Fanfic / New Blood (artemisgirl)

"Don't believe me if you want, but you'll see," Hermione promised. "All great houses had to have been founded somewhere, didn't they? Where did the founding Parkinson get his magic? All great houses start with a New Blood somewhere."

Hermione Granger is a witch born to non-magical parents. But after learning of the prejudice that she'll face due to her heritage, she makes a daring plan. She isn't going to let society look down on her for being Muggle-born, and she isn't going to settle for equal treatment, either. No, as far as she's concerned, being the first witch in her family just means she's the founder of something great — and she intends to prove it to everyone.

New Blood is a Harry Potter fanfic by artemisgirl, centering on Hermione Granger getting sorted into Slytherin, while claiming not to be a Muggle-born but a New Blood.

It is updated twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, and as of November 2022, it sits at over 1 million words in length. Currently on hiatus until summer.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Absence of Evidence: Luna's Christmas present to Hermione in her third year is a map of the UK and Ireland's ley lines. After some prodding, Hermione tries to find Hogwarts on it and realizes that even though she knows where it is, at an intersection of several lines, it can't actually be on the map because it's Unplottable. As is another point of interest, conspicuously located at the only nexus on the map with no labeled landmarks.
• Adaptational Badass: Justified in that Hermione has studied Magic extensively here and regularly levitates heavier and heavier items throughout her first year until she can cast the charm silently. She does this deliberately to appear gifted by Magic Itself, eventually killing the Basilisk in her Second Year.
• An Arm and a Leg: When a semi-shady merchant drags Hermione into Gringotts, wanting to be paid immediately, the goblin teller quietly and calmly informs him that if he doesn't let her go in the next ten seconds, he'll lose the hand that's holding her.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: As of the summer after the second year, Harry chooses to side with Hermione over Dumbledore, because Hermione sees him as a person while Dumbledore refuses to listen to him about the Dursleys.
• Best Served Cold: After she almost dies in an assault by older Slytherins in her First Year, Hermione is unable to get revenge as most are from powerful old families. So far she has framed two as having less than pure blood, soiled another's chances at Quidditch by having him crash into the ground during tryouts and finally framing Rhamnaceae Rookwood in regards to the Chamber of Secrets openings/attacks causing her expulsion. The names of a few of these people got out at a public Trial whilst Hermione was under a powerful truth compulsion.
• Blackmail: When Hermione sees both Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape angry at breakfast, she realises that her letters about Professor Lupin's illness may have been taken the wrong way.
  Hermione: I think I might have blackmailed someone.
  Blaise: Without realising it?
• Broken Pedestal: Hermione appreciates Professor Lupin's help with the Dementor on the train — until her first class with him, where he ignores her plea to provide some kind of privacy when facing the Boggart. After a string of horribly embarrassing violations of privacy, such as students' parents being revealed as abusive, Hermione loses all respect for his teaching and stops engaging in further classes.
• Chekhov's Gun: In chapter 55, Hermione sends her account manager Bloodthorne some Galleons and the prize from the third-floor corridor with the note "I trust you know what to do with them." Some 160 chapters later, she discovers that he very much did.
  "I SENT THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE THROUGH THE MAIL?!"
• Cool Teacher: What Lockhart evolves into as a Magical History teacher. When no longer talking about himself, his classes are informative, yet very engaging, and encourage his students to expand their mental horizons and confront prejudices. When the Triwizard Tournament is announced, he works to discourage students from entering by providing gruesome stories of how past contestants died (sometimes all in the First Task), and how even those who won the prize and 'glory' generally died within ten years as a result of their trauma.
• The Dark Arts:
  • Hermione has read a few of these books from Quirrell, even if she has no intention of using them for evil. Indeed, Snape makes her well aware of how personally damaging using the Dark Arts are. She does, on the other hand, intend to use the magic within to help a transgender first-year, even if that means Snape confiscating a few of the books, while making believe that is all of them.
    • However, Tracey Davis has proven willing to perform Dark Magic at Hermione's behest.
  • Hermione realizes that contrary to how people view it, the Memory Charm qualifies as Dark Magic.
  • Being in Slytherin has the stereotype that you will automatically learn the Dark Arts.
• Deader than Dead: Hermione is furiously indignant when she learns what the Dementor's Kiss does, and after she points out that it means denying someone an afterlife, Theo can see her point.
  Hermione: And if your soul is sucked up and consumed and is gone, just what do you think happens to those people when they die?
  Theo: ...nothing. There—there'd be nothing. There'd be nothing to move on.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: When Hermione suspects that a classmate is transgender and tries to help, all the resources available to her go by the "born in the wrong body" narrative that was mainstream in 1993. The author's notes make a point of explaining that this is how people viewed things at the time.
• Disproportionate Retribution: As retaliation for Ron's cruel commentary when Hermione tries to help him in charms class, the first year Slytherin plot to ruin Ron's social life by making him look violent in front of the professors. It also includes Hermione becoming a False Friend, seeking to ensure that he eventually lashes out at her so she can pull a Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Pansy was also supposed to play Honey Trap but that part was disregarded due to Ron's lack of interest in romance.
• Doorstopper: The fic has been reliably updated with a new chapter every Tuesday and Friday since 2018, barring a few brief hiatuses. While each chapter is but a single scene, about as short as a chapter can get and still meaningfully be a chapter, that still adds up to over 1.2 million words as of August 2023.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • To any reader who remembers canon, it is extremely obvious why a ritual intended to summon Sirius Black by invoking his betrayal-induced blood debt to the Potter family actually summoned Scabbers instead, but Hermione and her coven don't have that knowledge, so they come up with their own explanations.
  • Crouch Sr, standing in a truth circle, is cut off from saying he left his son in Azkaban. He manages to play on Exact Words to imply that it's because he disowned Crouch Jr, which convinces Hermione, but readers of Goblet of Fire will remember that he took his son out, leaving his dying wife in his place disguised with Polyjuice.
• Elemental Powers:
  • Due to capturing an Air Elemental, Hermione is able to use Air Magic wandlessly as well as fly. The method was invented by Voldemort, passed on to Snape then to Hermione and her Coven.
  • Hermione later adds an Earth Elemental, granting her Earth Magic and stabilizing her magical core after a botched ritual she did in her first year.
  • And a fire elemental, in third year, in hopes that it will help her control Fiendfyre to destroy Dementors. Harry uses this to best his dragon in the Tetrawizard Tournament.
• Exact Words: Hermione and her coven spend a substantial amount of their third year preparing for a ritual to call in a betrayal-induced blood debt so they can summon Sirius Black. When they perform the ritual, they only name "the traitor" — so they end up actually summoning Scabbers.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: After several chapters of preparation for a ritual intended to summon Sirius Black, Hermione's coven is finally performing the ritual, and everyone chants "We reach for the traitor's blood through blood, and we summon the traitor to come and answer for what he has done with our will, with our magic, and with our blood." Anyone who's read Prisoner of Azkaban is gonna notice the lack of names and suddenly remember that "the traitor" isn't Sirius.
• Flight: A technique invented by Lord Voldemort, achieved by absorbing an Air Elemental.
• For Want Of A Nail: The main point of divergence from canon is that Luna is a Seer and she gives Hermione a prophecy about being a new blood, kicking off the plot in the process.
• Frame-Up: Done to Rhamnaceae Rookwood in regards to the Chamber of Secrets openings/attacks by using some of Tom Riddle's blood and a medallion shaped like a Dark Mark. Hermione is able to save them from prison time as they were supposedly possessed.
• Good Parents: What Hermione's parents consistently prove to be throughout the story. They are very supportive of her from the very beginning and continue to be so as she becomes increasingly involved in more larger events. Doing a sort of gauntlet test in her first year? Send her an explorer's kit. Doing a ritual to protect her new constituents? They show up to help organise matters, provide water, and generally interact. Hermione worries that her memories have been altered? Calmly sit down to help her think things through and look for solutions. At the same time, they also clearly know when to put their feet down when they determine Hermione may be going too far on matters (assuming they learn about them).
• Genre Savvy: Hermione's father is an avid Dungeons & Dragons player, and interprets some of Hermione's descriptions of school life through that lens; while he's sometimes wrong about the details, some of his help proves useful, such as the dungeoneering kit he puts together for her.
• Homosexual Reproduction: Hermione takes on a personal quest to help Jade and her girlfriend Milan conceive a child. In chapter 318, the ritual is performed successfully (minus a little bump where Jade was temporarily pregnant instead of Milan, but they switched the kid to the right womb).
• How We Got Here: After the initial chapter, a series of interconnected chapters are used to explain away Hermione's altered personality and her focus on being "New Blood".
• Intergenerational Friendship: What Sirius is trying with Harry, to the teen's resistance. For Harry, he loves his newfound freedom away from the Dursleys too much to risk Sirius becoming a Parental Substitute for him. Moreover, Sirius comes off as too familiar and interprets his letters as attempts to manipulate Harry. When Harry is entered into the Triwizard Tournament against his will, the godfather's strident defense of him helps improve things between them.
• Kiss of Distraction: Hermione does very much enjoy intensely kissing Cedric before the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match, but as a Slytherin, she also recognises that it could be to Harry's advantage.
  Hermione: I daresay he might find sitting on a broom a bit uncomfortable for a while, or that he won't be able to focus strictly on the match or the Snitch like Harry will.
• Lethal Chef: Tracey Davis' mother attempted to make a Christmas roast once. By the time Tracey is finished talking about how she set the oven on fire, reflexively blew up the smoke alarm, and ended up serving meat and vegetables that were charred thoroughly black, everyone else has broken down laughing.
• Mister Seahorse: Discussed, but averted. Magic cannot cause male pregnancy, short of "very Dark rituals, which could possibly do horrifying things to a wizard's insides".
• Mundane Solution: Since Hermione is a Slytherin, Ron figures that he can expect something valuable in exchange for a sample of his blood for a coven ritual. Unfortunately, Hermione can't do his homework for him, or Professor Snape will spot it and fail them both, and she doesn't think she can successfully set him up on a date with Tracey or Susan. Then she offers to simply pay him ten galleons, and he accepts as soon as he can pick up his lower jaw, then asks if she wants more.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: When Sylvia is blackmailing Hermione:
  "Blackmailed?" Tom raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "And is there a reason you haven't just killed the blackmailer to be done with it?"
  "That's what I said," Blaise grumbled.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Lupin ignores Hermione's warnings about the Boggart in 3rd Year, not only do we witness 3 examples of child abuse, including a pedophile, but one student, Hermione, collapses screaming at her Boggart. The Fallout of Hermione's fear, a newspaper on London going up in a mushroom cloud, sends shock waves through the school resulting in the highest anti-Muggle sentiment in living memory.
  • Hermione accidentally overpowers a Summon Magic ritual resulting in a much stronger type of Air Elemental than intended. Luckily, Luna is able to bargain with it rather than be possessed.
• Power at a Price: In her first year, Hermione performs a ritual to start her menstrual cycle at the optimal time. This causes problems for her later on.
• Proud to Be a Geek: Hermione's father sends her an explorers' kit that very closely resembles the ones used by adventurers in Dungeons & Dragons.
• Refuge in Audacity: Rather than try to insist that her ancestry is just as good as anyone else's, Hermione goes the other way and insists that she has no prior connection to magic at all, that she's definitely not descended from a forgotten Squib line. This, she claims, is because she's been chosen by Magic itself. Her peers are skeptical, of course, but she has the intelligence and power to back up her claims of being something special, which makes some of them hesitate — and that's all she needs. Followed by her magically altering all the copies of a certain book Purebloods consider to be 'proof' of blood supremacy to now include New Bloods.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: When asked about how Divination relates to Arithmantic predictions, Professor Vector explains that Divination can only sense significant and dramatic events. But predicting an event can actually make it dramatic, such as when the death of Lavender's pet rabbit, matching a vague prediction by Professor Trelawney, causes quite a stir, because it bolsters people's faith in the professor.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Diary Riddle lives past his original canon death as he helps Hermione frame Rookwood and a Medallion as the cause of the Chamber Openings/Attacks.
• Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee: Snape is curiously absent at cleanup time the day he teaches the contraceptive potion, conveniently allowing all the girls in the class to "steal" a stash of it for themselves. Hermione's suspicions are solidified when the handful of students whose potions weren't brewed correctly are assigned detention to try again until they get it right; normally that's just a fail.
• Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: Manny Barrows^note still going by his birth name and pronouns at this point, as he still thinks he's a girl finds himself barred from the Ravenclaw girls' dorm for reasons he doesn't quite understand, but include it lacking a bed for him—but when Hermione finds an extra bed in the boys' dorm, he admits to having never liked being a girl and being terrified of the onset of puberty. Hermione, hearing about this, takes it to the logical extreme and asks Snape for a place that would forbid girls and allow boys, and indeed the Quidditch boys' locker room allows Manny in while forbidding Hermione. And it is strongly implied that both locker rooms let Luna in, setting off a gender exploration arc centered on her.
• The Talk: When the students learn that there's going to be a special lecture for all the third-years, separated by gender and with all House heads present, Hermione starts snickering, then begs to borrow Harry's invisibility cloak so she can eavesdrop on the boys' lecture and see Professor Snape's face when he has to answer questions about sex.
  Harry: On one condition—write down the most awkward questions you can think of for me and the other Gryffindors to ask him ahead of time and pass it to me beforehand.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: It is possible to absorb an Elemental by defeating them in a battle of wills; however, they will take your body for themselves should you lose.
• Women Are Wiser: Both boys' and girls' sex ed lessons in their third-year end with a free questioning segment, but while the girls ask serious questions like "how do I ensure nobody uses my menstrual blood in a ritual", the boys' questions are more like "can boobs pop if you squeeze them too hard" and "is it possible to screw a mermaid". This is to a certain extent deliberate, particularly on the part of the Gryffindor boys, as one of the teachers answering the questions is Snape.

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