The Alchemist's Trial

The air in the Gringotts sub-vault was colder than a Dementor’s kiss, a deep, sterile chill that had nothing to do with the weather outside and everything to do with the layers of ancient wards pressed into the stone. It was a silence that felt heavy, a quiet designed to contain screams. Hermione Granger didn't mind it. In the five years since the war, she had come to prefer the profound quiet of the deep places, the company of cursed objects over the platitudes of well-meaning colleagues.

On the obsidian pedestal before her, the object of the day’s work rested. A silver goblet, elegantly fluted, likely of seventeenth-century goblin make. To the untrained eye, it was a beautiful antique. To Hermione, it pulsed with a faint, greasy-green aura, a magical sickness that made the back of her teeth ache. A minor hex, according to the acquisition report. But there was no such thing as a truly ‘minor’ hex, only curses that killed you slower.

She ran a gloved finger along the smooth, cool length of her yew wand, its familiar weight a comfort in her palm. Her hair, a wild storm in her Hogwarts days, was now tamed into a thick, severe braid that fell over her shoulder. Her work robes were practical, black, and devoid of any insignia save for the Gringotts crest over her heart.

“Revelare maledictum,” she whispered, her voice a soft disturbance in the absolute stillness. The spell, one of her own design, flowed from her wand not as a flash of light, but as a fine, shimmering dust that settled over the goblet. The green aura intensified, and foul-smelling smoke, like rotting meat and soured wine, curled from the goblet’s rim. Dark, spidery runes, invisible moments before, blazed to life along the silver, crawling over the surface like agitated insects.

A Flesh-Rot Hex. Nasty. Not immediately lethal, but designed for a slow, agonizing corruption of living tissue. One touch and the victim’s hand would begin to blacken and decay as if it were a week-old corpse. It was a petty, vicious piece of magic.

Hermione’s expression remained impassive, her focus absolute. This was a delicate dance, a conversation with malevolence. Rushing, using brute force, could cause the curse to lash out or, worse, to lie dormant, waiting for a more opportune moment to activate. She began the counter-chant, a complex litany in Old Norse she’d unearthed in a crumbling scroll from a forgotten Egyptian tomb. Her wand moved in a series of precise, intricate patterns, weaving a net of golden light in the air before her.

The air grew thick, resisting her magic. The green aura of the hex flared, the runes on the goblet burning with defiant intensity. A low, guttural hiss echoed in the chamber as the dark magic fought back, recognizing its impending annihilation. Hermione pushed forward, her own magic a steady, relentless pressure. She felt the curse’s intent—a desire to maim, to corrupt, to cause suffering for suffering’s sake. It was a familiar feeling, the signature of a twisted mind.

With a final, sharp syllable and a decisive slash of her wand, the golden net collapsed inward, enveloping the goblet in a blinding flash. A piercing shriek, like metal tearing, ripped through the vault, and the foul stench of decay intensified for a nauseating second before vanishing completely.

And then, silence returned. Deeper, cleaner.

The goblet sat on the pedestal, inert and still. The sickly green light was gone. The runes had faded. It was just an old silver cup now, its history of violence erased by her will. Hermione held her wand steady for a full minute, her sharp eyes scanning for any residual traces of the hex. Nothing.

She allowed herself a slow exhale, the tension uncoiling from her shoulders. A single bead of sweat traced a path down her temple. Another day, another piece of malice scrubbed from the world. It was satisfying, necessary work. She lowered her wand, the tip still faintly glowing, and made a note on the parchment floating beside her. Item 734-B. Flesh-Rot Hex. Neutralized. It was a routine entry, one of hundreds she had made.

But as she was about to roll up the parchment and declare the job finished, a flicker of something incongruous caught her eye. It wasn't magic, not anymore. It was the ghost of magic. A faint, residual impression left on the fabric of reality itself, like the indentation left in a cushion long after someone has stood up. Most curse-breakers ignored these echoes; they were harmless, faded imprints of a vanquished power. But Hermione was not most curse-breakers. Her obsessive thoroughness, once a source of teasing from Ron, was now the cornerstone of her reputation.

She raised her wand again, this time murmuring a far more complex spell. “Signum revelio vestigium.” It was another of her creations, a diagnostic charm of excruciating sensitivity, designed to analyze the very structure—the architecture—of a curse's magical matrix.

A web of ethereal, silver-blue light bloomed around the goblet, mapping the vanquished hex. It looked like a three-dimensional schematic of malice. The core components of the Flesh-Rot Hex were there, textbook in their execution. But woven through it, like a single, discolored thread in a tapestry, was the signature. It was a peculiar, recursive loop of arithmantic sequencing tied into a triple-cast binding rune. It was needlessly complex, almost ostentatiously clever. It was also chillingly familiar.

Hermione’s breath caught in her throat. The sterile cold of the vault suddenly felt more personal, more invasive. She had seen this exact structural flourish before.

Her mind, a library of flawlessly indexed memories, flew open. Three weeks ago: a pearl-inlaid locket that tried to constrict around its wearer’s throat. The curse had been a standard Suffocation Charm, but the magical framework had contained that same, arrogant triple-cast binding. Two weeks before that: a porcelain music box that played a tune so discordant it caused temporary auditory paralysis. A simple sonic hex, yet it had been anchored by that identical, recursive arithmantic loop. And before that, the first one, a month ago: a silver hand-mirror that showed the viewer’s reflection rapidly aging into a skull. A Memento Mori curse, almost quaint, but for the signature woven into its foundation.

Four artifacts. Four different curses. Four different objects, recovered from different locations across Britain. All minor enough to be handled by a single Gringotts curse-breaker without raising alarms. But all of them built by the same hand. This wasn't a collection of random, latent dark magic festering in the post-war world. This was the work of one person. A single, highly skilled wizard or witch who was, for reasons unknown, seeding the world with cleverly disguised, malevolent trinkets.

A cold knot of dread tightened in Hermione’s stomach, a feeling she hadn't experienced with such intensity since the war. This was a pattern. And patterns meant intent. Patterns meant a plan. She stared at the harmless silver goblet, but she no longer saw it. She saw a breadcrumb. A deliberate piece of a puzzle she hadn't even known she was meant to be solving.

Who would do this? The work was too precise for a common dark wizard, too subtle. It showed a deep, academic understanding of curse-craft, a potioneer’s knowledge of reactive agents, and a duelist’s grasp of magical economy. The combination was as unique as it was unsettling. It was the work of someone who enjoyed their craft, someone who was showing off.

The satisfaction she’d felt moments ago had evaporated, replaced by a grim, focused urgency. The Ministry would dismiss it. She knew they would. They were desperate to believe the world was safe, that the great evil had been vanquished and all that remained were messy clean-up jobs. They wouldn’t want to see a pattern. They wouldn’t want to believe that someone new was moving in the shadows.

But Hermione Granger had learned the hard way that ignoring the whispers in the dark was how you ended up with monsters in your drawing room. She had seen what happened when small, seemingly unconnected acts of malice were allowed to fester and coalesce. This wasn't just another neutralized hex. This was the fourth data point in a terrifying sequence. And she would be damned if she let it become the fifth before someone listened.

Without a second thought, she extinguished her wand and sealed the vault. The heavy stone door boomed shut, the sound echoing in the subterranean silence, but her mind was already miles away, up on the surface, inside the polished halls of the Ministry. She strode through the labyrinthine corridors of Gringotts with a speed that made the goblin guards turn their heads, her practical boots clicking a sharp, insistent rhythm on the ancient stone. The quiet, contemplative work was over. Now came the part she loathed: dealing with people. Specifically, dealing with bureaucrats who had learned all the wrong lessons from the war.

Back in her small, spartan office, she didn't even bother to remove her work robes. She summoned the files from the Gringotts archives with a flick of her wand. Three thick folders soared through the air and landed with a thud on her desk: Case File 698-D: Locket, Constriction Hex. Case File 705-A: Music Box, Auditory Paralysis Hex. Case File 711-C: Mirror, Memento Mori Curse. She spread them open alongside the fresh parchment detailing the goblet.

For the next hour, she worked with a ferocious intensity. She cross-referenced every detail, every nuance of her own diagnostic spells. With her quill scratching furiously against the parchment, she composed her report to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was a masterpiece of cold, irrefutable logic.

To: Head of the Auror Office, DMLE
From: H. J. Granger, Senior Curse-Breaker, Gringotts Wizarding Bank
Subject: URGENT: Identification of a Coordinated Magical Threat Signature

She detailed the four separate incidents, listing the artifacts, the dates of neutralization, and the base-level curses involved. Then came the core of her argument. She outlined the unique magical signature she had identified, the one that bound them all together. She sketched the triple-cast binding rune and transcribed the elegant, deadly arithmantic sequence that formed the recursive loop. She gave it a name, a designation to force them to see it as a single entity. Signature Epsilon.

The consistent presence of Signature Epsilon across four distinct artifacts of varying origins, neutralized over a period of 32 days, indicates a single, active perpetrator, she wrote, her quill strokes sharp and angry. The sophistication of the signature, combined with the relatively minor nature of the base hexes, suggests a testing phase. The perpetrator is skilled, methodical, and is likely escalating their activities. To dismiss these as isolated incidents of latent post-war dark magic would be a grave, and potentially catastrophic, error of judgment. I am formally requesting the DMLE launch a full investigation into the origin of Signature Epsilon.

She read it over twice, her jaw tight. It was concise, professional, and left no room for interpretation. It was a warning bell, loud and clear. She sealed it with a drop of wax, stamped it with the official Gringotts seal, and strode out of her office, the letter a cold weight in her hand.

Apparating directly to the Ministry Atrium, she ignored the familiar churn of her stomach and the press of bodies. The vast hall, with its gleaming floor and golden statues celebrating a hard-won peace, felt like a monument to denial. People bustled past, laughing and talking, blissfully unaware of the quiet patterns forming in the dark. It made her feel profoundly, terribly alone.

The DMLE reception area on Level Two was a study in beige indifference. A tired-looking wizard with a sagging moustache sat behind a high desk, languidly stamping forms with a self-inking stamp. He didn’t look up when she approached.

“I need this filed,” Hermione said, her voice clipped. She placed the envelope on the counter. “It’s for the Head of the Auror Office. It needs to be marked as Urgent Review.”

The wizard, whose nameplate read ‘Wilberforce,’ finally lifted his gaze. He blinked at her slowly, his eyes lingering on the Gringotts seal before flicking to her face. A flicker of recognition, followed by weary resignation. “Granger. Another cursed teacup giving you trouble?”

Hermione’s fingers curled into a fist at her side. She kept her voice perfectly level. “It’s a formal report detailing a potential coordinated magical event. A threat. As I said, it’s urgent.”

Wilberforce sighed, a long, put-upon sound. He picked up the envelope as if it were contaminated, turning it over in his hands. “Right. ‘Coordinated threat.’ We get a dozen of these a week. Post-war jitters. Everything’s a conspiracy.” He reached for his stamp. ‘RECEIVED.’ Thump.

“It needs to be flagged for Urgent Review,” she repeated, leaning forward slightly, her eyes flashing with a dangerous light she hadn’t let anyone see in years. “If you file that under standard correspondence, you will be formally cited for dereliction of duty when the next cursed object sends someone to St. Mungo’s. Or worse.”

The clerk’s hand froze over the stamp. He stared at her, truly seeing her for the first time—not just the war heroine, but the fiercely intelligent, intimidatingly competent woman she had become. He swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet office. Without another word, he pulled out a different stamp, this one with angry red ink, and slammed it down on the envelope. URGENT REVIEW.

“It’s filed,” he mumbled, pushing it into a wire basket without meeting her eyes.

Hermione gave a curt nod, turned on her heel, and walked away. She hadn’t shouted, hadn’t threatened him with anything more than consequences. But as she stepped back into the lift, a cold certainty settled in her gut. He would pass it on, yes. But his superiors, comfortable in their peace, would read her careful, urgent words and see only the overzealous diligence of a woman who couldn’t let the war go. They would file it away, and nothing would be done. Not yet.

Her prediction proved depressingly accurate. Three days passed in a state of taut, simmering anxiety. Every morning, she scanned the Daily Prophet with a knot in her gut, half-dreading, half-expecting to see a headline that would vindicate her. Every afternoon, she found herself glancing towards the window of her office, anticipating the arrival of an Auror seeking consultation. Nothing came. The silence from the Ministry was more damning than an outright refusal. It was the silence of a report filed away, deemed unworthy of a direct response. The silence of being ignored.

On the fourth day, a Ministry owl, a nondescript barn owl rather than one from the Auror department, swooped through her open window. It dropped a crisp, cream-coloured envelope onto her desk and hooted once, expectantly. The parchment was thick, the Ministry of Magic seal embossed in gold. It felt heavy, final. Hermione stared at it, a cold sense of resignation washing over her. She already knew what it would say.

With deliberate, almost clinical slowness, she broke the seal. The letter was brief.

Dear Ms. Granger,

Thank you for your recent report concerning magical signature ‘Epsilon.’ The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has reviewed your findings with interest. We appreciate the diligence and meticulous care you continue to apply to your work with Gringotts, a service to the entire wizarding community.

The patronizing tone was a physical thing, a film of condescension coating the words. She read on, her jaw tightening with every line.

While your analysis is, as always, thorough, we have concluded that there is no cause for alarm at this juncture. After consulting with our own specialists in post-conflict magical theory, the Department has determined that these minor hexes are consistent with the vast amount of latent post-war dark magic still dissipating throughout Britain. Such residual energies can, on occasion, coalesce and mimic the patterns of intentional spell-craft, creating what appears to be a coherent signature where none truly exists.

It is, in essence, a magical echo. Unpleasant, certainly, but ultimately harmless and without malicious intent. The DMLE will continue to monitor the situation, but we see no need to allocate resources to a full investigation at this time.

We thank you again for your vigilance.

Sincerely,

Gawain Robards
Head of the Auror Office
Ministry of Magic

Hermione read the letter a second time, a low, guttural sound of disbelief caught in her throat. Magical echo. Without malicious intent. It was the most elegantly phrased, infuriatingly obtuse load of dragon dung she had ever read. They hadn't just dismissed her; they had patted her on the head and told her she was seeing ghosts.

She could feel the blood pounding in her temples. The careful arithmancy, the unique triple-cast binding rune—those weren’t echoes. They were as deliberate and specific as a signature on a painting. To suggest that such complex, layered magic could spontaneously generate from residual energy was an insult to her intelligence and a flagrant denial of the evidence she had laid out so plainly. It was Fudge all over again, burying his head in the sand while the threat gathered strength. The names and faces had changed, but the institutional cowardice remained the same. Peace was a profitable, comfortable narrative, and her report was an unwelcome complication.

A flare of white-hot anger surged through her. Her hand, resting on the letter, trembled. The parchment began to smoke at the edges where her fingertips touched it, the gold seal blackening and blistering. She snatched her hand back, taking a deep, shuddering breath to regain control of her magic. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of her losing her temper.

She stood up and walked to the window, looking down at the Diagon Alley crowds moving below. They were safe, for now. They were shopping and laughing and living their lives, all under the assumption that the Ministry was watching over them, that the Aurors were prepared. They were wrong. The Ministry wasn't watching. It was sleeping, dreaming of a peace it hadn't truly earned.

Hermione turned back to her desk. The smoking letter lay there, a testament to their willful blindness. They wouldn’t listen to her report. They wouldn’t heed her warning. Fine. She would keep working. She would keep gathering data. And she would wait. Because she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that Signature Epsilon was not an echo. It was a promise. And sooner or later, the perpetrator would escalate. Sooner or later, there would be a victim the Ministry couldn't ignore. The thought brought her no satisfaction, only a profound and weary sorrow. Proof would come, but it would be written in pain.

It took nine days. Nine days of tense silence, of Hermione meticulously cross-referencing goblin silver markings and ancient runic charts, building a case no sane person could deny, all while the Ministry slept. Her anger had cooled from a raging fire to a block of solid ice in her chest. She worked with a grim, detached focus, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She knew it would. The magic of Signature Epsilon was too precise, too arrogant, to remain dormant for long.

The drop came on a Tuesday morning, not with an owl, but with a screaming headline on the Daily Prophet that made her spill hot tea all over a priceless scroll of Babylonian curse etymology.

WIZENGAMOT ELDER STRUCK DOWN! CORNELIUS FUDGE IN CRITICAL CONDITION!

Hermione stared, her heart hammering against her ribs. Cornelius Fudge. Of all people. The man whose entire career had been a monument to willful ignorance was now its victim. The irony was so thick it was suffocating. The moving photograph below the headline was chaotic—St. Mungo’s Healers frantically erecting privacy screens around a convulsing shape on a stretcher. For a split second, the camera caught a glimpse of Fudge’s hand, clutching a gold pocket watch. The skin on his fingers was grey, brittle, and flaking away like ancient parchment. The watch itself, however, gleamed malevolently, its surface crawling with faint, pulsing runes she recognized instantly.

The article described a sudden affliction. Fudge had been polishing the heirloom, a gift from the Bulgarian Ministry from his time as Minister, when he’d collapsed. The curse was one of accelerated decrepitude, a hideously potent dark magic that was literally turning him to dust while he was still alive. The Healers were baffled, their diagnostic spells fizzling out against the curse’s powerful magical interference.

The scroll was ruined. Hermione didn’t even care. She slowly lowered the newspaper, her hands steady, her face a pale, unreadable mask. There was no triumph in being right. No satisfaction. There was only a cold, hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. A man was dying in agony because Gawain Robards and his department of complacent fools had preferred a comfortable lie to an inconvenient truth.

She didn't have to wait long. Not five minutes after she’d read the article, a frantic-looking eagle owl slammed into the reinforced window of her office, rattling the glass in its frame. It wasn’t a standard Ministry bird; it was from the Auror department’s emergency fleet. It screeched, hammering its beak against the pane until she magically unlatched it. The bird swooped in, dropped a scroll tied with a stark black ribbon onto her desk, and took off without waiting for a treat.

The seal was cracked, the message hastily scrawled on the parchment. There was no salutation, no polite preamble.

Granger. Your presence is required at the Ministry. Conference Room 3, DMLE. Immediately.

Robards.

Hermione looked from the note to the headline on the paper. Immediately. The word was a command born of panic. The time for condescension was over.

She stood, smoothed down her robes, and walked out of her office without a backward glance. Her apparition was flawless, landing her squarely in the center of the Ministry Atrium. The difference from her last visit was stark. The lazy, bureaucratic calm had shattered. Aurors in full tactical gear were jogging through the hall, their expressions grim. Witches and wizards stood in tight, whispering clusters, their faces pale with fear. The golden statues celebrating peace now seemed like a cruel joke.

She strode to the lifts, her heels clicking an aggressive rhythm on the marble floor. This time, no one got in her way. People saw the look on her face—the cold fury in her eyes, the rigid set of her jaw—and parted before her like she was wielding a scythe. In the lift, a junior assistant from Magical Maintenance fidgeted, refusing to meet her gaze. The entire building hummed with a frequency of terror she hadn't felt since the war.

At the DMLE reception, Wilberforce was gone. A young, terrified-looking witch sat in his place, her hands trembling as she sorted through a mountain of emergency communiqués. She saw Hermione approach, and her eyes widened in a mixture of awe and fear.

"Ms. Granger," she stammered, jumping to her feet. "Head Auror Robards is—they're waiting for you. Down the hall, first on the left."

Hermione gave a single, sharp nod and continued walking. She didn't need directions. She knew exactly where she was going. She was walking into a room full of men who had dismissed her, patronized her, and endangered the public through their own arrogance. They had ignored her evidence. Now, they were faced with the consequences. And they needed her. The thought brought a bitter, metallic taste to her mouth. She reached the polished mahogany door of Conference Room 3, the muffled sound of panicked, important voices seeping from within. She paused, took one deep, steadying breath, and pushed the door open, ready to face the very people who had let the darkness seep back in.