She doubted it. His aura was too genuine for that. There was no deception there. He genuinely believed that she should just give what she could and pressuring her to give more was a bad thing in and of itself.
She suddenly felt terrible for taking advantage of these people. They had given her food and shelter, kept her from sleeping on the horrible streets around her, and even helped train her abilities, all because she needed it and helped one of them, asking for nothing more than what she was willing to give.
"Thank you then, I'll make sure to repay you for the book." she said with a self-deprecating smile on her face. She still didn't know if she should do all she could to help these people, she had read many books in Hogwarts on what happened to wizards and witches that decided to 'help' muggles, and while these people had magic, they didn't have the capabilities she had. At least not the same ones. At the very least, the commune didn't have a regular mage in it.
"Null sweat chumm, besides my runner friends made bank with that azzie' paydata, I can spare 50 nuyen." he said with a shrug. And that was the end of that conversation.
They kept walking through the market, this time checking out the food. Most of it looked terrible — she had even seen what she believed to be roasted rats being sold — but some of it looked quite good. Torch bought her some soy-meat skewers that she ate with gusto after she checked with one of the survival spells she had learned if it was safe to eat.
The skewers had a strange chemical smell and aftertaste, but the sauce was sweet and tangy. She was also really hungry, so she ate three of them before she was full. Thankfully they had only been two nuyen in total, so she didn't have to feel bad about it. Torch was content with slurping on his metallic nicotine vaporizer and eating some strange green doughy balls that were apparently sweets. She had seen some people pounding the dough they were made of with hammers, it was quite strange.
As the night wore on, she started to think that maybe they should go back, but when she brought this up to Torch, he laughed and said "The night's just beginning, come on Miu-Miu we going to The Adam."
She was so angry about the stupid nickname that she didn't fully register the implications of his words as they left the market. Spending most of the time explaining in great detail how degrading the nickname was. Torch just laughed at her well-thought-out arguments, it made her fume in indignation.
They left the market and through the dark streets of the barrens, now much more packed with people. The closer they got to 'the Adam' more and more young people could be seen walking around. Colorful outfits and strange hairstyles that would have given her Grandmother a heart attack.
She even saw some people engaging in activities they really shouldn't be doing in public, she wasn't the kind of girl that blushed at that sort of thing, but it was certainly shocking to see, especially considering that nobody around them cared. — Parvati would have an aneurism if she knew where hermione had been, much less the things she witnessed in this world.
As they walked, Hermione started to feel something on the edge of her awareness, and the closer they got to the destination, the stronger the feeling got.
Soon enough her curiosity was quenched, what she was feeling was a Land. a red mana one to be precise.
She walked on autopilot as she started to get a feel for the land. The second one she had felt in this world, not even the market had been one.
The land was impulsive action, it was extreme emotion and letting go of your worries. So long as you stayed there, you would be free.
Hermione tried to make a connection, the land was probably one of the strongest she had felt thus far. Dwarfing in power the other lands she had felt or made a connection to, only St. Mungos was stronger — and it wasn't even close, the hospital had felt like a fountain of pure white mana — so she excitedly tried to make the connection.
And she was laughed at and dismissed immediately. Not only had Hermione never stepped into the land, not only was she an outsider not from this world, but she also had never let go like the land wanted the people inside it to do. To feel carefree and good, even if just for a night.
Her frustration about having failed to acquire a new land was soon replaced with curiosity, she could hear music coming from further ahead. Lights could be seen in the sky and they flickered at the beat of electronic-sounding music. It reminded her of the music she heard in some movies but she couldn't quite place it.
It was then, as she walked closer to the land with Torch beside her, that she realized what 'The Adam' was.
"You brought me to a nightclub?" she asked, too astonished to bristle in indignation, so only disbelief came through in her voice. The music was loud enough that she had been forced to speak up enough that other people heard her.
She heard some people walking around them snicker about her question to Torch, it made her flush in embarrassment. She hated being made fun of.
"Obviously, you need to relax miu-miu, you read too much." he said with that infuriatingly smooth tone he sometimes used on the other girls in the commune. It made her angry for a second that he thought she would just give in because someone batted their eyelashes and smiled at her.
But he had bought her that book, so she felt he deserved a proper answer.
"I don't feel comfortable going to a nightclub." she said truthfully, she had never imagined herself even getting near one, much less being invited to one and having to decline.
"Really? I just thought you would like it, but if you don't want to, we'll just go." ugh! Why did he have to be nice about it? If he pushed her she could just claim he was annoying her and demand to go back, but something like this forced her to admit to it being her fault. She hated that.
She was thinking about how to say what she felt about nightclubs and why going into one would be a bad idea — and that's not even taking into account their ages. Hermione was sixteen and Torch was too — when she diverted her attention slightly to the red mana that came out of the building that was still out of sight. It felt like it wanted Hermione to make a connection to it. She tried again, sending her regular memories for red — Draco's face after being punched had been enough for red mana so far — but she was rejected again.
It felt like the land was exasperated with her. It wanted something else. But what? What would a stupid nightclub want?
Oh. Yeah, she was being stupid. The club wanted a memory of her being in a club, obviously. And look at that, there is one right up ahead and she had been invited too, so she had a perfect excuse to go.
She bit her lip in thought. Should she really do it? Maybe she would have a good time — she doubted it — but would that be enough? Maybe it wanted her to drink alcohol or dance…she didn't know how she felt about that.
She then remembered a fact. The wizarding world had no laws against alcohol consumption for minors. Anyone could legally buy alcohol, it was only up to the discretion of the seller.
That meant that Hermione could legally buy alcohol in the wizarding world and she had even seen other people her age do so. The same was true of entering bars, otherwise, the leaky cauldron would not have been the entrance to Diagon Alley and she wouldn't have been allowed to enter the building at 13.
I wonder what mom would think if she knew I am even considering going to a nightclub, just thinking about the screams and half-hour monologues she would give me if she knew…actually, thinking about it, it now sounds like a brilliant idea, let's go!
"Do they accept minors?" she asked, maybe a little too fast, the prospect of gaining such a large amount of red mana, red mana that wanted her to make a connection, had won out. She was going in for the mana. No other reason whatsoever.
"Accept minors? Ha! This is the biggest club in the barrens." he said with a disbelieving laugh as if Hermione was stupid. For once she didn't care.
Because his words did put things into perspective perfectly. The barrens weren't just the poor area of town, it was also a mostly lawless place where the police didn't step foot in — they were called Lone Stars here, and they were a privatized security force and the people there abused their power constantly, because of course they do — and laws were only enforced by gangs or organizations like the commune. Why would they care if sixteen-year-olds got drunk when people could buy guns on market stalls?
She was a little curious about the nightclub too, she had only seen these sorts of things in movies or described in books. She needed to investigate, make sure she could tell other people if they were bad, yes.
"Okay, I'll go." she said with finality in her tone, she said that's what was going to happen, so it would.
"You sure? We-" he tried to say, but she interrupted him by grabbing his arm and dragging him a little farther away
"I am sure, let's just go."
She let go of his arm after he started walking beside her. There was amusement in his aura, she could feel her in the edge of her vision. Pressing into her own from the closeness.
They only had to walk a little to get to the building. The music got louder and louder the closer they got, people were milling around outside, some drinking from cans and huddled together and others were waiting in line.
The building itself felt almost alive. The beat of the music inside feeling like a beating heart. The outside was painted a sleek metallic black, and neon purple lights adorned the facade that bore no windows and allowed no one to look into the inside of the place.
She was a little relieved when she saw Torch leading her to walk beside the line and going directly towards the entrance. Maybe he was going to bribe the guard? Hermione found she didn't care too much about that, it was a huge line after all.
As they moved beside the line, she could see that it was full of people dressed up, some wearing very little clothes and most having weird colored hair with strange cuts and styles. Similar to the people walking around the streets, but somehow even more flamboyant.
As they got near the end of the line, she heard someone shout.
"Hey! Why are you and the trog skipping the line?!" said a boy a couple of years older than her. He was in black and red clothes, and he had black eyeliner in one of his eyes. He had an ear tattooed on the side of his neck and a bald head. It was strange.
Hermione ignored him, she knew that 'trog' was supposedly a racial slur against Orks and Trolls, so she immediately dismissed the boy.
It didn't last thought. As the boy attempted to grab her arm before she could get out of reach. Her danger sense made her aware of the incoming grab before it reached her.
It was then that the training that she had been undergoing for weeks by this point kicked in.
If you are in range, use spells. If you are close, punch and shove.
The moment she felt his hand almost grabbing her arm, she whirled around, extending his arm to the side with the arm he wanted to reach, leaving a clean shot to his torso. She sent a textbook punch toward the core of his body, right in his solar plexus.
She might have been terrible at learning new adept powers, but just learning movements was fairly easy, all it took was coordination and memory, her passive adept capabilities took care of the first, and the second was taken care of by blue and black mana.
So it wouldn't have surprised anyone — except Hermione — what happened after she punched the boy.
She felt her first connecting with his body, the soft material of his black clothes doing nothing to protect the even softer muscle behind it.
She did the hit perfectly, exactly on the solar plexus, and moving her first slightly upwards as connected, just as she had been told.
The result was a boy that suddenly let out a loud gasping sound, all air leaving his lungs as he fell to the ground clutching his stomach.
Hermione stood there surprised for a second and grew slightly concerned as she watched the boy struggle to try to breathe. She had been in that exact same position when fighting Pierre's students, she just hadn't realized that she could do that to someone now. It made her feel strange and concerned that she might have seriously hurt the boy.
At least until the people around them started to laugh at his predicament and the man laid on his side and started to breathe after a couple of seconds.
Torch came to her side and led her away, laughing and patting her on the back — a little too hard, she almost went down like the boy after that.
She supposed it was a little funny, to watch a racist idiot that tried to grab her get a lesson in humility. She felt the black and red mana inside her glow in approval, she didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
When the red land around her reached out to her with approval, she started feeling better about it. It didn't help that Torch's laugh was a little contagious.
As they got to the end of the line, she could see two guards in front of the door wearing suits. They had no visible weapons, but Hermione had seen people walking around with weapons not even two blocks away, so she would bet on them having concealed guns or knives at least.
One was a human with a lot of cyber-parts on their body, their gender unidentifiable. The other was an extremely large troll, but he didn't glow with an aura of magic, so he wasn't a physical adept. She still hasn't seen a regular witch or wizard, they were apparently extremely rare in this city.
When they got to the door, Torch didn't even look at the guards and just walked right up to the black metallic door, but he was interrupted.
"Where do you think you are going?" the giant troll— seriously, Hermione was about 1,65cm tall, and he looked to be three whole heads taller than her, without taking his large horns into account, he looked quite intimidating in a purple suit that contrasted oddly with his red skin — said to Torch, giving him a death glare and getting into his face.
Torch didn't back down, and looked upwards into the troll's eyes. She feared the worst for a second.
"You smell like shit." said Torch, as if it was a normal thing to say to someone. Hermione was already reaching for her wand and looking for ways to escape.
There's a ladder right there and the facade looks a little broken there. A quick hop and a reverse-summoning charm to get there, a summoning charm on Torch, and then-
The bouncer laughed at Torch's comment and hugged the boy for a second — using that weird side hug some men used — and then spoke with a cheerful tone.
"Ha! Yeah, no showers here. They also pay like shit, so you need to get a better gig than this shit you hear me, boy? Come in, you and your girlfriend, let Pierre know that I'll be coming back in a couple of weeks. Missing the kids and all that." he said and all the animosity was dispelled.
Hermione let out a sigh of relief. He was from the commune. She was still thankful the boy had hidden his gun somewhere else before getting near the club. Otherwise, there might have actually been a fight right there.
Torch just smiled and nodded at the man's response and waved at Hermione to follow.
They entered through the metallic black door and through a small space with stairs that went down. They walked down the stairs and into a hallway that was lit with purple light. There were lockers on the sides for people to leave their things, Torch motioned her towards them and she got his message. She took out her school bag and left it there — though she still kept her bum bag on her waist — Torch then did something with the electronic lock, closing it with a thump.
There wasn't much to be stolen in the bag. Her most important possession was her wand, there were only a few invigoration elixirs and a couple of more normal healing potions there, nothing that a little money couldn't replace in her world.
At the end of the hallway a double door with what looked like insulation on the edges and the area they connected with each other could be seen.
They walked up to them and Torch opened the doors.
The sound was the first thing she noticed. While the sound outside had already been fairly loud. It was nothing compared to how it was inside the place. She could barely hear Torch tell her to move towards a particular place, and that was by getting right up to him and him speaking right into her ear.
It was almost enough to make Hermione forget that she had enhanced hearing.
Thankfully, one of the things she had been trained to do was to resist loud sounds and lights. And the wizards in her world were very resistant to them too for some reason, so the extremely loud beat of the music wasn't painful. She did feel it in her chest though, like someone was pounding it with their fists at the beat of the song.
Visually it was almost exactly what she expected. Lights of all different colors flashing around like a seizure waiting to happen, people huddled together and dancing. Groups of people standing around talking — somehow — and drinking. The smell of the place was a fruity/minty one that she recognized as the same one she got sprayed when she washed for the first time in the commune — before she changed it to vanilla — but it was diluted by slightly oppressive heat and smoky aftertaste.
The crowds of people inside had very few people with magical auras, some were strange to her, but she wasn't going to go towards someone at a nightclub to ask about their magic.
She was surprised to see that the different areas for dancing and drinking were seemingly separated by age group. The place Torch was moving her towards mostly had people her age or slightly younger, whereas the other dancing areas had older people.
She realized that it was actually on purpose as she got closer and saw a sign that said '18 or less' right beside the entrance to the sectioned-out area.
It still had a bar thought. People snorting colorful powders on the sides, and even in one case someone injecting themselves with a strange metallic syringe. It made her nervous and she unconsciously tightened her magical aura around herself.
The nightclub of the future, maybe it's the same in my world? I don't really know.
Before she got too uncomfortable by seeing people even younger than her in some cases doing drugs and drinking, she was led to a small empty spot deeper in by Torch.
"So, you wanna drink something? I got the vape and a couple hundred nuyen for today, so go crazy if you want miu-miu." he said, screaming in her ear to be heard. For once she was thankful for someone screaming at her. He also, as always, offered her a 'hit' of nicotine. He was like a preacher about the thing. She ignored the nickname this time.
She was quite thirsty, those soy-meat skewers had been good, but quite dry. So she nodded at him and then followed him towards the bar to the side of the 'youth' area.
When they got to the bar, the first thing she saw was a large black glossy table, and bottles of what she assumed were alcohol behind the bartenders, who were wearing purple suits like the bouncers, but without the jackets.
Torch ordered something called a pan-galactic gargle blaster, and just by the name she knew she wanted nothing to do with it. So she ordered water, which they didn't have, so she ended up ordering one of the extremely sugary soft drinks that had enough caffeine to wake up a sloth but had no alcohol. She saw some people snickering at her order, but she didn't care.
Once they got back to the little empty spot, she opened the colorful can and took a drink. It tasted like a Pepsi that had gone flat and had a bag of synthetic sugar mixed in.
She had drunk many of these during her stay here, as these cans were cheaper than water and the material they were made of could be used for other things in the commune, so they had a bunch of crates of it. Still leagues better than pumpkin juice. Plus she had gotten used to the flavor by now, the fact that it had enough sugar to rot her teeth inside out and her parents would freak out if they saw her drinking it just made it better.
She stood there listening to the music for a minute or so, Torch was occupied by drinking his strange bubbling concoction and so he paid no attention to her.
She watched the people around them, the way they moved and danced at the beat of the song was slightly hypnotic. The red mana seemingly drank their emotions in and weakened their inhibitions.
For a second she wondered what the hell she was doing in a place like this, and what her grandmother would say about it. She knew what her parents would say at least.
Torch beside her grabbed her attention, seemingly done with the drink that had more in common with a potion in her eyes than an alcoholic drink.
He motioned her to follow her to the mass of people dancing. But she shook her head and he shrugged and went on his own, not before making sure she knew to return to this place if she got lost.
It felt strange, like when one of her friends — Harry and Ron, she had no other friends — left her to do something stupid and she had to stay on the sidelines. Nothing more than a dispenser of information or research they could use to go on adventures.
She knew that thought was wrong, that she was valued. But even with her incredible intellect and knowledge, she couldn't be objective one-hundred percent of the time. No matter how much she tried sometimes.
She reached out to the red mana around her, feeling stronger than ever now that she was inside its domain. She asked if this was enough.
It wasn't. She wasn't really doing anything but being miserable inside it and feeling sorry for herself.
She sighed and was about to cut the strange mind-to-senses connection she used to 'talk' the lands when the red mana stopped her and sent an impression at her.
It was a deal. A deal she desperately wanted to both reject and accept in equal measure. A contrast of conflicting emotions and thoughts about it.
In the end, she was a little curious, so she accepted. What's the worst that could happen?
She felt the connection to the red mana grow inside her, the energy flowing into her like a torrent, as if a dam had been broken and the only thing that was necessary had been her own realization of how much she wanted this experience.
She felt her body grow stronger, her muscles being reinforced, her breath deeper and the slightly uncomfortable feeling of the heat around her disappear.
She felt like she could jump to the ceiling. And she almost did. Because the deal had been struck, and the red haze of the mana was seeping into her.
She would forge a connection to the red mana, and only for a night, she would not fight the feelings it brought into her, but embrace them.
She immediately felt the difference in her thought patterns, the blue and black mana inside her allowing her to realize that she could fight the feeling and calm herself down.
But if she did that, the red connection would be cut. She had given her word, she would not be an Oathbreaker.
So she let the feelings draw her into a haze, she felt giddy and joyful and ready for anything and she wanted to do things and she felt like she-
She was high. She knew she was. But that had been the price, she didn't think it would be this strong, but right now she didn't care.
She finished her drink in one big pull of the can, flattened it in her hands, and threw it towards a rubbish bin with perfect accuracy without looking. Her perfect throw made her laugh and a smile bloomed on her face. It was like everything was going to go right for her tonight.
She quickly went towards the mass of people and stayed on the outside, closing her eyes.
The music — now a different song singing in what she knew was Japanese but could understand perfectly for some reason — felt almost like a compulsion charm, and she let it flow through her, the beat making her vibrate in place, soon enough followed by little jerks and movements at the beat of the song.
The further she let herself be drawn to the beat and the pace of the crowd, the happier she felt, like a cheering charm, she had purposefully allowed to affect her.
Soon enough she wasn't just moving in place, but was bouncing and moving to the droning beat of the song, she strengthened her willpower with the red mana flowing in her brain and channeled it towards her magic, making her aura stronger.
This caused people around her to move out of her way unconsciously. She flowed through the crowd like water and soon enough she was surrounded by people. Then she cut her magic so that she wasn't making people uncomfortable.
Soon she was in the zone. Now that she was in the middle of the dancing people around her, she realized that she was unconsciously drawing away from the feelings the red mana gave her. She didn't know if it would cut the connection because of it, so she stopped doing it.
She felt so much better after that. Her movements became erratic, one moment dancing, others giggling and looking around.
It was so much fun!
She had been overwhelmed by the sounds and presence of other people dancing at the same beat as her, but right now she loved it.
Her movements lost the jerkiness they had before and her steps and bounces started coming perfectly on beat. Her dancing stopped being weird movements that people would associate with someone who didn't know how to dance and became a perfect choreography to the song around them. As if her every step had been guided to perfectly complement the beat of the music.
After spending an unidentified amount of time dancing and laughing, she felt someone behind her grabbing her waist, she whirled around and saw a handsome boy around her age (he was completely human), so she just smiled and continued dancing, now facing him.
They danced for a couple of minutes, the hypnotic beat guiding her movements before the boy grabbed her waist again and tried to kiss her.
She giggled and accepted. They made out for a couple of minutes —still dancing — but soon enough she grew bored and pushed him away, he ended up on the floor, and she then started moving towards a different side of the dancing. She heard the boy letting out confused sounds and people laughing at his fate. She laughed too.
The beat of the music got faster and louder, a different song this time. It made the previous one feel slow, the beat several times faster and frenetic.
She liked that song even more than the first one.
She danced for a couple of minutes, several people dancing alongside her and some even matching her pace and rhythm.
An unidentified amount of time later a girl that looked like a teenage lord of the rings elf, just with a lot of tattoos and black clothes, started dancing right in front of her and smiling.
They danced like that for a second, before Hermione made the first move and quickly wrapped her arms around the girl and went in for a kiss, the girl laughed and smiled and accepted.
They made out while dancing to the beat of the song for a while, before she got thirsty and left the girl there, no explanation or words, Hermione just left.