Hermione Granger's Pitiful Creatures Crusade
Chapter Three Flashback: December, 1994 [link] Written to "forwards beckon rebound" by Adrianne Lenker
Hermione shook her head, exasperated. “Is this some forbidden thrill for you, appearing every time I’m alone and drawing attention to yourself via thinly veiled innuendos? Because it’s certainly not for my benefit.”
“Maybe it is for your benefit, an act of charity,” Malfoy supplied easily. “You must be lonely, self-imprisoned in the library, reading your”—his searching hand bypassed her open Arithmancy text and snatched up the closed book next to it, which happened to be Mykew Gregorovitch’s Written Guide to Wandlore—“massive tome on the art of wand-making, apparently. Salazar, it’s worse than I thought if you’re spending your time reading this drivel.”
She fought her blush valiantly. It wasn’t as though Malfoy would be able to deduce her reason for having the book set out at her workstation.
Ever since she’d noticed his wand was composed of hawthorn, she’d been revisiting Gregorovitch’s analysis of the wood again and again, attempting to make sense of the senseless as she was known to do. But the text did not bend to her will, only ever reading:
“Hawthorn wood makes a strange, contradictory wand, as full of paradoxes as the tree that gave it birth, whose leaves and blossoms heal, and yet whose cut branches smell of death. A witch or wizard wielding a hawthorn wand, likely suffering a life of dissonance and strife, may find they are unsure whether to walk the path of Light or its twin path of Dark. A hawthorn wand is suited for either, capable of both exceptional healing spells and especially wicked curses. Due to their conflicted nature, hawthorn wands are not easy wands to command and require a talented master.”
