Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Hermione flooed in to the Ministry for work the atmosphere in the Atrium seemed significantly more chaotic than usual. A team of Maintenance staff came tearing past her and she had to step back against the fireplace to avoid been swept along.

She looked down the long row of fireplaces and saw that Magical Law Enforcement officers were stopping other staff as they arrived and conscripting them into teams that were then hurried off to other destinations.

What on earth is going on? she wondered, but she was in a hurry to get to her office. She was to lead her first Preliminary Conference with a delegation of Beings today, and her Portkey was leaving for the Maudit Moor in half an hour. When she spotted a clear path to the elevators she left the Atrium as unobtrusively as she could.

Arriving at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, she was perturbed to find the chaos had spread there too. The Goblin Liaison Office in particular seemed full to bursting with people she'd never seen before. As she walked past, a wizard popped out into the hallway dragging an extremely long, extremely full filing cabinet drawer behind him. The drawer stretched all the way back into the office and Hermione realised it was from one of the archival cabinets that held missives dating back centuries. She wondered again what had triggered this sudden frenzy of activity.

Walking into her office she was relieved to see that her partner Percy was already there. He was busy grabbing scrolls from the slots in the wall and appeared to be in quite a hurry.

"Hermione, thank Merlin you're here!" he exclaimed, struggling to keep a hold of the rolls of parchment. "It's all hands on deck today, I'm afraid. The Muggles expanded their subterranean tube train into a high security Gringotts vault and now the Goblins are threatening war, the Muggles are panicking and the MLE is trying to ... " he paused and looked frustrated.

"Well, they are certainly obliviation mad today, but at the moment I think they're just reveling in their expanded emergency powers, crisis protocol, you know.

"We are going to have to call off our meeting with the Delegation," he continued. "The Head wants us to help out the Goblin Liaison team."

Hermione stiffened. This meeting with the Delegation was to have been her first meeting as primary negotiator.

"Percy, I just walked past the Goblin office," Hermione protested, "they've got more people in there than they know what to do with. They've even breached the Archives of Antiquity."

Percy finally got his scrolls settled in his arms. "Well that's as may be, but this has come down from the top." He gave her an apologetic shrug. "Send the Delegation an owl, it's only the Prelim meeting and it's not such a terrible breach of diplomacy to reschedule. It may even give us more leverage later."

Hermione pursed her lips in annoyance and then she sighed.

"Just go on then," she said, "I'll be right behind you." Percy gave her a relieved nod and rushed out.

Her eyes settled on the clock. She certainly could send an owl, or she could give the entire rest of the Ministry a few hours to figure out what it was doing about the Goblins, go to her meeting, and still be back before she was missed. The idea was tempting.

It would mean going without backup as there was no way she could convince Percy to come... and that was definitely a violation of departmental policy.

She squared her shoulders, this outreach work was what she was born to do and who knew how long this ostracized community had been neglected by the Ministry. She didn't want them to have to wait a minute longer than necessary for official recognition - the Ministry was already centuries out-of-date on the rights of non-human persons - she couldn't be the reason for any further delay: she would go alone.

An hour later she was regretting that decision.

On her arrival by Portkey at the Maudit Moor she'd found herself standing alone on a vast heath. It was a beautiful landscape, open to the sky and covered in low growing bushes, but it was also a disquieting location. Trying to sort out the source of her unease Hermione suddenly realised that she couldn't hear the sounds of any other creatures, just the wind.

A sudden pulse of magic caused her to black out.

She woke up in a small dim room that smelled of earth and rot. Thick straps held her body to a flat table and craning her head she could see a female figure silhouetted by the low hearth fire.

The woman was moving around and Hermione could hear the clinking sound of metal implements being jostled together. She tried to speak, but she was still too weak from whatever magic had hit her and only made a faint croaking sound.

"Ah, you're awake," the figure said turning around and approaching Hermione. "I wanted to thank you for reaching out to us, it's been so long since the Ministry last sent anyone."

Hermione's heart was thudding in a fast, heavy rhythm. The hag who had approached her was surely the Being she'd been corresponding with before the meeting, but never once in all the missives that they had exchanged had she ever considered that she might be in serious danger.

She was beginning to panic.

"Not ...a child, don't... eat me!" she managed to gasp out.

The hag looked annoyed. "Of course we don't eat the whole child," she said.

Hermione didn't think that sounded quite right.

"Just the liver," the hag continued.

Hermione was a clever witch and she knew many things, including the mundane fact that you don't need your entire liver to survive and that the organ can regenerate quite quickly.

Maybe there was room to negotiate with her captor, she thought, and perhaps she could survive this encounter. After all, she had come prepared to negotiate, just not for her own organs.

She hadn't uttered more than the beginning of her argument before the hag interrupted angrily.

"Of course I know that! Why do you think we find it so irritating to be called monsters."

The hag reached over and pushed a gag into Hermione's mouth. Hermione tried to bite at the being's long hairy fingers, but the hag nimbly kept her digits out of the way of Hermione's teeth while continuing to speak,

"It's only when we're cut off from magical education that my desperate sisters try eating the entire child. Me, I had the good fortune to be conceived half-Muggle and my mother encouraged me to go to medical school," the hag trailed off...

"Well, when I say encouraged." she rolled her eyes and continued with her preparations.

Hermione was struggling against her restraints and could hear clinking metal and the hiss of pneumatic seals being opened.

"Just relax and stop struggling. I promise not to take it all. You'll be good as new in a month."

Hermione squeaked behind her gag as a shudder of fear traveled through her. The hag's stated intent not to kill her didn't reassure her all that much and with increasing desperation she continued writhing against her bindings.

"Really, this is nonsense," the hag said, "Don't you eat any living creatures? This is hardly worse than drinking milk from a cow."

The hag seemed to be in the end run of whatever preparatory work she was doing. No longer moving around she came to stand next to Hermione and was fiddling with a long silver tool that she was holding in her hands.

"Most cows live perfectly happy lives, you know." she continued talking, sounding somewhat distracted, "and it's certainly not their fault they've gone all docile, that's down to the breeding. "But it's probably easier for them too, all things considered. The stupider they are the fewer brains they have to object to the situation.

"Just like Muggles, really. And I suppose that goes for witches like you too.

"Anyway, I think we're just about ready here."

When the hag pulled Hermione's robes up past her waist the witch renewed her struggles.

"Arthroscopic surgery, well established technique," the hag said. "It'll just be a little pinch through the belly button," she reassured.

Hermione screamed through the gag.

"Well, I suppose if you really can't be still..."

Everything went black again.

Hermione woke up lying on her back with twigs of heather uncomfortably jabbing at her through her robes. She had a minor cramp in her abdomen and the vaguest impression that her preliminary conference with the Hags had been successful. As awareness slowly returned she noted that her hand, which was curled around her stomach, was also holding a scroll.

With limp muscles she let herself half roll, half fall onto her side and opened the document. It was a formal missive containing a short written text indicating that the Hag delegation was thankful for her efforts during a productive first meeting and that they would be looking forward with optimism to resuming their negotiations in six weeks.

Well, Hermione thought, a bit blearily, that sounds promising, and even if I can't remember exactly what was said at least I will be able to file the paperwork.