characters are the creation and intellectual property of j. k. rowling. no profit is derived from this work of fan fiction.

Rated PG-13
 
 

the unspeakable universe: soror mystica
 
 

eight months before "The Waiting Room"
 
 

She had no memory of escaping the fire, or walking the two kilometers to the edge of the anti-Apparition barrier.  There was a gap in her memory, nothing more than a vague sensation of pain and fear.

She did remember crossing the barrier, the ache in her blistered feet and the sting of her burnt arms.  She'd clutched her wand in swollen fingers and Apparated to Hogsmeade, collapsing in the main street.

Her memory of waking up was as clear as Veritaserum.  The tail end of a dream of fire.  Voices (Madam Pomfrey and Hermione).  People walking quietly.  Opening her eyes and seeing the hospital wing.  Madam Pomfrey leaning over her.

"Awake at last, Miss Weasley?"

***

Two hours after she woke up, she asked to see Professor Snape.  She allowed Madam Pomfrey to help her bathe first, and dressed in soft, modest robes imbued with healing charms, because she fancied that she'd be less intimidated by Snape if she weren't burnt and bedraggled.

Two and a half hours after she woke up, Snape and Hermione entered the hospital wing, summoned chairs and sat beside her bed.

"Put up a privacy shield," she said to Hermione.

Looking curious, Hermione did so.

Ginny waited until the rest of the room seemed misty through the charm's distortion.  Then she said, "The Philosopher's Stone."

Snape made a sudden movement, and Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"Sorry?  Ginny, that was destroyed--"

"They're making a new one.  Sorenson and -- and Travis."  The Bear Man, all muscle and thick, black hair.  "They could have done it, too.  Could have..."

Could have, if not for her.  Saboteur.  Sorenson had trusted her, and she'd betrayed him, just as the Bear Man had predicted.

He'd been wrong about one thing.

She would have regrets.  Oh, how she'd have regrets.

Snape gave her a severe look, and suddenly she was eleven years old, still reeling from the Sorting ("I see a great deal of Slytherin in you...") and faced with a cold, terrifying Potions Master again.

"The creation of the Philosopher's Stone took the Flamels almost eighty years, Miss Weasley, and no one else has successfully recreated their work."

"Not yet."

Snape acknowledged this with a curt nod.

"Even so," Hermione pointed out, "there are a few crackpots every decade, claiming to have the Stone and the Elixir of Life.  Hybrid magics are rarely successful, and alchemy combines Transfiguration and Potions, which is a particularly difficult--"  She stopped and gave a slight smile.  "Sorry.  Teaching's a hard habit to break."

"Hermione, I know all this.  I've been reading everything I can about it for the last six months, not to mention living with a mad alchemist."  Such a harsh, flippant note. " But you must believe me: Sorenson and Travis could have done it."

"I take it, then, that you functioned as soror mystica?" asked Snape.

Mystical sister.  The alchemist's feminine half.  Alchemy was rife with such symbolism.

She remembered Travis's words, in the shadows of the ruined Muggle church: "Science and magic as erotica, Virginia.  You understand, don't you?"

Oh yes.  She'd understood.

The Bear Man.  The loyal friend.  The ambitious traitor.  The seductive teacher.  The crude rapist.  (Attempted rapist, her mind amended, but then there were those bruises on Debbie's throat, and the odd look in Tara's eyes, and surely she hadn't been the Community's first candidate for the position of soror mystica...)

She understood all too well.

"I think ..." Ginny looked down at her bandaged hands.  "I think I'd like a cup of tea."  Snape waved his wand and the tea appeared on the bedside table; Hermione perched on the bed and helped her hold the cup.

When she'd drunk the tea, she leaned back in bed and told them her story.

The Community was a group who had withdrawn from wider magical society in order to expand their magical abilities, much as both monks and wizards had done in the Middle Ages.  Ten years ago, they'd been a harmless, loosely-organised group who occasionally published papers on the more esoteric branches of magic.

Seven years ago, a wizard named Christopher Sorenson had become the spokesman, leader and focal point of the Community.  Since then, the group had become more withdrawn, and there had been rumours of Dark magic and other, more mundane perversions.

Six months ago, the Department had pulled Ginny out of her comfortable, Ministry-funded research position in the Centre for Magical Social Affairs, and asked her to infiltrate the Community.

Reluctantly, she'd put discarded the persona of Ginny Weasley, sociologist, historian and Dark Artifacts specialist, and become Virginia, the little girl who'd loved and lost Harry Potter, who tried and failed at feigning adulthood, the passive victim who just wanted someone to look after and love her.

Sorenson had liked her immediately, had offered her a place in the Community within a few days of their "chance" meeting in Diagon Alley.  She'd be a librarian, a drudge to begin with, but she'd quickly become a real part of the Community, you're just the kind of woman we need, Virginia...

Travis, on the other hand, had regarded her with a mixture of hatred and desire.  Hatred, because she was an interloper, a newcomer, far too talented, and far too closely associated with the heroes of the Order.

Desire, because she was beautiful and powerful, and because she was a temptation.

Travis, good little Slytherin that he'd been twenty-five years ago, wanted to be the one to recreate the Stone, and if he could be the one to seduce the soror mystica...

They'd come so close ... she'd watched, absorbed, learnt, and they'd been so close to success.  She remembered the power, the bond between her and Christopher, the white light and the Stone forming at the centre...

The pain as she deliberately twisted the spell.

The room bursting into flames.

Alchemy was an elemental hybrid magic, based in fire.

Fire.

Flames licking at her skin, scorching her hair as she ran through the old house, urging people out into the open.

Flames on her clothes as she ran towards the barriers, knowing that Travis would follow.

Flames.

Fire.

The burning in her chest as she watched Christopher die.  The mad, brilliant, charismatic alchemist who'd trusted her so completely...

Up in flames.

"I don't know where Travis has gone," she said finally.  "I do know that it was him and his supporters who were dabbling in the Dark Arts.  I don't think he was ever a Death Eater, but he knew his stuff."

"He didn't--"  Hermione swallowed.  "You said he tried to seduce you.  Did he--"

There was no joy in Ginny's smile.  "He tried.  But you don't grow up with six brothers without learning how to fight with boys."

Hermione gave her a small, satisfied smile.  "Good.  But, oh Ginny, you could have been killed."

"I know.  But I wasn't."

"Why did you sabotage the Stone?" Snape asked, watching her closely.  "You must have known what the results would be.  Why not destroy it after it had taken its physical form?"

Ginny looked away, then forced herself to meet his eyes.  After all, he'd been a Death Eater once.  He understood.

"I wouldn't have done it.  If it wasn't destroyed then... I'd never have done it at all."

Snape nodded.

"But Nicholas Flamel destroyed his Stone," Hermione objected.

"I know."

But that was Nicholas Flamel, the great alchemist.  A good man.  A man of honour.

Not a man who'd share his soul with Voldemort, however unconsciously.  Not a man who'd have a place in Slytherin House.

Not a man who'd allow someone he loved to die in flames.

Hermione lowered the privacy charm and they left the hospital wing.  Ginny watched Snape's hand rest on Hermione's lower back and thought that they were well-matched, far too cold to be touched by fire.

She stared at the ceiling and thought of flames.
 

end