Chapter 267: Traps

Chapter 267: Traps

If you want to support me check out my patron at /athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 15 chapters ahead as a bonus.

I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

---------------

9th February 2013, Malfoy Manor

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

I prepared myself to create a secondary temporary consciousness that I would have programmed for them to ruin themselves before dissolving, but I noticed that Nathan started screaming. It was odd, I wasn't even doing anything to him. He then started to burn, and melt into something. I noticed that the rest of the members of the Court were doing the same.

Oh shit, I felt that their life forces weren't being dissipated but absorbed into a ritualistic array underneath the carpet. I hadn't even noticed that. I couldn't move. I was frozen completely, and I felt ethereal chains coming from the ground binding me as well.

This whole thing was a trap, and whoever was responsible used the entire Court of Shadows as a sacrifice to get to me. What a shit show.

---------------

(Hermione Granger POV)

Hermione Granger knew that she was an ambitious woman. It ran in her blood, after all. Her mother's family wasn't wealthy; they could barely afford anything after paying for food and rent. After they died when she was barely more than a teenager, leaving her practically nothing. Emma Granger, Hermione's mother, had studied like no other, and worked her arse off, to rise from a nameless orphan, all the way up to a Dentist with her own successful practice, who earned more in a month than others did in a year. Follow current novels on novelb((in).(com)

Instead of wallowing in despair and helplessness, she refused to give up. She gave everything her best, no matter what, and that's something that she had always stressed on to Hermione when she was growing up. Her father was born privileged, with an upper-class family that always made sure that he was cared for. Truthfully, Hermione admired her mother and did her best to emulate her over the years.

It was why she studied so much, when she heard stories on how her mother studied her way to success. Hermione loved her father, don't get her wrong, but her mother held a special place in her heart. When young Hermione had received her Hogwarts letter, her mother looked sad. Now, she understood that her mother had understood the inevitable division between them, the wall that would separate them, even when she wasn't in school. Because even when she was at home, Hermione yearned to use her magic, something that she now understood was a way for the Ministry to make sure that muggleborns stayed in the magical world.

It took months of studying and experimentation, but Hermione discovered that the only issue with the ritual was the summoning which for some reason wouldn't work on Jasmine. She had tried to summon and bind one of her enemies, and it worked flawlessly. They were obliviated later of course, after Hermione dispelled the enchantment. She wasn't a monster after all.

The biggest issue was the fact that the strength of the binding depended on what powered them. The Peverell brothers were rumored to be three wizards of legendary power, maybe even in the same league as Merlin, something that Hermione definitely wasn't. And with Jasmine Potter being the person she wished to bind; failure wasn't an option. The Potter girl would just kill her.

And so, after some research in the Grimoire, Hermione discovered that there were few things as powerful as life force. She modified the ritual to use the sacrifice of certain people to power the bindings. She decided to forgo the summoning that didn't seem to work on her enemy, leaving her with the fact that she had to lead Potter into a trap, as well as find people to sacrifice. She decided to hit two birds with one stone and just use the Court members as the sacrifice necessary to power the ritual, and also put the idea in their head to use Rose as leverage, by constantly mentioning how close the two sisters are.

In the end, she used an invisibility spell that hid her entire magical presence from the world, one that was created by Ignotus Peverell in an attempt to replicate Death's cloak. This spell allowed someone to slip through wards unnoticed, but it was very magically consuming and was very unstable. Still Hermione gambled and used it to sneak into Malfoy Manor, prepare the ritual in the meeting room and afterwards it was just a waiting game.

She slowly marked the magic of every Court member to be used as sacrifices for the ritual when it activates if they're in the vicinity. Every member of the court wore a ring that signified their membership to the Court, and they were used to bypass the wards to attend court meetings. It was simple for her to use those rings as the marker for the magics. Everyone who wears their rings when they're inside the ritual circle while it's activated, will have their life force ripped out to power the bindings. In the end, she waited until the Court foolishly kidnapped Rose Potter.

Watching through a mirror, Hermione watched as Jasmine Potter tried to make peace with the Court of Shadows, a foolish move, since the Court would always lust for her power, as many others did.

She watched fascinated as the woman effortlessly rescued her sister and started breaking the members of the ritual. She even blocked a Killing Curse, somehow. No, not blocked, she froze it in midair and returned it to its castor, Malfoy, killing him.

And the worst thing was the emptiness in her eyes as she did all of this. She just looked so bored, so apathetic to the misery that she was condemning these men and women into, even those who had protested Rose's kidnapping.

Things were getting too far; Hermione couldn't afford to let Jasmine kill the members of the Court, since the less they are, the less powerful the ritual will be. Steeling herself, Hermione reminded herself that the lives that she will take that day were for the greater good. They would be used to defeat a vicious monster, a true threat to the magical world, and it would bring her closer to her goal of an equal magical Britain.

Hermione Granger simply walked to the door and activated the ritual, confident that it represented a giant leap of progress in the magical world.

---------------

If you want to support me check out my patron at /athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 15 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.