The Grangers were waving enthusiastically at the platform exit. They were dressed in smart Muggle clothes, their faces alight with the pure joy of seeing their daughter.
Hermione, holding Lia's hand, quickly walked through the bustling crowd, the steam in the air blurring the sound of The Weasley Family's farewells behind them.
"Oh, Hermione, my darling!" Mrs. Granger gave her daughter a solid hug, and then her kind eyes fell upon Lia. "Good girl, I've prepared this season's smoked fish. I think you'll like it."
Lia's eyes lit up slightly, and she thanked sweetly, "Thank you, Madam!"
"Oh! Such a good girl," Mrs. Granger smiled and pinched Lia's cheek. "You look much cheerier than last time."
The drive home was smooth and quiet. Mr. Granger was driving, watching the two girls in the back seat through the rearview mirror.
Everything seemed so peaceful and wonderful.
It wasn't until the following afternoon that the first strange incident occurred.
It was a sunny afternoon, and Hermione was teaching Lia to identify several common Muggle plants in the garden.
Lia was very interested in these flowers and plants that neither moved nor attacked people. She extended a slender finger, carefully touching the petal of a rose.
Just then, the neighbor's fat white Persian Cat jumped down from the low wall with an elegant stride.
It saw Lia, and perhaps out of some territorial instinct, it arched its back and let out a threatening "Haaa—" sound from its throat.
Hermione was about to speak to calm it down, but Lia reacted first.
She didn't even turn her head.
Her deep blue eyes were still fixed on the rose in front of her, but a string of low, strange hissing sounds came from her mouth.
"Ssssshaaa-kaaa-thsssss..." (Quiet)
The sound was neither like a cat nor a person.
It was short and sharp, carrying a commanding authority, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue, or an ancient, forgotten spell.
The white Persian Cat's threatening sound stopped abruptly.
Its fur stood on end, as if it had seen a natural predator, and its eyes were filled with extreme fear.
It scrambled to turn around, crashed into the low wall, and then fled back to its own yard like mad, letting out a mournful wail from its throat.
The garden instantly fell silent.
Hermione froze in place, her blood seeming to congeal at that moment.
She understood.
That pronunciation, that language... it was Parseltongue.
She abruptly looked at Lia, but Lia acted as if nothing had happened, still examining the rose.
She turned her head, looked at Hermione with those innocent eyes, and tilted her head, causing her soft cat ears to sway slightly.
"Hermione, it ran away."
"Lia," Hermione's voice was a little dry. She crouched down, trying to meet Lia's gaze. "What did you... say to that cat just now?"
"Telling it to be quiet," Lia replied matter-of-factly. "It was too noisy."
"I mean, you..." Hermione was cut off mid-sentence when the neighbor's window was pushed open with a "bang." The neighbor's wife poked her head out and cried in alarm: "Oh dear! Miss Granger! Is there something terrible in your yard? My Snowball is scared senseless!"
Hermione's heart thumped heavily. She immediately stood up, putting on an apologetic, flawless smile.
"I am so sorry, Mrs. Brown! We didn't see anything! Maybe it accidentally saw a car? You know how timid Snowball usually is."
As she spoke, she quickly pointed toward Mrs. Brown and silently muttered: "Confundus."
Since Lia swallowed the soul fragment, she had unconsciously been transmitting magic power to Hermione, which made Hermione's magic and control stronger and stronger, allowing her to gradually master Wandless Casting.
The panic on Mrs. Brown's face immediately turned into confusion. She muttered to herself, "A car? Oh... yes, it must have been a car... that timid, silly thing." She grumbled and closed the window.
Hermione sighed in relief, her palms slick with cold sweat.
She turned around, looked at the still bewildered Lia, and felt for the first time that this was tricky.
This was not a simple magical accident; this was Parseltongue, the mark of Salazar Slytherin, and the symbol of a Dark Wizard.
It was Tom Riddle's ability.
"Lia, listen," Hermione's voice grew serious. "From now on, never make that sound to any animal or person again, understood? No matter what happens."
Lia looked at Hermione's serious face, and although she didn't understand why, she nodded obediently.
She leaned forward, rubbed her cheek against Hermione's arm, and asked softly, "Hermione, are you angry?"
That familiar feeling of complete dependence relaxed Hermione's tense nerves slightly. She sighed and rubbed Lia's head: "No. I'm just... protecting you."
This incident lodged itself in Hermione's heart like a small thorn.
A few days later, more "abnormalities" began to surface.
During dinner, Mrs. Granger casually mentioned, "Lia, your ears... the color seems to have gotten a little darker?"
Hermione immediately looked up. Under the bright dining room light, the fur on the tips of Lia's pure white, fluffy cat ears indeed showed a trace of extremely faint, almost imperceptible grayish-black, as if accidentally stained with ink.
Lia herself was unaware; she touched her ears, looking confused.
"Oh! That's a Magical Dye I've been researching recently!" Hermione immediately interjected, her tone as casual as if discussing the weather. "I wanted to see if I could invent something safe for coloring pet fur. It accidentally got on Lia's ears, but it will wash off in a few days!"
"magic?" Mr. Granger put down his knife and fork and asked curiously, "Like the magic at your school that makes feathers fly?"
"Yes, Dad. A very harmless little spell." Hermione explained with a smile, but her hand under the table was secretly clenched into a fist.
It wasn't dye.
She knew it was something deeper, penetrating outward from the depths of Lia's soul.
That night, Hermione didn't go to sleep right away. She locked herself in her room, using the excuse that she had to finish her summer homework.
Open on her desk was *advanced potion-making*, but what she was actually reading was a forbidden book she had dug up from an old bookstore in Diagon Alley, hidden underneath: *Soul Anchors and Living Vessels: A Hypothesis*.
The pages were yellowed, and the writing was obscure. She illuminated the text with the tip of her magic wand, reading word by word.
"...When a powerful soul fragment parasitizes a living body, the living body will inevitably be assimilated by it. The initial manifestation is often a subtle change in appearance, like ink dropping into water, silent and unseen..."
Hermione's breath hitched. She closed the book and looked out at the dark night sky, her heart sinking.
A few more days passed. On a cold, rainy night, The Grangers gathered around the fireplace in the living room to keep warm. Incendio burned fiercely, crackling and warming everyone's faces.
Lia was curled up on the rug beside Hermione, her tail wrapped around Hermione's ankle. She stared at the dancing flames, utterly mesmerized.
Mr. Granger, sipping hot tea, asked with a smile, "Lia, aren't you afraid of fire? I thought cats usually stayed away from the fireplace."
Lia turned her head, her deep blue eyes reflecting the firelight like two translucent gems. She replied softly, in a tone both innocent and slightly unsettling:
"No. Inside the fire... there are warm souls."
This sentence instantly silenced the living room.
The Grangers' smiles froze. They exchanged glances.
Hermione's heart felt as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand.
She knew what Lia was talking about.
That was Quirrell's soul—the soul fragment of Lord Voldemort that had been utterly annihilated in the Chamber of Secrets by the combined effects of the Basilisk venom and Phoenix tears. It had left a final imprint on Lia's body: an affinity for fire, or rather, the perception of "burning souls."
"Lia means that the fireplace feels warm, like it has life," Hermione immediately interjected with a laugh to smooth things over. "It's a metaphor in the Wizarding world to describe a strong flame."
As she explained, she reached out and ruffled Lia's hair. Under her palm, the girl's body was compliant and soft.
However, what truly terrified Hermione happened the next day.
She was helping her mother prepare a salad in the kitchen, while Lia watched curiously nearby.
Hermione was slicing tomatoes with a sharp fruit knife. When Lia saw the gleaming blade, she instinctively took a step back.
"Don't be afraid, Lia, it won't hurt you," Hermione said gently.
Just as she turned her head to comfort Lia, the blade in her hand accidentally sliced across a finger on her other hand.
"Ah!" Hermione gasped softly.
A thin, long cut immediately appeared, and bright red blood welled up.
"Hermione!" Lia's cry was laced with tears. She instantly forgot her fear of the knife, rushed over, and grabbed Hermione's injured hand.
"I'm fine, Lia, it's just a small cut..." Hermione was about to reassure her, but the words caught in her throat.
She watched as, the moment Lia's warm hand grasped her finger, the bleeding wound began to heal at a visible speed.
Muscle tissue rapidly wriggled and connected, and the skin surface quickly closed up. In no more than two or three seconds, the wound completely vanished, leaving only an extremely faint pink mark, and then even the mark disappeared.
Completely restored.
It was as if the wound just moments ago had been Hermione's imagination.
The kitchen was deathly quiet.
Mrs. Granger came out of the pantry carrying a plate, and seeing the two girls standing motionless, she asked curiously, "What's wrong, dears?"
Hermione snapped back to reality. She immediately hid her hand behind her back and shook her head at her mother: "Nothing, Mum! It's just... Lia was being clingy."
She pulled Lia, quickly walked out of the kitchen, returned to her room, and immediately closed the door.
Hermione looked at her finger; it was smooth as new, with no trace of injury.
Super-speed Regeneration.
That was Lia's.
But this time, it had worked on herself. Was it through Lia's touch? Or because of something else?
She could no longer deceive herself.
That night, after everyone had fallen asleep, Hermione quietly opened Soul Anchors and Living Vessels. She flipped to a certain page, where a line of small text was written in ancient Runes:
"The devourer of a Horcrux shall ultimately become a new Horcrux. The boundary between the Vessel and the parasite will gradually blur. The host that is devoured will gradually exclude its self outward, becoming a new Horcrux."
Hermione's finger traced the line of text, and the cold sensation seemed to travel from the paper to her heart.
The self that Lia was excluding was being transferred to Hermione via magic.
She walked to the bedside. Lia was sleeping soundly, her long silver hair spread across the pillow. The black color on the tips of her cat ears seemed to have deepened by another shade.
Hermione reached out and gently touched the black patch.
A cold, deathly magical fluctuation traveled through her fingertips.
That was Lord Voldemort's magic.
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