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Chapter Text

July 3rd

Swathed from toe to throat in stiff black, like an ink blot on the smudged, grey landscape of the Highlands, Severus impassively surveyed the house. He stood on the outside of the surrounding low stone wall, and every few seconds a drop of very red blood trembled at the tip of his thumb before falling into the grass by his left shoe. He had not gone into the house since the Christmas break, nor did he intend to now.

His intentions had been all swift and efficient, and yet he had been standing just outside the wall for a number of minutes. He’d been mildly thrown by his trip to number 8 Heathgate, London. He had intended to reinforce the wards he'd set the year before, sealing her home before the sun rose, and then begin work on his house in the Highlands after. The Granger family home, however, had been empty – still, cold, and picturesque except for the grotesque, blue genitalia someone had spray painted onto the plastic ‘For Sale’ sign staked into the front lawn.

He was not dismayed to have found the home empty – it saved him the effort of casting the wards, and it was far, far better for her parents to have been moved somewhere else entirely than to attempt to protect their current known residence. He assumed Hermione had done something sensible. But it took him a quiet moment to process and accept not knowing what she had done. He felt, for a brief second, as if the pendant tucked under his collar, still unused, tingled against his skin.

He would not contact her again, except for in the most pressing circumstances, unless she decided to use the method of communication first. He had left her the pendant as a choice, an option without obligation. When he'd returned to the castle for the first time after the Dark Lord took the Ministry, the pendant had been gone from his drawer. So he assumed she had at least had it. Not a wise idea to dwell on what her lack of contact might mean for her opinion of him. He accepted responsibility for the hurt he would feel at losing her respect and trust. Each time they had proceeded with an escalation of their relationship, he had taken the time to accept that a potential and likely outcome for him would be an escalating amount of hurt.

Severus raised his arms, briefly pressing his hands together, the cut along his left palm pulsing more urgently, before holding them up in front of his nose, his palms facing outwards. He was not well practiced in blood magic – no one but niche professors and perhaps the Dark Lord were nowadays – but he had done his research and was confident. He trusted the wards he already had in place to hold out against all but the most powerful magic, but still he wanted them stronger, and he did not anticipate being back here until the war was concluded one way or the other.

Expanding upon his knowledge of ward casting had grown from a necessary interest to an almost manic obsession over the past few months. It was a way to while away any spare time he found himself with. It felt productive while serving the dual purpose of distracting him from less welcome thoughts. He'd almost read everything in the entire Hogwarts library, and was expecting a delivery from the Wizarding School in Denmark – the historical and current hub for ward research – before the week was out. He doubted he would have time to read it all with the school term encroaching.

Easily, he erected a barrier in his mind against the tangible presence of her magic – he was confident, but not so sure that he would risk blundering horrifically and reaching unconsciously across the connection towards her – and focused his attention. He began to chant in a fixed, monotonous tone that first jarred with and then blurred into the background of the sound of waking birds.

“Cuiusdam pellem huic aedificio consue, ut omnes arcet, qui ingredi conentur, praeter paucos electos quos hic magus tutela dignos iudicaverit."

"Hi circuli hunc magum admittent, magum cui nomen est Harry James Potter, magum cui nomen est Ronald Bilius Weasley, et magam cui nomen est Hermione Jean Granger.”

One by one, Severus allowed a clear, insignificant memory of Weasley, Potter, and Hermione to surface in his mind. The air surrounding the house shimmered almost imperceptibly as he lost each memory to the wards. He continued to chant, unperturbed by the unusual feeling of a small, blank space forming in his mind where the memories used to sit.

“Ceteris omnibus, sit invisum. Ceteris omnibus, sit intangibile. Ceteris omnibus, sit inexpugnabile. Ceteris omnibus, sit sepulcrum.”

As he finished speaking, the blood still leaking out of his palm was caught up and began to spread outwards through the air surrounding his hands, as if diffused across a bubble of water. His hand pulsed steadily, and then very painfully, until the colour abruptly vanished with a shiver, and the stone wall, the garden, and the house all disappeared. There was only the swamp-like grass on which he stood, and then the mountains in the distance.

Severus reached his arm out until his fingertips passed through the wards, brushing up against invisible, rough stone. He stared at the point where his fingers disconcertingly disappeared, unblinking. He would go from here straight to Hogwarts, for the first time since he had taken over the Headmaster's office a week prior. Only a week, and yet it had felt like much longer, for he had spent that time lurking in Spinners End, watching the Daily Prophet collapse under the weight of the Dark Lord's propaganda.

He’d had a fairly quiet summer. He had not taken part in most of the muggle attacks, the slow, burgeoning process of infiltrating the Ministry, or the policing of Diagon Alley. The Dark Lord, he suspected, did not want his name to crop up, formally or informally, throughout the wizarding public sphere. He wanted Severus inserted quietly but firmly onto the throne at Hogwarts without provoking such a strong reaction as an uprising, or worse.

Severus had been grateful for it, even if the walls of Spinners End had begun to feel like an airless prison. He had soundproofed his bedroom against Wormtail, and accepted the stuck restlessness in his body for the lucky compromise that it was.

He trailed his middle finger along the wall an inch, feeling the rough tips of his fingers catch and grate against the stone. Albus’ portrait had been in place, but empty, when Severus had commandeered the Headmaster's office. Minerva had not been in residence either. He doubted either of these reliefs would be the case any longer.

He pressed his fingers more solidly against the wall, and then curled them into a fist. His hand disappeared up to his wrist. He was not so sure that he liked the Highlands without the snow. He retracted his hand and squinted at the empty space where the house should have been. Satisfied, though unexpectedly unsettled, he turned and disapparated.

Chapter Text

July 27th

Hermione woke to the sound of distressed, sharp breaths, and even for a long moment after realizing that they were her own she felt frozen where she was with her nose pressed half into the pillowcase, partially suffocating. When she was finally able to break herself out of that half-unconscious state, she remained on her side, just turning her head enough that she could breathe openly. She curled her knees up to her chest and huffed into the pillow, which was wet, again. She had no idea what the dream had been about, only that her mouth and gut both felt sticky with the grief of it.

She’d spent her first week at The Burrow reclusive at best, and waspish at worst. She struggled to be downstairs, in the kitchen at meal times especially. Mr Weasley, she'd noticed, had watched her carefully for the first few days, and then seemed to have deduced that she didn't want any particular attention or comfort and had since then done his best to be quiet, and to let her be quiet. She appreciated it, but she didn't have the energy to be outwardly grateful. Nor did she often feel like she had the goodness. She was sleeping a lot, but never seemed to feel very rested.

The small metal claw of her necklace was digging into her left collar bone where it was pressing into the mattress. She didn't move. She closed her eyes, her eyelids two red curtains, and tried to relax into the heaviness of her body against the bed as she willed the sick, sad feeling to fade enough that she could get up.

She had lost track of time, and perhaps had even fallen back into and out of a light sleep again, when she became vaguely aware of the bedroom door creaking open. A few seconds later the mattress dipped.

Fred and George made regular appearances at The Burrow, but they now slept at the joke shop, which meant that for the first time ever staying with the Weasley’s, she'd had a room to herself. She was very rarely ever interrupted, so she was surprised at the sound and weight of someone swinging their legs up onto the small bed beside her. She was trying to figure out whether or not to pretend to be asleep when Ron spoke in a low, nervous whisper.

“You awake, ‘Mione?”

Hermione was surprised again. She'd thought it would've been Ginny. She’d been becoming half afraid that she was making Ron genuinely scared of her, with her low mood over the summer. She sniffed, feeling abruptly and unexpectedly emotional, and nodded into the pillow, her hair rustling around her.

There was a long, perhaps awkward silence, and then he muttered, “Do… Do you mind if I'm here? Ginny’s so nervous about today it's already driving me up the wall.”

Today they were retrieving Harry from Privet Drive. There'd been three whole Order meetings planning it, all of which Hermione had attended. It seems her membership was no longer up for debate. Funnily enough, she didn't seem to care anymore.

She shook her head, managing to hum her ascent at the same time. Her voice cracked its way into its first use of the day.

“Thanks.”

He was, unnecessarily, still whispering.

“Are you nervous?”, she asked, mumbling into her pillow.

“Nah, we've pulled off crazier.” He replied, but the airy note his voice didn't exactly foster confidence. “It might be fun to be Harry for a bit too. I've always wanted to know what'd feel like to be so short and flat-footed.”

Hermione huffed lately, vaguely recognizing a Quidditch in-joke she only knew about second-handedly. There was a flat silence, and then she felt Ron shift beside her, one of his knees briefly knocking against her spine.

“What's been the matter?”

Hermione froze for a long second, and then shrugged into the mattress.

“Did I do something?”

The follow up question sounded so pathetically worried that Hermione managed to actually break out of her low, sticky state. She rolled over, and Ron raised an arm awkwardly as she repositioned her head in his lap, staring at his knees, which somehow managed to look knobby even under the thick denim of his jeans.

“It's not you, Ron.” His arm dropped back down onto the mattress, and she knew he was waiting for something else. She sighed, trying to pull a truth to give him out of everything that had actually been weighing her down. “I just don't want to have to do what we're going to have to do.”

“You mean go with Harry, right?”

It was the first time they'd said that out loud to one another that summer – addressed the obvious reality that neither of them would be going back to Hogwarts. It was almost a relief to shed light on the daunting truth.

“Yeah.”

“Cause we are going too, right?” Ron insisted, sounding fiery and distracted, despite her agreement. “He's going to try and sneak off by himself but we're not gonna let him. We're going too.”

“We are definitely going too. He's an idiot if he thinks he can hunt down half a dozen Horcruxes on his own.”

“Exactly,” Ron reinforced, almost triumphantly. But then she felt him tug a strand of her hair and he said, with far less certainty, “But maybe just he and I could do it, if you really want to go back to school. I know how important this year's exams are to you. I mean, we're sometimes bloody useless without you but I think we could pull something together.”

Hermione barely kept herself from interrupting him. “What on earth are you talking about, Ronald?”

She felt the movement of his shrug in his legs.

“I dunno. I mean, does thinking about going off make me nervous? Yeah. Sometimes downright scared too, and I never thought I'd miss Fred and George, let alone Ginny, but even the idea of not knowing when I'll see them again is freaky, but…” He trailed off, and she waited. “I haven't felt depressed. Or whatever you've been.”

Hermione bit her lip, glad that he couldn’t see her face. She was hit by a now-familiar conflicting surge – she wanted to tell someone everything and she wanted to be comforted. But not by him. She appreciated him coming in, though. In fact, this was the first time since the beginning of the previous year – since before she'd first caught onto his crush – that she felt truly close and comfortable and safe with his presence. Part of her was incredibly relieved to realize it'd become possible again. And part of her just wanted Severus.

“I'm coming.” She stated surely, confidently. “I think, for me, if I process everything now, I'll be able to shut it all off when we do go. So I've just been throwing myself into all the emotional stuff and the anticipation now, before it matters.”

It was actually the truth. She had been preparing to shut everything down before Harry arrived at Grimmauld Place. In a matter of minutes. She could not let grief get in the way of winning the war.

“That's all?”

“Yes,” she insisted. “And it's just… the war. Which people back at Hogwarts we might never… I don't know.”

“I know.” Hermione was surprised and saddened by how earnest and dejected Ron sounded. Then he flicked her shoulder and his voice was lighter again. “It'll be good to have Harry back. I think you've forgotten how to throw yourself into something stupid and way over your head without thinking.”

Hermione huffed in faux annoyance and he bounced his leg in time with the attempt at lightening the mood, jostling her head.

“I've never done that,” she retorted, defensive of her level-headedness.

“Yup.” Ron amended immediately, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “I was lying before– if you'd chosen to go back to Hogwarts, Harry and I would not have lasted two… damn… seconds.”

He sounded like Ron now, and she smiled momentarily. He stayed, to her surprise, for another half an hour without showing any signs of restlessness, chatting to her about how awfully tiring Ginny's pining over Harry had been before Hermione's arrival at The Burrow, and how he'd surprised himself with his exam results, and how weird it was that Tonks was going to have a baby. All the stuff they would’ve covered by now if she hadn't been so sullen over the past few weeks.

Hermione allowed the light chatter to wash over her, grateful that he didn't seem to need her to contribute much to the conversation, and found it easy enough to pretend that it was just the beginning of any other year, just for a second. Knowing that these were the last few moments she was allowing herself to really miss her parents, to really yearn for Severus, to really feel anything. At first she felt a little frustrated at Ron for taking up that time. It didn't take her long, however, to decide that this was actually for the best. This unexpected, abrupt, but companionable shift would make putting shields in place easier.

When she began to hear the faint sounds of clanking dishes and voices from the kitchen, she decided to rouse herself properly.

“Okay,” she insisted finally, tapping his knee. “Go away. I need to get ready for breakfast.”

Ron patted her head, like she imagined he might a dog, and then swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. Hermione still hadn't actually looked at him properly when she heard the door thunk closed and his loud footsteps thud down the winding staircase towards the kitchen.

She smirked, and pushed herself up into a seated position. She folded her legs, and her spine curled along with the softness of the mattress. She pinched her pendant between her thumb and forefinger half consciously, half on autopilot, and held it up to the line of sunlight streaming through the gap between her closed curtains.

The milky, mainly blue substance of a message swam gently within it. The message had arrived three days ago. She'd been brushing her teeth, gearing for bed, when a tiny blue light, like the tear drop of a patronus, had passed straight through the window and flew into the pendant, warming the spot of skin it sat against. Needless to say she hadn't slept much that night.

She struggled to articulate to herself why she hadn't listened to it yet. Part of her – the part of her that was on the alert, gearing for the most dangerous mission of her life – couldn't believe the sheer irresponsibility of not listening to it. But each time she reached up to her neck, fingers itching, she'd felt a mild wave of sickness that stopped her. She didn't want to know whether it was a warning, or form of comfort, or reassurance, or annoyance. Was he demanding to know why she hadn't contacted him yet, or was he going to tell her he missed her? Well of course it wouldn't be that. But as long as she hasn't heard it, it could be whatever she wanted to hear most at any given time.

And, if she did listen, she might need to reply. If she needed to reply, she'd have to figure out whether she was angry with him – how hurt she still was after Dumbledore's death, whether she'd forgiven him for not telling her, whether there was anything to forgive, and she'd probably uncover a whole new layer of missing him. It was much easier to pretend that she could freeze time.

But she was aware that she had to listen to it now – before they rescued Harry, and before she put up her shields. Her stomach filled with something that felt both like anxiousness and excitement. She carefully held the clasp between the fingers of both of her hands, and inserted a fingernail into the clasp. It popped open with an almost inaudible click, and the blue, misty drop flew out and hovered before her nose.

Hermione held her breath, waiting for more, but nothing came. She released the breath in a long, deflated sigh. Of course she'd known, particularly when she hadn't chosen to communicate with him all summer, that it wasn't going to be poetry. She clicked the pendant shut again as the silver ball shivered itself out and died, and reached absently for the hair tie lying on her bedside table.

She felt a small, uncomfortable knot in her stomach dissipate as she repeated the message over in her mind. She felt a little guilty for not listening to it earlier now, given that it was a warning. She wondered whether she should warn the Order. She knew that a false date had been circulated in the Ministry, and that everyone was hoping that the Death Eaters had taken that bait. But everyone going that night had been told to stay alert.

Severus’ message had been a warning, not an urgent suggestion that the plan be aborted. The message indicated that they should still go ahead with the plan tonight. So it must be something Severus had told Voldemort to maintain his trust. The thought was a little comforting, of all things. As much as she would’ve liked to warn the rest of the Order, she wouldn't be able to without both giving Severus away and undermining his position with Voldemort. He’d warned her, rather trustingly, as a courtesy.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a thin cotton shirt and tried to decide whether the message had scared her. She didn't actually feel any more nervous than she had the previous night – though she’d been pretty damn nervous the previous night. But the knowledge that they were going to be attacked stripped some of the anxiety of the unknown out of her anticipation.

She tugged socks on, a pair with little roses stitched around the rims, and pulled her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. She then sat down underneath the still-drawn curtains, crossed legged, and closed her eyes. She hoped that useless apathy wasn't all that would be left once she erected much-needed walls in her mind.

She took a few long, deep breaths, clearing that worry and her memory of Ron's morning greeting and Severus’ message and everything else temporarily from her mind. She noticed that familiar, chilly feeling around the rims of her nostrils as air rushed in with her inward breaths.

It was a little more difficult, and took a little bit longer, than it had at the end of the previous school year to reach a state of emptiness. Each time she became aware that she was nearing a point of nothingness an image or a sound would pointedly surface – what she imagined her parents new Australian house might look like, the lost chain her mother had given her being dragged along the bottom of the ocean floor somewhere below a cliff, the sound of a fire crackling or that ghoulish, high pitched scream that still persisted in her dreams. All of those thoughts accompanied by an unwanted emotion, and a frustration and sense of time passing that she tried to suppress.

But she managed it eventually. Not a complete, utter emptiness, but something that would do. The mental equivalent of a clean, empty room after all the stuffed toys, unwashed clothes, and art supplies have been shoved into the wardrobe or under the bed – an emptiness with a pressure somewhere. There was a box under Fred’s bed that contained the few things she’d taken from her parents house. She lost her progress with this thought, and had to start again, taking deep breaths.

It took a good half an hour before she’d reached a state of near-emptiness, the awareness that she was resolutely ignoring something tickling at the edges. It was good enough. She started to erect her shields – not the ones she and Severus had been using to regulate the connection between their minds, but something completely new, a series of blockades around her own thoughts.

It wasn’t something Severus had taught her explicitly, although their lessons on occlumency had given her the groundwork she needed to build on what she’d been reading in preparation. As she reached for the feel of his magic and drew it to the front of her mind, it felt natural, and like something she'd done a million times before. She built the shields like a series of chambers – a bubble around her parents, a bubble around Severus, a bubble around her time at Hogwarts and Luna and Neville and Fred and George and Ginny, and a bubble around the night of Dumbledore's death and all the fear and anticipation she had about what was coming next.

Then she let Severus’ magic sink and settle back down, and brought herself slowly out of her state of concentration. When she opened her eyes the room was exactly the same except for a clock on the wall that indicated she'd been focusing for just under an hour. She was surprised at how steady she felt, and almost smiled with the relief of it. She wondered if she should have done this a week or so ago.

She stood and went about her usual pre-breakfast morning routine – pulling out her jinxed handbag from under the bed and methodically checking everything there, pointlessly recasting the strengthening charm on the chain around her neck, and straightening her bedcovers. She then tucked her pendant under her shirt and decided that she was well overdue in the kitchen.

By the time she left her room, she'd settled into the opinion that she appreciated the brief, matter-of-factness of Severus’ message. She hadn't realized, until now, that she'd been anticipating with discomfort a message that asked something of her or provoked some feeling of guilt or pressure. But of course he wasn't going to assume anything more than she invited. For the first time since she'd found the pendant, she didn't feel conflicted about the idea of reaching out to him.

Hermione held back a gasp as her skin began to stretch upwards and her skull began to itch with the feeling of her hair crawling back into her scalp. She would never, never not feel like she needed to throw up when this happened. She did feel a small bout of self-deprecating triumph, however, when she managed to keep ahold of the tiny glass vial Mad-Eye had given her this time.

She looked down at herself, wincing a little when she shifted her weight and her now very-tight clothes bit her in new, fascinating, awful places. The wince turned into a badly suppressed, wide-eyed blush when she felt her jeans pinch there. She shifted a little again, more cautiously, and tried to get used to the sudden lack of space at her crotch. It was more than disconcerting.

Wishing they’d thought to change before taking the Polyjuice, she bashfully reached out and accepted the pile of clothes Mad-Eye shoved in her direction. As she began to tug her own shirt over her head – wincing again as she heard a rip – she very briefly locked eyes with Harry-dressed-as-Fleur, who proceeded to widen their eyes at her meaningfully. Hermione suppressed a giggle and turned away.

She tugged on a better fitting pair of jeans, a red top, and a grey sweat-shirt, surprised at the roughness of the hair on her legs and arms and the lack of weight at her chest, and reached into the deep pocket of the jeans for a pair of glasses.

“Harry, your eyesight really is awful,” she observed out loud as she pushed them up Harry’s nose. They felt tight and uncomfortable against the sides of Harry’s head, and she resisted the urge to re-adjust them. Once the Death Eaters caught onto the Order’s plan, at least some of them would have the brains to look for any tell-tale sights of unfamiliarity with this new body. She reached into one of the two sacks Mad-Eye had brought along and pulled out a bird cage with a fake, stuffed Hedwig perched inside and a trunk of luggage identical to the one Harry had sitting by his feet.

“Good,” Moody grunted, as six of the seven Harry’s now standing in the room made last minute adjustments to their outfits. “The pairs will be as follows: Mundungus will be traveling with me, by broom— ”

“Why’m I with you?” Sounded a rather moody Harry to Hermione’s left.

“Because you’re the one that needs watching,” Moody replied, unmoved and rough as ever. “Arthur and Fred— ”

“I’m George! Can’t you even tell us apart when we’re Harry?”

Hermione glared at the Harry across the room from her, knowing even as Moody gruffly apologised that the twins were fooling around.

“Sorry, George— ”

“I’m only yanking your wand. I’m Fred really— ”

“Enough messing around!!” Moody barked, with enough bite that the twins managed to look a little admonished – Hermione wondered if they were more likely to let the emotion, usually so unusual to find on a Weasley twin, show on Harry’s face. “The other one— George or Fred or whoever you are—you’re with Remus. Miss Delacour— ”

“I’m taking Fleur on a thestral,” Bill interrupted. “She’s not that fond of brooms.”

Hermione suppressed a sigh of annoyance, both at the continuous interruptions and the haughty ease of Fleur-Harry as they glided over to stand beside Bill. It frustrated her every now and then, as she’d spent time with the Weasley's, how easily Fleur got her way. And she wished everyone would just hurry up. Knowing that a direct confrontation lay ahead of them, she knew they had better get underway as soon as possible. Absently, a little apathetically, she wondered whether they would all make it. She was very aware that she was probably in the best position of them all – at least she wouldn’t be taken by surprise. Her body felt tense, and she tried to inject the reaching calmness of her mind into it.

“Miss Granger with Kingsley, again by thestral— ”

Hermione felt a little of the tension she’d been feeling ease away at Mad-Eye’s next instruction, knowing that at least she wasn’t going to have to take to a broomstick. Still, she could easily recall the journey she’d taken via thestral to the Ministry in her fifth year, and she was loath to repeat the experience.

“Which leaves you and me, Ron!” Tonks said cheerily as Hermione moved to stand beside Kingsley, who shot her a small smile.

She touched the outline of her wand as they walked outside, which was tucked into the inner pocket of her jumper. Unable to see the thestral, she nearly walked straight into it, only Kingsley reached out and stopped her a second before she heard it snort. She watched him as he mounted the animal, which was clearly visible to him, and resisted the urge to peer around to try and figure out who else could see it. As she reached out to accept his hand, she noticed a murky stain on the cuff of her collar. Surely Mad-Eye could have replicated clean copies of Harry's clothes, she thought, a little perturbed.

The buzz of anticipatory chatter became a monotonous blur as she shifted in position, her heart jumping a little each time the thestral shuffled on the spot. She was a little surprised to find that she was more anxious about flying than the prospect of anything else that might go wrong. She edged closer to Kingsley, but self-consciousness held her back from latching onto his deep purple cloak. If she was killed that night as a result of falling out of the sky, rather than being hit by an actual curse, it was going to be the most embarrassing, disheartening, awful thing. She was beginning to wonder whether it was more likely.

“Good luck, everyone,” shouted Moody, interrupting her mental spiral, “See you all in about an hour at The Burrow. On the count of three. One . . . two . . .”

Hermione groaned quietly as the thestral shifted in earnest. Now that she was mounted, she dug into her pocket for her wand and grasped it firmly in her right hand.

“THREE.”

Her knees dug mercilessly into the sides of the thestral as it leapt off the ground and she wrapped her free hand into Kingsley's robes, all self-consciousness supplanted by the sturdy feeling of the ground dropping away and all-encompassing imbalance. Her eyes fixed determinedly on the back of Kingsley’s collar, she grit her teeth. This was a good plan and she was still glad she’d volunteered for it.

And then–

She felt a numb tingle at the base of her skull about three seconds before the first sharp cry of an Order member alerted everyone to their unexpected company. Absently, she heard herself make a kind of half-gasp, though she felt mentally detached from the sound itself. It felt like it had been years since she’d felt her sliver of Severus’ magic react to his proximity. And then she, Harry, Ron – everyone – were surrounded by swarms of cloaked, dark figures.

Hermione hadn’t been expecting to be confronted so soon. They’d barely left. If she looked down – which she was not going to do – she was quite sure she’d still be able to make out 4 Privet Drive from below. The tingling at the base of her skull was already unidentifiable, her ability to sense it overwhelmed by the sudden, chaotic rush of startled shouts and flashes of light.

Chapter Text

July 27th

“Cast to kill, not to disarm!”

Hermione barely heard Kingsley's instruction over the sound of the wind whipping past her ears and the disorienting whoosh of at least twenty or thirty death eaters shooting through the air. The expelliarmus spell she’d just thrown at the large form who’d immediately started hurling flaming green curses at her had missed its intended mark, but had whizzed so closely past the end of the death eater’s broomstick that it had caught on fire and forced the figure to drop back. Not that it made a dent in the ranks of their pursuers.

She heard an alarmed shout about two meters to her left in Harry’s voice, and her heart leapt once automatically and then a second time with the awareness that she couldn't actually identify who was in trouble given their disguises. It was a dulled, and somehow therefore a sickly anxiety, like she imagined it might feel like to watch someone slice into her flesh under the influence of an anesthetizing drug. She didn't have time to give the feeling more than a passing, confused thought.

“We’re too close together!” She shouted, not knowing whether the sound actually reached Kingsley's ears as she swiveled in her seat and shot a reducto curse at the masked figure closing in a few meters behind them. Yelping as she nearly lost her balance, she whipped back around and grabbed onto Kingsley’s robe before she saw whether or not she’d hit her target.

“I know! They’ve formed a ring around us! Shoot another one of those directly ahead and I will try to steer us through!”

Hermione complied, steeling herself as she leaned to the side and pointed her wand at the space directly before them, where the glint of three incoming death eater masks suggested a closing circle.

“Reducto!” She shouted at the top of Harry’s lungs.

All three death eaters swerved around the incoming curse, but it created a momentary gap in the lines of the enemy, and in response to some intelligible signal from Kingsley their thestral dove forward. Hermione shrieked – a sound that even in Harry’s voice sounded awfully unlike him, almost sliding off the animals back, except at that same moment a darkly cloaked body shot past them so closely and so quickly the force of the movement rebalanced her. She almost had time to form the thought that it might have been Severus, before the figure rounded and shot a bright orange curse directly at them.

“Protego!”, she cried, the curse colliding with her shield two meters out from Kingsley’s face. The thestral shrieked – a cold, grating, dying sound that she’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again – and swerved upwards so that she and Kingsley were suddenly tipped almost vertically backwards. Hermione didn’t think, she just wrapped an arm around Kingsley’s waist and held on, hoping that no curses were thrown their way in the meantime.

She was loath to close her eyes, but the speed of their ascent as the thestral climbed was enough that the wind forced her to squint. Her thighs began to scream at her after just a few seconds, and for a gut-wrenching moment she felt both herself and Kingsley slide back an inch. Hermione started counting. She’d reached thirty seconds, and they’d slid down another two inches, before the thestral slowed and returned to horizontal flight. The air was much colder than it had been a minute ago, and Hermione felt genuinely physically sick when she started to wonder how far above the ground they were now. She isolated the thought and forcibly made it slip into a deep, numbed level of her mind.

Not quite ready to test her balance again but knowing it had to be done, she twisted around to look behind them. Remarkably, the sky was black and cool and empty. For a long minute all she could hear was the sound of the thestral’s wings beating a steady, leathery pace. She tried to figure out whether or not she could still feel the tingle of Severus’ magic in her mind. He was either too far away or she was too hyped up to be able to sense anything.

What if he gets hit?

She let that thought slip under too. He was too important to get hit this early in the war anyway – that was her strong consolation.

Hermione had the urge to push her glasses up her nose, a gesture that she knew would take a second at most, but her hold on her wand and her hold on Kingsley’s robes both seemed too crucial to risk.

“How far away are we?” She ventured, to distract herself from the feeling of the sliding frames. She wondered if she'd be able to hit anything if they fell off.

“About seven minutes,” Kingsley shouted back, “we’ll need to desc–”

But whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the crackle of a white hot curse a foot from Hermione’s left ear. She flinched and Kingsley swore, and she twisted around again with her wand already raised and a spell already on her lips.

“Petrificus totalis!”

To her relief, at first, and then a little shockingly, the spell connected with its object and the death eater went suddenly stiff and toppled off their broomstick. Hermione only had a second to wonder whether that person was about to die, before three more figures swooped out of the darkness and into her visual range.

“Merlin,” she whispered, under her breath.

The thestral dove so suddenly Hermione momentarily lost contact with her seat, just as two twin red curses shot through the air towards them, passing over her head with a hiss as she slid forward. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, she would’ve been vaguely amused at the challenge of fighting a duel in the middle of the most violent roller coaster ride of her life. It sounded like the kind of impossible challenge Professor Snape might have come up with as a final exam.

The thestral evened out its flight and Hermione twisted around again with another shield spell already on her lips.

“Protego!”

The incoming spell smashed into her shield and exploded around it in a semi-circle of flame, one of the two pursuing death eaters so impossibly close to them now that she heard the end of the fiendfyre incantation before it died on the whistling wind. Her ears hurt. She grunted with the effort it took to keep the shield in place long enough for the fire to whip itself out. Her face was suddenly very hot, beads of sweat running down her forehead and dripping into her eyes. She pressed her lips together and could taste salt on her skin.

“Petrificus totalis!” She cried out, and then when the death eater veered out of the way, “Impedimenta!”

This spell connected with the tip of the death eater’s broom, and the flying figure was slowed so quickly and forcibly that it looked for a moment as if they were being sucked backwards into a vacuum. Hermione barely had time to be grateful before the second death eater took their place. Without thinking, she redirected her wand. She was struck with the impression that they didn't seem to be trying overly hard to kill – they mustn't have figured out who the real Harry was yet.

“Impedimenta!”

Her spell streamed out of her wand at the same time as the attacker cast one of their own, and the spells collided in mid-air. Hermione, expecting that sensation of creeping pressure that she’d felt before when her spells had collided with that of another, had already braced her knees harder against the sides of the thestral and leaned a little forwards in preparation for the backlash. Instead, a cold, thick, heavy feeling took over her wand arm at the same time as something in her head recoiled, as if everything inside her skull had been jerked violently backwards. She was distracted from the whitening of her vision by a sharp pain, like someone driving a nail through the base of her skull, and then the sudden ballooning of a dark, rolling, indigo magic into every corner of her mind. For a moment, fear and anticipation flood her senses–

What had happened to Harry and Ron? Were they hurt? What if someone hit Severus? What if the Order mission succeeded and then Voldemort was furious – would Severus suffer because of it? What if she were killed and then there was no secret keeper, and Harry and Ron had to hunt down Horcruxes without a backup plan? If she died she wouldn't be mourned by her parents.

Those awful feelings and the blindness ended almost as quickly as they had begun – quickly enough that she didn’t fall off the thestral, though it was a close thing. This was followed by a seemingly suspended second, during which she was left staring into the hollow eyes of a mask that seemed far closer than it had a moment ago but didn’t scare her nearly as much as it should have. The death eater had lowered his wand. She pictured her wide, shocked eyes, and wondered if she should try and look less overwhelmed.

Before the thought turned to action, the death eater turned sharply and, as if caught on the wind, swept away. She lost sight of him within seconds. To her surprise, no one else surfaced in his place. The death eater she’d temporarily slowed was nowhere to be seen either. Feeling oddly like the danger was over, she turned and focused instead on gripping Kingsley’s robes more tightly as they began to descend – not as steeply as before but still enough for Hermione to hold her breath against the physical feeling of her rolling stomach.

“What was that? Are they all gone?”

She gulped in just enough air to answer Kingsley’s skeptical, shouted question.

“Yes!” And then because on second thought his skepticism made sense, “do you think we lost them?”

“That, or they’ve all zoned in on a single target!”

The idea wasn’t at all pleasant. She didn't have much time to contemplate it, however, because the thestral broke through the thick cloud cover – the damp, chilliness of the experience coating her skin – to reveal the sporadic golden glow of a small, coastal village, the ocean a massive glittering darkness spread before them. They swooped downwards, veering left away from the centre of the village, Hermione twisting around every two seconds to ensure that they were still alone.

The thestral landed, with a final chilling jolt, outside an old, isolated, seaside manor, seemingly built of stone or brick, with pointed turrets and slanting roofs. As she pushed Harry's fringe out of his eyes and finally readjusted the glasses – now that they were no longer under attack she had time to notice again the tight way they compressed her head, her ears also still aching with the height and chill of the flight. She caught the flash of a television behind a drawn curtain. Absently, she was aware that the sight triggered a dull burning behind her eyes. The faint noise of what sounded like a sports channel was accompanied by a number of voices. At least two of them sounded like shouting children.

“That sounds like muggle TV,” Hermione observed, as Kingsley marched towards the building.

“Indeed,” he replied. “My family line has shared this home with a muggle family line for generations, not that they know it.”

Hermione's lips parted with a question, but she held her tongue when Kingsley flicked his wand and the whole house began spinning, at first slowly and then so rapidly that it became one blurred outline, and then just as suddenly stopped. The light of the TV was gone, and so were the voices. It was quiet and dark. A string of wooden beads that hadn’t been there before hung down the frame of the doorway, knocking spookily in the faint seaside breeze. Hermione hurried after Kingsley through the front door, which opened to reveal a wide hallway illuminated by a dull, bronze light of unknown origin.

She didn't have much time, or the will really, to take in her surroundings. Kingsley led her over to a thin wooden coat stand, upon which hung a single clothes hook. He checked his watch.

“Good, we have thirty seconds left. A bit tight, but given what was waiting for us…” He looked down at her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, and he nodded once, altogether rather unfazed.

“Wonderful. Quickly, Miss Granger! Grab on!”

Hermione shot out her hand and caught onto the clothes hanger just in time for it to start glowing a luminous blue, and then she felt as if she were being sucked once again upward. Everything a blur, she thought for a moment that she saw the roof of Kingsley's manor spin into the distance below her and then a more familiar, crooked, multi-turreted roof materialize far below. And then she was kneeling in the grass outside The Burrow. She caught her breath and took the hand Kingsley offered, rising to her feet in time to see the front door open and a number of people spill out.

As Professor Lupin and Harry stepped into the yard she felt her skin begin to stretch, and as painful as the process was, she couldn't help but welcome the transformation back into her own skin. Pulling off her now vision-befuddling glasses, she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around Harry with a relieved squeal.

“The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us!”

“Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.”

Hermione heard and processed Kingsley's urgent question and Lupin’s calm, steady reply, but she didn’t care to properly take in anything more than Harry’s safety for a good few seconds while the two men continued to converse. She let go of Harry, however, her ears pricking up, when Kingsley asked who else had made it back to The Burrow.

“Only Harry, Hagrid, George, and me,” was Lupin’s grave reply.

Hermione groaned reflexively, drawing back and meeting Harry’s eye. He looked upset, and she could empathize. As far as she was aware, she and Kingsley should’ve been two of the last to arrive. She wondered how well Ron and Tonks were faring. She glanced at Professor Lupin. He was staring up at the sky, a small but unconcealed frown on his face, and his fingers clenched into a fist around his wand. She turned back towards Harry, who was hovering close behind her, the grass under his feet rustling as he fidgeted anxiously.

“What happened to you? Where’s George?”

Harry’s face pulled into a grimace. “Given that both Hagrid and I took turns falling out of that damn bike we’re faring pretty well. George is on the couch. He– he lost an ear.”

“What? Lost an–” Hermione asked, for a moment thinking she’d misheard. When Harry just stared at her, his mouth tugging to the side miserably, she turned and strode towards the house. As she reached the door she caught the last of the conversation.

“Snape’s work,” Lupin claimed. Hermione’s heart did a thing.

“Snape?” Harry exclaimed, the information apparently news to him too. “You didn’t say–”

She darted through the doorway, not wanting to hear anything else. She wondered whether it had been before or after she and Severus had clashed in the sky. Her next breath was a little shaky, even before she turned into the living room and saw George, splayed along the length of the couch, the armrest under his head doused in blood. Mrs. Weasley was bent over him, though threw a quick glance over her shoulder as Hermione stepped into the room.

“Can I do anything?” Hermione asked meekly. She thought, she hoped, that it couldn’t have been too bad, otherwise Mrs. Weasley would be making more of a fuss.

“No, no dear. I’ve stopped the bleeding for now, I think. I don’t know if anything else can be done.”

Hermione nodded, though no one was watching, and walked slowly over to the couch. For a second she thought she caught George’s eye, thought he might have smiled. A moment later, however, it seemed that he was unconscious. His ear was a dark hole, blood caking and drying in his hair.

Severus did that, she thought. And then, did he know it wasn’t me? Was it to protect George from something worse? I want to talk to him.

She waited for feelings like guilt, yearning, or awkward anger to arise, but they didn’t. She felt an unnerving kind of nothing.

“I’ll prove who I am, Kingsley, after I’ve seen my son, now back off if you know what’s good for you!”

Hermione looked up as Mr. Weasley came bursting into the kitchen, his eyes immediately finding and locking onto George. He was quickly followed by Fred, who looked paler and more genuinely spooked than Hermione had imagined possible from either of the twins. In a creepy way, it disturbed her even more than the sight of George’s wound.

“Arthur!” Mrs. Weasley exclaimed, grabbing onto her husband’s arm. “Thank goodness!”

Hermione, feeling like a spare part, began to back up until one of her shoulder blades connected with a wooden panel. She needed to do something to distract herself from the fact that Ron hadn’t returned. She spun around, finding that she’d hit a doorframe, and stepped beyond it into the hallway. Taking a deep breath, on a whim, she pulled her chain out from under her now far-too-loose collar. She hurried up the stairs and into a cubby-hole used to keep the Weasley’s various broken and unused broomsticks, not even patient enough to make it all the way up to the room she’d been using.

Raising the wand that she still hadn’t let go of, she held the tip to the hollow of her throat without hesitation.

“Mitte verba mea”, she muttered, and felt the tip of her wand heat up against her skin. She took a deep breath. She held it in place as she spoke.

“Severus,” she began, and then paused. It was strange to hear his name out loud, strange to say it. The sound was accompanied by a repressed pang. All of a sudden, she wanted to say everything in the world.

“I’m fine,” she managed after a long pause, pathetically. “Harry is fine. George… isn’t, really, but he’ll be okay. Don’t tear yourself up about it, I understand.”

She watched a thin, silvery thread, like a glowing strand of a spider web flow out of her mouth as she spoke, pooling into a tiny ball of blue-white light in front of her face. She wanted to say something else, but when the silvery band of thread continued to trickle out from between her lips, recording long seconds of nothing, she dropped her wand. She watched the last of the thread spin itself into a small ball, and then flicked her wand at it. The ball of light shivered, and then so quickly she almost missed it, flew out of the room. She almost immediately regretted not taking the time to plan out a proper message. It was her first utilization of the necklace, and she could’ve done it better.

But it was difficult – she almost felt as if the message wouldn’t actually find him, that she wasn’t actually speaking with him. This method of communication was a million times better than what they’d been working with in the past, and yet she felt like she’d never been more powerless when it came to reaching him. There was some strangeness that she suspected wouldn’t have been there if only she’d gotten to see him in person, even just once, after Dumbledore’s death.

A sound from downstairs kept her from wallowing too much more in her thoughts – a soft bang and then a rise in volume of the faint buzz of conversation. She slipped back out of the small closet and back down the stairs. Everyone except Mrs. Weasley and George had gone back outside, and she padded out the front door to find them all standing in a little huddle in the yard, necks craned towards the sky. She nudged Harry, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Ginny.

“What? What?” She muttered, squinting up at the sky.

Without looking away, Harry replied, “I dunno. I think Mr. Weasley felt something pierce the wards around the house or something.”

Almost the second he finished speaking, Hermione saw a flicker of movement within the black, and then a hint of red.

“It’s them!” She cried out, almost jumping on the spot.

With a simultaneously impressive and fumbling effort – impressive because they swooped in together, as if choreographed, and fumbling because both parties practically fell off their brooms – Ron and Tonks landed in the yard. Tonks threw her arms around Professor Lupin – who had taken two big strides towards her, one arm outstretched – with a stunned sounding laugh. She disappeared from sight within the swath of Professor Lupin’s arms.

Hermione, for her part, threw herself at Ron.

“You’re okay,” he muttered, sounding as relieved as she felt. She nodded into his shoulder.

“I thought– I thought–” Now that she’d laid eyes on both of the boys, a decent chunk of her mind seemed to have disengaged from the situation and she struggled to form a sentence.

“‘M all right,” Ron insisted. “‘M fine.”

From over Ron’s shoulder she saw Professor Lupin glaring almost angrily down at Tonks, though simultaneously using both hands to brush her fringe out of her eyes. In contrast to his still, muted attention, Tonks was practically vibrating with energy as she recounted her and Ron’s trip. Hermione pulled back and reached behind her, grabbing sightlessly onto Harry’s sleeve and tugging him forward so that they were standing in a small triangle.

“Right then,” said Ron, and Harry nodded.

Severus stood in the South Wing of the castle, the faint, heavy whoosh of the giant clock swinging to and fro above him, the loudest sound in all the grounds. Under his reign, it would be a silent, still, dead school. The students had not yet arrived, of course, but the staff had. All the staff, ghosts, portraits, and magical creatures in the wizarding world wouldn't be able to dent the bubble of depression that had settled over the school. It was not an environment he had put much effort into cultivating – the Carrows were seeing to it singlehandedly.

The small, silver ball hung in the air for a strangely long time even after she stopped speaking, and therefore he expected her to continue. She did not. After about thirty seconds he watched, with remorse, as the silver ball shivered and extinguished itself. He had not heard her voice in months, and it was an almost out of body experience. The message was broken and uneven. He was relieved, however, to have received something from her. A building tension he had been ignoring all summer quietly unraveled itself as he stared out into the night. He was not so completely reprehensible to her to be beyond all contact. Though they were not comfortable, he was surprised at the ease with which he thought these thoughts.

He should return to his quarters, change his robes, and spread burn-healing paste into the mildly charred skin of his left wrist. He anticipated that it would be easier to linger like this in corners of the castle now, though. Much of the claustrophobia he had experienced in previous years had already lessened. Students would no longer break curfew. He no longer felt so watched. He felt like a tyrannical lord, and he wore it coolly, with more ease than he would have liked.

He expected he would be called back to the Dark Lord's side within the next twenty-four hours, at which point he would have to prepare for pain. The night had failed, Potter still lived, and someone would have to pay. Severus had dedicated good time to setting up his quarters in a manner that would allow him to repair himself in almost any state, as long as he was conscious. He no longer had any faith in Poppy's willingness to heal him. At least he now had the ability to apparate straight into the castle.

This had been his past few weeks – anticipating everything that could possibly go wrong and doing as much as he could to prepare. The protection he extended over his students would need to be an invisible thing. He had no support in the castle now except for the single portrait of an infuriating old man. Self reliance had to be as familiar as breathing. This was not so different from his previous life as to throw him.

Severus felt, rather than heard, the interruption to his solitude, the wards of Hogwarts which he was now irreversibly attuned to tingling in his fingertip. He didn’t move a muscle, but waited until his company had stopped advancing, about two meters behind his back. She did not announce herself for an extended moment.

“Are you going to kill me, Minerva?” He asked the night sky.

“It had crossed my mind,” came the terse, though subdued, reply.

“What holds you back?”

“The fact that it would put the students in danger, disrupting the Dark Lord's hold over the school at this time.”

Severus’ lips pinched together in a mirthless smile. “Thank you for your honesty.”

“Oh don’t thank me Severus,” Minerva bit back, displeasure and annoyance properly entering her tone.

Severus blinked and smoothed over his automatic, hurt, scathing reaction with practiced ease. It was a good sign that she had been fooled. If anyone among the staff might have held out a last hope for him, it would have been Minerva. Even though it was a good sign, he couldn’t help but resent her. It would have been nice – and disastrous – if a single person in the castle had held out hope. He felt for the presence of Hermione’s magic in the back of his mind. It was strangely, unusually quiet, but not absent.

“Are you on duty, Minerva?” he replied instead, his voice impassive, if not vaguely commanding. “Perhaps you are hoping that I might treat you as an exception to the new schedule.”

“I’m not on duty. I am informing you that the Carrows–” she said this with an honest to god hatred that he had at least never heard directed at himself “–have just revealed to me that they’re commandeering my classroom for detention purposes after school hours, as well as their own.”

“I see.”

“Are you going to do anything about it?”

“I do not see why I should.” Severus replied, though he appreciated being informed. His surreptitious watch on the Carrows was constant and wary, but they were slippery. Thousands of portraits all throughout the castle reported to Dumbledore’s portrait on their whereabouts, who in turn reported to him, but he would have preferred live footage of their every move. “Do you anticipate needing your classroom outside of the normal hours?”

“I don’t,” Minerva disclaimed, “But designating two classrooms for detention, Severus, before the students have even arrived–”

There was something in that sentence that genuinely believed he might take her side. It feared, but was not quite resolved, to his betrayal. It surprised him, and he had to reconsider his previous negative certainty.

“I suggest staying out of the way of the Carrows, lest you get stung.” Severus droned, after it became clear that Minerva had trailed off, and with no small amount of sarcasm, added, “I have tried my best not to get in the way of your artistic freedom while you have prepared for the year, Minerva. I would be a poor Headmaster if I treated the Carrows any differently.”

“You’re a blithering bastard, Severus.”

Severus took a final breath of open air – a dark silence stretching between them – and then spun on his heel. Minerva was standing just beyond the perimeter of the shadows of the corridor behind her. He thought the corners of her eyes flinched at his sudden movement. He had watched a colleague, a friend even, insofar as he had them, plead with him and then die earlier that week. In comparison, looking into Minerva’s eyes was child's play.

“Are we finished?”

“Certainly,” she assured, and Severus almost smiled at the stubbornness in her voice; They were fighting against all the raw power that dark, unchecked, uncaring magic unlocked, but their side had all the doggedness. He was on the right side, even if it watched him with those deceived, loathing eyes.

Chapter Text

August 1st

Hermione stood near the edge of the massive, indigo wedding tent, absently rubbing a forming blister on the back of her left heel with the toes of her right. She and Ron had just spent a good half an hour on the dance floor, and she was beginning to suffer the consequences. She’d had fun though, even joined in with whatever strange dance Luna and her father were enacting in the middle of the floor. She was enjoying watching almost as much, however. She was enjoying the feeling of being dressed up in silk, of being pretty, and having put attention into her hair.

She caught Viktor Krum's eye for a moment in the writhing mass of the dance floor – one of Fleur's most unexpected guests – and returned his smile. That had been the strangest part about the wedding for her so far. It wasn’t exactly deja vu. It was a reeling, disbelieving feeling of how much had happened since she’d last dressed up nicely and spent an evening dancing in the proximity of Viktor Krum. It was nice to see him and feel unfazed.

She caught a flicker of red to her left, and turned her head in time to see Fred skirting his smooth way around the edge of the tent to stand at her side. He was holding a cup in one hand, and he nudged her with the elbow of his free arm.

“Hey Stranger Granger.”

At hearing the nickname Hermione was hit with a proper flush of deja vu, and simply stared at him for a moment. She was standing in the Room of Requirement, the triumph of a successfully performed spell sitting in her chest, trying to avoid making eye contact with Harry and Ron – their relationship strained. She was harboring the beginnings of a crush that she was pretending not to notice.

“It's me – Fred Weasley.”

Hermione blinked, and was looking again into Fred’s face, a smirk on his lips and his eyes widened teasingly. She narrowed hers.

“Is it?” She asked, her voice pointed and sarcastic. “Who was the Hogwarts student you and your brother ‘adopted’ in our fifth year at school?”

Fred rolled his eyes at her. “You know, I actually really miss that little tyke. But I heard through the grapevine you might not be going back to school this year.”

Hermione pursed her lips, unpleasantly reminded. She, Harry, and Ron should’ve been planning for their mission ever since Harry's arrival, but Mrs. Weasley had made it her mission to keep them all so busy with wedding preparation that they hadn't been able to. Hermione was convinced – in fact she knew – that it was a purposeful attempt on Mrs. Weasley’s behalf. Which infuriated her. What did the matriarch think they were going to do? Just give up and never leave The Burrow for the remainder of the war? If they didn't have time to put their heads together soon they were just going to end up leaving thoroughly unprepared.

She only barely held herself back from venting at Fred. Instead she shot him a guilty grimace. “Almost definitely not.”

He smirked. “Hermione Granger; dropout.”

“Professor McGonagall may have a heart-attack.”

“Hermione Granger; dropout and slayer of Professors.”

Hermione's grimace deepened. “God, I hope not.”

There was a small pause, and both of them stared out at the mass of dancers. One of Fleur's French friends was spinning around on the spot like a ballerina, a beautiful blur of constant, pink motion, with two other girls clapping her on in dangerous proximity, as far as Hermione was concerned.

“I'm sorry though,” Fred said after a minute, and it took Hermione a moment to realize he must still be talking about her dropping out of school. “George and me, we weren't ever meant for school. But you're like a fish.”

Hermione understood the gist of what he meant, but pulled an indignant frown anyway and badgered him, because he was Fred. “I’m like a fish?”

“Too right.” Fred let go of his drink, and to Hermione's amusement it hovered midair beside him. He began digging around in the pockets stitched into the inside of his suit jacket. “I might have something to cheer you up. We – well George actually – came across this a couple of days ago, and we thought of you of course.”

He tugged out a small, green, leatherbound book, one that made her think of a pocket bible. It had faded gold lettering on the front which for a brief second read, ‘L'Università dei Maghi di Bologna’, but then quickly morphed into, ‘The Wizarding University of Bologna’. She took it cautiously.

“What's this?”

“I can tell you or you can see for yourself.”

Rolling her eyes, Hermione flipped through the book. It was quite thin – only about forty or fifty pages – but they were all blank, except for the very first. She squinted, scanning the fine, cursive print scrawled across the middle of the first page.

Hermione frowned, confused, though delighted by the nugget of information. She glanced at Fred questioningly.

“I think they called it a ‘curiosity appirif’,” Fred said in response to her unasked question. “It gives you a new one every day. It's not a full year's worth of syllabus, obviously. As far as I can tell actually it's all pretty useless trivia. But it's cool, right, if you’re into learning and that sort of thing?”

As she began to understand the gift, a slow beam spread across her face. “It's so cool! Where did you say George found it?”

“I didn't. Every now and then we do an exchange with other joke shops across the world – we ship our products there, they ship us something in return. We got a package from Chicago on Thursday – they said it’s an old thing from Italy maybe. I got the feeling they didn't actually know who it was from. They used it to develop their own product, and I bet you it's just been lying in a cupboard somewhere for years and they wanted to get rid of it. A bit disappointing actually. I mean, no offense Granger,” he reached over and tapped the book, “but this isn't the kind of thing that takes off with our general customer base.”

“All the better for me.” Hermione assured, tucking the book carefully into her handbag – with everyone currently sleeping at The Burrow with the wedding, all squished into one house, the bag had gone with her everywhere for the past two days – and rummaged around inside. Growing quickly impatient, she drew out her wand and pointed it into the endless, dark stomach of material.

“Accio coin.”

Quickly, she stuck her wand between her teeth, freeing her hand in time to catch the small, golden coin that flew out of the purse a few moments later. She handed it to Fred, who was looking between her and the purse with an eyebrow raised.

She removed her wand from her mouth. “Sorry, I should've been more prepared with gifts given that it's the holiday season.”

But Fred was shaking his head, looking down at the coin in his palm with a faint smile. “This’s one of the old D.A. coins, right? I could never find it after we made our hasty escape from Hogwarts.”

“I found it down the side of one of the couches.” Hermione noted. “Overall I found three there, actually.”

Fred’s shoulders shook a little in a silent laugh, and he pocketed the small token.

“Merlin's soggy socks, that seems like millennia ago though, doesn't it?”

Hermione hummed in agreement. “Yes, well, since then you two have successfully developed a popular business model, opened a shop, and all but moved out of home.”

“Yeah.” Fred's eyes widened mockingly, though his next words sounded less vibrant than usual. “You n’ Harry did a cool thing with that group. Merlin, were we all naive.”

Hermione didn't think they'd been so naive. They hadn't anticipated what was coming – Sirius, Mad-Eye, Dumbledore – but of course they couldn't have. She glanced up at Fred, about to say so, but found that he'd extended his hand out towards her and was wiggling his eyebrows.

“Shall we dance then, M’Lady?”

Hermione grinned and took the arm he offered. He pursed his lips and stuck out his chin in clear exaggerated mockery of the old-fashioned gesture and led her swaggeringly towards the dance floor, which they reached in time to attempt something almost like a foxtrot. Hermione wasn’t experienced enough to know how to correct their efforts, but she knew they were doing it wrong. Still, Fred was a surprisingly smooth dancer, and he swung her liberally around the floor in a way that made the room spin and almost knocked out an older couple gently swaying in the centre of the floor. Hermione was breathing hard and grinning when the slower music was replaced by a jaunty, cheerful song that stopped all the younger dancers in their tracks. The swinging couples broke apart and became a mosh pit, waving their hands in the air and jumping up and down.

Hermione squeezed Fred’s hand before letting go and shaking her head a little. “That might be enough for me, I’m afraid! I’m not wearing the right shoes for whatever that is.”

Fred smirked, peering past her. “Not a problem… I think I might squeeze over there while I have the chance.”

Hermione shot a glance in the direction he was looking, and smirked to find that his line of sight was trained on Fleur's group of old school friends, now swaying their hips in perfectly synchronized time with the music.

“Good luck,” Hermione remarked dryly, and Fred winked at her as he sidled away.

Hermione peered around the room, looking for one of the boys. She found Harry first, seemingly trapped in between two older looking guests who appeared to be having a rather heated conversation, judging by the redness in their faces and the way they were leaning threateningly towards one another. Harry was looking rather stuck. She decided to go over and save them. Maybe they could find Ron and slip out of the tent for a few moments for a breath of fresh air. He let out a held breath when she slipped into place beside him.

“I simply can’t dance anymore,” she panted, stepping properly out of her shoes and sighing in relief. “Do you think we could take butterbeers outside the tent? The sweat is starting to drip down my back!”

She stopped herself from rambling when she noticed the slightly dazed, slightly pinched look on Harry’s face. He opened his mouth and closed it again, eyes darting between her and the older couple, whose argument seemed to have petered out with her arrival.

“Harry, are you okay?”

Harry shook his head, and opened his mouth to try again, but was interrupted by a loud whoosh and a faint cry of surprise from someone behind them. Hermione turned around in time to see the crowd part around a graceful, silver lynx, shining too brightly to miss in the dimmed light of the massive tent. The room stopped moving, the music dribbling to a halt, and all heads turned towards the patronus. The lynx opened its mouth, and relayed a loud, deep message in the voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt.

“The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.”

Hermione felt Harry’s shoulder stiffen against hers at the same time as her heart dropped to her stomach with a white, airless feeling. She dug her fist into her purse and pulled out her wand, spinning to face Harry properly. The confused vagueness had disappeared from his eyes.

There were a few short seconds in which Hermione felt like she and Harry were the only ones who had understood the message – as if everyone else were living and processing in slow motion. During those few seconds, she had time to grasp her wand and purse firmly in one hand, and latch onto one of Harry’s with her other. Then someone somewhere broke the confused silence with a scream and everything went up in chaos.

“Ron!” Hermione stated, and Harry nodded grimly.

She stood on her tiptoes, trying to make Ron out from among the panicking crowd. Everyone had picked a different direction to run. She was thrown off balance as someone, mid-sprint, disapparated out of the tent about an inch from her right shoulder. Realizing it was useless, she tightened her hold on Harry’s hand and tugged him into the frey, heading in the direction of the drinks stand.

“Ron!” She screamed into the crowd. “Ron, where are you?”

She stumbled back into Harry’s chest as a wailing witch in a tight green dress pushed violently past her. Harry all but pushed her forward again, though they weren’t able to manage more than a slow crawl forwards. They’d somehow found themselves working against the direction of the crowd.

“Hermione!”

She only just heard Harry’s startled cry above the racket, and began to turn around, when she caught sight of the picture that had probably provoked his exclamation – a silvery, leering mask shoving through the mass of bodies about two metres from their left. Hermione noticed her skin flush hot and her heart-rate spike as if she were a stranger in another person's body.

“Ron! Ron!” She could hear the desperate catch in her voice, though felt detached from the emotion behind it. She just needed to find Ron – one step at a time. She veered away in the opposite direction she’d seen the death eater. A streak of light shot over their heads.

“–ione!”

“–ermione!”

Hermione spun around in the direction of the voice, almost throwing herself in between a young, very sharply dressed couple. Her grip on Harry’s hand was getting too sweaty.

“Ron!”

He emerged out of the crowd suddenly, one second nowhere to be seen and the next a mere foot in front of her. His eyes were wide, though sharp. She reached out and latched onto his outstretched hand. She felt like she’d just swum through a pool of everyone’s intermingling sweat. Over Ron’s shoulder, Hermione saw the flicker of a silver mask. Step two was to get them as far away from The Burrow as she could.

She pictured a green, wooden building, bright gold letters – Rising Sun – and a cobbled footpath. Tottenham Court Road.

Both boys tightened their grip on her hands as their bodies began to compress and blackness replaced the panicked wedding scene.

Hermione felt herself being yanked backwards by both arms just as she began to regain her balance, and then a loud horn blasted frustratedly at her as a bus whooshed past a couple of inches from her nose. She stumbled the rest of the way backwards onto the pavement of her own accord. She shook her head, ignoring the fact that she’d nearly killed the boy who lived by apparating them into the middle of a busy road, and began tugging both boys down the street. She found herself pushing through a new crowd, almost as thick and buzzing as the one they’d just escaped – drunk businessmen in tweed suits walking slightly askew, girls with straight blond hair and baggy jeans buzzing with all the energy of a late night out, a group of hollering young men, one of whom shot Hermione a sleazy leer as she shoved past him.

“Where are we?”

Hermione responded to Ron’s bewildered question without turning. “Tottenham Court Road. Walk, just walk, we need to find somewhere for you two to change.”

Almost jogging, they continued down the footpath until the crowd began to thin out. Hermione didn’t care to worry about whether or not they made a strange sight. Step three was to find an empty side street.

“Cocksucker!”

They pushed through a huddle of grungy young men leaning against the rails surrounding a particularly busy beer garden. She grit her teeth. Harry and Ron were still wearing their wizarding dress robes. Step three, step three.

“Hermione, we haven’t got anything to change into,” Ron commented, sounding annoyed, though she guessed it was more a result of the shouts that trailed after them as they passed the pub than anything else.

“Why didn’t I make sure I had the Invisibility Cloak with me?” Harry muttered darkly. “All last year I kept it on me and— “

“It’s okay,” Hermione interrupted, scanning left and right. “I’ve got the Cloak, I’ve got clothes for both of you. Just try and act naturally until— this will do.”

She’d spotted a dark alley to their right. She turned sharply, dragging both boys half way down the narrow street before finally letting go and turning around. They were looking a little red, and Harry’s hair was sticking up haphazardly as if he’d just run a sweaty hand through it.

“When you say you’ve got the Cloak, and clothes . . . ”

Harry trailed off when Hermione, who’d been holding her purse with one hand and digging around with the other, reached one of her arms into the bag up to the shoulder. Ron made a startled little noise. Hermione wasn’t quite sure how the magic of the thing worked, even though she’d performed the spell herself. Usually she would’ve taken the time to read up on the theory, but since her conversation with Professor Dumbledore at Grimmauld Place her life had never calmed down enough for it to become a priority. So far, however, she’d found that as long as she could remember the direction in which she’d placed an item into the bag if the clasp was facing outwards away from her stomach, she’d brush it with her finger tips eventually.

She pulled out a pair of jeans and handed them blindly to one of the boys. Another pair of jeans followed, and then two pairs of socks, some trainers, sweatshirts.

“Yes, it’s all here.”

“How the ruddy hell..?”

“Undetectable Extension Charm,” she explained, as the boy began to shrug off their robes. She rattled off an explanation, useless chatter that helped to re-structure her mind as she felt her breathing return to normal. She shoved the boy’s robes back into the bag, wincing a little in genuine pain when she heard the books she’d meticulously ordered and stacked the night before topple over, and pulled out Harry’s invisibility cloak. She was pretty sure they’d be safe in a muggle area for the foreseeable future, but she didn’t feel like cutting any corners.

She heard Ron catch his breath as they stepped back out onto the main road, and glanced up at him. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw tight and his face hard. She reached out and squeezed his hand. She hadn’t expected their mission to start so soon or so abruptly. She was grateful Ron hadn’t given any hint that he wanted to return to The Burrow despite leaving his family behind in less-than-ideal circumstances. She suspected, as they began to trudge along, that all three of them were just quietly taking a moment to come to grips with the fact that this was it.

“Just as a matter of interest, why Tottenham Court Road?” Ron asked after a minute, and Hermione was relieved to have the silence broken, even if the question gave rise to a memory of waiting for the bus with her father on the corner beside the Rising Sun pub. They used to take the bus from that spot back home every Wednesday after her evening piano lesson, for the two years before receiving her first Hogwarts letter. Eager for independence, she used to insist that she could make the journey by herself, and he’d always tell her that there were too many pubs on Tottenham Court Road for it to be safe.

“I’ve no idea,” she shrugged, all expression melting from her face. “It just popped into my head, but I’m sure we’re safer out in the Muggle world, it’s not where they’ll expect us to be.”

“True,” Ron admitted, sounding uncomfortable “but don’t you feel a bit— exposed?”

“Where else is there?” Hermione started, at the same time as she started running through the list of other potential places she could’ve taken them and feeling annoyed at herself… Herself and Mrs. Weasley. This is why they needed to have been planning together.

A loud, meandering whistle from the other side of the road pulled her out of her thoughts, and she hunched her shoulders in self-conscious unease when she realized the men sitting outside the pub were waving at her. The first wolf-whistle spawned a small ensemble.

“We can hardly book rooms at the Leaky Cauldron, can we?” She started, half her attention focused on her reply, the other half on whether or not the men were going to start following them. “And Grimmauld Place is out if Snape can get in there. . . .”

Severus’ name had passed her lips before she’d even realized she was going to evoke him, and the surprise of it stopped the automatic flow of her thoughts. As she stumbled over her words, one of the men shouted a slurred, indecipherable word in their direction. She felt Ron sidle a little closer to her. Had she not needed to watch where she was going she would’ve closed her eyes and imagined stepping through from the laboratory into Severus’ quarters.

“I suppose we could try my parents’ home, though I think there’s a chance they might check there…” In the back of her mind she was thinking that she ought to mention her parents' house, lest it seem suspicious, given that both boys knew that she lived in London. She was keen to move on from the suggestion, however, but she lost her train of thought again at the sound of a drunken whoop. “Oh, I wish they’d shut up!”

“All right, darling?” She glanced quickly over her shoulder to find that one of the men had separated from his party and was stumbling up the pavement on the opposite side of the road, following them in parallel. “Fancy a drink? Ditch ginger and come and have a pint!”

Hermione felt her cheeks heat up and pressed her arms tighter to her sides. She was beginning to feel a little over her head. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ron begin to turn around and quickly stuck her arm out to stop him. She swerved them both to their right, hoping they wouldn’t bump into invisible Harry, and to her relief they found themselves standing outside a small all-night cafe.

“Let’s sit down somewhere,” she decided. “Look, this will do in here.”

A bell rang lamely as they passed through the door and they bundled inside. She and Ron watched for the imprint of Harry’s butt on one of the flaking, red booths near the door before Ron slid in beside him, leaving Hermione to take the chair facing the counter. In hindsight, she wished she’d thought to slip into the booth beside Harry, because she found herself with her back to the door. She glanced over her shoulder, her spine crawling.

Ron leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. He dug his fisted knuckles into his temples and released a long breath. The fake leather squeaked as Harry shifted invisibly. Hermione glanced over her shoulder again. She wondered what they’d do if that man followed them into the cafe, given that using magic was out of the question. When the waitress trudged up to their table, she ordered two cappuccinos. The drinks arrived two minutes later, filling only about three quarters of their thin paper cups, luke warm to the touch. Hermione wrapped her hands around hers anyway and glanced back over her shoulder, wishing grouchily that Ron would offer to swap seats with her.

“You know, we’re not far from the Leaky Cauldron here, it’s only in Charing Cross–”

“Ron, we can’t!” Hermione hissed at him, annoyed by the suggestion and their lack of a plan and the repeating sound of the men calling her a darling in the back of her mind. She felt like the air around them could snap.

“Not to stay there,” Ron interjected, “but to find out what’s going on!”

“We know what’s going on! Voldemort’s taken over the Ministry, what else do we need to know?”

Ron pushed back in his chair and flung his arms up. “Okay, okay, it was just an idea!”

A silence settled over them again. Hermione decided she should’ve apparated them onto Portobello Road instead, that way they could have slipped into a cinema and taken an hour or so to just process the evening. She understood why Ron would be nervous, having just deserted his family in the middle of a death eater attack. She honestly didn’t know what she could have done better though. Except apparated them onto Portobello street, and perhaps changed out of her low cut dress, and directed them somewhere that sold better coffee and maybe some food.

She startled in her seat at the sound of the bell and swiveled around again. Two burly looking workmen sidled into the bar, not glancing in their direction. Breathing out, she turned her attention back to Ron, leaning across the table towards him, partly so that she could whisper and partly to be sure that Harry could hear her and join in with the conversation if he had any ideas.

“I say we find a quiet place to disapparate, and head for the countryside. Once we’re there, we could send a message to the Order.”

“Can you do that talking Patronus thing, then?” Ron asked, leaning in too.

“I’ve been practicing and I think so.”

Ron raised his cup, a deep frown line splitting his brow. “Well as long as it doesn’t get them into trouble, though they might’ve been arrested already.”

Hermione shook her head, though she knew it was entirely possible. She’d had this lingering feeling of alarm at having been taken by surprise by the death eater attack at the wedding, and it struck her for the first time that it was because she hadn’t had any warning from Severus. Without consciously deciding to, she’d started to rely on him as an information source. That was another mistake she needed to correct.

“God, that’s revolting,” Ron exclaimed, his nose wrinkling up as he replaced his coffee on the table. Hermione unclasped her hands from around her cup. “Let’s get going then, I don’t want to drink this muck. Hermione, have you got muggle money to pay for this?”

“Yes, I took out all my Building Society savings before I came to The Burrow. I’ll bet all the change is at the bottom…”

Hermione drew her bag onto her lap, relieved at the suggestion. Step four – figure out where next to disapparate. Somewhere without any people, she decided resolutely. Not London, she thought, annoyed at herself again.

Her fingers had just brushed against the cool, solid edge of a coin when Ron lunged across the table and shoved her to the side at the same time as she heard Harry’s voice yell, “Stupify!”

Disconcerted, Hermione instinctively groped around for her wand, slipping off her chair and under the table for cover. One of the two workmen that had walked in earlier – a blonde man with a very thick jaw – slumped to the floor about a metre from her position, his hand falling limply across his body and almost reaching under her table. A foreign wand rolled across the floor towards her, and she realized what was going on.

“Expulso!” She heard a man's voice shout, an almost familiar sound that made her recoil impulsively, and then the table one over from them exploded. Harry suddenly appeared, slammed up against the wall beside the splintered table. Ducking out from under her cover, Hermione pointed her wand at the second man.

“Petrificus Totalis!”

She screamed the spell a little more forcefully than she’d intended, having seen the death eater's face. She’d recognized the bearded, thin, leering figure that had towered over her in the Ministry two years earlier. Her ankle tingled, remembering the sickening twist. The death eater toppled over, landing on his face with a nose breaking crunch next to his companion. Hermione slipped properly out from under the table. She shook her hair and in the stunned silence of the room heard little bits of glass tinkle to the floor. She observed that she was shaking.

Ron made a hrumphing noise and she turned around to find him bound up in rope on the floor. She hadn't noticed that happen. She pointed her wand at him.

“Diffindo.”

Ron's face crinkled in pain and he cried out as she missed and sliced open his knee. She cursed inwardly, her grip on her wand tightening. She stepped over the blonde death eater and knelt down so that she had a better line of sight.

“Oh, I'm so sorry Ron, my hand’s shaking! Diffindo!”

The ropes severed and fell free. Ron stood, wincing a little, and gingerly straightening out his limbs.

“I should've recognized him,” Harry said, and Hermione turned to see him tap the arm of the blonde death eater with his shoe. “He was there the night Dumbledore died.”

The allusion to that night made Hermione take a deep breath.

“That's Dolohov,” Rom chimed in. “I recognize him from the old wanted posters. I think the big one's Thorfinn Rowle.”

“Never mind what they're called!” Hermione winced at the sound of glass crunching underfoot. Everything seemed to have a prior association, none of them pleasant. “How did they find us? What are we going to do?”

She looked at Harry imploringly. She needed someone else to come up with something solid and fast. She hadn't expected her decision to take them to a crowded muggle area to go so horribly wrong and she was struck by it, her confidence shaken. Harry, either because he saw this in her eyes or perhaps because the attack had given him the animation he'd needed, nodded resolutely.

“Lock the door, and Ron, turn out the lights.”

She followed the instructions with relief, also turning over the ‘Open’ sign hanging in the glass window. She could hear the same men that had oogled at her earlier jeer at another woman. Hermione pressed her forehead to the glass, trying to see whether whoever it was was alone or not. It was difficult to tell whether the feeling in her stomach was hunger or worry or something else. It was weird not to be able to read the signals her own body was giving her.

“What are we going to do to then? Kill them? They'd kill us? They had a good go just now.”

Hermione turned away from the door, staring at Ron. She wasn't sure how she felt about that idea. Ron, for his part, didn't look very taken with it either, his face too white.

Harry shook his head. “We just need to wipe their memories. It's better like that, it'll throw them off the scent. If we killed them it'd be obvious we were here.”

“You're the boss,” Ron breathed with what sounded like relief. “But I've never done a memory charm.”

Both boys looked sideways at Hermione.

“Nor have I,” she lied, and a weight like a stone settled in the back of her mind, “but I know the theory.”

She stepped over the blonde death eater. She felt abruptly very calm, though her wand hand was shaking like never before.

“Obliviate,” She heard herself say through a fog.

“Brilliant!” Harry clapped her on the back, and she almost jumped out of her skin. “Take care of the other one and the waitress while Rom and I clear up.”

Hermione hadn't realized the waitress had been hit. Step four was to obliviate the second death eater and step five was to obliviate the waitress. Hermione drew a deep breath, taking a moment to feel the air rush through her nose and picturing it enter her empty skull. She stepped over to the second death eater, whose eyes were open and conscious and glaring at her. This actually made it easier.

“Obliviate.”

Apparently the waitress had been struck by a rogue stunning spell, landing in a frozen heap just below one of the big front windows. Her eyes followed Hermione as she stepped around and hooked her hands under the woman's arms. Hermione could read fear in them, and she tried very hard not to picture it as she dragged the girl behind the counter.

“It's no wonder I can't get it out, Hermione,” complained Ron from across the room, tugging at the wand in his back pocket. “You packed my old jeans, they're tight.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” Hermione snarled at him as she positioned the women on the floor behind the till, muttering darkly to herself, “you can keep it shoved up your arse if you have any further complaints.”

She stepped around and knelt down in front of the waitress, knowing how scary it was to have someone stand towering over you with a wand pointed at your face.

“This is confusing, I know. I’m sorry we came in here. Don’t worry, I’m going to erase your memory of all of this – it’s a very safe spell that I’ve done before – and then you can go back to your life without worry.” She whispered all this as she tucked a few strands of hair behind the girl’s ears, not knowing whether an explanation was going to help or hinder, not quite sure why she’d decided to provide one given that she was about to erase the memory of it. She pointed her wand at the girl’s chest. “Obliviate.”

She let out a long breath as she turned back around to join the boys. They’d been straightening out the broken mess of the diner, and were just heaving the two slack death eaters back into a booth.

“But how did they find us? How did they know where we were?” She shook her head and looked at Harry. “You don't think you might still have your trace on you, right Harry?”

“He can't have. The trace breaks at seventeen, that's wizarding law. You can't put it on an adult.”

Hermione refrained from reminding Ron that she'd memorized an entire book on wizarding law during her first year at Hogwarts. But she wondered how much that was able to be changed, if the Ministry was in the hands of dark wizards.

“As far as you know,” she stated forebodingly. “What if the death eaters have found a new way to put it on a seventeen year old?”

“But Harry hasn't been near a death eater in the past twenty-four hours. Who's supposed to have put the trace on him?”

Their small argument petered out when they both glanced at Harry and saw him frowning pensively at the floor.

“If I can't use magic,” he started, slowly, “and you can't use magic near me, without us giving away our position–”

“We're not splitting up.” Hermione cut him off. If they hadn't made that clear by now then they hadn't done anything productive over the summer.

“We need a safe place to hide,” Ron added, not giving Harry any time to insist. “Give us time to think things through.”

Harry finally looked up, and Hermione knew what he was going to say a second before he did. She sighed, not very pleased by the idea, though there was a resolution in Harry's expression that she didn't think would prove very swayable.

Harry set his jaw. “Grimmauld Place.”

Two hours later Hermione sat cross-legged, alone on one of the beds at Grimmauld Place. The quilt smelled like four-hundred years of dust and rain beyond a window, and was covered in a stiff embroidery that bit the thin skin over her ankle bones. She’d pulled out the sleeping bags she'd packed and the boys had dragged a few mattresses down from bedrooms into the main lounge, so she was certainly not sleeping alone, but when Harry and Ron had headed down to the kitchen to see if they could find any food in the cupboards, she'd slipped away for a moment to herself.

A patronus from Mr. Weasley had burst through a window to inform them of the Weasley family's safety a few minutes after their arrival. She knew she wanted to do the same, her pendant pinched between her fingers. As had been the case the first time she contacted Severus, however, she had no idea how she might go about forming the right words.

She needed to tell him that she was safe. And then she wanted to ask him about this numb feeling, how all the fear she knew she should be feeling had turned into a blurred kind of puddle at the bottom of her mind, and how her hands shook even when her thoughts continued to work practically. She wanted to tell him how uncomfortable she'd felt about the men calling at her from across the street, and how that had made it hard for her to think. She wanted to ask him whether it was okay that they were at Grimmauld Place and whether he'd been here since Mad-Eye had erected the new wards. Had Dumbledore's ghoulish, streaming phantom of a figure upset him, if he had?

She touched her wand to her throat, and began to speak, hoping that the words that followed were good enough and that the cold, stiff way they came out wouldn't hurt him.

“Harry, Ron, and I got out of the wedding unharmed. I took them to London, but we were tracked down in a small cafe almost immediately. We've moved on again but I have no idea how they found us and when it'll happen again. I thought I'd be better–”

She surprised herself with that last sentence and flinched, the message cutting off prematurely as her wand jerkingly lost contact with her skin. She stared at the silvery, floating ball for a long time, and then with a sigh flicked her wand at it. It shot away.

She kicked herself out of her sleeping bag at around two in the morning that night, catching Ron's glinting, open eyes in the dark as she tiptoed to the bathroom. She didn't think Harry had managed to fall asleep either, but at least the house was warm and they were resting their bodies. She thought she must have actually drifted off for a bit, given that she felt a little sticky, but she’d been woken by the faint pang in her stomach. There had been a single can of peas and a moldy hunk of burned cake in the cupboards to share between the three of them. She could have duplicated the peas, but at that point none of them had felt particularly hungry.

She used the bathroom and then hovered in the hall, pulling her necklace out and finding it glowing softly. She took a deep breath and fortified the shield she'd constructed around Severus. She opened the clasp and then caught and cupped the little ball in her hands as it flew out, holding it close to her ear. She didn’t need to do this, but felt like it.

She nodded to herself practically and, a little reluctantly, released the silver ball. It left her palm tingling and warm.

As she slipped back into her sleeping bag she met Ron's eyes again. They had caught the light of the moon through the window, and glinted in a way that made him look a little scared. She reached out and took his hand. She felt guilty for how snappish she'd been with him that day, often when he'd been doing little more than making suggestions. Her mind had just been very overcrowded. It was almost as if the shields she'd put in place had shrunken the space she had to work with. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her thoughts away so that she might get some sleep.

Chapter Text

August 2nd – After the witch hunts of the 1500s, some magical communities moved entirely underground — physically and socially. At least two of these communities never emerged, and given their geographical location, are likely to still exist, entirely independent from above-ground dwellers, (Esme Fern-Fawndiggle, 1901).

August 3rd – In the year 1645, a wizard by the name of Morty Daggerton devised a charm by which his private thoughts were made audible to all about him. For this unhappy invention he was struck with eight and forty hexes, and lost his life before ever he discovered the means to undo it, (Hannibal Welleseley, 1723).

August 4th – Certain creatures of magic are known to be drawn toward grief. Thestrals are foremost among them, of course, yet there are also moths of the night, which are wont to gather about those who have borne sorrow too long upon their hearts, (Augusta-Rose Groggit, 1873).

August 5th – In the time of the First War of Wizards, whole families of magic folk were seen to vanish, leaving behind no trace nor token. Some hold that they did employ charms of Memory so exceedingly strong, as to blot out even the remembrance of themselves from the course of History, (Andrei Mișelav, 1601).

August 9th – It has been observed that, when magical blood is spilled along certain ley lines in Wales, there occasionally arise clusters of a purple-spotted fungus. Preliminary accounts suggest that ingestion of this species may induce visions of a hallucinatory character, comparable to those produced by delirium or certain dream-states, of certain moments in the lives of said deceased wizards or witches, (Helena J. Murkle, 1799).

August 10th– Within the forest of Brocéliande in France, certain trees have been reported to deprive visitors of their memories. To date, this phenomenon has been observed exclusively among individuals of red hair, though the reason for such precision remains unknown, (Alberto B. Bogdan, 1801).

August 15th – Spells cast in extremely emotional states may sometimes deviate from their standard magical signatures, making them difficult or impossible to trace, (Sherbert P.L. Montuáno, 1899).

August 21st – The magical flora of the Hebridean Islands has been observed to possess an uncommon resistance to dark enchantments. This peculiarity is most plausibly attributed to their long habitation in the vicinity of native dragon populations, whose influence appears to have exerted a protective effect through successive generations, (Flora Middlewart, 1831).

August 22nd – According to certain enquiries undertaken at the Magical University of Prague, it hath been determined that near upon sixty-four out of every hundred Muggle mythologies may be traced to some interaction with the wizarding world. Next in order of cause is the misinterpretation of natural phenomena, which hath oft supplied matter for their superstitions, (Rupert D. Delly-Waddlesome, 1798).

August 25th – When a witch or a wizard falls in love, it alters their magic irrevocably. If the subject of that love is violently killed, the magic of their surviving partner becomes less powerful. All of this occurs at a level that is meaningfully unnoticeable, given the kind of magic that has been practiced from the twelfth century onwards, (Persephone Blue, 1903).

September 1st – Magical virtue is often found to gather in places of passage—such as doorways, thresholds, and the meeting of roads—and for this cause the greater part of ancient rites were appointed to be performed in such locations, (Juana Navarreth, 1611).

Chapter Text

September 1st – Magical virtue is often found to gather in places of passage—such as doorways, thresholds, and the meeting of roads—and for this cause the greater part of ancient rites were appointed to be performed in such locations, (Juana Navarreth, 1611).

Hermione was lying with her head cushioned on Harry’s stomach, listening to the occasional sound of it churning away the bland meal of boiled vegetables and bread they’d eaten that night. None of them had snuck out of the property under an invisibility cloak to spy on the Ministry that day.

During the month following their disaster night in London that they spent living at Grimmauld Place, Hermione had added and completed steps six through thirty-two of her imaginary list. Now that Harry had made the hasty decision that tomorrow would be the day they infiltrated the Ministry – she’d just decided to lump all of that under one big ‘step thirty-three’ – they’d all taken the day to just rest. Given that the house had been under constant death eater watch since their arrival, making nervously disapparating under the invisibility cloak on the front door step their only way of coming and going, The change was good. An entire day without fretting for their immediate safety.

Other than those lonely, sneaking visits to the official entrance to the Ministry, none of them had left the property in a little over a month. The result of that prolonged, in-your-face living situation was that Hermione was both intensely aggravated – unreasonably so, she knew – by the grumbling in Harry’s stomach, but had also grown accustomed to a level of closeness with the boys that surpassed anything they’d previously achieved and was therefore not easily persuaded to sacrifice her comfort by moving. Harry’s stomach, as far as she was concerned, was as much a place for her to rest her head as it was a place for him to digest his food.

For the last three weeks they'd been sleeping in separate rooms, to reclaim a modicum of privacy, but she was hoping they all stayed in the living room tonight. So far they'd all shown signs of gravitating in that direction, so she suspected the boys were feeling similarly.

They’d gone over the plan so many times that night Hermione wouldn’t be surprised if she started reciting it in her sleep, as Ron – who shared a wall with her – had been complaining she’d begun doing with a few of the stories in The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She would’ve found it soothing to continue revising for another few hours, but after she’d quizzed Ron for the fifth time about what floor Umbridge’s office was on he’d kicked a stool under the table and glowered at her so severely that she’d decided to give it a rest. Repetition wasn’t going to help any more. They needed to get it over with.

She’d been tossing up whether or not she was going to alert Severus that they were going into the Ministry tomorrow, and suspected that her indecision was going to make the choice for her in the end. What could he do, anyway, if they got into trouble? She needed to rely on herself and the boys. And she suspected she’d contacted him too frequently over the past month. Even if it felt like she hadn’t heard his voice nearly enough. And even if that creeping awkwardness she hadn't been able to shake had made each message feel one hundred times more significant than it actually had been.

Currently, she was staring up at the ceiling, counting the water spots, while Harry tapped out an unfamiliar beat on the wooden floor beside his mattress. Ron was upstairs, brushing his teeth or generally mucking about. Somewhere in the back of the house Kreacher was making sounds with pots. She was both relieved and wary about leaving the house.

“Do you think we should pack everything up here, just in case things go wrong and we don't come back?”

She waited in silence for Harry to respond, but the rhythm his fingers were taping didn't falter, nor did the rise and fall of his breath. After a prolonged moment she tilted her chin up towards him.

“Harry?”

“What?” He startled, and then shook his head. “Yeah, yeah that's a good idea.”

He was staring up at the ceiling too, though his fingers had stopped tapping.

“What are you thinking?” She asked, watching the sliver of his profile visible to her from this odd angle.

He half shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Are you thinking about Ginny?” She asked. It was an informed guess. The Hogwarts students should all have settled into the school by now, the banquet feast over. And Hermione hadn't failed to notice Harry's slightly absent presence over the past twenty four hours.

As it was, his cheeks flushed pink and he tipped his chin further away from her. “I was actually.”

“She'll be okay. She's one of the most determined people in the whole school. She can stand up for herself and then some.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Hermione thought, based on Harry’s private tone, that he wasn't going to say anything else, but after a moment he took a deep breath and added, “I just… I wish I could…”

“I know.” Hermione murmured, only half-consciously.

“No, but it's different! I mean, I'm worried about Neville and Luna and everyone else, but the fact that she's living under the same roof as a death eater every day – Snape,” the word was swathed in the armour of hate he'd constructed the night of Professor Dumbledore's death, and Hermione felt herself drain, “as Snape, it makes me feel ill. I think I'd give up a limb if I could just see her once. But I also don't want to until this is all over and we can meet without all this in the foreground. And I just wish… anyway, it's different.”

Hermione took a deep breath and frowned at a water spot that looked like a rat. The urge to snap at Harry niggled somewhere in her, but didn’t quite manage to take hold. She didn't want to draw him out of his bubble of sadness – she knew how necessary it sometimes was to feel. She did understand. And it was unpleasant to lie there completely unreactive and listen to him miss Ginny and hate Severus.

“I know what it's like to miss people, Harry.”

“This isn't missing. It's like– It's the worst.”

She didn't say anything else. The atmosphere in the room had gone bad, though it was something she decided more in the way that Harry had stiffened rather than anything she felt herself. There was a numbness in her body that tingled if she didn’t focus on it. She supposed their closeness was probably a bit awkward now, but if she moved she knew it'd only set in stone the shift in Harry’s mood.

Ron, his timing cinematic, trudged into the room, shutting the door with a solid thump. Hermione pushed herself up onto an elbow and watched him pick his way through the various shoes, books, and sweaters spread across the floor and drop down easily beside them.

“Is anyone else hearing that weird tapping behind the mirror in the top bathroom after about nine p.m.?”

“Yes!”

Hermione glanced at Harry as he rolled over onto his stomach and exclaimed enthusiastically at the same time as she. He flushed and threw her an apologetic smile, which she returned, thinking about the feeling of her skin pull at the corners of her mouth.

Ron shrugged, tugging his socks off and wiggling into his sleeping bag. “Maybe there's a ghost trapped in the wall.”

“Well let's not go exploring,” Hermione added worriedly. “We have enough going on in the immediate future, we don't need to add the liberation of long-imprisoned ghosts to our list before we've made it successfully in and out of the Ministry.”

“Fine with me,” Ron dismissed, looking far too relaxed as he swatted at Hermione's legs. She repositioned herself, lying longwise next to Harry, and Ron shuffled down beside her so that they were sandwiched in a row across the floor.

“Hey!” Harry groused when Ron reached over them both and snatched a pillow off the couch. “That's my one!”

“What're you lying on then?”

"Well when I had the room to myself I was using Hermione's, cause that's the best one obviously. But if we're all settling down I want my one.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because I'm used to my one!”

“You mean yours is the second best. I don't see why you and I can't swap every other night–”

Ron's complaint was muffled by a soft whack in the face, the remaining thin, threadbare pillow colliding with his head. Ron's eyes widened in disbelief and he sat upright, pillow now clasped in hand and on the rise. The only thing that saved Harry was Hermione sitting up and blocking the incoming blow with her arm.

“Will you two act your age!”

Ron blushed and slumped back down, chucking his pillow in Harry's direction and reaching for the dud.

“Easy to say when you've been sleeping with the only good pillow in the whole house.”

“Well then duplicate my pillow for God's sake! We may have dropped out of school but the last six years can't have been for nothing!”

Hermione remained upright until she was sure that both boys were going to stay settled with their various bedding, and then rolled her eyes and lay back down. They were now all lying on their stomachs, chins resting on their arms, staring at the small, studded leather legs of the settee on the far side of the room. Hermione noticed the shadows underneath flicker and wondered whether they were sharing the room with a mouse. As the companionable, uncomplicated silence ticked by, she felt a bit more feeling reach into her chest.

“Do you think they’ve changed around the staff at Hogwarts this year?” Ron muttered after a few minutes of silent staring. “I mean, surely Snape needs backup. What if half the Professors are death eaters?”

“Let's not talk about the school,” Hermione sighed, not unkindly. “At least until we know anything for sure. Theorizing about things we don't know just winds me up without having any way to calm back down.”

“We'll find a daily prophet after we pull off this Ministry heist successfully,” Harry added.

“The Daily Prophet won't be any good anymore, remember.” Hermione reminded him. “Voldemort won't let them print anything that doesn't paint him and his followers in a sympathetic light.”

“That might be a good reason to find a copy in itself. We can read in between the lines.”

Hermione eyed Harry admiringly and hummed, but she didn't respond.

“What can we talk about, then?” Ron asked after another minute of nothing, and Hermione smirked despite herself. At times over the past month she'd wanted to smack him over the back of the head with a pan given how much restless energy he had, but tonight she was happy for the distraction.

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind that isn’t going to depress me right before bed?” Hermione queried.

Ron flipped over onto his back, his head cushioned on an elbow. “What was it like seeing Krum at the wedding?”

Hermione blanched and barely stopped herself from aiming a kick at his shin. The sound of her muffled huff of annoyance was drowned out by Harry's groan.

“You’ve got to be kidding, Ronald.”

“No, no! I don’t mean it in a bad way or, you know, I know I could be a little stupid last year. It was just a surprise when he walked in. And surely you felt something about it, right?”

“Not much, actually.” Hermione started, cautiously. “I mean, it was nice to be reminded of that feeling I suppose.”

“What?”

“You know. The excitement of someone returning your interest. Feeling desirable. And then feeling like all the things you have to do that day are ten times easier than usual because you've got something so good happening in your life. And feeling understood without even speaking.”

“I didn't know you felt that way about Krum,” Harry remarked at the carpet, a little wistfully.

“Well I didn't really. But almost.” She shrugged. “Maybe I would've if the year had been less complicated.”

She wouldn't have. The tingling, giddy crush she'd harbored over Viktor hadn't persisted through his inability to hold a conversation longer than five minutes and his lack of interest in school other than as a vehicle for sport. He'd been refreshingly in touch with his feelings but a little oafish and completely disinterested in his curriculum. But sometimes she wanted to talk about those feelings, the ones she'd never felt for Viktor, with the boys; with the other people she loved. Viktor was a good enough cover, as long as the conversation didn't go too deep.

“Would you start things up again after the war?” Ron asked.

“I don't really think about what I'll do after the war.” Hermione skirted the question. Harry, shifting onto his side and propping his head up with one arm, agreed.

“Me neither.”

Ron gave them an almost disapproving look. “I do. I try and add something new to the picture every day.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at him, his expression mirroring Hermione's surprise. They'd never really discussed before how each of them dealt with the mental challenge of facing a war. She couldn't quite imagine what kind of internal world Ron might have constructed for himself.

“Go on then.” Harry urged.

Ron, looking far too relaxed, squinted up at the ceiling. “Well I'd go and work with Charlie for a bit, I think. If he gets his old job back. I wanna get out of the country, somewhere hot and dry. And then when I've saved up enough to move out of home properly when I’m back here I'll get a place somewhere in England, in a really good house. I don’t want to be so close to mum that she can just pop in and out all the time. Somewhere where there’re more people but that has loads of space. I guess I'll probably just wait to see who has kids first, Ginny I bet, and then go near there.”

“What?” Harry interrupted, sounding alarmed.

“What?”

“Why's Ginny having kids all of a sudden?”

“Oh, come on, Ginny wants kids. I swear mum didn't do a single thing last year without Ginny muttering under her breath how she'd do it differently with her kids.”

“That doesn't mean she wants them, though! I mean not soon!”

Harry sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. Hermione smirked. Ron's blatant refusal to acknowledge Harry and Ginny's relationship, or at least to ignore the obvious fact that their current ‘separation’ was little more than a performative act of gallantry on Harry's part, was only going to kick him in the butt if they all survived the war.

He was predictably now glaring at the roof. “What's it to you?”

“Well…” Harry started spluttering, and then stopped. “Well… Well maybe Hermione'll have kids first.”

“Me?” Hermione scrunched up her nose in protest. “I can't help but point out that you've both just automatically picked the only two girls in your lives. Men can have kids! What about Neville?”

“I wasn't thinking you're a girl!” Harry defended himself, stupidly, at the same time as Rom hrumphed.

“Come on, Hermione, I like Neville and all but I don't intend to play a role in his kids' lives. Plus, he needs to learn how to catch a ball before he can be trusted to hold a baby.”

“That's so mean, Ron!” Hermione gasped, ignoring Harry's epic snort.

“It's true! You'd be a good mum, Hermione,” he added, and Hermione felt something twist in her gut.

She tried to imagine herself with a baby. She'd only just been juggling everything she'd been fitting in over the past few years, always right on the verge of royally dropping the ball and screwing everything up. She couldn't imagine adding the responsibility of parenthood on top. She’d always been so driven by the prospect of earning a place in the wizarding job market that it wasn't something she'd spent much time thinking about, and she was disoriented to find herself immersed in this particular conversation.

She supposed it wasn't all that surprising that Ron would be thinking about his role in the next generation, coming from the bustling never-ending family he did. She also supposed this was something they might’ve talked about before, unseriously and giggling together in the common room, if they hadn't been preoccupied with love potion poisoning and mind reading serial killers and werewolf professors all their teenage years. She supposed she might be giggling and unserious now if the words his line weren’t playing over in her mind, a monotone, detached repetition, like a ceremonial chant.

She tried to picture Severus with a child, and struggled. She felt herself blush, but she didn’t waste any thought analyzing why. She did for a moment wonder about how he might react if he were privy to this conversation, and could imagine his dismay. It would scare him, too, though he wouldn’t show it. What she knew for sure was that if Severus survived, he'd need space and time to figure out who he was beyond war, and to a certain degree so would she. But every time she thought about a post-war future the reality of loosing felt a little more real to her. So she moved quickly on.

“I don't know about that.” She said simply and unrevealingly.

“Sure,” Harry insisted, apparently agreeing with Ron. “And you'd have the most infuriating kids too, quoting Bathilda Bagshot before they can walk.”

“But I don't think I'd know how to speak to a child. I mean, what would you even talk about when they don’t understand anything yet? And everything would get so messy. And they're so fragile and they put everything in their mouths!”

“Okay, okay fine, no kids then.” Harry assured, and Hermione suspected he was motivated to move on from the topic too. “What'll you be doing instead?”

Hermione took a deep breath. She did have a set of emotion-free, personless steps mapped out in her head. Mostly they had to do with passing her final exams. Would she be allowed back at Hogwarts as an older student? Would she be able to get a good job without all her school qualifications if she wasn’t? It was almost nice to think about these problems.

“Well I'd go back to school for one thing. And then I don't know. There're so many things. I could imagine doing research, or advocacy work. I'd like to rejig some of the antiquated ways they're still running things in the Ministry, but I also don't want to get stuck in that system unless I can actually make a change. Maybe by putting pressure on the Ministry from the outside somehow. I want to live somewhere quiet, though, somewhere with lots of trees, where you can see mountains.”

She stopped there. She didn't want to think about whether it would be possible to exactly recreate those two weeks in the Highlands.

“For someone who doesn't think about after the war, you've got a lot mapped out.” Ron remarked. “I guess I didn't really see you as a mountain person.”

Hermione shrugged, and avoided looking at Harry, knowing he’d be able to empathize all too painfully with what she had to say next.

“I suppose I just try not to imagine people. If the last two years have pointed out anything it’s that you can’t just assume everyone is always going to be around.”

There was a long silence, before Ron released a rush of a sigh. “You two are so grim.”

Hermione held her breath and waited for Harry's inevitable snappish response. She was always surprised when Ron still wasn't able to predict Harry's triggers. Or perhaps he did and just liked to keep them all on their toes.

“What do you expect, Ron?” Harry quickly supplied. “Or have you forgotten the madman determined to convert, torture, or kill, everyone we know?”

“You know I haven't.” Ron snapped back. “I just don't think I could keep doing this everyday if I wasn't thinking about what I want to happen and who I care about. I don't get how you two can keep living like this while pretending nothing can ever possibly be good again. You've gotta have hope.”

“I've got hope, Ron.” Hermione murmured, surprised at how significantly the word rattled the shields in her mind.

“Good.” He replied, sounding far less animated.

Hermione glanced at Harry. He looked tired, and a little uncomfortable, lying right on the edge of his mattress.

“You can move closer, you know,” she said. “It's been noticeably colder these past two nights anyway.”

Harry's expression softened and he did shuffle closer, though he also shot her a guilty look.

“If I get too close I always seem to wake up with your hair in my mouth. I don't know how you survive, Hermione, it's like it has a life of its own. If you do get back together with Krum at some point in the future you'll make life long enemies with a whole bunch of quidditch fans by strangling him to death in his sleep with your hair.”

“Hey!” Hermione complained, using both hands to tuck it behind her ears as she wiggled down self-consciously on the mattress. “It's not that bad.”

“If you say so,” Harry said, sounding unsure. “It'll be a brave guy for sure who decides to take it on in the future, in my opinion.”

Chapter Text

September 2nd – The enchanted quills used by the Ministry of Magic for court records are bound to the truth-telling charms of the Wizengamot chamber itself, (Charlie Doggit, 1932).

Hermione, confused beyond words as to why Mafalda Hopkirk had chosen to wear heels to work despite the fact that the Ministry had clearly been using this new method of transport for a while, let out a small, involuntary gasp when she stepped her second foot off the toilet seat into the bowl and almost twisted her ankle. She had braced one arm on the wall to her right, and once she was semi-stable, reached cautiously up to pull the chain with her left. As she gave it a good tug, the heel of her right foot slipped and she felt herself falling forward for a truly dreadful second, before her whole body was caught up in some twisting, suctioning force, finding herself the next moment stumbling out of one of the now familiar Ministry fireplaces.

She took a sharp step forward, lest whoever followed barrel right out of the fire into her, and glanced around. She couldn’t identify either of the boys – not that she’d spent a huge amount of time memorizing their new faces. What did catch her eye, because it was quite impossible to miss, was the new statue towering above her in the middle of the atrium floor. Two imposing figures carved in dark black marble seated squarely upon the twisted forms of what Hermione understood immediately to be a horde of muggles. Her attention stuck on the sculpture, on one of the twisted faces in particular – a dark marble woman with wide eyes and a loping mouth, her wild hair and lack of teeth giving her a manic, artless quality. Hermione supposed that was the point.

“Oi?” Her shoulder jerked a little as someone grabbed onto it, though she didn’t turn. “Hermione?”

She nodded, and Ron – now a short, wiry, marsupial-like wizard – took his place beside her.

“That’s new, right? What’s it supposed to be, do you think?” She didn’t answer, but it seemed to click into place for Ron after a second anyway. “Oh. You alright?”

Hermione nodded again and tore her eyes away from the thing. “Yup. Where’s–”

She didn’t want to say ‘Harry’. Ron squinted and peered back around at the fireplaces. “He was right behind me. Don’t think he was too keen about stepping into the bowl.”

“Yeah, well, neither was I,” Hermione remarked dryly, remembering her near-fall and shifting her weight across her feet to feel for damage. Her right ankle twinged a little, though not badly. She was wondering whether it would look very strange if she transfigured the shoes into flats when Ron latched onto her arm again and pointed at a tall, muscular, bearded man standing two meters to their left, looking rather baffled.

“Psst!”

The man’s eyes flicked towards them, stared confusedly for a brief moment, before understanding dawned. He hurried over.

“You got in all right, then?” Hermione asked, distractedly, following Harry’s line of sight. The statue seemed to have struck a chord with him.

“No, he’s still stuck in the bog,” Ron said unhelpfully, and Hermione shot him a side-long glare.

“Oh, very funny. It’s horrible, isn’t it? Have you seen what they’re sitting on?”

Harry shook his head, and then his eyes widened.

“Muggles. In their rightful place.” And then because she didn’t like the informative, almost professor-like tone of her voice, or how apathetic she found herself feeling as she gazed upon the massive statue, she turned towards the lifts. “Come on, let’s get going.”

They began to work their way through the writhing crowd, Hermione wary about their closeness given that she wasn’t sure whether the identities they had assumed were ones that typically associated together. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered so much a few months ago, but now even the unspoken atmosphere of the atrium screamed a story of a strong and dangerous divide. It wasn’t immediately obvious, but as Hermione scanned the crowd she noticed that there were two groups of pedestrians – those who tended to shuffle in small, close groups and avoided making eye contact, and those who walked alone with their heads high and a set, haughty look about their lips. There was a noticeable trend towards more expensive looking, black clothing in the latter group. There was a sense of magnetism about the crowd – a drawing together and a repelling.

“Cattermole!”

Hermione was startled out of her study at the sound of a sharp, low voice barking too close for comfort. She nudged Ron, who hadn’t seemed to have recognized his new name and had walked on a pace beyond her and Harry. They all turned to see a short wizard with long blonde hair striding confidently towards them. Hermione recognized him as someone who’d entered the last few moments of the fight in the Astronomy Tower after Severus and Draco had swept through. Strange, among other things, to see a known death eater approaching them so openly in the Ministry of Magic.

“I requested somebody from Magical Maintenance to sort out my office, Cattermole. It’s still raining in there.”

Ron shot both her and Harry a helpless glance.

“Raining… in your office?” He repeated slowly, as if giving his brain time to catch up with being perceived. “That’s—that’s not good, is it?”

The death eater sneered, an expression more intimidating than mocking. “You think it’s funny, Cattermole, do you?”

“No,” Ron amended hastily, “no, of course–”

“You realize that I am on my way downstairs to interrogate your wife, Cattermole. In fact, I’m quite surprised you’re not down there holding her hand while she waits. Already given her up as a bad job, have you? Probably wise. Be sure and marry a pureblood next time.”

Hermione’s hopes about an easy in-and-out operation sank. Their mission would not be helped by running after spouses. Their mission would not be helped by the now-guarenteed image she would have in her mind of the muggle-born witch they might be inadvertently condemning to imprisonment – or worse – as they swept the Ministry for a horcrux.

“I–I–” Ron was stammering, and Hermione mentally snapped at him to wrap up the interaction as quickly and affably as he could manage. They’d put all their preparation into getting into the Ministry, and very little into running through potential situations inside.

“But if my wife were accused of being a Mudblood,” the death eater continued “—not that any woman I married would ever be mistaken for such filth— and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement needed a job doing, I would make it my priority to do that job, Cattermole. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Ron breathed.

“Then attend to it, Cattermole, and if my office is not completely dry within an hour, your wife’s Blood Status will be in even graver doubt than it is now.”

Hermione took a deep breath. The death eater turned sharply on his heel, with a quick conspiratorial nod towards Harry, and flounced away. She jumped as Harry reached out and tugged her backwards into an elevator a second before the golden grille slid shut, closing them inside – she hadn’t even noticed it opening. The lift was thankfully empty, aside from them.

“What am I going to do?” Ron demanded. “If I don’t turn up, my wife… I mean, Cattermole’s wife–”

“We’ll come with you, we should stick together–” Harry started, but Hermione shook her head at the same time as Ron interrupted.

“That’s mental, we haven’t got much time. You two find Umbridge, I’ll go and sort out Yaxley’s office– but how do I stop it raining?”

Yaxley, Hermione thought. Of course. She struggled to understand why her brain hadn’t recalled that information immediately, but it came to her now as if dislodged from a bog.

“Try Finite Incantatem,” she supplied without having to think. “That should stop the rain if it’s a hex or curse; if it doesn’t, something’s gone wrong with an Atmospheric Charm, which will be more difficult to fix, so as an interim measure try Impervius to protect his belongings— ”

Ron, looking increasingly panicked with every second, waved a hand at her and then began digging around in his pockets, she assumed for a pen. “Sat it again, slowly–”

Hermione was about to rattle the lecture off again when the lift came to an abrupt, juddery halt and she buckled a little in her heels.

“Level four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being, and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office, and Pest Advisory Bureau,” the lift droned at them as the grilles squeaked open. They were joined by a small huddle of wizards and a number of paper planes.

“Morning, Albert,” greeted an older, white-haired wizard. Hermione had decided that Harry appeared to be in with the darkly aligned body of the Ministry, as opposed to Ron. She still had no idea where she stood. Still, she squished into the back of the lift with Ron as the other wizards crowded in, leaning in until their bent heads were almost touching.

“Finite Incantatem should stop the rain if it’s a hex or a curse. If that doesn’t do anything, maybe something went wrong with an Atmospheric Charm. Use Impervius so that his things don’t get wet, and then try an adaption of Finite Incantatem – perhaps Finite Tempestas or Finite Prior Opus. If none of that works, remember the spell we used to dry out sea-weed in second year? I think it was something like Sicco–”

She was cut off from her rapid whispering when the lift juddered to another halt, Ron grabbing onto her arm to stabilize her this time, and the company of wizards began to file out. Hermione pushed Ron to follow them when the voice of the elevator announced their destination on Level Two. His face was bright red and his expression so panicky that she took an instinctive step towards him as the doors closed again.

“Actually, Harry, I think I’d better go after him, I don’t think he knows what he’s doing and if he gets caught the whole thing— ”

“Level One, Minister of Magic and Support Staff,” the lift interrupted again, apparently determined not to let her finish a sentence.

Even before the grilles rattled open, Hermione caught a distinctive glimpse of garish pink through the lace-work of the metal doors, and her breath caught. She straightened automatically and pressed her spine into the back wall as three wizards and Umbridge sidled into the small space. What was a genuinely unbelievable stroke of luck – to have run into Umbridge before their hunt had even properly begun – felt like anything but.

“Ah, Mafalda!” Umbridge sang shrilly, making immediate eye contact. “Travers sent you, did he?”

As much as Hermione had been annoyed at Ron earlier for being unable to adapt to being addressed, she found herself struggling to process Umbridge’s attention, because as soon as she stepped into the lift Hermione felt a physical, shriveling sensation in the back of her skull. She winced, trying not to let it show in her expression. Since she’d erected the walls in her mind, she’d become less and less adept at feeling the presence of Severus’ magic. Might have worried her more had her feelings been less oppressed by the walls themselves. This was the first time in a while that she’d felt anything much from that place in her head – the first time since confronting Severus in the sky in July, though this wasn’t anything like that. This was definitely a shriveling, or a grating, squeaking, recoiling sensation.

“Y-yes.” She stammered, trying to ignore the feeling.

“Good, you’ll do perfectly well.” Umbridge nestled herself snugly into the elevator right in front of Hermione, who got the impression that the witch she was impersonating was valued enough to be utilized but not necessarily respected in whatever new hierarchy the Ministry was operating under. The lack of direct attention gave her a few moments to process the sensation in her head, however, as Umbridge continued. “That’s that problem solved, Minister, if Mafalda can be spared for record-keeping we shall be able to start straightaway. Ten people today and one of them the wife of a Ministry employee!”

Umbridge tutted, and shook her head in a familiar mock-remorse at her clipboard. “...even here, in the heart of the Ministry! We’ll go straight down, Mafalda, and you’ll find everything you need in the courtroom.”

She turned slightly towards Harry, who, like Hermione, had crammed himself into a corner at the very back of the lift. “Good morning, Albert, aren’t you getting out?”

No, Hermione’s hopes sank even further. Harry, clearly struggling not to look her way, began to shuffle reluctantly out of the lift.

“Yes, of course.”

He glanced over his shoulder just as Hermione, Umbridge, and the three unknown wizards began to sink into the depths of the Ministry. They rattled down a fair way, giving Hermione time to process what seemed to have been a very quick fraying of the mission. At least one of them was actually with Umbridge. Harry, she hoped, would find his way to her office, as planned.

The feeling in her head didn’t get any worse, just stuck with her like a dull migraine. She did, however, have to resist the urge to lean as far away from Umbridge as was physically possible, motivated by an instinctual sense that distance would alleviate the feeling. The doors to the lift slid open without any disembodied announcement, at the lowest level indicated by the dials on the far wall.

“Well?”

Hermione, apparently having lost a few seconds of time, skipped hurriedly out of the lift to join Umbridge in the corridor beyond. The other three wizards had also stepped out, but were already shuffling quickly down the hall. As she fell into step just behind her old Dark-Arts Professor, Hermione began to get a sense of why. As they progressed down the corridor, the air became steadily cooler, and the sound of her heels against the stone floor seemed to echo more dryly. They turned a corner, and all of a sudden Hermione felt like she had walked into a wall of freezing water, marching down a long hall lined with floating, leering dementors. She had flushed pink but her cheeks weren’t able to retain the warmth of blood rushing to her face for more than a few seconds.

The unexpected sight of tens of large, cloaked figures turning their heads in slow motion distracted her, for a moment, from processing the other inhabitants of the corridor. People clothed in wizarding garb were crammed onto the small wooden benches that lined the walls. They were all wearing more-or-less the same hopeless, nervous expression, and although most of them glared or stared determinedly at their laps as Hermione passed by, a few of them shot both her and Umbridge either hateful or entreating looks.

The realization that these people were muggle-borns hit Hermione with very little weight. She found it difficult to process their situation more concretely than she might a painting of a very real but long passed war in one of the British museums her mother had often taken her to during the school holidays. Even when Umbridge led her through a heavy doorway into a small, high-roofed courtroom with what seemed to be hundreds more dementors swirling gently above their heads, she wasn’t able to process what was about to happen with anything more than vague regret.

“Come Mafalda,” Umbridge’s clipped voice commanded, and Hermione followed her over to a small, raised platform in the middle of the room, taking a seat beside her. In front of her sat a large pile of documents, a quill, and a bottle of ink. “Well?”

Hermione glanced at Umbridge, trying to keep the question out of her expression. Two, watery eyes stared back at her in haughty expectation. Her heart-rate picking up, Hermione reached confidently out and began to rifle through the documents before her – each of which seemed to be a concise summary of a single muggle-born witch or wizard. This had apparently been the correct thing to do, because after a moment she felt the weight of Umbridge’s attention leave her.

Feeling a little more level-headed, and resolutely ignoring the soft rustling sound of the dementors overhead, Hermione started to read through the documents she held.

Hermione started flicking less thoroughly through the documents after reading through Mrs. Mary Cattermole’s file, having recognized the name and experiencing a twinge of guilt that actually managed to hit her. She briefly scanned the remaining seven personal files, and then put them to one side in the order she’d found them. She was still left with a fairly decent wad of parchment. The other documents included a timetable of the day’s proceedings, each trial only scheduled for fifteen minutes; an inventory of confiscated items, including wands, heirlooms, and muggle artifacts; medical records for each of the accused; a security roster for those Aurors, snatchers, and other Ministry officials scheduled to monitor the courtroom and prison transfers; and a summary of ‘pre-trial’ confessions.

One of the last files she scanned was a ‘Potion and Spells Requisition Log’, which included an order of various potions and a request for official oversight from the Ministry in the ‘last resort’ use of the cruciatus curse. Mid-read, Hermione’s hold tightened involuntarily around the document. Parchment crinkling under fingertips before she managed to relax them.

Ministry of Magic — Potion & Spell Requisition Log
Muggle-Born Registration Commission — Interrogative Support
Quarter: July – September 1997
Order Ref: #88-RP
Item / Spell: Restraint Potions (muscle inhibiting)
Quantity: 10 vials
Supplier / Specialist: L. Carrow
Purpose / Notes: To prevent violent reactions post-sentencing
Order Ref: #77-VA
Item / Spell: Veritaserum (Grade IV potency)
Quantity: 3 vials
Supplier / Specialist: S. Snape (Hogwarts)
Purpose / Notes: For cross-examination and confession inducement
Order Ref: #80-OL
Item / Spell: Occlumency Screening Charm
Quantity: N/A
Supplier / Specialist: Department of Mysteries
Purpose / Notes: Applied to assess resistance to mind-reading
Order Ref: #83-MB
Item / Spell: Modified Babbling Beverage
Quantity: 5 vials
Supplier / Specialist: P. Mulciber
Purpose / Notes: For disrupting defensive spells during testimony
Order Ref: #85-IM
Item / Spell: Cruciatus Curse
Quantity: N/A
Supplier / Specialist Request: C. Yaxley
Purpose / Notes: Confirmed via approved last-resort protocol during hearings
Order Ref: #90-WD
Item / Spell: Wand Detection Spell
Quantity: N/A
Supplier / Specialist: Unspeakable Program
Purpose / Notes: Screening for concealed magical implements

Picturing Severus in the laboratory. Standing over one of the massive cauldrons. That fixed look of cool calm concentration on his face. Was that the expression he had worn while brewing veritaserum for Umbridge during their fifth year? Was it the expression he wore brewing it for the Ministry now? Her already rubbing toes curled inside her shoes. Trying to expel the lightheaded energy that welled up inside her. Fingers twitched with the urge to touch her necklace. Instead, she mechanically stacked the remaining pile of documents under those she’d already read and held her hands into a fist in her lap. She felt tipsy but her head was calm.

The door to the courtroom flew open to admit the stout, blonde finger she’d run into earlier that morning.

“Ahhh! Corban, I was almost beginning to wonder whether you were going to show.” Umbridge smiled a pert little smile at Yaxley as he crossed the room, returning the expression with a smooth quirk of his own lips. He seated himself on the other side of Umbridge, nodding briefly at Hermione as he did so. Hermione nodded back but he wasn’t looking.

“Held up by the Goblin Liaison Office. Apparently there are still a few left resisting Ministry involvement at the bank.”

“Oh?” Umbridge queried, though she didn’t sound particularly interested. Much to Hermione’s disappointment, Yaxley seemed to pick up on this, as he simply made a non-committal, gravelly noise and waved his hand dismissively.

“Mulciber will have it under control.”

An allusion to another known name, a bad name. Umbridge smiled. “Yes, I believe I won’t regret that promotion.”

With that, Umbridge pushed her seat back and stood, a movement that Hermione almost mirrored except that Yaxley remained motionless, and Hermione had to make the split-second decision to follow his lead instead. Umbridge had pulled out her wand, and was pointing it at the floor in front of the small platform upon which they were sitting.

“Expecto-patronum!” She squeaked, and a silvery beam much too bright and enthusiastic given the morbid atmosphere in the room burst from her wand. It detached as a small cat, which immediately began pacing in a manner Hermione could only describe as snobbish, to and fro in front of the platform.

“We will begin!” Umbridge cried out to the room, and Hermione frowned, almost glancing around to double-check whether they had any company other than the dementors swirling overhead. Whether or not there was anyone hiding in the shadows to hear the command, a large door directly opposite Hermione’s seat on the raised platform swung open with a dramatic whoosh, and a tall, lanky wizard in dull grey robes and a tartan waistcoat was escorted into the courtroom by two towering dementors, a clawed, gnarled hand clasped around each of his biceps. The wizard was visibly sweating, though he tilted his chin up when his eyes found Umbridge, his lips setting determinedly. Hermione’s stomach did that veiled roll, a roll that should’ve been sickening.

Severus stood with his feet hooked sturdily between thick, overlapping roots, placating the Whomping Willow. He had not been aware that it was something the Headmaster of Hogwarts was required to do, but it was one of many new things – checking the wards around the school; preventing arguments between paintings by occasionally moving their locations to different walls; periodically re-adjusting the temperature in the lower east wing of the dungeons so that the family of anti-social, never-seen orphan ghosts there didn’t become restless and venture out to haunt the freezers in the kitchens.

These tasks had become hooked up to his very neurology through the magical, extra-sensory link he now shared with whatever part of the castle that was a semi-conscious, pulsing thing. Completing these tasks maintained an equilibrium that he felt in his spine, and in many ways this new link kept him calmer than he had ever felt at Hogwarts. It was a monotonous, fragile kind of calm, most easily unbalanced if he ignored the Whomping Willow for longer than a few days. It was a seething, restless limb of Hogwarts, and one of the few loopholes for getting into the school from the outside. Severus was therefore very conscientious in his attention towards it.

He stood under the eerie Scottish sky, grey clouds so low and fat that the turrets of the castle disappeared into them, swallowed. His empty hands were spread and held up, palms facing the slowly shifting tree, and he was chanting a deep, ancient Welsh poem he had found in one of Albus’ desk drawers.

“Gwern blaen llin,
A want gysseuin
Helyc a cherdin
Buant hwyr yr vydin”

He had come to the end, thankfully, when the feeling – a jerk in the base of his skull and then a strong desire to curl in on himself, away from something – began. It was not overwhelming, but his heart-rate immediately spiked, because it was that area of his mind, where even the slightest change of state was important. He dropped his hands, felt how the quick dismissal rankled the tree before him, and tried not to hurry too pointedly on his way back to the castle.

Class was in session, and the corridors were empty of stragglers. He swept past the ghost of Sir Nicholas De Mimsy-Porpington, who flinched and stopped chirping at the starling he had been entertaining on a windowsill, shrinking backwards through a wall. This was the only other soul Severus encountered.

He slowed as he reached the transfiguration corridor. He had entertained the hope that, upon reaching the castle, the strange sensation in his head might have become somehow meaningful, and yet it was still just a crawling, recoiling kind of tug. It worried him in its unfamiliarity, but he wasn’t sure how to respond. He itched to touch his wand to his throat and spell out some urgent message, but he had spent a great deal of time over the weekend applying all he had learned about wards and protective magic over the course of his last few years of research. The school was as safe from outside invasion as it had ever been, the consequence being that he was far less sure of the traceability of any magical message he wanted to send out. He ground his teeth and turned towards the dungeons.

This state of ignorance was almost wearing thin enough to upset the careful balance in his mind when a portrait hissed at him. Severus stopped, a fluid ripple of black robes, and turned slowly to his left with one eyebrow raised. A young boy in a white powdered wig and foppish puce waistcoat almost shrank back under the stare, though managed to maintain an air of composure, leaning against the frame of his painting – a rich, velvety scene of a mid-eighteenth century drawing room.

“Well?” Severus droned, accustomed to spineless resistance from the incredible majority of portraits within the castle.

“There’s something you ought to know,” lilted the spoiled boy, his chin tilted further towards his painted ceiling.

“Shall I hear it,” Severus queried, measuring a threatening note into his tone. “Or shall I hang you in the lower dungeons with only the Quarrier Orphans for company?”

The boy straightened, his lip pouting. “You needn’t be cruel! The kelpies told me that the old Blacksmith in the library told them that the Ladies in Blue told him that Dilys Derwent wants you in the Headmasters office.”

Severus snarled, and because he was on edge and not at all a kind person, flicked his wand at the portrait as he spun on his heel, locking it. The angry, righteous shouts of the boy followed him up two flights of stairs and then disappeared. He swept into the Headmaster’s office – a dark, cold, sharp version of the Headmaster’s office – with a crackling, annoyed energy that disguised a growing sick feeling. Derwent’s twin portrait lived in the Ministry, he knew.

“Well?” He snapped, repeating himself, as he immediately picked out and glared up at Headmaster Derwent.

The stately, gray-haired witch shot him a mildly disapproving frown. “There is a disruption in the Ministry.”

“That much I gathered.” Severus remarked, swooping over to his desk and retrieving his wand from where he’d left it before heading outside. The Whomping Willow, it seemed, was offended by a wizard unable to master wandless magic. “Who is it?”

“There is no need for such unpleasantness, child.”

His back to the wall of portraits, Severus closed his eyes for a moment. He reset and then turned, steadfastly avoiding making eye contact with Albus. “Forgive me. I am anxious about who might be there.”

Headmaster Derwent graced him with a small, stately bow, her expression quickly business-like. “No one who ought not be there.”

Severus has learned to be patient when conversing with the portraits. Some were hundreds of years old. Many liked, or perhaps had forgotten how not to, talk in riddles. It seemed to be a feature of age – the oldest of the portraits spoke more slowly, and with less clarity. They were suspended in their time and archaic mannerisms.

“Polyjuice?”

“Perhaps.”

“Who?”

“It is most difficult to tell who is acting out of place. That rosy-hued lady passed across the tenth-floor atrium, making her way to one of the lesser courtrooms, accompanied by that diminutive aide – Hopkirk, as I recall. The trials of the muggle-borns today are attended by Yaxley. Albert Runcorn subsequently followed, which has caused a wee confusion. He has no business there. The dementors are swarming with anxiousness.”

Severus frowned, trying to make sense of this haphazard information. “Runcorn in the courtrooms? No, never mind that. How many dementors?”

“Oh, a mere hundred.”

Severus’ jaw tightened. “Is the Minister of Magic on alert?”

“Not quite yet… They are too busy to pick up on these early signs of things. Portraits predict confusion before anyone, we watch and we know.”

Severus nodded a grateful though smart acknowledgment to Derwent, and turned expectantly to Headmaster Everard, less ancient and far easier to understand. Thankfully, the wizard needed no encouragement, but added his bit with an almost excited flourish of his right hand.

“I’ve seen nothing myself – no one ever wants to make any mischief in the Department of Transport anymore, a most dull location to be hung. Though I’ve caught wind of a rumor someone may have broken into Dolores Umbridge’s office.”

“Go back,” Severus demanded, and Everard pushed himself to his feet and stepped out of his portrait with a happy twinkle in his miniscule painted eye.

Severus was grateful. The Ministry was not his prerogative, and while the portraits in the Headmaster’s office were bound to secrecy, and to a certain degree his orders, within the castle walls, he had no authority over their out-of-castle identities. But they knew who he was. Collectively these portraits were the sole witness to countless promises between himself and Albus, and they had become his eyes and his ears in a castle that was too extensive to monitor alone.

“What do you think, Severus?”

Severus grit his teeth and spun around, pacing towards the far window and gazing out of it. He could ignore Albus, but to do so felt juvenile.

“I think,” he began, slowly, “that you failed to teach Potter common sense before you flung him out into the thick of it.”

“You think it is Harry?”

Severus' lip twisted at the nonchalance in the tone of this question. The painting had retained too much of its subject for comfort.

“Of course it is.”

There was a thoughtful pause, and Severus clasped his hands behind his back, wishing Everard would return. His instinct was to try and send someone from the Order into the Ministry, but those contacts had been cut off.

“Are you in contact with Miss Granger?”

One of Severus’ eyebrows shot up. He and Albus had only conversed in small, practical exchanges since his appointment as Headmaster. Albus warned him not to let the Carrows on too loose a leash, and Severus asserted that he had a balance to maintain. Severus returned exhausted from a death eater meeting, and avoided feeding Albus’ curiosity about the Dark Lord’s current madnesses. Albus imparted vaguely useful wisdoms about the nature of the bond with the castle and less-useful quips about how Severus was looking. They had not addressed Hermione – it had been a carefully skirted topic. Severus, to his own surprise, felt strong as well as wary, as he considered breaking that taboo.

“Is it your concern?”

“If you risk exposing Harry in his mission by contacting her, then it is of concern.”

Severus turned, appraising the lofty, gold-embellished portrait. “There is a risk in sending three young people, admittedly not inexperienced in war but certainly not altogether prepared for it, off on their own.”

“There are safeguards in place.”

“I am sure there are.”

Albus tilted his head to the side. Severus became aware that he was being given a rare, easy opportunity to drop the exchange, and he stunned himself by not taking it.

“Why are they in the Ministry?” He asked, the smallest amount of genuine anxiety working its way alongside intentional incredulity.

“I honestly do not know,” Albus assured, looking curious. “Though it’s not implausible. I’m surprised at how little faith you seem to have in Miss Granger’s abilities, given how well you’ve indicated that you know her, and having worked alongside her in the past. She is undeniably brilliant.”

“You will not–” Severus began, raising his hand in a half gesture, but he paused, lowered it, before he could finish whatever movement he’d intended. “You will not comment on my opinion of her.”

Albus’ image straightened in his chair, an eyebrow raised, and Severus turned to the window. Now the conversation was over. A portrait shifted uncomfortably in their frame somewhere to his right. Severus was very aware of many alert consciousnesses all listening. He resisted the urge to glance at Everard’s empty frame. The clouds had begun to curl through the peaks of the Forbidden Forest, still impossibly low. So low, in fact, that cloud and mist seemed to meet and the whole grounds were swimming in wispy grey.

“What are you going to do, if Headmaster Everard has something worrying to report back?”

Severus’ lip curled. He did not know. “I suppose I would be forced to send someone from the Order after them without giving myself away.”

“How would you do that?”

“Or I might send a Patronus, given that she, at least, would be given straight to the dementors – ‘Undesirable no. 2’. I might apparate to Grimmauld Place – I assume their return destination – despite the wards Alastor so tastefully erected to repel me. Perhaps I will simply place Minerva under the imperious.”

“And would you be doing this for Harry, or for Miss Granger?”

“Does it matter?”

“I believe it does!” Albus raised his voice a fraction, and Severus felt, despite his worry, a flicker of satisfaction. If the old man insisted on having the conversation they had skirted around since the night of the attack at Hallsands, then the least he could do was to be moved beyond his infuriating cheeriness by it.

Albus, perhaps sensing this and uncomfortable with it, hunkered back down into his chair. “I hear my own callousness, and it is not pleasant, but Harry is essential. They might be together now, but that may not always be the case. Harry must be protected at all costs.”

Severus thought, ‘I know’, but because he was in a provocative mood, he voiced his second thought instead. “Is it so hard to believe that there might be more than one essential figure in this war? Was there ever a point where it was possible to win without him? I wonder if you bound him up so expertly in the centre of it all that you have created something essential that didn’t have to be.”

“I have done exactly what I thought to be right, every step of the way, even if I have done it as a fallible person. I will admit to having brought Harry deeper into the fray than need be, but I did so because he is a powerful wizard and can be trusted to fight well. You cannot expect to be an exception to the sacrifices of war, Severus, because you care for someone once again.”

Severus felt his face flush hot, a quick reaction. “I can protect Potter without throwing Hermione away!”

There was another discomforted rustle across the wall of portraits, and Severus hated how her name struck an unnatural chord in the atmosphere of the office. He felt his face pinch, the corners of his eyes tightening and his lips pressing together, as he waited for wherever was next. Before Albus’ response could come, however, a flicker of movement caught Severus’ eye and he turned sharply away, his attention zeroing in on the image of Everard clawing his way uncomfortably back into his frame, as if from a lower level.

The wizard huffed in effort, once standing, and tugged his cap back into place. “The wards for unusual spell work in the courtrooms are triggered. Someone has cast a Patronus and the Aurors are flocking towards the main atrium and the courtrooms.”

“Are the possible intruders still on level ten?” Severus asked coolly.

“I was unable to tell. This is all second hand, you know. There aren’t any portraits in the courtrooms.”

“Never mind,” Severus dismissed, waving a hand and turning back towards the door. A weightlessness that had been poised to drop in his stomach had done so. He knew that he should do nothing, that he needed to wait. The idea of lurking in the office and feeding off half-formed information from the portraits was undesirable. Particularly with Albus staring down his long hooked nose, being at least partially right. “I will be back, if you would continue to monitor the situation.”

Right up until the gargoyle slid into place behind him he expected Albus’ voice to ring out again, but it didn’t. Severus pressed his teeth together. The feeling in his skull hadn’t intensified, but it had persisted, and without knowing what it was recoiling from he was beginning to feel like peeling off his skin might be a worthy substitute. The presence of her magic in his mind had become dulled, over the past few weeks… and now this.

Classes had finished two and a half minutes ago. Rows of marching students shuffled to the side on their way to the great hall, recognizing the sound of his footsteps well before he reached them. Skipping lunch without a second thought, he spiraled his way to the owlery, pulling out his wand and touching it to his throat even as he climbed.

“I’m behind you.” Harry’s voice whispered into Hermione’s ear, so unexpectedly that she jumped in her chair, almost tipping over the bottle of ink her charmed pen was about to dip into. Thankfully, the quill had started scribbling down the proceedings of each miserable trial all on its own. As far as she was able to tell, her role was to oversee its enthusiastic work and to sign the transcription at the end of each trial. This, alone, was an unsavoury task. It had become quickly obvious how little the Ministry actually cared about the letter of the law.

Hermione observed the faint warmth she could now definitely feel from behind her right shoulder. Umbridge’s sickly-sweet voice continued to purr to her right.

“Could you please tell us from which witch or wizard you took that wand?”

“T— took?” Mrs. Cattermole asked with a confused sob. Hermione wondered how on earth she was confused, why she hadn’t figured out immediately how unfair and impossible this process was going to be. “I didn’t t-take it from anybody. I b-bought it when I was eleven years old. It—it—it— chose me.”

Umbridge tittered. Hermione felt an invisible fabric brush by her shoulder. She imagined she could sense Harry’s fury like an extra-sensory thing. Umbridge leaned forward over her bench, a gleeful look in her eye, a gold chain dislodging from under her pink, fluffy collar and swinging forward. Hermione flinched harder than she had in response to Harry’s whisper.

“No, no, I don’t think so, Mrs. Cattermole.” Umbridge cooed, unaware of the alarm bells going off in Hermione’s head. The horcrux was right there. “Wands only choose witches or wizards. You are not a witch. I have your responses to the questionnaire that was sent to you here— Mafalda, pass them to me.”

Blinking at the sound of her unfamiliar name, Hermione jerkily began to rifle through the documents in front of her. She withdrew the file labeled ‘Elizabeth Cattermole’ and passed it across the desk, disliking that split second during which both she and Umbridge held the document together, crisp paper crinkling with the force of Umbridge’s excited clutch.

Feeling Harry’s restless energy behind her, Hermione hunted for something to say that might carve out a way forward.

“That’s– that’s pretty, Dolores,” she remarked gesturing at the locket now resting plush against Umbridge’s hot magenta overcoat.

“What?” Umbridge’s face pinched in annoyance, though when she glanced down at her chest the frown line disappeared, replaced by a pert, proud smile. “Oh yes— an old family heirloom. The S stands for Selwyn… I am related to the Selwyns… Indeed, there are few pure blood families to whom I am not related… A pity,” she turned back towards the shaking women in the center of the room, “that the same cannot be said for you. ‘Parents professions: greengrocers.”

Hermione’s eyes flicked to Yaxley at the barking, gravely sound he made. Unsavory. She heard something shift behind her, and turned just in time to see a wand appear out of thin air. She opened her mouth in protest as Harry’s disembodied voice broke the silence.

“Stupify!”

Hermione violently pushed back her chair and stood as Umbridge flopped down onto the bench, her forehead sliding along a pile of documents that slipped and went flying. The temperature in the room immediately dropped at least three degrees, and Hermione’s eyes widened at the almost beautifully coordinated sight of tens of black, ribboned figures gliding swiftly down towards Mrs. Cattermole, who was still chained securely to a chair. Hermione had avoided looking at the woman for most of the trial, disturbed by her own lack of squeamishness, but having been forced abruptly into quick action she forgot the anxiety.

“Stupify!”

Yaxley’s small figure dropped to the floor, and Hermione thanked Merlin for the element of surprise and she darted down off the raised platform towards Mrs. Cattermole. She tried to bring up a memory of something happy, of the Highlands, of waking up with a calloused hand brushing hair away from her cheek, and felt very little except for a sunken, far-off pang. Still, she raised her wand, knowing even before she spoke that this wasn’t going to work…

“Expecto patronum!” She demanded. Not even a fizzle of silver emerged from her wand. She cursed under her breath and spun back around towards Harry. The cloak had fallen away.

“Harry!”

“Hermione, if you think I was going to sit here and let her pretend— ”

“Harry,” Hermione interrupted, “Mrs. Cattermole!”

Glancing down, an expression of realization crossed Harry’s face as he took in the dementors, and he raised his wand with the kind of confidence that comes from not even having to think.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”

A silver stag burst from Harry’s wand and plunged off the platform, the recoiling of the dementors immediate and screeching.

“Get the horcrux,” Harry demanded as he practically leapt down from the platform, landing heavily and a little awkwardly in his new, larger body, and started towards Mrs. Cattermole.

Hermione hurried back up beside Umbridge and shook the trembling out of her hands before working with the clasp on the back of the woman’s neck. Umbridge’s skin was warm and clammy, and Hermione pinched her fingers once with the clasp of the chain before it came undone and she was able to pull it free. It was heavy, and as she lifted it towards her face the recoiling feeling at the base of her skull – which she’d almost grown accustomed to – reared up and she felt the urge to fling the locket as far across the room as she could. She tightened her hold instead and raised her wand.

“Hermione, how do I get rid of these chains?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at the locket, somehow not wanting to take her eyes off it. “Wait, I’m trying something up here— ”

“Hermione, we’re surrounded by dementors!”

“I know that, Harry,” She snapped distractedly, though gritted teeth, “but if she wakes up and the locket’s gone— I need to replicate it—Geminio!”

The locket swinging between her fingers became two.

“There . . . That should fool her. . . .” Hastily, Hermione fastened the duplicated locket around Umbridge’s neck and then turned without hesitation, hurrying towards where Harry was standing over a stunned looking Mrs. Cattermole. She pointed her wand at the chains binding the scared woman to her chair. “Let’s see. . . . Relashio!”

The chains dropped to the ground with an uncomfortably loud clatter.

“I don’t understand…” Mrs. Cattermole whispered as she raised herself gingerly. Hermione, remembering the three other muggle-born wizards she’d signed away in the last hour, turned sharply away and strode towards the door she and Umbridge had entered through. She shivered as her fingers brushed against the metal handle, significantly colder than she remembered it being. Overcome with some sudden, fatigued urge, she pressed her forehead to the door, and shivered again when a forlorn, contextless wave took hold of her guts and yanked.

“Harry,” she started, perhaps interrupting a conversation, but motivated by a strong urge to move, “how are we going to get out of here with all those dementors outside the door?”

“Patronuses,” Harry answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Perhaps it was, but Hermione had started worrying the inside of her cheek with her teeth. As if making a point, Harry’s stag swooped down to the floor and began walking a slow circle around Mrs. Cattermole.

“As many as we can muster;” Harry insisted. “Do yours, Hermione.”

Feeling the weight of very little time, Hermione took a deep breath. It shouldn’t have been difficult for her to clear her mind and picture something good – she’d had hours that probably amounted to months of practice with the kind of occlumency that should’ve made it easy. And she could clear her mind – as she took a second deep breath and observed it rushing out of her nose she found that there was very little to clear. As she hunted for a glowing memory however, she found it difficult to reach through the shields she’d constructed around Severus.

“Expec—Expecto patronum!” she demanded, though nothing happened.

She made a frustrated sound and closed her eyes, a low comment Harry shared with Mrs. Cattermole breaking through her concentration.

“It’s the only spell she ever has trouble with.”

She didn’t try to reach for Severus again. She recalled the foxtrot she’d danced with Fred on the night of Fleur and Bill’s wedding instead, not thinking about how long ago that seemed.

“Expecto patronum!”

A silver drizzle died on the tip of her wand before it had really begun. Harry had taken Mrs. Cattermole by the hand and they were crossing the room towards the door. Hermione felt a weird kind of thing like being stuck in a dream where her feet had turned to lead.

“Come on,” she whispered to herself. The locket in her left fist was pulsing hotly and hard to ignore. What was the last truly good, untouched memory she had with the boys? She clawed up a small pocket of a moment at Grimmauld Place – two weeks ago Ron had insisted that they take a break from Ministry talk for a night, brandishing a pack of cards almost threateningly. Kreacher had made hot chocolate. She’d caught Ron cheating on the second round of Go-Fish. The memory suggested a positive feeling.

Feeling a rush of freezing air tickle the hairs on her arm, she raised her wand again, the barely restrained mass of dementors above flickering in her periphery. She opened her mouth and was a fraction of a second away from speaking when she caught sight of a tiny blue light dart past her eye before disappearing under her blazer. Her pendant warmed slightly. Her heart did a little skip.

“Expecto patronum!” She shouted, and a small otter bloomed out of her wand. Awash with relief, she turned to see Harry shoot her a quick smile and disappear through the door.

“C’mon!”

Hermione dashed out into the corridor in time to see the silver stag and otter dancing down the long black passage before them, dementors shrinking back against the walls on either side with dry shrieks of displeasure. Harry was already shouting at the confused witches and wizards waiting for their trials, gesturing wildly at them as he hurried past.

“It’s been decided that you should all go home and go into hiding with your families. Go abroad if you can. Just get well away from the Ministry. That’s the—er—new official position. Now, if you’ll just follow the Patronuses, you’ll be able to leave from the atrium.”

Hermione grit her teeth, unsure how wise it was to head back up to the atrium but unsure what other options were available. She wished she’d quizzed Severus more on the ‘alternate’ ways to leave the Ministry he’d alluded to back in her fifth year.

It was a not-quite-right, lurching thing to rush down dementor-filled corridors, feeling the faint shift of sucking air on her cheek if she brushed too close to one, safe but only if she and Harry could both maintain their Patronuses. They reached the lifts without meeting anyone else, and to her amazement, when it rattled to a halt in front of them and slid open, Ron burst out.

“Reg!” A desperate shout gave Hermione a moment’s warning before someone pushed past her and threw themselves into Ron’s arms. “Runcorn let me out, he attacked Umbridge and Yaxley, and he’s told all of us to leave the country. I think we’d better do it, Reg, I really do, let’s hurry home and fetch the children and—why are you so wet?”

“Water,” muttered Ron, pulling away from Mrs. Cattermole with a look so befuddled and so bedraggled that it was unfittingly comical. “Harry, they know there are intruders inside the Ministry, something about a hole in Umbridge’s office door. I reckon we’ve got five minutes if that— ”

Hermione sucked in a breath and forgot to concentrate on her Patronus. The little spike of excitement she’d felt after receiving a message from Severus had faded along with the temperature of the pendant.

“Harry, if we’re trapped here—” She started. It was hard – when she only had to look over her shoulder to find a mass of dementors so thick she couldn’t actually see more than two meters down the corridor they’d just come – not to be very aware that they had walked straight into the worst possible place they could get caught. The war could end within the next ten minutes. But Harry didn’t give her time to follow that train of thought much further.

“We won’t be if we move fast,” He turned towards the congregation behind them. “Who’s got wands? Okay, all of you who haven’t got wands need to attach yourself to someone who has. We’ll need to be fast before they stop us. Come on.”

It took two lifts to get them all up. Hermione watched the grilles slide shut between her and her Patronus, who hopped and skipped a little dance on the floor below as the lift began to inch its way up. Both Ron and Harry were in the other one.

“Thank you,” Hermione jumped for the second time that day at the sound of a whispered voice over her shoulder. She turned and looked up into the long, mournful face of a very tall witch, who had stooped so as to murmur into Hermione’s ear.

“My daughter started her first year at Hogwarts this year. My husband was killed in a death eater raid last month. I don’t know what I would’ve done, who would have been able to meet her at the station, if…”

The woman trailed off, and Hermione wondered if her eyes really were that wild, or whether it was a trick of the light flickering through the grate above their heads. She didn’t know quite what to say. She was concerned that Harry might have given the impression of hope by saying that their release was ‘new Ministry policy’.

“Hide. Don’t trust the Ministry. Hide immediately and don’t come out until you have to pick your daughter up.”

“But if I resist,” whispered the witch, “What will they do to her? The new Headmaster…”

She was cut off when the lift momentarily jolted, and Hermione wondered if that’s where the spark of energy she didn’t actually feel had been channeled – unable to take hold in her, instead into the machinery of the elevator.

“She will be safe at Hogwarts,” she mumbled, even though she shouldn’t have, and even though that might not always be true.

The woman, who no longer looked like she was processing the conversation, began to say something else, but the lift had stopped and the doors were opening.

“Level eight,” announced the unmoved, disembodied voice of the lift, “Atrium.”

The first noise she heard – perhaps because she’d heard it before in a memory etched into her mind through repeated nightmares – was the sound of the fireplace grates slamming shut.

“Right,” she whispered under her breath, and stepped out into a panicking atrium. Harry had reached out and grabbed onto her arm before she could even spot him.

“Harry!” She panted as they started forward, gesturing at the emerging swarm of muggle-born witches and wizards behind them, “What are we going to–?”

“STOP!” Harry boomed as he let go of her arm, and it took her a moment to realize he was addressing the crowd in the atrium, rather than her. She almost reached up to cover his mouth with her hand – Harry of all people should not be drawing attention to himself in the middle of the Ministry of Magic. But the effect was immediate – the wizards sealing off the fireplaces stopped, and the crowd parted for them. Runcorn, it seemed, was powerful.

Harry strode forward confidently, addressing the wizards sealing off the fireplaces. “This lot need to leave before you seal the exits.”

One of the wizards – a short, bald man in a yellow and green overcoat – shrugged worriedly. He looked fearful of getting in trouble.

“We’ve been told to seal all exits and not let anyone— ”

“Are you contradicting me?” Harry interrupted, his deep, booming voice well-suited to giving orders. “Would you like me to have your family tree examined, like I had Dirk Cresswell’s?”

“Sorry!” The wizard had already started sweating. Hermione really just wanted to leave. “I didn’t mean nothing, Albert, but I thought . . . I thought they were in for questioning and . . . ”

“Their blood is pure, purer than many of yours. I daresay.” He waved at the muggle-borns that had trailed behind them. “Off you go.”

Hermione was surprised how slow the muggle-born witches and wizards were reacting. She supposed the shock of sitting in that long, black corridor surrounded by dementors all morning might have the effect of draining all urgency or hope out of their movement, but her body felt jittery for them. And, disturbingly, she also felt a twinge of annoyance at them. Why didn’t they understand that they needed to be alert and feeling, now, when the opportunity was there. She very briefly caught the large, very round eyes of the woman who had whispered to her in the lift. As if Hermione’s annoyance was obvious in her expression, the woman started hurrying towards the un-barred fires, the rest of the group first trailing slowly, and then in a belated rush, after her.

“R-Reg?”

Hermione tore her eyes away from the somehow transfixing sight of a muggle-born wizard stepping gingerly into a fireplace, to see Mrs. Cattermole glancing desperately between two identical versions of Reg Cattermole. Hermione huffed.

“Hey—what’s going on? What is this?”

That window of confusion was overruled by a furious shout that echoed through the atrium, and Hermione spun around yet again to find Yaxley racing towards them. Without even thinking, an arm darted out and she’d latched onto Harry’s sleeve, pushing past two muggle-born witches in order to tug him towards Ron. She felt horrid but she needed to get Harry Potter out.

“Seal the exit! SEAL IT!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione saw the bald wizard who had been sealing the fireplace lunge towards them, but Harry’s reflexes were quicker than hers and he balled up his fist, landing a solid punch right in the centre of the man’s jaw. Hermione gasped in shock, at the same time as a number of outraged cries indicated that the bald man’s colleagues were about to take violent revenge.

“He’s been helping Muggle-borns escape, Yaxley!” Harry shouted.

“My Wife! Who was that with my wife? What’s going on?”

Ron, unable to separate himself from Mrs. Cattermole, had grabbed her hand and was now pulling her towards an open fireplace. She and Harry veered off to follow, tripping over their own feet in their haste. Hermione glanced over her shoulder a moment before she and Harry threw themselves into the nearest fireplace, an image of Yaxley’s red, rapidly advancing figure in pursuit.

A little disoriented by the physics of bursting out of a toilet bowl, Hermione stumbled into Harry as he flung open the cubicle door and they burst through together to find Ron and Mrs. Cattermole already standing by the sinks.

“Reg, I don’t understand— ” Mrs. Cattermole was blubbering, her face puffy and bewildered and streaked with tears. Ron was prying one of her hands from around his collar.

“Let go, I’m not your husband, you’ve got to go home!”

Hermione didn’t need to turn to know that Yaxley had just shot out from one of the toilet bowls behind them. Harry seized her hand at the same time as she lurched forward towards Ron.

“LET’S GO!” Harry yelled.

Hermione latched onto an arm, and decided to leave now. They spun into awful, twisting, gut-wrenching darkness. She understood immediately that something was wrong, the fabric of Ron’s shirt one moment tangible and the next a slippery half-solid thing in her grip. Almost as if the magic had detected her uncertainty, the compressing, twisting feeling persisted, holding them in some in-between space where she couldn’t breath and she could almost feel her skin begin to scrape off against the darkness. Someone had grabbed ahold of her left calf, or her right calf. She tried shaking her leg but she felt eleven fingers digging into her flesh and a tug. The same red, furious face she’d seen in the Ministry twisted in front of her, followed by a streak of blonde.

Grimmauld Place! She screamed in her mind, and then it was there – the little steps leading up to the green door. The grip on her leg loosened, and as she felt solid ground begin to take form beneath her she yanked her leg away from it. The weight tugging her down came loose. Not Grimmauld Place! Not Grimmauld Place!

Dartmoor Wood

Hermione had the strange sensation of her torso twisting one way, her legs the other, as if someone were trying to pop her spine from her pelvis, and then she felt something wet and sticky and warm flow across the wrist she hoped to gods was still wrapped into Ron’s sleeve.

Chapter Text

September 2nd – The enchanted quills used by the Ministry of Magic for court records are bound to the truth-telling charms of the Wizengamot chamber itself, (Charlie Doggit, 1932).

September 3rd – Hippogriffs possess the faculty of discerning falsehood. Their responses to deception vary in severity, from the mere swishing of the tail to the more aggressive act of striking at the wand-hand, (Devoleir D. Durnspile, 1888).

September 17th – There is only one known magical painting of a dragon dated prior to the 15th century. It breathes real fire once every 100 years — last recorded instance was in 1901, (Silvia-Emese Wilder, 1911).

September 21st – In 1709, a ghulah ran for Minister for Magic. Her campaign slogan was 'Better Hexes for a Better Future.' She lost narrowly, (Bert Grogsworthy, 1932).

September 24th – Thestrals, most often appearing in companies of three, have been observed to follow individuals fated to die within the space of a year. Such occurrences have been most frequently recorded in Poland, and along the ley lines of Machu Picchu. The means by which these creatures foresee death remains undetermined; yet the prevailing hypothesis holds that Thestrals are among the few species whose souls exist in the space between fixed measures of time, (Jacob LeCompte, 1878).

September 27th – The French Ministry of Magic banned time-turners after an incident in 1801 that resulted in seven Napoleons, (Mark S. Doge, 1900).

September 30th – Certain creatures of magic—most notably the Jobberknoll, the Kelpie, and the Merfolk—are reputed to perceive the magical bonds that exist betwixt wizards. In general this sense worketh no harm; yet all three creatures are wont to fix their gaze upon such persons, and the Merfolk in particular are given to follow the magical track that attendeth such wizards, (Oliver J. Swenley-Griggor, 1607).

October 2nd – There are seven cases in the historical record of owls delivering letters prior to their having been written. The mechanism by which this occurs remains wholly obscure, (Bertha MacDuff, 1803).

October 4th – Wizards in the 1800s believed sneezing while casting a spell meant that the spell would take on the emotion you were feeling. Though the superstition is all but dead in the 20th century, a group of Witches at the Magical University of Sydney are still trying to disprove the theory concretely, (Gustav Proccuta, 1904)

October 6th – Magical scars have on occasion been observed to alter with the passage of time. In certain instances their form has been reported to shift in correspondence with the dreams of the afflicted witch or wizard, (Lilith Twinkler, 1820).

October 12th – During the eighteenth century, the Ministry of Magic is recorded to have prohibited the use of the phrase ‘What could possibly go wrong’ in the context of experimental spellwork. The measure followed upon reports that a taboo had been affixed to the expression, though whether this claim was grounded in fact remains uncertain, (Sandor Andersson, 1849).

October 13th – Prior to the invention of the Pensieve, wizards were accustomed to storing memories in such vessels as jars, hats, and on occasion even their shoes, (Desmond Sloanswoggle, 1888).

October 15th –The charm Lacarnum Inflamarae is believed to have been first devised in the time of the Great Wars of the third century, its fiery smoke being employed as a means of communication upon the field of battle, and serving as a non-verbal code amongst wizards, (Aberforth Venesse, 1709).

October 18th – The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures maintain a catalogue of more than forty species reputed to imitate the speech of man with remarkable exactness; of these, eleven are accounted to be aquatic in nature, (Olga Karabakova, 1799).

October 24th – In 1899, Desmond Diggory posed the theory that, House-elves, in possession of a form of raw magic not channeled through wands, may share a common ancestor with current day humans, having taken a divergent evolutionary path at some point between 300,000 and 250,000 years ago, (Roland Doyle, 1918).

October 25th – It is speculated that basilisk venom interacts with enchanted materials on a molecular level, disrupting magical cohesion irreversibly, (Greta G. Vtzvaugan, 1920).

Chapter Text

November 19th – The Goblin War of 1559 is correlated with a sharp increase in wand thefts throughout what is now Cornwall. Multiple leaders of the goblin resistance explicitly challenged the wand ownership laws in preserved manuscripts of rebel newspapers during this time (Mayslie Madderwashing, 1933).

“Ron,” Hermione said, the name falling from her lips unintentionally. Loud enough to reach him. Even over the beginnings of rain battering the canvas roof above them. He seemed to pretend he hadn’t heard. He even turned slightly away from her. The silver chain around his neck caught the light of a lamp and glinted teasingly. Like it was laughing at them. Feeding off their raised voices.

“I thought you knew what you’d signed up for,” Harry snapped at Ron, though Hermione could hear the self-consciousness in his voice. Accusations that had been building for weeks were spilling out. For once, she didn’t think airing their thoughts in the open was going to do any good. A tiny voice was telling her to step forward and to calm the situation down. A kind of heavy fog that had been building inside her too long now – so steadily, hard to place – holding her back. She tried to summon the energy she needed to step in between them. She was sluggish and unwitting. Like her plea had been.

“Yeah, I thought I did too.” Ron shrugged in a pointed, exaggerated way.

“So what part of it isn’t living up to expectations?” asked Harry. Anger had replaced guilt. “Did you think we’d be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you’d be back to Mummy by Christmas?”

We didn’t realize how cold we would be, and hungry thought Hermione. But neither had Harry. Ron’s face darkened yet another shade at the mention of his mother. She drew in a breath. Use it to say something helpful.

“We thought you knew what you were doing!” Ron yelled before she did say anything. She winced despite the layer of sound-proofing she’d woven around the tent thirty minutes earlier.

Protego Maxima – the standard spell that she would build off. Fianto duri – increased the strength of Protego maxima. Protego Pluvia – for if it was raining or snowing. Quietus – so that no one could hear them. A few others, too.

“We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!” Ron was yelling.

“Ron.” said Hermione. Again, a word that she heard as if her body and her mind were separate parties to the conversation.

“Well, sorry to let you down,” said Harry. Hermione had to check herself to determine whether or not she’d only said the word inside her head. Perhaps slipped silently into a whole other plane. The boys having just as much trouble hearing and seeing her as she was putting her own thoughts into action.

“I’ve been straight with you from the start,” Harry continued, “I told you everything Dumbledore told me. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve found one Horcrux— ”

“Yeah,” Ron cut in, “and we’re about as near getting rid of it as we are to finding the rest of them—nowhere effing near in other words?”

Finally, as if she’d simply been operating on a setting half as fast as the boys, Hermione broke through the vaguely terrifying fog in her mind. She jerked forward towards Ron. Like a wind up toy released. On a spring.

Extended her hand towards him. Take the locket off. Step– she’d forgotten which step she was up to. She’d actually stopped thinking in steps about a week after leaving Grimmauld Place. Why was she thinking about that now?

Step on had been to find Ron.

“Take off the locket, Ron.”

He flinched away from her. As if her fingers were burning hot.

“Please take it off. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you hadn’t been wearing it all day.”

“Yeah, he would,” said Harry. Hermione could’ve growled at him. She felt the sound in her throat. Surprised her so much she choked on it. “D’you think I haven’t noticed the two of you whispering behind my back? D’you think I didn’t guess you were thinking this stuff?”

What? Her and Ron whispering. As in, her and Ron whispering about Harry. Sometimes they whispered about how to cook fish properly. Or where to apparate to next. Whispering because Harry was asleep or tense, with the locket. Shook her head in indignation. “Harry we weren’t— ”

“Don’t lie!” Ron hurled at her. “You said it too, you said you were disappointed, you said you’d thought he had a bit more to go on than— ”

Yes, she had said that once. Wearing the locket. Wearing the locket!

“I didn’t say it like that—Harry, I didn’t!” Hermione’s head spun. As if mounted on a spike. Standing between the boys. Trying to hold both of their eyes at the same time, as if that might keep them in place. But Harry stepped to the side so that he could once again gesture angrily at Ron.

“So why are you still here?”

“Beats me,” was the cold reply.

“Go home then,” said Harry.

Yeah, maybe I will!” Ron shouted, properly pushing past Hermione. As if she were a paper cut-out person, then he took a genuinely threatening step towards Harry. “Didn’t you hear what that portrait said about my sister? But you don’t give a rat’s fart, do you, it’s only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I’ve-Faced-Worse Potter doesn’t care what happens to her in there—well, I do, all right, giant spider and mental stuff— ”

Perhaps the brief conversation they’d had with Phineas Nigellus had done more harm than good. His description of the detention that Ginny, Neville, and Luna had received after attempting to steal the Sword of Gryffindor. It had been incomplete. But Ron’s nerves didn’t leave much wiggle room when it came to his family.

“I was only saying— she was with the others, they were with Hagrid— ” Harry tried to insist.

“Yeah, I get it, you don’t care! And what about the rest of my family? ‘The Weasleys don’t need another kid injured’, did you hear that? What did Phineas mean by that, you think?”

“Yeah, I— ”

“Not bothered what it meant, though?”

Just take the necklace off him, quickly! The voice in the back of Hermione’s head screaming. It barely touched her. A faint twinge of worry. Care about this, quickly!.

“Ron!” she managed to interject. It was effortful to put the exclamation mark on her sentence. Spinning back around and forcing her way between them. “I don’t think it means anything new has happened, anything we don’t know about. Think, Ron,” be logical, “Bill’s already scarred; plenty of people must have seen that George has lost an ear by now. I’m sure that’s all he meant— ”

“Oh, you’re sure, are you? Right then, well, I won’t bother myself about them. It’s all right for you two, isn’t it, with your parents safely out of the way— ”

Neither of them saw it, but the last of Hermione’s ability to summon the energy to deescalate the fight drained out of her at that moment. The arm that she’d been holding up towards Ron dropped to her side. A soggy limpet. She felt her mind lock down against the memories that threatened to spill through.

“My parents are dead!” Harry bellowed, provoked in the opposite way. If there had ever been a chance of backtracking, obliterated. Ron had found a way to obliterate it.

“And mine could be going the same way!” he yelled, oblivious.

“Then GO!” Harry hollered. “Go back to them, pretend you’ve got over your spattergroit and Mummy’ll be able to feed you up and— ”

Hermione numbly caught Ron’s movement out of the corner of her eye – his hand twitched for his wand. A part of her broke a little at seeing it. Stunned beyond belief that they were somehow drawing wands against each other. The other part was very practical – had somehow been expecting this – and it had raised her own wand before Ron even had time to blink.

“Protego.”

A shield burst from her wand and contorted the air between her and Harry, and Ron. His red face rippled a little across the barrier. Despite this intervention, neither Harry nor Ron were looking at her.

“Leave the horcrux,” Harry ordered coldly.

Hermione frowned. She was confused. She had the distinct impression that an unsaid conversation had just passed between the two boys. She hadn’t been privy. Ron removed the locket and threw it on the ground between them. It thudded like a heavy chunk of flesh.

“What are you doing?”

Took Hermione a second to process that Ron was talking to her. She shook her head.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you staying or what?” His voice was almost threatening. Hermione realized that they were actually going to split up. For the first time since leaving The Burrow, as that sickening feeling of her stomach dropping as if in another body hit her, she pulled down one of the cushioning shields in her mind. She needed the anguish that suddenly rushed through – hopefully not too late – to act.

She sucked in a breath and took a step backwards. A dam splintering. Ron leaving them because he was scared, like she was scared. How could he not see that Harry was just as scared? Could she leave? How many times had she contemplated switching Ron’s radio to an Australian channel. She teared up, hiccuping with the force of how quickly it happened.

“I…” She blinked and a sound like holding back pain came out of her mouth. “Yes—yes, I’m staying, Ron, we said we’d go with Harry, we said we’d help— ” She faltered as Ron’s face twisted into an expression she couldn’t place, and had never seen before.

“I get it. You choose him.”

Hermione took a proper, quick, purposeful step forward even as he turned without a second's hesitation and yanked one of the flaps of the tent door open so forcefully she expected the entire structure to collapse around them.

“Ron, no—please—” She was panicking for the first time in forever. “Come back, come back!”

For a horrible moment she was blocked by her own shield charm. Like a fish blobbing against the glass bowl. She flicked her wand and the invisible barrier collapsed, but he’d already disappeared. She rushed outside, one arm coming up to shield her eyes from the wall of rain that immediately soaked her hair and shoulders. If she could make him look at her she was sure she’d know exactly what to say. She’d managed to hold them all together this far – even if Ron heated up incredibly quickly when the chain was around his neck and Harry took at least a day to cool down even after it was removed from his.

“Ron!” She called out when he wasn’t there. A hopeful part of her wanted to be confused by this but the distinct crack she’d heard as she stepped outside was too unique a sound to misinterpret. Gone already. “Ron!”

She skirted the whole tent twice. She ran right to the edge of the wards she’d cast around the front of the tent and counted to thirty, stunned when he didn’t reappear after that time. She turned and rushed back into the tent, puddles following her, her mind wild. Harry was standing exactly where she’d left him, glaring at the flaps of the tent.

“He’s gone! Disapparated!” She stared at him, expecting him to do something about this announcement. His frown slowly faded, but he just stood there.

Hermione stumbled over and into a chair, and pressed the palms of her hands to her forehead, feeling quite literally like her skull was about to crack down the middle. The controlled, unemotive, slow part of her that only a moment ago had been very dominant but now seemed rather quiet, ironically wondered whether these were the consequences Severus had warned her about back when they’d been living in Grimmauld Place. She’d been so stupid.

She struggled to think. She tried to remember whether it was possible to trace a disapparation, and had the vague sense that this was an idiotic and obvious question, but her head hurt too much for her to be able to figure out whether it was idiotic because you obviously couldn’t or you obviously could. But when Harry finally moved all he did was shuffle over to Ron’s bed, throw his blanket over her shoulders, and then slump over into his own mattress. So surely it was impossible to trace Ron.

Her head was so full of a very loud nothing, though every now and then a stray thought bubbled up like a fish eye in a cauldron of befuddlement draught, and once or twice the thought would make her flinch instinctively out of her chair as if she might follow Ron anyway. But then she’d sink back down because she was the secret keeper, and so she couldn’t leave Harry even if she wanted to.

Did this mean they needed help? She’d been teetering on the edge of suggesting they seek out another Order member for weeks, thinking that surely they needed to have come up with their next actual plan by now. But they’d never been in distress, or at least she’d been finding it more and more difficult to identify distress. It was hard to pick distress out of one long, grey march. She wondered if Professor Dumbledore had taken that into account when he made her secret keeper. She wondered whether she’d been the wrong choice. She wondered whether they were going to lose the war because of her.

Hermione groaned quietly as those thoughts slipped into the background, replaced by an image of Ron storming outside the tent, of the backs of her parents heads over the top of the couch as they stared at a reporter on the television, and of Severus sweeping stonily past her with Draco at his heels – all of these images in quick succession. And then a loud, gut-wrenching memory of Fred nudging her during the secret-keeper Order meeting, when Dumbledore had told them about Harry's mission. He’d said ‘I know you’ll do it anyway, but look after Ron’. This was all followed by an ingrained recoiling kind of response, as if the grey matter of her brain were able to flinch, and then followed again by a feeling like the raindrops outside turning to steel and shredding through the canvas into her skull.

She took a deep breath and tried to piece back together the hole she’d let form in her shields – far too late and useless a reaction. She understood immediately that the task was going to be impossible. What she did manage, over the next hour or so, was to concentrate hard enough that the physical pain and the excited, liberated thoughts calmed down enough for her to drift restlessly in and out of a hazy sleep for a few hours. For once, there were no nightmares, only a constant feeling of everything being wrong that followed her in and out of unconsciousness.

Harry wasn’t awake when her eyes cracked open the following morning. Lying on his side in bed, locket resting on the mattress in front of his face. Blankets kicked down to his knees. He didn’t startle when she moved a little in her chair and her back cracked. An involuntary grunt of discomfort followed the straightening of her stiffened spine.

The pain in her head had dulled to a bearable headache overnight, and the shields in her mind seemed to have stitched themselves badly back together. Survival mode, perhaps. That would explain the stunned numbness she was feeling.

But as she unfolded her legs and pressed her feet hard into the floor and methodically recalled the previous night, piece by piece, one of the first things she decided was that it would be bad to continue to leave them in place. Bad. She brushed that realization away and stood, little voice tutting at her with morbid irony. Assured it that this last avoidance was only for a little while.

She and Harry did a lot that day. Very quietly, not looking at one another. Harry started making moves to pack up the tent right after breakfast. Instead of protesting, she followed suit. Methodically processed everything back into her bag with more precise care than she’d taken in a while, drawing it all out. They’d been scheduled to begin another few days of solid walking. In silent agreement they prepared to disapparate instead.

For the first half of the day Hermione would intersperse her activity every hour on the dot with peaking outside. Just in case. A habit she quickly discarded during the second half of the day. Nothing but the drenched, sad leaf litter of their camping ground – a little harder each time to keep the headache at bay.

She went outside the perimeter of their wards once – to send a monotone, not very well put together message to Severus. Noticed her pendant glowing with a response about two hours later. She had to close her eyes, focus on her breath for a moment at the sight. She didn’t want to listen to the response yet. She received so little from him these days. She wanted to wait until she’d taken the shields down so that she could hear his voice properly.

When the sky began to darken it became obvious that she couldn’t delay any longer. Unwound the scarf from around her neck – cool air bubbling her skin with gooseflesh – and tied it around the nearest tree. The gesture felt hollow.

Twenty-four minutes past five. She took Harry’s hand, apparated them to the edge of a cliff. Malham cove. She began setting up the tent on an outcrop of rock. Her father also had four years ago during her summer holidays. Harry set the wards. He sulked outside until eleven minutes past seven. Usually this would have struck her as something she should be worrying about. She couldn’t bring herself to care about that now, though. She was seated on the floor darning one of her socks by hand when he finally entered. She put down her sock to look up at him.

“What now?” He asked. If the look in his eyes hadn’t been a little lost she would've yelled at him. It was actually surprising, given that he’d been wearing the locket all day. How little animosity she saw in his expression. He seemed like her.

“I need some space.” She said. “Go find something for us to eat.”

Again, she was surprised when he did little more than nod once and turn and walk out of the tent. She rose and followed him to the entrance. Staring out at his silhouette until it had become indistinguishable from those of the trees. She took a step backwards and stood staring at the canvas of the entrance. It flapped slightly in the breeze. She half expected him to come barreling back in. Ron in toe. After about a minute, he still hadn’t. She turned and hobbled over to her bed. She slumped onto the mattress with a huff, her hands clutching the wooden frame beside her thighs.

Staring absently at her knees, she took a shaky breath and then let the shields in her mind drop. It was far easier than it should have been to drop them. Even though it had become so easy to keep them in place.

She took another breath, one that was more like a sob, as the loneliness she'd only been feeling as a dull pressure in the base of her skull hit her with full force for the first time since they'd left The Burrow. She bent over and rested her forehead on her knees and whined like a child.

She was always aware of how much she was missing Severus, but feeling it was different. Before she'd actually left Hogwarts she'd had a stupid, guilty idea of what the romanticism of missing him might entail. A part of her now, which was watching her from outside of her body – sitting on the edge of the bed with her spine curled over her legs, blotchy, flushed cheeks – could see objectively that it was indeed a romantic picture. But she hated it. She didn't want a crumb of it, she wanted to see Severus’ face.

She needed to curl into his chest and be very insignificant, instead of essential. She needed him to understand how much she missed her parents, and how sore her feet were at the end of each day and how hungry she always was, and to confirm that she hadn’t made too bad a blunder, that she’d been doing the best she could. She wanted his voice without that godforsaken, blue pulsing light. She really wanted to hear him confirm that she still existed. She wanted to look into his eyes and gauge how much his role at Hogwarts was killing him, because she knew he’d never admit a scrap of it out loud.

She had the thought that if he truly loved her, he would be able to feel her distress across the country and would come. She held her breath half-unconsciously in anticipation, and when he didn't appear she dug her toes into the hard ground with a new wave of self imposed wretchedness. She was almost tempted to start putting the shields back into place, but she knew that if she didn’t process this feeling, she was going to get so slow and muted that one day she just wouldn’t be able to summon the care to get out of bed and Harry would be forced to go on without her.

Her mind tossed a few suggestions at her - fishing his potions book out of her handbag, sending a message, hugging her pillow to her chest. All of them, however, were methods to avoid the feeling, and she was also aware that all of them would be hollow. In the end, she was able to bawl her eyes out for ten minutes before she began to feel worried that Harry might return and badger her with a whole bunch of questions and concerns that she didn't have the energy for. She opened her pendant and listened to the message inside, only half processing his actual words and instead listening to the way hearing his voice made her feel. She cried for another ten minutes, and then washed and dried her eyes and curled up on her bed, facing the wall of the tent and pretending to sleep.

To her immense relief, when Harry got back he set about preparing whatever he’d found for dinner himself, outside the tent. She had decided that she wasn’t going to put the shields back up. She was struggling, in fact, to wrap her head around the kind of risque, wreckless, aching mindset she must have been in to erect them in the first place, having watched Severus struggle with the barriers in his own mind and their consequences for years. She’d been wasting her privilege.

She listened to the sounds of Harry shifting about. Slowly her breath became normal again and some of the flush drained from her cheeks. She was surprised at how it left her with a calmness and a stillness, despite the loneliness she felt over Severus, the horror she felt over Ron, and the sadness she felt over her parents, persisting. As far as consequences went, she had anticipated worse. Still, as she imagined continuing on as they had been for the past few months, feeling the loneliness, horror, and sadness in real time, her lungs flattened with a miserable breath.

Severus flicked his wand at the small ball of blue light that had formed before his nose, his eyes tracking its rapid departure until it was impossible to distinguish from one of millions of specks of floating dust. It did not carry away with it the cold sensation in his gut. It was a different experience to find himself surprised by the news that Mr. Weasley had left the golden trio. Different because he was unaccustomed to dedicating a lot of thought to the dynamics of Hermione’s relationship with Potter and Weasley, and different because what little thought he had dedicated to it tended to encompass a vague sense that they had something strong. Stronger than he had ever come close to during his time as a student at Hogwarts. He had seen her suffer significant lows with them over the past two years and he had always had to refrain from patronisingly ensuring her that, with the distance that age and outsider status permitted him, it was clear to see that the relationship between the three of them wasn’t vulnerable.

It was also strange to discover that the idea that the three had split scared him. Over the course of her last several communications, he had warily tracked a growing sense of foreboding – her words had become more terse, more clipped, her voice fraying around the edges. The repelling sensation lurking across the connection– a now constant feeling of needing to claw himself away from some unknown thing – flared up more and more frequently. Worse, was that this was the only thing ensuring him that the connection still existed. He couldn’t feel her magic, just her isolated magic, any longer.

He had told himself, however, that she was not alone, and that her base was strong, and had been grateful that she was not in his position – fighting to stay afloat amidst a community of barely restrained hate. It was unpleasant not to know whether this new situation was a sign that she was flailing or in mounting danger. It was difficult to believe that it wasn’t.

Severus had prepared for the inevitable feeling of helplessness that he’d known would come with their separation. He had tried his best after the appointment of his role as Headmaster not to wall up as many shields in his mind as he might otherwise have, in order to deal with the stress of the new position. Not as many as he might have before her. Frustratingly, this made that helplessness feeling more difficult to accept that it might have been.

A flicker of movement caught his attention. Squinting through the night, he distinguished five figures picking their way through the frost-bitten grounds. Miss Weasley’s and Miss Lovegood's distinctive heads were red and silver halos bobbing through the field, accompanied by a tall and lanky figure who managed to trip over unobstructed ground with a lack of grace only Mr. Longbottom could achieve. Their miserable procession was herded by a Carrow, and Hagrid.

Severus was unable to justify sending students to detention with the Gameskeeper alone without compromising his reputation as a dictatorial Headmaster, though attaching a Carrow to the task tended to make him too restless to spend the evening working in the dungeons. He had taken to waiting in a small alcove in the south tower, overlooking the forest, standing vigil until he could confirm that Carrow-accompanied detention parties had returned intact. The behaviour often struck him as hollow, even as he persisted with it. Only yesterday, Amycus Carrow had overseen a detention during which he used the cruciatus on multiple third year Ravenclaw students. This punishment was no longer infrequent.

Severus’ time was subsumed with paperwork and scheduling, unique to his specific reign as Headmaster. Albus might have spent a typical afternoon corresponding with the Head of Beauxbatons, organising an academic exchange, or signing off on a student trip the Hospital Wing after an accidental injury in Herbology with a Venomous Tentacula plant. Severus had spent the previous evening reviewing class curriculums and, based on the most recent run of detentions, switching class schedules so as to prevent particular students from ending up in classes with either Amycus or Alecto in the evenings, when they tended to be more liberal with their violence. Of course, Albus had also spent many afternoons trying to anticipate and alleviate as much of the current war as he could before his death.

Given the recent valiant though misguided attempt of Potter’s friends to steal the Sword of Gryffindor, Severus had also been forced to increase patrols and curfews for the castle overall. He had put together a staff roster then concentrated the Carrow patrol routes near the dungeons and Hufflepuff common room, knowing that the Gryffindors would be most likely to rebel.

Each week he reviewed a report submitted by the Carrows for the Ministry, which included the names of those students with suspected muggle-born or Order-sympathetic relatives. Severus tampered with about half of every report, scanning the list of names on the ‘Watchlist’ and erasing those more vulnerable students – first years and those he knew for certain had muggle-born lineage – and necessarily replacing them with the names of more resilient, older or well-connected students.

Three weeks ago, the parent of one of the students he had selected as less vulnerable had been caught in a Death Eater raid and subjected to the dementors' kiss without trial. Severus was grateful that he already had years of experience closing himself off to the emotional cost of morally impossible decisions.

Still, this way of life was a breeding ground for self-loathing, and he had noticed his ability to withstand such feelings ebb and flow with the level of optimism in Hermione’s voice when she messaged. Optimism had been there for the first few messages, perhaps. More and more frequently, he thought, she sounded automatised.

Severus frowned at the unlikely detention party as they trudged their slow way towards the front steps. The three thestrals following at a distance behind them – two elders and a skipping fawn – trotted a happy gait in stark contrast to the hunched shoulders of the students. The skeletal creatures held back when they reached the castle steps, bid farewell by the tiny figure of Miss Lovegood, who half-turned to wave. This picture broke Severus out of his inaction, and he spun on his heel.

The sound of his quick footsteps descending from the tower echoed throughout the silent castle as he strode towards the Headmaster’s office, a place he avoided far more than he should. He still based himself in the dungeons for most of his work, to the point that his sudden entrance into the shadowy, musty room often provoked a flurry of woken titters and startled rustles from the portraits lining the far wall. They tittered now, someone even letting slip a barely-polite scoff.

Severus directed his attention straight at Albus’ portrait without hesitation. This was something he rarely did, and the old man’s lazy gaze sharpened and he straightened in his chair.

“Weasley has deserted Potter.” Severus demanded. He wasn’t quite sure what the demand asked of Albus. Some information, perhaps, or confirmation that this was all going as planned.

“Has he, indeed?”

“Indeed.”

Albus leaned forward in his chair, hands steepled. “That is worrying news, though I don’t suppose the split will last for long.”

“How can you be sure?” Severus asked incredulously. He waved his hand in a gesture of frustration. “And until then he is a blazing red thread to be tracked right back to Potter!”

“I have faith that Mr. Weasley will find his way back.”

Severus shot Albus a withering look. “How?”

“He has my deluminator.”

Albus said it as if it were some grand solution, but Severus sneered. He could feel his words running away from him. It had been a while since he’d felt so on the edge of losing his cool – even during the Ministry incident, his worry had not become a hot thing. It was the growing list of detentions, the Dark Lord’s increasing, painful frustration as Snatchers continued to turn up empty nets, and the weight of his colleagues' hatred becoming more and more difficult to ignore.

“Praise be!” He drawled. “I am sure the boy will be able to decode that riddle as quickly and easily as he figured out how to hypnotize Kappa’s in his sixth year.”

“Mr. Weasley is an expert at puzzles.” Albus observed knowingly, and Severus closed his eyes against the frustration of the conversation.

“But not, it seems, emotional regulation.”

There was a weighty pause, and then Albus spoke again, his voice faintly provocative.

“Perhaps you should just go to her, Severus. I’m sure Voldemort would understand if you took a few days out of your schedule as Headmaster to assist in Harry’s cause.” Severus’ eyes opened, and he turned to glare out the window, more hurt by the flippant allusion to Hermione than Albus would know.

“You are restless,” Albus observed eventually.

“Of course I am,” Severus snapped back.

“Have you been tampering with the wards of the castle?”

Severus ticked his head to the side, not looking at but raising an eyebrow at the portrait, and waited for Albus to elaborate. He had been tampering, but he would wait until he knew the extent of Albus’ knowledge before he began justifying himself.

“The portrait of Sir Cornelius noticed you scrolling through a chapter on scheduling ward rifts in the restricted section.”

“You once reflected that the castle would be more mine than yours by this point in the war. I have as much trouble believing it now as I did then,” Severus remarked dryly. Talking wards was grounding for him. The obsession – learning, casting, researching –that he had carried through into the year. Albus didn’t respond, but Severus felt that he had made a point. He lapsed into the monotone, factual voice he used for talking business with his old Headmaster. “I have been weaving a series of holes into the general wards, geared for sudden one-time-only activation.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because war is changeable and unexpected.”

“What are you expecting?”

Severus frowned, agitated. “In all your time planning and anticipating the future, did you never consider the possibility that Hogwarts might play a role as a safehouse?”

“Of course I did.”

“I am simply expanding on that vision.” He turned back around. “If I am killed or otherwise expelled from my position, would you see the Carrows seize hold of the school and enact their tyranny in earnest? Better that they are expelled and the school is made accessible to all those currently vulnerable on the outside.”

This was the central truth, but it disguised a second, less concrete truth that Severus was sure Albus suspected, given the wary glint in the portrait’s eye. With every hint he received that Hermione was in pain, struggling, or in danger, he was a little less confident in his ability to fulfil his role impartially, and a little more enticed by the temptation that was breaking free of the path that had been explained by Albus. But he understood that the role he played was one of protection, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to break free of it until he was sure he wouldn’t condemn everyone currently under that protection to an ill fate. Whether or not breaking free would ever be necessary, and whether he would have the gall to do so if it were, was unsure. But he was taking steps that gave him a kind of secure, hopeful, and previously unexperienced peace of mind.

“Are you anticipating a coup?” Albus asked, either only detecting or only choosing to address the central truth.

“Minerva grows more livid with every passing day. We both know that it will only become an increasing possibility.”

“Most certainly,” Albus agreed, his voice comparatively stern. “But this precarious stability is only possible for as long as you maintain your grip. You must try to tighten your hold.”

Severus realized that none of the conversations he had hoped for – neither illuminating and placating, nor fiery and cathartic – were going to happen, and decided to leave. This is why he never came in. He started towards the door, his voice cool and impassive.

“Trust me to strike this balance, Albus.”

There was a long pause as he crossed the room, and finally as his fingers brushed across the door-knob, Albus offered unexpectedly, “There is a tunnel leading from the basement of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes to a hidden entrance point in the castle, behind the statue of Gunhilda de Gorsemoor. You might consider weaving a rift into the wards there.”

Severus stilled long enough to silently accept, or at least acknowledge, the peace-offering, and then slipped back out of the office.

He took a winding, indirect route towards the dungeons, one that led him through seldom seen, craggy sections of the castle. He anticipated a sleepless night and knew that as soon as he lay down his legs would start to tingle uncomfortably, and yet he didn’t want to distract himself with the work waiting for him on his desk. He had just swept past a portrait of a rather shy dryad who looked more than a little shocked to see him, and turned to descend a staircase to his right, when out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of white at the far away end of the corridor.

He paused, peering through the shadowy length of the passage. Right at the end, sitting with her knees tucked up to her chest on an open archway, overlooking the Great Lake, sat Ms. Lovegood. Severus felt awash with annoyance. She had barely finished the run off assigned detentions for attempting to steal the sword, and yet she could not manage to obey curfew for even one night.

That annoyance rather quickly ebbed away, however. She was staring out at the grounds, her long, glowing hair floating about her, despite what Severus had thought to be a rather still night. When she turned her head, it was he who felt a flashing second of alarm, before he remembered himself. She was too far away for her face to be more of a white, smudgy blur, though he thought her shoulders perhaps tensed.

Severus hovered in a long moment that seemed to play out across a dreamscape – knowing that having been caught finding her he now needed to officially catch her; processing the accepting, wistful sadness that came his way; frowning against a creeping sense of discomfort at the eerie sight of the girl. Ten seconds passed. He turned and descended the steps towards the dungeons.

Chapter Text

December 4th – A seldom-practised branch of magical cartography, called fortuitous topomancy, involves interpreting the geographical magic signatures left behind by, specifically, backfired enchantments and accidental magical trauma, (Regina-Rose Amorium, 1924).

Hermione peered back over her shoulder, her hair whipping against her numb, sensitive cheeks. She and Harry had been walking for half the day, though it felt to her like at least a day and a half. Harry was stopping for breaks less and less frequently recently, and she almost had the feeling that he was trying to push her to her limit. She knew that the accusations Ron had made against Harry for not knowing more – for dragging them on a doomed, trying mission – had hit home. It was as if he were trying to alleviate himself of the guilt by shaking her off.

She knew that if she wanted him to stop, she’d need to have a conversation with him about it, to communicate, but somehow she never did. She would peel her shoes off after a long day's march, squeeze the melted snow from her socks, repair the blisters on their heels, set up the tent, reenact the wards, eat whatever Harry found for dinner, and fall into bed. They talked very little, and she’d almost forgotten how to structure a good conversation. Especially when one of them was always wearing the locket, which one of them always was. It was best not to even try.

For the past hour they’d been walking through a huge, grassy field towards a beach. Every now and then she’d look over her shoulder to remind herself that at least it wasn’t snowing here. She could see snow in the distance, covering the hills, only a few miles away. Her legs were aching with the effort of pushing through the sand-softened dirt of the field and the mist had well and truly melded the denim of her jeans to her thighs, but at least it was not snowing.

She had a vague idea that they were somewhere in Gloucestershire. At least, they had been in Somerset a few days before, also walking along the coast. She suspected they’d passed through Bristol on Wednesday, and it was now Thursday afternoon. They had been apparating less, walking more, but staying in each location for a few extra days at a time. Hermione at least had justified it to herself by thinking that anyone on the lookout would be having a harder time tracking them in the Winter too. But she knew that it was a flimsy excuse, given that potential pursuers would be using magic far more freely than she and Harry were allowing themselves. Really, she was just worried that she actually would abandon the mission if they pushed themselves any harder than they already were.

When she wasn’t wearing the locket, she distracted herself on the long walks with memories of anything but her parents. Sometimes of past birthday celebrations at Hogwarts – they hadn’t acknowledged it at all that year – or after-party Quidditch match celebrations, or of the Yule ball, or of trips to Hogsmeade. In the first week or so after abandoning her shields, she’d avoided thinking about Severus, the pangs of loneliness and worry a little too much. But when the winter had really dug in and snow had developed into an every-day occurrence she’d given up, and now she’d spend hours at a time replaying the tiniest details. How his body would angle itself towards her when she sat down beside him, how he hooked his laced fingers around his knee when lost in conversation, sex.

When she was wearing the locket she resisted the urge to scream at Harry and claw her skin off and throw herself onto the floor to throw a tantrum, only through repetition. She would repeat the ingredients and instructions list for skele-gro, memorised paragraphs of Beedle The Bard, old Gryffindor sports chants,

Weasley is our King, Weasley is our King–

Go, Go Gryffindor!

Three pufferfish, one chinese chomping cabbage, one red spider

The dinner menu on Wednesday nights at Hogwarts, her steps, song lyrics, passages she could remember from ‘Hogwarts; A History’.

‘And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like. The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And Death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility.’

…five thousand and forty-two, five thousand and fourty-three, five thousand and fourty-four, left, left, left right left.

“We thought you knew what you were doing! What are you doing?”

She slept worse on these nights, because her brain got stuck in such a rut that it often wouldn’t stop repeating these things for hours. As long as she didn’t have to walk the next day, though, she wasn’t so worried about the lack of sleep. Her nightmares had subsided for a short period of time after she gave up with the shields, but they’d returned after about a week. They weren’t sickening anymore – she wouldn’t wake up clammy, disoriented, and mute – but they kept her from sleeping well.

Harry had been wearing the locket for the past three days. She knew they’d need to swap over the following morning, and the anticipation of that had filled her with enough anxiety that it had been difficult that afternoon to get lost in her memories. She’d spent the past two hours just staring at the back of Harry’s head. He needed another hair cut – his hair had grown enough that the tips of it brushed against his collar, hiding from her view the nasty red welt she knew the chain around his neck would’ve burned into his skin by now.

The sky rumbled, and Hermione looked warily up at the packed, dark gray mass above their heads. They would need to stop walking soon anyway, otherwise they’d be picking their way through a field littered by pot-holes and loose stones in the dark, but she knew Harry wanted to reach the beach. They’d had a few good, comparatively warm nights the previous week pitching their tent behind sand-dunes, and she guessed he was keen to replicate that experience. She also guessed that he’d realized about an hour ago – around the same time she had – that this was a long, flat beach. No dunes. But he tended to knuckle down and grit his teeth in the face of disappointment.

They had, however, veered off in unspoken agreement towards a tall, stone structure that had become identifiable as a lighthouse about thirty minutes ago. The likelihood was that it would be occupied, Hermione guessed, but at least figuring this out would provide them with some variety before they pitched their tent.

There was another rumble, and a crack, and then it started to pour with rain. Hermione squealed, startled by the almost cinematic abruptness of the change. Harry swore, a blunt remark almost drowned out by the audible thwack of raindrops pelting into already damp soil, and half turned around, beckoning towards her.

“Come on!”

Hermione broke into a run, clutching her handbag to her chest as they made a beeline for the lighthouse. Clothes she’d already thought had been soaked through by the mist became wetter and heavier in the space of ten seconds, and within a minute the sandy-dirt under her feet was a gritty slush that sucked at her feet and made her feel like she was moving in slow motion. Her thighs burned.

“Faster, Hermione!” Harry yelled as they came close enough to the lighthouse for her to determine that it appeared to be abandoned – green moss and algae had inched its way up a good half of the dirty walls, and part of the balcony encircling the top of the structure had broken away, the barrier that once might’ve prevented fatal falls now swinging on its hinges.

“I’m going as fast–” Hermione began to yell back, though cut herself off. Harry wasn’t listening, but still sprinting ahead, and she got a wet slab of hair in her mouth. She let out a grunt of frustration and it actually helped a bit.

She reached the lighthouse about a minute after Harry, who’d spent that time yanking at a stuck metal door at the base of the tower. It broke open just as she arrived, sending him stumbling back before he caught his footing, and he waved her in. Not needing any encouragement, she dashed inside. It was a round, empty room.

The inner walls were a faded blue concrete, slippery green algae thickly coating the first two feet from the floor, a steady drip-drip-drip of water leaking through the ceiling, a crumpled tin can to her right, a couple of weeds poking up through the uncovered floor. But it was generally dry. Much dryer than outside. A white, concrete, winding staircase curled upwards from the middle of the room. Hermione took a further step inside as Harry nudged her forward, the door shutting with a rusty groan behind him. The sound of the rain was muted and steady, muffled by layers of concrete.

“Well,” said Harry, as he walked a circle around the outside of the room. “Good enough.”

Hermione silently agreed. It was a small relief not to have to fish the tent out of her bag.

“Should we go up?” she asked, and at the same moment something far above their heads creaked menacingly. “Never mind.”

She decided she would add a strengthening charm to her wards that night. There was a chapter covering spells for structural reinforcement somewhere in one of the books on wards she’d stolen from the library.

“I might go up and see if I can find anything to burn.” Harry remarked, his voice and expression mirroring the same impassive, persistent, slightly relieved feeling she always had after they’d found somewhere to hunker down for the night, if not slightly more agitated. The locket glinted under his collar.

“Hang on,” she stopped him, drawing her wand and pointing it at her chest. “Excoquatur.”

A white puff of steam rose from Harry’s clothes and hair as he dried.

“Thanks.” He turned and began to climb the flaking concrete steps.

Hermione repeated the spell on her handbag, which she then tucked into the driest looking spot along the wall. She pulled out her book on wards and flicked through until she found the chapter she wanted, scanned it thoroughly, and then tied her hair up and trudged her squelching way back outside. She cast her wards quickly, efficiently, despite being blinded and muted by the rain. It was like brushing her teeth. Harry was still exploring the heights of the tower when she returned inside to dry herself.

She was fishing through her handbag for dinner when she heard him trudge back down.

“I pulled these off the railings of the balcony,” he muttered, and she turned to see him drop a pile of split wooden posts onto the floor in the middle of the room. Hermione frowned at them.

“Harry, we can’t light a fire in here. We’d smoke ourselves out.”

Harry stared blankly at the pile for a long moment, and she saw his jaw tighten and his face darken a shade. She understood where he’d come from. They’d started lighting proper fires about three weeks ago, when warming stones wasn’t producing enough warmth. He’d been going through the motions, completing the next step in the routine, because he was used to allocating the bare minimum amount of energy at the end of the day to think.

“Well you should’ve said so before!” He snapped, lamely kicking the planks to the side.

Hermione sighed and crossed the room. She reached up, slowly, as if anticipating spooking a wild animal, and caught the necklace carefully between her fingers. The moment her skin touched the chain she felt her body recoil and the tips of her fingers itch with an uncomfortable warmth, but she pulled it over his head and hung it on an iron rod sticking out of the wall near the door. She turned back around to look at him.

“Yeah.” He nodded, scrubbing at the back of his neck with one hand and wincing. She tugged the corner of her lip into a half-hearted smile.

“We got anything for dinner?”

Her smile turned into a grimace. “A few dried mushrooms, I think, and a can of beans left over from that supermarket shop on Monday, and a piece of dried fish, but we’ve already replicated it twice so I don’t know if it’ll be much good.”

“I could go out and see if I can…” He trailed off, and Hermione shook her head.

“Don’t bother. It’s too miserable.”

“It just seems a waste, when we’re right near the sea.”

“It’s too miserable. It’ll stop raining in the morning.”

She didn’t know that, and Harry didn’t know that, but they both decided to believe it for the moment. She returned to fishing around in her bag while Harry began clearing chunks of concrete, bird bones, and whatever else was scattered across the floor before experimenting with a few cleansing charms.

It took about half an hour for the really sullen, biting energy to dissolve out of Harry’s expression after removing the pendant. Hermione was actually quite surprised – this was not a very long time at all. She suspected it had something to do with finding somewhere other than the tent to spend the night and the large slab of forgotten supermarket banana bread that she’d pulled triumphantly out of the handbag along with the beans, fish, and mushrooms. By the time they sat down to eat he even managed a smile.

The lighthouse actually cleared up pretty well. Harry had scourgified the floor, and then a little later the ceiling, when bits of dirt continued to periodically rain down upon them. Hermione’d cast a warming charm on the floor and, unlike the dirt and undergrowth they usually pitched their tent into, the temperature didn’t immediately diffuse. They ate their dinners on the floor, butts warm. Afterwards, Hermione pulled their sleeping bags and a couple of pillows from the bag and they laid them out across the spell-scrubbed floor, curling onto them and staring up at the winding staircase. She suspected they would have rather stiff backs by the morning but for now it was nice.

The lighthouse contained a second floor about half way up, but the wooden rafters that would’ve once been a ceiling were mostly rotting, if they hadn’t already fallen down, giving Hermione a clear line of sight all the way up to the top of the tower, where holes in the ceiling revealed tiny pinpoints of grey sky. She’d woven a waterproofing charm into her wards, so she felt comfortable laying her sleeping bag out so that she could stare up into one of those holes, enjoying the prick of light.

Usually, after dinner, she would pull out her copy of Beadle the Bard, and Harry would either fiddle with his snitch or the Marauder’s Map. Tonight, however, she lay down without her book, and Harry followed suit. She felt like a conversation was possible, and she wanted to reach out for it, but she didn’t quite know how. She scrunched her nose against the sadness that came with being yet-again confronted by how much this way of life was breaking them down. She opened her mouth several times, and then closed it again when nothing but Ron, her parents, Voldemort, Severus, or Mrs. Cattermole and courtrooms full of muggle-borns and dementors came to mind.

Harry managed to speak first. She heard him take in a massive breath, release it so slowly it shook, wiggle uncomfortably in his sleeping bag, and then sigh.

“You know right at the top there’s a little room, I guess where they used to look out for the ships, with an old radio in it. Do you think it’s possible to find a wizarding channel on a muggle radio?”

Hermione perked up, pushing herself onto her elbow. She would never admit it – because Ron’s radio had driven her half mad during the first leg of their journey – but she’d missed the small window of insight into what was happening in the wizarding world.

“Yes!” She exclaimed, and Harry raised an eyebrow at her.

“I looked up the spell before we went home at the end of last year,” she explained. “I wanted to be able to keep up to date with the latest information when I was living with my parents.”

With an enthusiastic bounce, Harry wiggled out of his sleeping bag and dashed back up their stairs. Hermione listened to his footsteps growing steadily fainter, her heart-rate picking up a little as a hundred different possibilities for what they might hear rattled around her mind. He returned in under a minute, an old, weather beaten radio clutched under his arm. Hermione frowned skeptically.

“You think that’ll even work? Was it exposed to the weather?”

“Nah, there’s a little cupboard up there that I shuffled through hoping to find something to eat or something. This was tucked in between a couple of life-jackets and a blanket.” Harry gestured vaguely at a folded blanket at the foot of his sleeping bag, one that Hermione hadn’t noticed before. He placed the radio triumphantly on the floor, and then winced a little himself.

“Maybe it’s a bit wet.”

Hermione grabbed her wand and pointed it at the box. “Tergeo!”

She then leaned forward and scrubbed at a smear of dust on its rectangular frame, trying not to get her hopes up. It was chunky and plastic, built to withstand stormy weather and salty air, with a stiff black dial and a scratched tuning window lined with faintly glowing numbers. She twisted the power knob until she felt a dull click under her fingers and a low static crackled to life. Harry gave a small shout of victory. She felt like they’d just found a treasure box. Carefully, she rotated the tuning dial, feeling it resist slightly as the needle slid from one end of the AM band to the other — bursts of garbled music, overlapping voices, and white noise flickering in and out.

With her other hand she drew her wand up an inch from the plastic exterior, and muttered, “Revelare frequenta."

The static whined, a high-pitched, pained sound, and then caught. A deep, defiant voice, first staticky but quickly clearing, came through the speaker. “...and to those listening from the shadows — stay safe, keep belligerent. This is Isamu, bringing you news with New Dawn. We’ll be back after a short break with the latest list of muggle disappearances.”

Hermione held her breath as a gentle, jazzy saxophone began to drone, accompanied by a tinkling, rippling sound from an instrument she couldn’t quite place. It sounded like some combination of beads and water and bells. She glanced up at Harry.

“Have you heard of New Dawn before?”

He shook his head. “Nope. There must be a whole bunch of independent resisting channels out there. Even if they’re all reporting the same stuff, it’d make it harder for the Ministry to crack down on them, don’t you think?”

They waited in silence until the song faded and the voice crackled back into focus. From her periphery, Hermione thought she saw Harry jump a little when it did.

“Welcome back to New Dawn, Girls and Ghouls, I’m Isamu, bringing you the latest list of muggle disappearances. If you hear the name of someone you know, I just want to take a second to encourage you to stay strong, and to feel your loss, and to honor them."

"Matilda Parker, aged thirty-one, last seen in Liverpool."

"Rose Bond, aged twenty-four, last seen in Liverpool."

"James Brooks, aged fifty-five, last seen near the border between England in Scotland."

"James Adder, aged forty-nine, last seen in London."

"Alec Hayvice, aged seventeen, last seen in Bath."

"Holly Astwood, aged twenty-one, last seen in Glasgow."

"Dean Jacobson, aged thirty-two, last seen just outside of York."

"Gretchen Smith, aged seventy-three, last seen in Manchester."

"Alec Bruce, aged sixty-four, last seen in Glasgow."

"Emma LeCompt, aged sixteen, last seen in Glasgow."

"Jessica Fips, age fourty-one, last seen in Inverness."

"On another, equally serious note, I want to extend a warning to those of you out there who have managed to falsify the blood-status of your muggle-born children and have sent them to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year. We’ve been contacted by an anonymous source inside the school who reports that increasingly extreme measures – these were not disclosed to us – are currently being used by certain staff to force confessions out of suspected muggle-born students. They, and you, may not be safe."

"While we understand that the situation of each family is different, we strongly suggest, based on the recommendation of our source, that any parents of muggle-born students use the Christmas break as an opportunity to extract their children from the school and go into hiding. If any of you listening are in touch with or know of muggle-born families out there who may not be tuning into wizarding radio channels, reach out, give them this message. Stick together."

"That’s all we have for today. Tune in at seven-o'clock again tomorrow for New Dawn. Stay safe until then. Oh, and just a quick note before I sign off – I’ve been asked by our friends in the orchard to pass on a message; the green apples are ripening a little later than usual this season.”

The radio crackled mysteriously for another long second, before that slow, jazzy music filled the silence again. Hermione reached over and switched it off. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but she felt flat. She wondered if she would’ve felt fulfilled by anything other than a direct message from Ron or an update on the health of the staff members of Hogwarts.

“What was that last bit?” Harry asked.

“Hm?” She looked up and shrugged. “I’d guess a code of some sort. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Order, or some other resistance groups, are using these kinds of channels to pass on messages.”

Harry looked enlivened. She smiled faintly. He thrived off this kind of thing – connection and furtiveness and secret communications and strength. She missed the black and white nature of straight-forward, face-to-face interaction. They’d both shuffled closer to listen, and so when they lay back down were separated by the space of one single radio.

“What do you think ‘increasingly extreme measures’ are?” Harry asked after a long moment, voicing the silent thoughts they were both projecting into the empty, concrete room.

Hermione bit her lip. “I mean I don’t know for sure, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the Carrow siblings are using unforgivables.”

“What!” Harry exclaimed, pushing himself onto his elbow, and Hermione winced. She regretted bringing it up. She could tell immediately that the conversation was going to hone in on Hogwarts, and she didn’t want to go there. But she could sense that Harry did, perhaps almost needed to.

“Well who's going to stop them?” She reasoned, as calmly as she could. “Not the Ministry. And any parents who react badly to it will just be making targets of their children and putting themselves on Ministry watch lists. Everyone who isn’t sympathetic to You-know-who’s cause is stuck.”

“I know but… I know but… I just can’t believe it.” Harry’s shoulders slumped, and Hermione picked desolation in his expression. “Well I can, actually.”

Hermione opened her mouth to say ‘it might not be the case’, but Harry started talking again before she could inject enough belief into her voice.

“Ginny’s so defiant, you know? I just can’t imagine…” He shook his head. “Snape. He's got everything he wanted, hasn't he? I can't see him wasting time brewing veritaserum when he can just imperiu– Hermione are you okay?”

Hermione shook her head. She hadn't expected and had no control over the tears that had begun to trickle down her face. Something had dropped at the sound of such hate in Harry's words. Perhaps her body had intuitively known and supplied the solution – squeezing tears out of her unwilling eyes, because how else was she going to get Harry to stop? She felt her loneliness mount.

She nodded, spreading dampness across her cheeks with the back of her hand and sniffing a wet sniff. Harry didn't look startled. He looked sad. There were too many reasons to cry for this to alarm him.

“Sorry.” He mumbled, ducking his head. “We don't have to talk about Hogwarts. Does it make you think about… about Ron?”

Hermione's breath caught in that juddery, suffocating way that came with trying to stifle too many tears. They never talked about Ron. He was the ultimate taboo.

She nodded again, and squeaked, “Yes.”

“He's such a jerk,” Harry said, but he sounded almost tearful himself. Closer than Hermione had ever heard him try to talk through tears, which was startling.

“Yes.”

Harry lay back down. Hermione eventually stopped sniffing, and he reached his hand out between their sleep bags to take hers. It made her smile, a tiny bit of liquid salt spreading across the seam of her lips. She hadn't properly touched another person in at least a fortnight.

They were quiet for a long time, and Harry had let go of her hand, and then all of a sudden he asked, “Do you like Fred?”

Hermione was jolted out of wallowing thoughts by the shock of the question. Fred? She opened her little book of facts religiously every morning. Even when she didn’t think it was going to make her feel anything. Because sometimes it did, and that was always good.

“What? Of course I do.”

She peaked at Harry from the corner of her eye and his cheeks had gone a bit pink. “No, but I mean, are you and Fred, like…”

“What! No! What in Merlin’s name gave you that idea?”

“I dunno,” she could hear the bashful, awkward shrug in his words. “I saw him give you something at the wedding, and then you danced. And you never want to talk about anything from back home.”

“I danced with you right at the beginning! And I danced with Luna a little. And Luna’s dad!” Hermione realized how unnecessarily shrill her voice was. She was too on edge for this conversation, though at the same time it was kind of nice, really nice, to talk about something other than their mission or Hogwarts or the war. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be so defensive. I don’t like Fred. I mean I do like Fred. I really like him as a sweet, thoughtful, silly, platonic person.”

“Huh. I mean yeah, he is. And George. I think I don't do a great job of separating them into two people in my mind.”

Hermione smirked. “Well I think they actively encourage that impression.”

Harry made a huffing sound, and brought his hands up to rest under his head. When he was wearing the locket, he looked flammable, and when he took it off, he didn’t.

“Sometimes,” He started, speaking slowly, determinedly looking at the ceiling even though Hermione had turned onto her side and was watching him intently, “I miss Ginny so much. I don’t even think it’s about Ginny a bunch of the time, or at least, it is about Ginny but only because I’m missing everything that we used to have and our lives at Hogwarts. I never know whether everyone else is okay. I can’t help but wonder if someone from school or The Burrow is dead, has been dead for weeks, and we’ve just been carrying on without even knowing. Then I just stick all that into missing Ginny and it’s intense.”

Hermione frowned, and Harry tilted his head a little to the side, away from her.

“And then sometimes I look over at you curled up on your bed or on that chair, and I have the feeling you’re thinking the exact same thing as I am. Thinking that if you don’t get back to something, to someone, everything we’re doing out here is for nothing.” His profile grimaced. “I feel bad for saying you didn't understand how I felt… you know… when we were talking about missing people.”

Hermione had forgotten that conversation, back in the days of Grimmauld Place and meals from Kreacher and all squishing together in the living room to sleep. It wasn't difficult to bring the memory up, however. It was accompanied by the suppressed sadness, like missing someone wrapped in plastic, she'd been feeling through her shields then, which made her shiver. She hadn't realized how quickly she'd grown used to not feeling that way over the past few weeks. It’d been like being constantly drugged, she thought.

“It’s okay,” she said simply.

“Is it?” Harry asked, and then rolled over to face her. “Do you understand what I mean?”

Hermione pressed her lips together. She wasn't exactly sure what he was asking, and she didn't think he knew either, which meant that he was as close as either of the boys had ever been to seeing her life with Severus. As much as she'd often wished she could talk about it with them, she felt her stomach twist itself into a knot now that she found herself one step closer to the possibility, scared.

“Almost. I think I do,” she appeased, not taking the branch. It wasn't a lie, really. She didn't exactly understand what Harry had described. “But I feel like it’s a good thing. Because of that feeling, or something like it, I’ll do anything to get back to Hogwarts. I’ll do anything to make sure we win.”

Harry nodded, but his brow was deeply furrowed. “But sometimes I just wish I didn’t have anything I really cared about, you know? Just a general care that people I didn’t know wouldn’t die, and that's it. Saving the whole wizarding world is enough without having to save my– Ginny. And Lupin, and, well, I don’t have to list them. You know.”

Hermione watched his face. After a couple of unresponsive seconds, Harry's brow corrected itself and his eyes flicked up to hers. She tugged the corner of her mouth into what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“They can look after themselves, Harry. Trust Ginny to want to get back to you enough that she does everything she can to stay alive.”

It was a silent, masked prayer she was praying for herself. She imagined seeing Severus again for the first time. It felt so unreal. It actually scared her a little. Her eyes flicked to the locket hanging on the hook in the wall, somehow always glinting. It had made her so hard.

“Okay.” Harry said, simply and quietly, drawing Hermione out of her thoughts. For a moment, she had the maternal, full sense that she was soothing a child.

They chatted in light and increasingly dispersed sentences for another half hour, before Hermione fell asleep. She woke up in the dark, Harry having ended the lumos spell they'd used to light the room after the sun had gone down. The floor at the foot of her sleeping bag was glowing faintly with the moonlight seeping in two, tiny, perfectly square holes in the wall opposite. It was oddly quiet, and it took her a second to realize that this was because the rain had stopped.

She’d been dreaming of something unhappy. Not a nightmare, but something that had left her with a queasy feeling and an incoming sense of foreboding. She felt flushed and stuck in her sleeping bag, despite the fact that her breath was visible in the cold air.

She could hear Harry breathing deeply and evenly beside her. She wondered how much he'd needed to talk, even so briefly, about Hogwarts and Ginny. He didn't usually sleep more than an hour or so the night after taking off the locket. She turned her head to the side, her hair rustling in her ears, to look at his profile. It was shadowed, but relaxed, turned just away from her. He'd removed his glasses, and they were lying on the concrete floor between them, and his hair was sticking out at odd angles about his forehead. She felt like they, just the two of them, were in the best place they'd been in weeks. She hated that she would be the one to ruin it tomorrow, when she put the locket on.

Feeling sleepy but still somehow restless, she carefully drew herself out of the sleeping bag. She tiptoed across the floor, barefoot, and hefted the door open. The wind was much louder the moment she stepped outside, and it was freezing. She wasn't going to last long, especially without any shoes on and in a thin singlet and pajama bottoms. She was reminded of standing in the owlery in the middle of winter.

She began to trail her slow way around the base of the lighthouse, wet sand clinging to her feet and rubbing between her toes. She looked out across the field, the beach, and the sea as she walked. It was all black in various textures. She felt slightly calmed.

It was strange to be in the middle of nowhere. It was strange to be one of the only two people in the world. It was such a big thing they were trying to do. She both wondered if she would ever be able to enjoy camping ever again, and whether she was ever going to be able to go back to a busy, populated, urban lifestyle.

She stopped after two circles of the lighthouse, her feet too numb now to feel the small stones and sticks poking through the sand. She raised her wand to her throat.

“Mitte verba mea.”

The sound of the words sent a pleasant shiver down her spine. Her throat warmed under her wand. She had only messaged Severus once since she'd informed him of Ron's leaving, to ask about the safety of a new apparation location and to inform him that, even after a long uncommunicative gap, she and Harry were both still alive. She was less inclined to contact him when each passing day, particularly wearing the locket, just made her more pessimistic, sharper and more snappish. She’d always tried to disguise the worst of her mood and the mission from him. She didn't want him to worry, and she didn't want to complain.

“Hello,” she started, the formality of the greeting objectively odd, though she felt like the night had swept her up into a kind of nonexistent half-way-in-between land. It was a feeling she remembered from nights spent in the laboratory or the Highlands or Severus’ quarters, and she was both confused and secretly thrilled that it had arisen. “Hello. We're both still okay. We're sheltering from the weather in a lighthouse. We've been listening to the radio. You're so strong to be living there with the Carrow siblings and no one who knows that you're on our side. I know, though, and I'm thinking about you. Every day, actually."

"I think Harry is on the verge of suggesting that we go to Godric's Hollow, and I think when he does I'm going to agree. I want to finish this. We're still a long way off but we need to do something. I'm having an unusual moment of clarity tonight, or at least a kind of calm that I haven't felt in a while. It's my turn to take the burden again tomorrow, though, so I don’t think it’ll last. My feet are cold so I’m going to go back in now.”

Chapter Text

December 5th – Merfolk are the youngest living magical species, fossil evidence suggesting that they came into being at some point during the 1500s. The explanation for this spontaneous, rapid appearance is uncertain, though the standing theory is that they were a product of a wishful thinking spell gone rogue, given that the creatures were present in muggle mythology well before the 16th century, (Mabella Merkle, 1943).

December 6th – Organized religion does not appear to have evolved within wizarding communities themselves, its presence being felt only insofar as Muggle-born individuals maintain a religious practice after discovering the wizarding world, (Oldritch Fuggleward, 1845).

December 19th – Those with undiscovered or undeveloped psychic abilities are more prone to unplanned ghosthood, (Mervyn Linus, 1938).

Chapter Text

December 24th – For more than two millennia, the most heavily protected institution of magical learning has been the Tarragona School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in what is now Spain, its wards strengthened by upwards of seven hundred enchantments laid down through successive generations. At her death in the year 477, the seventh Headmistress is recorded to have bound her very soul into the fabric of the protections. Since 1845, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in Scotland, has been regarded as second only to Tarragona in the extent of its defensive wards, (Otto Meyer-Twinkle, 1899).

“You all good, Hermione?”

Hermione breathed out a heavy sigh and pushed up to standing. She'd been very slowly shuffling things around her handbag, distracted, and she wasn't surprised Harry had noticed. He was impatient to move.

“Yes, sorry. It's just so important that we do this right, I'm making sure my head’s clear.”

Harry turned over a rock with the tip of his shoe, shuffling from side to side. The muggles they had stolen hairs from for their Polyjuice had been as similar in stature to them as they could find, but Harry’s shoes were still a little tight. Hermione was surprised by how well he was bottling in his impatience. She supposed that, unlike her, he was feeling unconflicted and probably even quite excited to go to Godrics's Hollow.

“We've been preparing for a week.”

“We prepared for the Ministry for a month.” She muttered distractedly, tying her scarf around her neck.

“And we pulled it off.”

“That's exactly what I said!” Hermione announced without thinking.

Harry shot her a quizzical look, and she shrugged. Sighing again, she stepped alongside him, taking his offered arm. Her hands were numb, even in their mittens, and weren't doing a good job of wrapping into his sleeve.

She was decided, in part through her hesitancy. It was too late to alert Severus now, even if she wanted to. The guilt was pressing, but she knew he would only be caught between a rock and a hard place if he knew about the risk she and Harry were about to take. She'd tell him when they were successful. If they weren't, there was a pre-prepared message stored in her locket containing the word that would trigger his memories of the Order meetings last year and instructions to make the rest of the Order aware of the importance of completing her and Harry's mission. According to the book she'd taken from the Hogwarts library, if she was killed the pre-prepared message should dispatch itself.

“Ready?” Harry asked, squeezing her arm in his.

“Yes, yes,” she assured, fidgeting on the spot. Wand, handbag, necklace. Harry shook out the invisibility cloak he was holding, and wrapped it around their bodies. Hermione took a deep breath and pictured the newspaper clipping image of Godric’s Hollow she'd been studying through the morning. “Godric's Hollow!”

Her guts twisted around Harry's, and then they were standing on a cobble path, both slipping a bit on the ice-covered stone. It was darker than it had been in Dartmoor, though a little warmer. Tiny snowflakes fluttered down and melted on Hermione’s cheeks. There was no-one about, but Hermione didn’t let go of Harry’s arm as they began to walk, holding his elbow tight against her side. Christmas lights glittered in the windows and Hermione could hear the staticky, faded sound of radio caroling coming from one of the red-roofed houses on their left. Hermione huffed in annoyance. She had been hoping to avoid reminders of Christmas.

“All this snow!” She muttered, taking her frustration out on the landscape. “Why didn’t we think of snow? After all our precautions, we’ll leave prints! We’ll just have to get rid of them—you go in front, I’ll do it— ”

“Let’s take off the Cloak.” Harry said, not taking any pains to keep his voice low. Hermione could hear the almost dream-like quality to his voice, but her heart did a flutter when she thought of exposing themselves. Harry quickly read this in her expression. “Oh, come on, we don’t look like us and there’s no one around.”

Before she could further protest about them veering from their original plan before they’d even really begun, Harry had pulled the cloak off and was folding it under his jacket. Hermione sucked in a breath of annoyance, peering around the streets again, but held her tongue. It was all in.

They made their way down the small residential lane for a number of minutes, before they emerged quite abruptly into the town square. They had immediate company – warmly dressed people in thick red coats, stripy mittens, and woolen hats bustling to and fro. Hermione’s attention was caught by a young couple kissing outside a pub to their left, and then a small boy skidding along the trodden down, compact snowy footpath, his mother shuffling worriedly behind him. She and Harry took a quick step backwards as the boy almost bowled into them, and the mother muttered a hasty apology as she passed by. Hermione felt an un-encumbered pang.

A large war memorial stood in the middle of the square, and behind it, a church, from which more caroling could be heard. Hermione’s worried, nerve-heightened thoughts dulled a little as the sound washed over her, pulling her into a kind of holiday-nostalgic haze.

“Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve,” she murmured.

“Is it?”

He sounded surprised. She was too. She’d known that they were in the general vicinity of Christmas, but not so close. She wondered whether the small village near Severus’ Highlands house was much like this – whether there was a town square where people had gathered and laughed and become drunk and conducted very last minute Christmas shopping. She realized she didn’t even know where the house was, other than it being in the Highlands.

“I’m sure it is,” she nodded, trying to keep her thoughts from wandering in that direction by squeezing Harry tighter to her side. She pointed to the church. “They . . . they’ll be in there, won’t they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it.”

Hermione glanced over at Harry when he didn’t respond. He was staring fixedly at the church, his expression telling because it was blank. She couldn’t know for sure what was in his head, but she guessed it was something along the lines of stolen, alternative childhoods, old photographs, and the happy family of three that had just walked out of the church. She tugged him forward, and they began to cross the square. They’d only made it half way, however, when the memorial now towering above them shimmered with a magical quality that caught Hermione off guard.

“Harry, look!” She exclaimed as the muggle memorial morphed into three stone figures. She stayed where she was while Harry took a few steps towards the monument of his family, his hand coming to rest lightly on his fathers knee as he stared up into the likeness of Lily Evans.

It was rare that Hermione ever saw Harry as Harry Potter. Having come from a muggle family straight to Hogwarts, the period of time during which she’d known him only as a wizarding legend had been so brief she struggled to remember it. So the statue made her feel strange. She lived in a world that built statues of her best friend and his dead family. It felt strange to imagine how Harry must feel all of the time – she knew he couldn’t ever quite forget that he was Harry Potter. Especially since fifth year. She noticed herself become a little more patient.

Harry stood there for about three minutes, before turning back towards her. “C’mon.”

They trudged the remainder of the way across the square silently, Hermione pushing through the kissing gate enclosing the graveyard and wincing when it squeaked softly on its hinges. Behind the church the gravestones stood like veterans – straight, uniform, and worn. They wore identical white caps of snow. She and Harry, in wordless agreement, each took a separate aisle and began their slow inspection.

“Look at this,” Harry piped up after a few seconds, “it’s an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation of Hannah’s!”

“Keep your voice down,” Hermione shushed worriedly. The sound of the carolers in the church behind them would obscure their voices from the square but she was still on edge. She glanced around the graveyard to ensure that they were still alone. She was actually vaguely suspicious of the graveyard's emptiness, if it was Christmas Eve – a time for celebration and family and reminiscing.

Hermione was shin-deep in snow and beginning to relax into the methodical process of sweeping the graveyard when she came across a name that rang a bell. She tugged her right mitten off, shoving it into her pocket, and brushed a thin layer of ice from the chilly stone before her.

“Harry, here!”

He heard Harry shuffle to her right. “Is it—?”

“No,” she shook her head, “but look!”

Hermione bit her lip, peering sideways at Harry. She knew that his feelings about Dumbledore had been horribly complicated over the course of the year, most significantly during the conversation he’d overheard at Bill and Fleur's wedding – learning about Dumbledore’s potential involvement in the death of his sister and his potential early life anti-muggle politics. She knew he didn’t like to be reminded, as much as she didn’t like to talk about Hogwarts.

She couldn’t deny the small part of her that found relief that Harry had expressed a certain betrayal about learning that Dumbledore had kept a significant, important part of his past a secret. It felt safer, like he might act less impulsively as he had when he’d just assumed Dumbledore’s word was golden. A small part of her sometimes hoped that he might also be a little more understanding of greyness. Still, it wasn’t at all pleasant to see him struggle with that betrayal either.

Harry’s face had morphed into a tight frown, and she regretted calling him over. “Are you sure he never mentioned–?”

No,” Harry interrupted. “Let’s keep looking.”

It was less than a minute later that Hermione’s attention caught on another familiar name, and she exhaled in relief.

“Here!” She announced, a little too enthusiastically. She scrubbed at the gravestone with her hand, the capital ‘P’ that had caught her eye followed by what looked like an ‘e’ and a ‘v’, except that the lettering was incredibly old and worn. “Oh no, sorry! I thought it said Potter.”

She shot Harry a guilty look as his shoulders slumped. She’d been so keen to distract him from thoughts of Dumbledore that she’d tried to jump the gun. Still, she bent down and frowned at the old grave, which seemed startlingly familiar. She realized, with a small gasp, that the symbol carved into the stone beneath that name was something she’d seen before on the cover of her copy of The Tales Of Beadle The Bard.

“Harry, come back a moment.”

“What,” Harry snapped.

“Look at this!” He bent down begrudgingly beside her. “Harry, that’s the mark in the book!”

“Yeah… it could be…”

He sounded doubtful and distracted. The stone had worn away near the centre of the symbol, making it hard to decipher, but Hermione had seen it too many times to mistake it. She trusted her gut. She squinted back at the name, trying to trace letters with her fingers despite cracks and gouges in the stone.

“It says Ig– Ignotus, I think…”

“I’m going to keep looking for my parents, all right?”

Hermione didn’t protest against the edge in Harry’s voice. She heard him walk away again, but stayed crouched down in front of the grave and began rummaging around in her handbag. Locating Beadle The Bard and a quill, she traced what she could of the name and the symbol onto one of the blank pages at the back of the book. She could make out the first four letters of the surname, P–E-V-E, but then everything after that was a bit of a mess. She wondered if she was wasting her time. She wondered whether she was missing Severus so much that she was going to start making useless links and stupid mistakes in her haste to get back to him. She wanted to be drinking Butterbeer in the Great Hall and stealing furtive glances at the High Table. She wanted to be drinking wine with her mother.

She stood up. As if some higher power had felt and understood her pang of frustration and decided to take pity, she'd taken barely three steps to her left before she saw their names. At the same time, she caught a flicker of movement just beyond the wall surrounding the graveyard, and she spun towards it to find herself staring at the shadowy corner of the church. She bent forward and squinted, though neither action softened the shadows or the increasingly heavily falling snow. She shivered, spooked, but she’d been kind of spooked beforehand, too. She couldn’t shake the thought that, even though she’d agreed with Harry that they needed to come here, it was going to backfire. She also couldn’t shake the thought that, if things did backfire, Severus might not ever have the opportunity to scold her for coming.

She turned back towards the grave, deciding that she couldn’t entirely trust her mind or her eyes and the best thing was to get this all over with. She scrubbed at the headstone with her sleeve to be sure before she called Harry over again. There was no doubt.

“Harry,” she said, and her voice sounded depressed. “They’re here… right here.”

The snow crunched as Harry moved to her side, the hesitation in his footsteps suggesting that he’d picked up from her tone that this was it. She had no idea how he must be feeling. A fleeting image of two identical, white marble gravestones flitted across her mind, except these ones were bare - no names, no dates, no information. She’d had a lot of thoughts about her parents since letting down the shields in her mind, and like a forming scab, each one felt a little easier. But she’d never before had the thought that they might die one day, and she wouldn’t even know. She flinched and shook her head, curbing the burning behind her eyes before it could start. This wasn’t about her.

Harry read the words out loud. He sounded like a disciple trying to interpret the words of an uncovered, ancient scripture.

“Isn’t that a Death Eater idea?” He asked eventually, gesturing lamely at the engraving at the bottom of the stone. “Why is that here?”

He sounded scared, and Hermione did her best to reassure him, not knowing whether anything she could say would actually be very helpful at the moment. “It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry. It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.”

She glanced sideways at Harry’s profile, and could see that her reassurance had fallen flat. She couldn’t blame him. Platitudes about life after death were meaningless if you couldn’t reach out and touch the person you missed. Harry started crying. Hermione sucked in a breath. She’d rarely seen him cry. She reached out to take his hand, and didn’t think he noticed, but held on anyway so that when he did come back out of himself he wouldn’t feel abandoned. At some point, perhaps a few minutes later, he squeezed her palm.

She withdrew her wand and, wordlessly, conjured a wreath of white roses. Harry plucked it out of the air and laid it on the ground in front of the gravestone. She was surprised by the relief she felt at his accepting the gesture – she wanted very, very strongly to be able to do the right thing for him. She followed his lead when he stood, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and began to steer them out of the graveyard.

She wrapped her arm around his waist and leaned into him, which slowed their pace down and made it a little awkward to walk, but felt nice. She decided that she was going to try and initiate more physical closeness between them when they were back on the road, even if they were still lugging around the locket. It was immediately comforting and she felt a little energy return to her. She wondered whether Harry would let her apparate them straight out of the little village, now that they’d found his parents. She wondered whether that would be the smart decision, or whether they should follow through with their plan to track down Bathilda Bagshot and the Sword of Gryffindor since they were here. For a tiny space of time, their mission felt secondary.

That accepting space of time was quickly cut short, however, before they’d even made it out of the graveyard. Just as they reached the stone of the unknown Abbott, Hermione caught another flicker of movement in her periphery. Again, she flinched, and Harry’s arm tightened around her shoulder.

“Harry, stop.”

“What’s wrong?”

He sounded alert, though in an emerging, sluggish way, and she pointed towards a clump of bushes on the far side of the graveyard. “There’s someone there. Someone’s watching us. I can tell. There: over by the bushes.”

She hadn’t consciously told herself to whisper. They stood in silence for a long moment.

“Are you sure,” Harry asked after thirty seconds, warily.

“I saw something move, I could have sworn I did.”

“We look like Muggles,” Harry assured her.

“Muggles who’ve just been laying flowers on your parents’ grave! Harry, I’m sure there’s someone over there!”

Harry was quiet, skeptical, but after another moment the bushes shifted distinctly. She noticed that, in her rising nerves, she’d pulled away from Harry at some point.

“It’s a cat,” He said, though now there was an edge to his calm reply that she suspected he’d forcibly layered on to reassure her, “or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we’d be dead by now. But let’s get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on.”

He shook out the cloak and she stepped close to his side again so that he could wrap it around them. She felt herself calm a little, even if they left tracks of footprints in the snow as they hurried out of the graveyard and back across the square. The streets were quieter but the pub was full and noisy and looked warm. The very same carol that was being prettily chanted inside the church when they’d entered the graveyard was now being yodeled and warbled in a drunk, clashing harmony inside the pub. It crossed her mind to seek refuge first in the church, then in the pub, but she dismissed both ideas. They’d have to remove the cloak in the pub, and if they were going to hide instead of look for Bathilda they may as well just apparate out of the village all together.

“Let’s go this way,” she urged, tugging Harry down a poorly lit street that led them quickly into a residential area. She glanced right and left at the houses as they hurried down the slippery footpath, but everything looked decidedly muggle.

“How are we going to find Bathilda’s house?” She asked, shivering with either cold or nerves or both. Harry was frustratingly quiet. “Harry? What do you think? Harry?”

Still, he didn’t say anything, though after a second he grasped her arm and began to pull her forward at a faster pace. She scuffled a bit as her shoes – the tread worn very thin – slipped a little.

“Harry— ”

“Look . . . “ He interrupted, pointing ahead. “Look at it, Hermione . . . ”

“I don’t . . . oh!” Peering across the badly lit street, she identified the tangled mass of slanting roof and overgrown hedge that Harry was pointing at. They dashed across the road until they were standing outside the caving-in structure of a cottage. The first floor was still standing intact, but half of the second floor was blown in, the edges of the wood and stone noticeably black despite the darkening night. She was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by how much Lily and James Potter’s eerie presences lingered and defined this little town. It seemed more and more impossible that Voldemort would just leave it un-guarded. And for the same reason, more and more impossible that they’d be able to complete their mission without thoroughly investigating it.

“I wonder why nobody’s ever rebuilt it?” She whispered, sickened by the ferocity of the violence implied by the crumbling, deserted building.

“Maybe you can’t rebuild it?” Harry answered, reaching one arm beyond the barrier of the cloak and wrapping his hand around the rusted gate. It squeaked. “Maybe it’s like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can’t repair the damage?”

“You’re not going to go inside?” Hermione asked in a high-pitched, anxious voice, “It looks unsafe, it might— oh, Harry, look!”

She startled as a sign suddenly pushed itself out of the overgrown grass at their feet, soil and nettle cascading off it into the snow. In clear, golden letters, the sign read,

The words were surrounded by graffiti – and as Hermione peered closer she could make out scrawled handwriting, some of it simply names and signatures, some of it longer messages. In some places, the graffiti was so thick it was unreadable. The first thing that struck her was that it gave the sign a dirty, rushed look.

“They shouldn’t have written on the sign!” She muttered, annoyed.

“It’s brilliant,” Harry replied, and she glanced over at him to see him smiling for the first time since they’d apparated in. “I’m glad they did. I…”

And then he broke off suddenly, frowning. Hermione turned, following his gaze back down the way they’d come. She’d momentarily let her guard down given the surprise and intrigue of the sign, and so it was all the more chilling to see a small, hunched figure shuffling down the road towards them. She held her breath, and if the lack of white puffs in front of Harry’s nose was any indication, so did he. The old woman – Hermione was pretty sure it was a woman – slipped and stumbled on the ice as she crept towards them. She was walking right in the center of the road, and perhaps that, more than anything else, was what gave Hermione an itchy, uncomfortable feeling. The woman stopped directly opposite them, peering straight in their direction. Hermione’s eyes widened and she glanced wordlessly, worriedly, at Harry.

They were still under the cloak. Hermione wished that a car might come speeding along the road, forcing the lady to move, in order to break whatever staring contest had begun. She disliked herself for the thought. And then, to her horror, an arm wormed its way out from the multiple shawls the woman had wrapped around herself and beckoned directly at them.

Hermione felt Harry stiffen beside her. She leaned up towards him, whispering, “How does she know?”

He shook his head. The woman beckoned again. Hermione experienced a pattern of thought – should they hide, should they stay, should they apparate out – almost exactly the same as the ones she’d thought back in the town square, except all more urgent and harder to rationally weigh up. Then without warning Harry stepped forward and addressed the woman, making Hermione jump.

“Are you Bathilda?”

The woman nodded. Hermione and Harry exchanged a look, twin questions in both of their eyes. Hermione wanted to say ‘no’. The safest answer. But they had come to Godric’s Hollow to find Bathilda. They couldn’t turn away because they’d discovered her hunched, silent, and slightly creepy. Hermione nodded, and Harry’s eyes flickered with resolute respect. As one, and without removing the cloak, they stepped off the curb and onto the road. As soon as they started to move Bathilda turned, and then they were following her. The house she led them to was only four doors down.

Hermione didn’t take her eyes off the over pile of shawls and scarves as Bathilda pulled a set of keys out from the folds, which tinkled and clicked as she shimmied the lock. Hermione didn’t like that the woman hadn’t said anything yet. She couldn’t imagine Professor Dumbledore giving the sword to this morose, curious, almost lifeless figure. It seemed at odds with his way.

Bathilda stepped aside to allow them in, and Hermione followed Harry, who didn’t miss a beat, pulling the cloak from around their shoulders as he stepped into the house. She kept her eyes trained on Bathilda as she crossed the threshold, and for the first time caught a glimpse of the witch’s wrinkled face, bone white skin mottled with spots and red-rimmed eyes that bulged from her head. The eyes made Hermione panic.

Just for a second, she was back in the Ministry with Merope Gaunt, and in that second the last thing in the world she wanted to do was step into Bathilda Bagshot’s house. But Harry was already lingering in the hall and she had to go where Harry went, so she tore her attention away from those eyes and hurried to his side. He nodded at her, but his focus was on Bathilda, who had closed the door and was unwrapping a threadbare, red shawl from around her head. The action was a little reassuring, somehow.

“Bathilda?” Harry asked.

Bathilda nodded again – still no words – and hobbled past them, brushing so close that Hermione was almost knocked off balance, surprised by the sturdy weight of the woman. As they came into contact – Bathilda’s shoulder knocking into Hermione’s arm – Hermione felt a familiar recoiling feeling in the base of her skull. For a moment, she didn’t think much of it. The sensation was no less unpleasant than she’d first experienced it in the Ministry, but it had become normal. But as she watched Bathilda shuffle out of sight into the next room, she did a mental double take when she realized that Harry was wearing the locket. She generally didn’t feel the recoiling unless she was touching the locket itself.

“Harry, I’m not sure about this,” she warned, as he made a motion to follow after Bathilda.

“Look at the size of her,” Harry replied, “I think we could overpower her if we had to. Listen, I should have told you, I knew she wasn’t all there. Muriel called her ‘gaga’.’”

Hermione pursed her lips, annoyed that he’d missed out this detail. Not that it really mattered. Just that she didn’t feel prepared for this turn of events. What had she expected? That Bathilda would take one look at them, smile, and hand them over the sword? Of course she hadn’t expected that. But she hadn’t expected to feel so clammy either.

“Come!”

Hermione jumped at the coarse, gravelly word shouted from the room Bathilda had disappeared into. It was a low voice, with a hissing quality to it, as if the witch was struggling to inject air into her words.

“It’s okay,” Harry assured, and tapped her arm as he brushed past her into the sitting room. Bathilda was struggling to light a candle, and Hermione hoped that it was scented. The sitting room had a kind of meaty, fungal smell to it.

“Let me do that,” Harry said, reaching out and taking the matches from Bathilda. Hermione frowned, wondering why the woman hadn’t used her wand. She watched Bathilda watch Harry make a circle of the room, lighting the various candles perched on windowsills and wooden shelves. He finished his mission at a set of photo frames sitting on a chest of drawers on the far side of the room, leaning down and inspecting them while Bathilda shuffled over to the fireplace, where she once again opted to try and stoke a fire without magic. Hermione watched her for a full minute before moving to help.

“Let me try,” she insisted, and took another box of matches from Bathilda’s pale, shaking hands. “It is rather cold in here, isn’t it? Do you have something against using insulating charms?”

She tried to keep her voice light and conversational. She wanted the reassurance of hearing Bathilda speak properly, say anything welcoming or friendly. Something that an old lady would say. Something someone who worked for the Order would say. There was no response, except for bulging eyes watching her, unblinking. Hermione had to look away from them, concentrated on the fire.

“Mrs—Miss—Bagshot?” Harry eventually asked. “Who is this? Miss Bagshot?”

Hermione heard Bathilda shuffle over to Harry. Maybe she’d talk to him.

“Who is this person?”

Hermione, who hadn’t actually been trying that hard with the fire, set the box of matches on the mantle and turned to watch the pair.

“Do you know who this is? This man? Do you know him? What’s he called?” Harry was now speaking slowly, deliberately, loudly, enunciating like one might for an ancient, deafening aunt. “Who is this man?”

Hermione shook her head. “Harry, what are you doing?”

He looked up at her excitedly. “This picture, Hermione, it’s the thief, the thief who stole from Gregorovitch! Please!” He returned his attention to Bathilda. “Who is this?”

Hermione could see Harry getting a little impatient, but she herself was getting downright annoyed. This was not okay.

“Why did you ask us to come with you, Mrs—Miss— Bagshot?” She asked, raising her own voice out of frustration, rather than with the aim of being heard. She had a feeling that Bathilda wasn’t struggling to hear them. Something about her eyes. “Was there something you wanted to tell us?”

Bathilda didn’t acknowledge either question, and it struck Hermione that the woman hadn’t properly acknowledged her once, only Harry. In keeping with this suspicion, Bathilda gestured at Harry, jerking her head towards the door.

“You want us to leave?” Harry asked. “Oh right… Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her.”

“All right,” Hermione agreed testily, folding her arms. “Let’s go.”

Hermione moved towards the door, but an abrupt movement from Bathilda stopped her – the woman was shaking her head, pointing first at Harry and then herself.

“She wants me to go with her, alone.” Harry interpreted, and Hermione grit her teeth.

“Why?” She demanded, no longer holding back the annoyance from her voice.

Harry shrugged. “Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only me?”

Hermione was having trouble believing that even Dumbledore would make this step so cryptic and difficult. “Do you really think she knows who you are?”

“Yes,” said Harry, frowning and watching Bathilda carefully. “I think she does.”

Hermione pursed her lips, glaring at the back of Bathilda’s head. “Well, okay then, but be quick, Harry.”

Perhaps if Harry distracted Bathilda, just for a few minutes, it would give Hermione the chance to poke around and get a better sense of the house and the witch unselfconsciously.

Harry nodded at the hunched figure before him, who was gazing up at him in an almost worship-like fashion. “Lead the way.”

Hermione took a step back and watched them trail out of the room, slowly, formally, a religious procession. Harry shot her a reassuring smile, which failed. She stood stock still, listening, until the stairs stopped creaking and she noticed her jaw beginning to ache. Unclenching her teeth, she moved towards the small bookcase on the far wall.

As much as it disturbed her, she tried to picture Bathilda's eyes. They were bulging and blood-shot, but not glazed over like she would expect from someone under the influence of the imperious. She had expected Bathilda to be the chatty type, simply because the limited knowledge she had of the woman included that she’d given an interview to Rita Skeeter about the Dumbledore family. She supposed Skeeter didn’t really need an overly chatty subject to produce a gossipy article – she could’ve and probably had made half of her report up. But none of it sat right. The recoiling feeling, the lack of magic, the silence, the attention solely fixed on Harry, the eyes. Hermione brought her hand up to pinch the locket around her neck for some sense of security.

Scanning the bookcase unconsciously, her eyes caught on a familiar word, and she reached out to hook her finger over the spine of a thick, purple book. She pulled it free of its neighbouring volumes, a satisfying and recognizable give, and inspected the cover. The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. Rita Skeeter. Hermione pulled a face, and tucked the book carefully into her handbag.

She continued to poke around the room, opening the drawers of a cabinet by the fireplace – quills, a number of fairly decent sketches, a notebook – and shuffling through the content of a set of shelves – wine bottles, a candle, a vial of blood replenishing potion, what looked like a collection of rat skulls. Nothing so truly out of the ordinary as to confirm the suspicious feeling in her gut.

It couldn’t have been more than two minutes but she was no longer comfortable with being separated from Harry. If Bathilda wanted to help them, she would need to be a bit more lenient. Hermione tiptoed out of the room in search of the stairs. She was going to creep up them and listen in on whatever was happening, like the Slytherin she was increasingly comfortable being. She regretted not sending Severus a message. It had been a decision swayed too much by their relationship and her care for his feelings and position, not enough by practicality. Or perhaps the opposite. Perhaps in an attempt to avoid impartiality she’d been overly practical.

She was half way up a winding staircase when she heard a heavy thump – two heavy thumbs – and a muffled, male, alarmed voice.

“Harry?” She called out, her wand drawn before she noticed herself reaching for it.

The response was another heavy thump, a little louder. Hermione abandoned stealth for speed, darting up the remainder of the stairs, her heartrate jumping from cautious to urgent in the space of a second. She reached the landing and looked frantically left and right – she was standing in the middle of a long hall with at least three doors on either side. She started left and then almost immediately swerved right at the sound of another, almost inaudible, thump.

Noticing that the door right at the end of the hall was slightly ajar, she burst through. Either because she was overly used to things going horribly, unexpectedly wrong, or perhaps because she was already so unnerved by the whole situation, the sight of a massive snake wrapped around Harry’s torso wasn’t enough to freeze her. The opposite, in fact – she hardly needed to think as she directed her wand at a broad, scaly flank.

“Confringo!” She yelled, a blue, fiery bolt shooting out of her wand and smacking into the snake.

She wasn’t able to tell whether the curse broke through the snake’s hide, because it unfurled itself from Harry in a sharp, writhing mass, throwing itself onto the floor with the force of a felled tree. Before Hermione had time to process anything else it was throwing itself at her, two fangs catching the light of something somewhere as its enormous head filled her view. It was a very particular, almost childlike kind of fear that squeezed Hermione’s chest – snake, limbless, slithering, venomous, suffocating, one long, scaly muscle, big enough to swallow her whole.

She shrieked and dived to the side, landing on her elbow, and somewhere a window shattered, perhaps by her first spell or by her second. These things all happened practically simultaneously, but her brain processed them in this order – the flying snake, throwing herself aside, a window shattering, casting another Confringo curse.

The snake was no longer on her side of the room. Her second spell had thrown it back towards Harry, or perhaps it had made this move independently. Nagini, she thought, even though this wasn’t immediately important.

“He’s coming! Hermione, he’s coming!”

He? Hermione thought, and then, Voldemort. She shot another curse at the snake and tried to use the chaos that followed – smashing crockery and splintering wood – to get to his side. She almost tripped up on a coil, and the magic in her head recoiled so violently she had to bring one hand up to clutch at a bed post in order to steady herself. The snake seemed to have doubled in size since she entered, something she knew was realistically unlikely, but that was hard to disprove. It spasmed and thrashed.

Harry leapt across the bed, grabbing onto her sleeve and pulling her over to his side with a strength that hurt. She shrieked – an unintentional sound prompted by the feeling of her arm twisting in her socket. But she slid off the side of the bed just as the snake made another pointed move in their direction, its fangs sinking into the mattress where her calf had been a second before. Harry had pressed one palm against his forehead, but with the hand still wrapped into her sleeve began pulling her backwards. They stumbled over an upturned roll of carpet and into a dresser as the snake reared again.

“Confringo!” She shouted, another bolt shooting out of her wand in the general direction of the snake, just missing, and instead rebounding off a mirror – which shattered – and shooting back towards them. They both twisted out of its path, though she heard Harry curse as the spell whizzed past them. Before she had time to process this – whether Harry was hit or where the snake was and whether that was Harry’s wand lying broken in two on the mattress or just a splintered piece of the headboard – someone had grabbed onto her and she was being dragged towards the window. On a thoughtless instinct, she reached out and snatched up the broken stick, not Harry’s wand, please not Harry’s wand, and then Harry threw them out the window.

She screamed, her stomach lurching with the unexpected weightlessness that came with losing the floor. The back of her calf smacked into the window ledge as they went over, together, and she was trying to orient herself mid-fall in order to avoid smashing her head against the stone wall of the cottage. For a millisecond she thought she caught sight of the window again. A pale, twisted, fuming face was leaning out towards them. And then she and Harry were twisting into a combined knot.

She’d squeezed her eyes shut at some point and she didn’t open them until she was very, very sure that the ground was back under her. This wasn’t difficult. It was a wet, muddy, cold ground – all of this had completely soaked through her outer and inner layers before she pushed herself into a sitting position with a small groaning. They were in a marsh, on the edge of a forest. Harry was lying in the mud beside her, for all appearances unconscious, though his eyelids were flickering rapidly.

All she wanted to do was lie back down and fall asleep, but she stretched out and opened her handbag – thankfully still secured to her wrist – and located a vial of calming draught. She tried to wake Harry for five minutes, but although he groaned and shook his head a fair amount, he remained incognizant. She used her wand to heal a few light cuts on his arms and hands – glass, perhaps – and then went about setting up the tent and casting their wards. It was strange to carry out the same routine – the one she’d performed every evening since leaving Grimmauld Place – mere moments after definitely catching a glimpse of Voldemort’s actual face. But she wasn’t sure what else to do, and they needed shelter.

Her whole body ached – from her muscles to what felt like the tissue of her brain. In the end, she had to levitate Harry onto a mattress. She would freak out if he wasn’t conscious by sunrise. She recognized his muffled mutters and the deep frown line splitting his forehead as the kind of dream-state he entered when he was confusing his thoughts with those of Voldemort. It happened a couple of times a month. He never admitted this to her when he woke up, but she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t want to think about why he might’ve slipped into that state now, and how close they’d just come to meeting Voldemort in the flesh.

She was feeling rather numb. She tried to muster the wherewithal to be stunned by the events of the night, but the adrenaline had worn off and taken with it every scrap of energy she might have used to process the attack. The worst part of her evening, however, was when she ducked quickly out of the tent to look for a mitten she thought must have fallen out of her pocket when they landed, and instead found one half of Harry’s wand sticking up out of the mud. The second half was attached by a sliver of wood, like a spare limb dangling from a tendon. She cleaned it, wrapped it up in her warmest scarf, and tucked it under her pillow, wracked with guilt.

An hour after arrival she fell into bed. A very loud voice in her head was niggling at her to message Severus. He was going to be angry – or perhaps hurt, or disappointed – that she hadn’t told him about their trip. And he was going to find out, sooner or later, through Voldemort himself, she suspected. If he hadn’t already.

Giving into the sleep she could very much feel just behind her eyes was the only way she could think to avoid thoughts about how much she was going to disclose to him about what had happened, and about Christmas Eve and what her parents might be doing to celebrate, and whether Ron was alone, and what she was going to do if Harry didn’t pull himself out of whatever dreamlike state he had slipped into.

She was going to contact Severus first thing in the morning – after sleeping, so that she didn’t start crying mid-message, and so that her head cleared itself enough for her to decide how to string the words together.

26th December – In 1878, a witch in Hungary was arrested and imprisoned for five years for attempting to create a magical quill that transcribed not just words but ‘intent,’ despite a then two hundred year old law spanning Eastern Europe that prevented experimentation with clairvoyant-based magic, (Jan Anderle, 1928).

Chapter Text

26th December – In 1878, a witch in Hungary was arrested and imprisoned for five years for attempting to create a magical quill that transcribed not just words but ‘intent,’ despite a then two hundred year old law spanning Eastern Europe that prevented new experimentation with clairvoyant-based magic, (Jan Anderle, 1928).

Severus crossed into the Headmaster's quarters, perhaps strangely, the calmest he had felt in months. He had woken, fitfully and clammy, in the very early hours of the morning, his pendant warm and glowing against the skin of his chest. At opening the pendant, the dregs of some nightmare and the content of Hermione's message had combined and settled in his stomach like dread for a moment. Both of these things, however, had then quickly dissipated. As he'd dressed, his dominant state had settled into one of relief.

The first time she had mentioned Godrics's Hollow, his mind had become alert, and perhaps it had never quite calmed down. It hadn't just been about that location – it was the product of months of nothing but slivers of messages in which her situation seemed to become increasingly cold, distant, and desperate. The past few weeks had seemed somewhat better. She’d sounded lighter and he’d regained the ability to feel her magic, undulating in the depths of his mind. But not knowing why he’d lost that ability in the first place, why it had returned, the persistent recoiling headache that struck and lasted for days at a time. It grated. It was a relief, therefore, that things had come to such a point. There wasn't a question any longer.

As always, the portraits tittered as he shut the door behind him.

“Enough.” He established, and the voices quietened, either chastised or intrigued as he waved a dismissing hand at Albus’ frame. He was not here for advice or to negotiate. “Enough.”

He repeated himself and then closed his eyes, stilling. He was the edge of a fraying sleeve. He was the last leaf clinging to the Whomping Willow. He was the calmest he had been in months.

“Enough of what, Severus?”

“Enough of this non-intervention.” He decided, discovering his words as he spoke them. “Tell me where Potter is.”

He directed this at Nigellus, having determined that a conversation with Albus was unnecessary.

“What happened to plausible deniability?” Nigellus crooned, clearly pleased to be directly singled out. His nasal, high voice overlapped with Albus’ cooler one.

“What has happened?”

Severus tuned the latter out. “Enough of plausible deniability.”

“Are you quite sure? You were very clear. ‘Do not tell me where they are.’” Nigellus recalled mockingly.

He was going to bask in this attention, attempt to draw it out, Severus could tell. Initially indignant at being lugged around in the dark depths of Hermione’s bag, he had developed a sort of all-important air at periodically knowing where the golden trio was. Severus, aware that any knowledge he had on Potter’s whereabouts left the boy potentially vulnerable, had resolved to ignore the portrait and had forbidden him to disclose any information pertinent to Potter’s mission to the other Headmasters. Nigellus was bitter.

“I will have your canvas doused in ridge-back bile–” Severus began to snarl, his calm momentarily glitching, and Nigellus held up a moth-bitten hand.

“All right! I concede. Let me see what I can find–” he pushed himself to his feet and minced out of his frame, muttering all the while, “though she’s probably shoved me under the bed, the ungrateful twat. I cannot be called upon like some common–”

“Severus!”

This was not the first repetition of his name. Severus swiveled on his heel, raising a cool eyebrow at Albus. A conversation with the wizard was not necessary but perhaps it would distract him from the restlessness that came with having to wait.

“Albus.”

“Is Harry in trouble?”

“Did you tell him to go to Godric’s Hollow?” Severus asked instead, genuinely curious. Albus straightened in his chair.

“Of course not.”

“Did you explicitly tell him to avoid it?”

“I did not.”

“The boy is sentimental, exhausted, vulnerable, headstrong, reckless–” Severus began listing off traits, spelling out an obvious equation, the clasped hands behind his back tightening with each pointed word.

“But he is not stupid.”

“He is desperate. How could he not be. How many months has he been walking without hope?”

Severus had wanted to have this argument for a while, and yet now that he was saying the words he found that there was no argument in them. He didn’t need a conflict, he was calm and relieved and very much struggling to sustain the patience required to keep his eyes trained on Albus rather than Nigellus' empty portrait. On a level, he was fascinated by the reality of those opposing states – calm and impatient.

“What do you plan to do?”

“Deliver the sword.” Severus answered without hesitation. It was the only practical thing he could think of. He was pleased that he had a practical excuse to do what he would have done anyway. “It is important to their ultimate goal, yes? Otherwise you wouldn't have had me swap the original for a fake.”

Albus nodded slowly, looking distracted. “I believe it will be important, at some point.”

“Splendid.”

“Though not, perhaps, now. Not before they need it, lest they lose it.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. Albus was angling for more detail. The fine features of the older man's painted face were smoothed over with a sort of apathy. The cherry expression that, if not obvious always at least showed in lines around the eyes, had almost disappeared. The prolonged, curious silence broke when Albus’ sharp eyes flicked over to meet Severus’, and the lines guiltily, half-heartedly winced.

“I had hoped he wouldn't go there.” The older wizard admitted, his voice soft, perhaps even self-deprecating.

Severus knew about the gray past – the ‘greater good’, the lover, and the sister – and he tilted his head to the side, stepping out of his impatience for a moment to be intrigued. He had often suspected that Albus’ dicey adolescence had saved his own life; whatever the wizard had learned about himself and his morals in his early years was what had kept him from killing or incarcerating Severus on the spot on that cliff. Severus always had the impression that Albus had come to terms with his morally compromised youth. But he became unsure, now. He was surprised that Albus would care so much about Potter's opinion.

Slowly, weighing his words, Severus suggested, “Then you should have warned him against it explicitly. I thought you knew the boy.”

“I try not to think of the place.” Albus waved a hand, dismissive, hiding his vulnerability extremely well. Severus, however, was a spy by trade. He then added, less smoothly. “Is Harry hurt?”

“His wand is broken.”

“Ahhh. Ah. A painful loss.”

Severus stared at the wizard. He looked frail, as if he truly had been reduced purely to canvas, oil, and paint. Severus’ lips cracked apart in preparation for a pointed remark about how any resentment Potter might feel at discovering Albus’ past politics could have been avoided by telling the boy, by being open and transparent. In the end he didn't say this.

“Headmaster!” Severus whisked around, the pace of his heart picking up again. Nigellus had returned to his portrait, one hand wrapped around the edge of his chair, humming with the power of knowledge. “They are camping in the Forest of Dean! The Mudblood— ”

“Do not use that word!” Severus snapped, before he had properly weighed up whether or not the admonishment would discourage Nigellus’ current, uncharacteristic helpfulness.

Nigellus scowled and bared his teeth in distaste, though carried on. “— the Granger girl, then, mentioned the place as she opened her bag and I heard her!”

“Good. Very good!” Albus announced from behind Severus’ back, sounding slightly more animated than he ever had in portrait form. “Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget that it must be taken under conditions of need and valor— and he must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read Harry’s mind and see you acting for him— ”

“I know,” Severus interrupted. It was less complicated to have Albus’ – somewhat unexpected – enthusiastic support, but it was not something he needed in this instance. He itched, the reality of doing something slightly bewildering.

He crossed the room swiftly and swung Albus’ portrait aside, reaching into the exposed cavity and removing the sword of Gryffindor. The metal handle was faintly warm, as if he had been handed it by another living body. He clicked the portrait back into place and waved his hand towards the desk, a thick traveling cloak hitching up off the back of the chair and flying towards him.

“And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?” He asked, wondering whether Albus’ sudden enthusiasm and momentary emotional vulnerability might make him any more lenient than usual in regards to the mystery surrounding Potter’s mission.

“No, I don’t think so,” Albus replied, though he sounded marginally less sure than usual. Severus hadn’t expected anything, really. Old habits die hard. Old habits did die and in death lost the ability to mature. “He will know what to do with it. And Severus, be very careful, they may not take kindly to your appearance after George Weasley’s mishap— ”

“Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he dismissed as he swept towards the door, pointedly articulating the wizard’s last name. “I have a plan.”

Chapter Text

26th December – In 1878, a witch in Hungary was arrested and imprisoned for five years for attempting to create a magical quill that transcribed not just words but ‘intent,’ despite a then two hundred year old law spanning Eastern Europe that prevented new experimentation with clairvoyant-based magic, (Jan Anderle, 1928).

Hermione was having trouble sleeping. It was weird to hear three sets of breathing in the tent again. She was angry – she wasn’t going to let Ron off the hook just because he’d saved Harry’s life – and cold – having had such a close brush with Voldemort, she and Harry hadn’t been taking the risk of lighting fires since Godric’s Hollow – and strange – Ron’s sudden appearance was warping time for her somewhat. It was as if the past month and a bit hadn’t happened, yet at the same time seeing him again highlighted just how much empty, useless time she and Harry had trudged through.

She supposed it wasn’t entirely useless. For the past two or so hours, at least, there was one less horcrux in the world than when they’d set out. After Harry and Ron had slipped into bed she’d dug around in her bag and secured the ugly, broken locket around her neck. She wasn’t sure why. She was embarrassed by the urge – she was definitely going to remove and return it to her bag before the sun and the boys rose. Partly she was just processing her disbelief that the horror of wearing it, of feeling it, was over. Partly she was just feeling wholly wretched, and it was alarming not being able to blame such a strong feeling on the locket, given that Ron was back.

She hadn’t expected the boys to sleep, but they were breathing slowly and heavily. She couldn’t understand how they could sleep. Ron was back. They’d destroyed a horcrux. Somehow she still felt awful. She couldn’t quite unlock the relief and joy she could sense trapped just beneath the surface of her mood. She felt like she was hovering. Severus hadn’t responded to her, even though she’d sent him that awful, guilty message earlier that morning, hours ago. Who had put the sword in the lake? It could only have been him. So he’d been close. His actual person in the same forest as her. Why–

She wasn’t going to think that, and disappoint herself. She did fall asleep, eventually, because she was incredibly exhausted.

She woke up some amount of time later – not that long. It was such an abrupt shift from sleeping to wakefulness that she was for a moment confused. She hadn’t been dreaming. She’d been so deeply asleep, in fact, that she felt sticky and weighted down. Disoriented, she peered over at the boys, but they were still. She didn’t think there’d been a noise.

It had been so long since she’d felt anything good tug at the back of her mind. It took her two seconds to notice it, and when she did her stomach plummeted and the stickiness fell away. She had tossed the covers aside and was standing beside her bed before she’d told her body to move. She started towards the entrance to the tent and then stopped, successive, opposite movements that almost tripped her up. She closed her eyes and tried to make sure that what she was feeling was real–

Violet sky. Rumbling. When it’s about to storm but the air is warm, and there are scented droplets hanging in it.

She opened her eyes and her hands were shaking as she reached for the woolen jumper – Harry’s, she suspected – hanging over the chair in the middle of the tent and it took her two tries to get it over her head. She was already wearing two pairs of socks, which made slipping on her shoes a little difficult, but she was loath to remove items of clothing. Before she left, partly to give herself a second to calm down and partly because time felt like it’d frozen, she tossed her duvet over Ron and her sheet over Harry, and then she crept out of the tent.

It was freezing outside. It was hard to compute how cold it was. She desperately didn’t want to be hopeful, but the air in front of her nose exposed her slightly faster than normal breath. Once or twice in the past she’d woken up thinking she could feel the tug of his magic in her head, only to gradually recognize that she’d been imagining it. But the feeling hadn’t faded yet, and it had to make sense because who else would have delivered the sword.

She hovered on the inner perimeter of the wards, feeling the layers of invisible, magical protection ripple almost imperceptibly at the tip of her nose. An alarm bell – an automatic one – went off in her head at the idea of stepping beyond, and the fingers of her wand hand tingled. She glanced back at the tent. Harry, rightly, still hadn’t returned her wand to her after she’d threatened to use it on Ron. It was lying under his bed. But if she snuck back in she risked waking the boys, and then she wouldn’t be able to follow the thread in her mind.

She took one step beyond the barrier, and realized that the trees were going to be too thick for her to see, anyway. She cursed, twice, and turned around. She held her breath all the way through tiptoeing into the tent, freeing her wand from where Harry had snuggly wrapped it in one of his shirts, and then creeping out again. This time she didn’t hesitate to cross beyond the wards, her heart-rate urgent. Was she taking too long? What if he’d only had a few minutes? She felt like the feeling in the base of her skull had faded – for a moment she couldn’t feel it at all – and she panicked.

“Lumos!”

She wasn’t quite sure where to go, but on a whim she hurried through the trees in the direction of the lake where Harry had found the sword hours before. The snow crunched under her feet and soaked into her shoes and the hem of her pajama pants. The sound of her breath was loud in her ears, and she couldn’t tell whether this was because her perception had become distorted and internal – narrow focused – or because the night was a quiet, breezeless one.

At one point she had the sudden, unprovoked thought that she might be lost. She stopped, huffing a high, stressed sound and had to cast a four-point spell in order to re-orient herself North. She hadn’t been lost. It felt like hours before she broke out of the tree line, two meters from the lake. There seemed to be no one else there.

Tentatively, she approached the edge. The top of the lake was mostly frozen over, like it had been yesterday evening when she came looking for fish, except for a rather large hole in the center where she assumed Harry had jumped in. Bits of ice floated in the exposed water. She glanced around anxiously, biting her lip, the fingers of her left hand curling into a fist and her right curling tighter around her wand. Her head was thrumming with cold and perhaps quite a bit of nerves and she’d lost the feeling of his magic. She tried to reason away the nerves. Nerves that he wouldn't show up, and also, to her dismay, nerves that he would.

She wondered whether she should close her eyes and try to meditate. But then if he was here she wouldn’t see him. But she was standing out in the open so surely he’d see her. She tried to remember whether he was the kind of person who would come to her before she spotted him. She knew she used to be the kind of person who would, but she'd changed a lot. Her stomach twisted. Nerves that he would.

She stood on the edge of the lake for about five minutes, watching the moon ripple in the water and periodically scanning the dark tree line, and slowly she began to calm. Her thoughts became less nonsensical. She began to reason with herself – if he had come and gone without seeking her out, or if she’d missed him, she was still going to be able to get up in the morning and carry on with the mission. She missed him, and sometimes it hurt so badly that the feeling of a ghost squeezing her chest would follow her around all day, making it hard to catch her breath on long walks or summon the energy to care about how hungry she was. But it was not debilitating. Ron was back, and they had destroyed a horcrux. There would be a logical reason for his being or not being here.

She made sure that she was emotionally prepared to return alone before she turned back around. He was not lurking in the trees behind her. She accepted this, and then began to pick her way through the snow towards the tent. She was so cold now that her whole body was buzzing as if someone were conducting a weak electric current down her spine. Her hair caught on a low twig as she re-entered the forest, and she reached up to yank it back into place.

“Hermione.”

Her heart leapt into her throat and she spun back around. Severus was striding towards her, looking, and having said her name, as if he were threateningly singling her out in a corridor at Hogwarts. She started crying. The moonlight dully illuminating the clearing gave his black hair and coat definition apart from the backdrop of forest. Seeing him was a quick, strong shock. She remembered every second of missing him since Professor Dumbledore had died, and the alleviation of that feeling was frightening to anticipate.

She stood motionless, the tears burning divits into her frozen face, until he was barely three steps away and then she startled herself, and perhaps him too, by leaping forward with her arms outstretched. He managed, impressively, to unfurl his cloak in time to swathe her in it as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her nose into his throat. He smelled the same as she remembered, and he radiated warmth.

Exactly six times in the past month she'd said to herself, ‘don’t forget how lovely it is to discover that he’s warm when he touches you– it’s like being in a cocoon’.

She was trying to suppress the sobs bubbling up from her throat, but this only resulted in hiccups and shuddering shoulders. The arm wrapped around her waist was squeezing her just as tightly as she suspected she was squeezing him, and the hand in her hair was slowly clenching and unclenching.

He started rocking slightly from side to side, as if he were soothing an infant, but she didn’t protest. It was soothing. It helped her not to be overwhelmed by the moment, by getting in her head. She was incredibly impatient to hear his voice properly. When her shoulders stopped shaking, the arm around her waist loosened enough that she slipped down the inch he’d been holding her up, and they both took this as the cue to pull back.

She smiled, and blinked, and two new tears slipped over her cheeks. He looked more gaunt than she remembered. Not overly – not in a way she would’ve noticed if she’d seen him everyday, but different from the image she’d been holding in her mind for the past few months. Without looking away she brought her hand to his stomach and curled two fingers into a gap between two of the buttons of his waistcoat. She couldn’t actually believe she was seeing him.

She stood, looking up at his face, as he used his thumbs to carefully catch the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. He brushed a speck of something from her forehead and then pressed the warm backs of his fingers against her freezing cheeks and let the heat pass into her skin. He took her chin between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger and squeezed gently, and then drew stray strands of hair out of her eyes and tucked it all behind her ears.

Hermione stared at him, slightly disbelievingly and grateful for the repetitive touch, all the better to convince her that this wasn't a very well constructed dream. Having him fuss over her, after months of travel – of barely even giving a thought to brushing her hair or scrubbing the dirt under nails knowing it would just reappear within minutes – was an unexpected pleasure that choked her up.

“I had wondered whether you would be more agitated at seeing me after our last proper meeting.” He murmured, his voice maybe roughened.

Hermione waited for the flush of happiness at hearing his voice to pass before actually processing the words themselves. When she did, she exhaled heavily.

It felt odd to reference Professor Dumbledore’s death. It seemed so very long ago, both relevant and irrelevant. She resented that they had spent all the following months separate, because if things had been different, she knew she would’ve forgiven him in every way by now. Because there wasn’t any proper reason not to – it had been planned, he’d made a judgement to keep it from her, and that hurt. She might not have agreed with it, but she understood his position.

Instead, however, it had been half a year and this was the first time she was seeing him, the first opportunity they’d had to stand together with it in the surrounding air. She was feeling both lacking and complete forgiveness in a tiring-to-interpret mix.

“Angry at you?” She asked, and he confirmed this with his eyes. “A month or two ago I would've thought so too. But I got to the point of missing you too much.”

The corner of Severus’ mouth ticked, but she struggled to interpret the expression as either upset or relieved. Was that because it was a new expression, born of new circumstances, or because she’d become worse at knowing him? She bit the inside of her cheek anxiously, and looked down at his collar.

“But…” she asked, after a moment, remembering that she was hurt. “...why didn’t you tell me?”

Severus was quiet. She listened to him breathing, and the rustling sound of his hands dropping from her hair. She curled her fingers tighter into his waistcoat, trying to communicate the forgiveness and the lack of forgiveness together. When he spoke, Hermione was surprised at how steady his voice was. He sounded hesitant, but also very calm. Far calmer than she felt.

“If Potter ever discovered that you knew Albus intended to die, and kept this a secret from him, I wondered whether he would find it difficult to forgive you.”

“That’s why?” She whispered. Upset, because he was right. Harry would have forgiven her, but only after a lot of time. Severus, she thought, had sheltered her from becoming him – the withholder and betrayer, rather than the betrayed. “And if that wasn’t a factor for some reason, you would’ve told me?”

“I would like to hope so,” Severus said, a frown audible in his voice. “I was also, in some ways, avoiding the task by not admitting it aloud. And it is difficult to break free from the habit of secrecy. But I do trust you.”

Hermione nodded. She had reached a place of full forgiveness far more easily than she’d expected, which was a softening feeling. “It still hurt. For a second I… doubted.”

“I’m sorry, Hermione.”

She shook her head, regretting her last sentence. It hadn’t been necessary.

She realized, during the following silence, that her old shields were up. The ones she’d been so practiced using at Hogwarts that raising and dropping them had once become like a second language. She'd barely thought about the connection for months – the idea of ruminating on their shared magic had seemed pointless, to her, when she knew it'd only make her sulky and sad. Perhaps that’s why she was having difficulty sensing his magic after that initial, unexpected flare.

She could still hear her heart thudding in her ears. She’d stopped crying but hadn’t seemed to have otherwise calmed down. Dropping her shields – seeing if she even could anymore – felt like playing with fire. She could feel her head struggling to keep up with the prolonged adrenaline rush. She wasn’t doing this reunion right.

“Hermione?”

Her fingers tightened in his waistcoat, and she curled her lip frustratedly at the third button down. “I’m struggling.”

“So am I.” He replied, a disembodied voice somewhere above her.

Whether or not he had intended it – he probably had – the admission helped. She met his eyes and curled her lip again, this time in a more optimistic smile. She opened her mouth to start forming a request, but he seemed to anticipate it by leaning in and kissing her. A purely joyful grin split her face – a rapid change – and for a moment teeth clashed, before she pressed herself against him and kissed back.

She felt like breaking away and skipping, and she felt like shuffling them back until they fell through the hole in the ice on the lake, sinking to the bottom where it would be so terminally cold that temperature would cease and so dark that they’d have no choice but to be suspended in only this sensation. The tips of his thumbs against the corners of her eyes were frosty, but she could feel her cheeks redden with warmth under his palms. She wanted to hear him groan so she sucked on his tongue – he didn’t, but he exhaled heavily and took a step closer, the toe of his shoe tapping hers and his hands tilting her head further back. She wrapped her hands into his hair, which was softer than she remembered, and giddily allowed him to draw her tongue into his mouth instead.

He pulled away first, his hands dropping to her shoulders and squeezing. She bobbed up to recapture his lips and missed, finding the left side of his chin instead. So she kissed his left cheek and his jaw, his right cheek twice, the bridge of his nose, his right cheekbone, perhaps too fast and too close to his eye because he flinched. She laughed, pressing her cheek against his, and then lowered down, excited about the familiar burning feeling in her calves. She couldn’t stop smiling now. Whatever part of her that had been dreading the fact that meeting him required leaving him again was overruled, probably by his air of calm. She had forgotten how much of an effect his presence had on her innate restlessness.

“You seem to be doing better, now.” Severus observed, his voice faintly amused but also wary. She shook her head as an answer. Because they were standing so close, she felt rather than saw him reach into a pocket of his coat, and only looked down to see what he’d retrieved when he narrowed his eyes at her. He was holding a small, thin, rectangular package with a plain, unbranded, brown paper wrapper. She took it between her thumb and forefinger, and then held it with both hands. There was something universally familiar about the feel and the size. She looked up at him cautiously, reining in her excitement.

“Not chocolate?”

The corners of his eyes flickered. “As requested.”

She had a vague recollection of an off-handed comment, more like a daydream, about chocolate, surely weeks ago. She swallowed, thrilled, touched, and very hungry. She tucked it into her pocket for later. The gesture had sobered her somewhat, though not in a negative way.

“Sometimes I wondered whether you were even listening,” she admitted, thinking back on long, lonely messages and that artificial pulsing light, and the feeling of stupidity she often felt the second after watching it flit away.

Severus frowned, shaking his head in a half movement. “I hung on every word.”

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and listened.

“I am sorry that too often I couldn't respond in kind.”

Dizzy, she tipped forward until her forehead was pressed against his chest. His arms encircled her waist. “How long do you have?” She asked cautiously.

“Perhaps an hour.”

It was more than she’d expected, but she felt ambivalent. She nodded, her hair rustling against the fabric of his collar.

“Why did you take so long to be here?”

“I wasn’t sure where you would go to find me, or whether you would notice my presence, or whether you would emerge at all. Potter and Weasley had to be asleep.”

Hermione was aware that these were all true points. She let go of the part of herself that was angry for there not being more time.

“I want to sit.” She decided, without moving.

“Good.”

Severus pulled back, turning and flicking his wand at the snow-covered foot of a tree. Assuming – correctly – that she wasn’t going to wet her pajama pants through with two inches of shaved ice, Hermione lowered herself down, taking his hand as he followed suit. They sat side by side, backs pressed into the knobbly trunk of the oak. Hermione hugged her knees to her chest and focused on the feeling of her arm pressed against his and his knee jutting into her calf.

“I have been furious with you.” He admitted, not unkindly.

“For not telling you about Godric's Hollow?” Hermione asked, and then without looking at him for confirmation, nodded solemnly at the toes of her shoes. “I knew you would be. I don't know if I would've been able to do it if I didn't feel like I wasn't already on slightly higher moral ground than you after last year. But I think my reasoning was sound.”

“That you did not wish to worry me?”

Hermione nodded, glancing at him. “And not wanting to put you into the position of wanting to help, but being unable to.”

“What would have made me unable?”

“Well…” she hesitated, confused as to why she had to spell it out. “Maintaining your cover, of course.”

“There would be other ways…” He began, determinedly, frowning, almost an immediate continuation on the end of her sentence, though he quickly tapered off. She reached over and took the hand closest to her, which was resting on one of his folded knees.

“But you would've had to decide to find a different way instead of doing the fastest, most dangerous thing by just coming yourself.” Hermione insisted.

She knew what it felt like to worry. In the past she'd sometimes even been glad that he never told her about the goings on of Hogwarts and the Death Eater meetings he was surely still required to attend. It meant she didn’t have to resist the urge to stay put. She knew he would feel that conflict, and yet she also knew and accepted that the answer was always going to be – and should always be – duty. Not her. So she was surprised at the confusion his eyes contained when he looked at her.

“Hermione,” he started, his hand slackening in hers. “Saving the people you love is not a failure. I do not want you to protect yourself against it.”

Hermione wondered if he'd said ‘love’ in order to take all the breath she might’ve used to protest – it almost worked.

“I know it's not a failure,” she assured, softly. She had the strange impression all of a sudden of reassuring a child, as if she were methodically smoothing out a naive web of confusion. But also that she wasn’t quite understanding something. “But I know that you, of all people, are in such a unique position, sustaining such a delicate balance. You already have a minefield of impossible decisions to navigate everyday. How is Hogwarts?” She winced, the change of topic jarring and not something she'd intended to walk into. “I kind of don't want to ask. Do you want me not to ask?”

Severus’ expression tightened, though his fingers curled around hers again, applying a comforting pressure.

“The school is an…” His eyes narrowed in an obvious search to find the right word – perhaps a word she wouldn't be upset by. “...unkind place to be at present. For everyone.”

He paused, and Hermione waited for him to continue, which he did with a forbearing air.

“But it is safe. I feel relief in that it puts me in a secure position to shield the students from as much as is possible. In every other way it is very trying. It’s difficult not to–” Again he hesitated, a pause that struck her as self-correcting. “It is difficult not to miss you.”

Hermione smiled and drew her thumb along the back of his hand, but she threw him a pointed look. “That’s not what you were going to say.”

His lips tugged into barely a smile.

“And you?” he asked, obviously brushing her comment aside.

She sighed. She wanted to pretend that the weight of the mission had been lifted from her shoulders, but she also wanted to pretend that the war was over and they were back in the Highlands. It was a level of make believe neither of them were practiced at indulging in. Probably for the best.

“I've already been telling you how I've been,” She muttered.

“Whatever softened version you feel that you can reveal from a distance,” he suggested, undeterred.

She thought about saying a lot – she had things that had run through her head to tell him so often it she had a kind of pre-prepared script –

Cold, hungry all the time. Hopeless because we're barely making progress. Harry once said he thought we'd be out here for weeks. None of us thought it'd be months. And if we keep going on like this it's more months spreading out into years. With people hurt and dying while we flail. My feet have never been so sore – at one point my entire left heel was a blister, and it popped and bled all through my sock before I took my shoes off to fix it. Once we woke up and leeches had gotten all through the tent. It's physically difficult but nothing is worse than missing you and my parents. Did you know there are at least seventy known species of leech in Australia, many of which bite humans? It’s so hard not knowing if people are still okay, though I suppose we'll have Ron's radio again now. Every now and then I'll be on the verge of sleep and then I'll have the thought that my parents are only just waking up to start their day, and I wonder whether they're good days, and if they can feel that something is missing. I almost hope that they can. That there’s a big aching hole in both of their chests. That’s awful of me. Seeing You-Know-Who was terrifying. I almost couldn't move I was so shocked afterwards, except I had to because Harry was unconscious and it was so cold.–

But now that he was next to her she didn’t want to complain. It wasn't just that she could sense how grim his life at Hogwarts was; by the dark patches under his eyes and the tiredness his posture couldn't disguise. And that she had an idea about the self-negligence he might have slipped into by the dig of his too-boney elbow into her arm.

Whereas, even just a few minutes ago, she’d felt self pity at the thought of having to return alone to the heavy slog of the horcrux hunt, she was now feeling incredibly lucky. She thought of Harry and Ron huddled up in the tent, unconsciously assuming a fetal position to conserve warmth, and how they would only wake up to each other. Perhaps she was the luckiest person in the whole war, that she was getting to live this hour.

“It's hard,” she said, because he'd actually given her something when she'd asked about Hogwarts. “I feel like I've never done anything but this, to the point that it's sometimes hard to imagine– no, that's not right. I was going to say that sometimes it's hard to imagine that the war exists, but that's definitely not the case.”

“You have been incredibly isolated.”

Hermione opened her mouth to elaborate, but struggled to articulate herself. Isolation was one part of it, but it wasn’t enough to explain the heavy feeling that had taken permanent residence in her stomach. She sighed after a few long seconds, giving up.

“If our shields were lowered I suppose you might be able to feel it.” She said, not really thinking.

There was a pause, and then Severus subtly shifted. When he spoke he sounded like he was trying not to startle an animal, gently, carefully, and without any animosity

“Mine are down.”

“Oh?” She mumbled, a little ashamed, the admission tripping her up. “I didn't– this whole time?”

He had tilted his head to the side, watching her with a neutral expression and unblinking eyes. His eyes were still so black. She had forgotten how nerve wracking it was to be subjected to his scrutiny, especially since he'd come to know her well enough that all those curious, perceptive thoughts in his head were likely bang-on, or something close to it.

“What is it?” He asked, instead of answering her stupid question.

Hermione shifted uncomfortably, angling herself subtly away from his inspection. She wanted to understand why she was hesitant about lowering the shields across her side of the connection – why she hadn't immediately done so when they'd first popped into her mind. Despite the discomfort of being watched, she was so close to articulating something she felt had been happening, gradually, over the past few months.

“I feel,” she began, once she managed to calm herself enough to think straight, “like I've changed a lot over the past few months. When I meditate I can feel that even as deep as the part of my mind where my magic sits – it doesn't feel as light. It's depressed somehow. I find it hard to think positively about almost anything.”

She took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. The weight in her stomach that she hadn't been able to place for months suddenly sat tangibly in front of her, and it seemed very obvious. She didn’t like understanding it. She clenched her teeth, hoping that it would keep the lump in her throat from rising much further. She’d scared herself. When it subsided, she took another deep breath, continuing.

“Isn't the connection possible because our magic was so compatible? Can you change so much that the nature of your magic changes? I know you liked how I was before, brighter. I know you felt like I balanced you out.”

Feeling herself begin to unravel, she looked over at him and was surprised by the level of calm still visible through his eyes. He stared at her for a long moment, and then moved, unfolding his legs and shifting around so that he was facing her, his now bent legs brackets on either side of her body. Briefly, he brushed the sides of her face with his thumbs and then dropped his hands to rest on her knees. He looked to one side of her head as he spoke, and while he still sounded as calm as he appeared, he also seemed very solemn.

“To begin, you mustn’t be afraid that any change you notice in yourself under these circumstances is permanent. You cannot possibly expect to remain the same as you were during peace-time. And if we find peace-time again, some, if not all, of those changes will slowly reverse. Magic, in particular, is fluid. It is in its nature to adapt.”

Hermione stared at him, mesmerized. She hadn’t been properly reassured by anyone about anything for a long time. And his reassurances were logical, the weight of experience behind them. They didn’t lie.

The night before they’d apparated into Godric’s Hollow, Harry had said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll be fine. We have the cloak and a plan’.

Severus paused, and she squeezed her legs tighter to her chest. His lip ticked upward a fraction, though his eyes stayed fixed on a point beyond her left ear.

“Second,” he continued, more quietly, “the amount you would have to change for me to question my feelings for you is incomprehensible. I don't know enough about the theory behind the relationship our magic seems to share to comment for certain, but it does not ring true to me that the only reason I am attracted to you is because of an impersonal magnetism between our magic. Perhaps we are compatible, and therefore our magic has aligned. Most likely, both alternatives are true to a certain extent.”

Hermione was holding her breath, lest the sound of it in her ears drown out any part of his voice. Two tears spilled over her cheeks again, though she wasn’t crying properly. Severus’ eyes flicked to hers and then away again, and his hands on her knees squeezed. His words were even softer, as if excluding more and more of the forest from words that were only for her.

“When the war was a less tangible thing, I was drawn to your lightness and warmth. Now that we find ourselves in the thick of it, I am drawn to your endurance and strength. Whether or not you have changed, I still feel more balanced now than I have for a long time.”

One of the hands on her knees twitched when he said this last sentence. Hermione felt gratitude, and at once, her inability to express the extent of it provoked the familiar urge to share the feeling. Vaguely self-conscious now that she’d made a bit of a deal about it, but unexpectedly excited, she dropped the shields obstructing the free-flow of the connection between their minds – the last shields she still had in place. It was easier than she’d anticipated, deeply ingrained muscle memory. She focused on channeling her gratitude, relief, adoration, tiredness, how close she was to the edge, how invigorated she was having set eyes on him, how hypnotizing the sound of his voice was to her.

Severus closed his eyes and dropped his head. She felt his [solace], and how thinly spread he was. The magic in her head tingled. She reached up and tucked strands of hair that had fallen across his face behind his ears, and trailed her fingers across the underside of his jaw. The skin was rough, a texture interpreted strangely by her near-numb fingers.

[Amusement, consolation, reverence.]

She listened peacefully to the sound of him breathing, until a frown crossed his expression and he looked up.

“What?” She asked, her hand coming to rest on top of his, on top of her knee.

“What is that?”

“From me?”

Severus hummed in confirmation. An intake of breath suggested he was about to elaborate, but he stopped short at the last minute and shook his head. He met her eyes with that meaningful look.

“May I?” He asked, and Hermione, confused and abruptly nervous, nodded hesitantly.

She quietened her thoughts quickly, easily, though still shivered at the feeling of him slipping into her mind. He hovered for a long moment, and she had the sense that it was as much in confusion about how to find what he was looking for as it was to allow her to adjust.

May I see anything from the past few months that you are comfortable sharing?

Pleased to have some direction, she concentrated on finding something mundane, non-threatening. Arbitrarily, she located a memory of the walking. It was before Ron had left – the autumn sun was shining and she was staring at the backs of the boys heads, fingers sweaty and wrapped tightly into the cord of her handbag. Her feet ached. It was easy to picture because, for some reason, the limp Harry had been sporting at the time was a very clear picture in her head. It had been a rhythm she’d used to distract herself.

They’d come across a crumbling, stone cottage as the sun had started to set, and while the boys had headed straight towards it, she’d experienced an aversion she traced back to investigating the deserted house in Hallsands with Professor Lupin the year before. She showed him how the ruins had been literally sinking into the marshy land it’d been built on, and how they’d found the floor inside a mushy bog, a fork and some kind of wooden pike sticking out of the mud. They’d pitched their tent a couple of hundred meters away instead, where the ground was more solid.

The house made you sad?

It made me think of Professor Lupin and then about how the members of the Order were doing, and whether any of them had had to go into hiding, and then you.

That feeling.

What? Missing you?

Her shields had still been in place then. Missing him had been that cloying thing – there but not there. Every time it’d begun to flare up she’d felt something in her shrink away–

She felt Severus locate a thread in the memory, and she let go, allowing him to take control. Instead of something visual, as she’d expected, he honed in on that shrinking feeling. He tugged, and very quickly she was thinking about The Burrow. She was in Fred and George’s room, her eyes burning, fortifying her mind. There was a box under the bed she that was distracting her from the task, containing a childhood painting and a photograph. Her parents house–

Hermione jolted, recoiling, and Severus immediately let go and withdrew from her mind. She released a held breath, startled by the reminder of how quickly and skillfully Severus was at maneuvering through the landscape of a foreign mind. She eyed him cautiously. Their eyes still locked, she felt him again dip into her mind just briefly enough to share an image – her parents house, a ‘For Sale’ sign thrust into the front lawn, blue graffiti. It was confronting.

“What did you do?” He asked, once her thoughts were again her own.

Biting at the inside of her cheek, Hermione felt her face warm. She was less sad now thinking about her parents than she usually was, in Severus’ company. But she felt suddenly guilty, as if she’d been keeping an all-altering secret.

“I wiped their memories of me and moved them to Australia.”

A startled look flickered across Severus’ features. “A reversible procedure?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Somewhere in the forest an animal skittered through the undergrowth, and the sound was very loud. Severus seemed to be evaluating this new information. Finally, his hands squeezed her knees, and he sighed a kind of relenting, restless noise. “You shouldn’t have had to do it alone. You should have asked for my help.”

“You’d just–” She started, casting herself back to those first few weeks of the summer. She’d been living in a constant state of feeling as if she’d been hanging over a cliff by a thin thread that had just been cut. “–killed Professor Dumbledore,” she finished.

Severus’ flinched, and she winced, whispering an apology. She hadn’t meant it, or said it, as an accusation. “Sorry.”

Severus shook his head. Drained, Hermione began to unfurl, and without hesitation he hooked his hands under her knees and lifted her legs over his hips. She rested her forehead against his shoulder and closed her eyes. She could feel in his posture that he wasn’t entirely ready to move on, but she was pleased when he didn’t persist with the conversation. Everything important that had happened during their separation had been touched on, at least, and their ability to solve all the problems was limited and would require ruining whatever time they had left. She wanted to use it to soak up his warmth.

“Thank you for the sword,” she mumbled after about five minutes of silence – the length of time it took for his spine to soften and his hand to find its way to her hair. He harrumphed dismissively.

“The walls you constructed in your mind were incredibly unhealthy.” He muttered after another long silence, but not in a way that invited an argument. Not even in an admonishing way. It simply sounded as if he needed to make the observation aloud.

She laughed ironically into the curve of his shoulder. “I know.”

She remembered the locket tucked under her nightshirt and Harry’s jumper, and immediately it seemed to start burning against her skin. A flush crept into her cheeks as she felt like she’d been caught somehow red-handed. She, Harry, and Ron had been incredibly isolated… so much so that she’d barely given a thought to keeping the locket secret, only to suffering through it.

Severus didn’t comment on her abashment as it rose and faded, or the displeasure she then felt at having brought the ugly thing so close to him. Since Ron had destroyed it, it didn’t give her that recoiling feeling. But it was still repugnant. She couldn’t fathom the urge that had motivated her to put it on any longer. As soon as she got back to the tent she was going to shove it to the very bottom of her handbag – if there even was a bottom – and never touch it again if she could help it.

She wondered how much time had passed – how much longer until she actually was trudging back to the tent. She tightened her fist in the collar of his coat. It was hard to tell.

Other than those first few seconds of seeing him walking through the snow, she’d been struggling to feel like he was completely there. She was annoyed at herself – at her mind – for coating his presence in an unreal film. What would it take – the end of the mission? The end of the war? Before it felt like she could relax enough that it was okay to enjoy his presence without any wariness at all. Simultaneously, he was somehow the most real thing she’d experienced in months, perhaps second only to the physical sensations of an empty stomach, sore feet, and aching hips.

“I’m sorry this is somewhat strained.” She admitted. “I haven’t stopped thinking about seeing you since we left, and this is the best thing that could’ve possibly happened tonight. I don’t think I’m showing it very well.”

Severus took a deep breath. [Understanding].

“You are perfect.”

It was her turn to harumph, a quiet, disbelieving snort, even though her chest tingled at the sound of the sincerity in his voice. He seemed to curl further around her.

Hermione knew that their time was over the second before he started to move. [Regret, self-loathing, anticipation, responsibility, frustration]. And so they drew away together. He offered his hand and pulled her to her feet, and only once they were standing did she meet his eyes again. The lines around them had tightened.

What if this is the last time? Her mind provided, with an accompanying flare of panic. She smoothed the thought over and smiled shakily at him. She was going to turn around before he disapparated. Severus’ head tilted in a quick flinch, as if he were suppressing a physical flicker of pain.

“One trait that serves you well in your academic endeavors,” he began, as if they were standing in the Potions classroom and he was giving her a tip after class, “but will be dangerous if transferred over into this lifestyle you are now leading, is the urge to prove yourself as unwaveringly independent.”

Hermione lowered her eyes and grimaced at the snow. She hadn’t expected the comment, and even though he’d delivered it forgivingly it struck her with full force. She wondered whether he’d picked the anxiety out of her own head – some less developed version of it had certainly been there to find.

“You’re telling me to ask for help.”

Warm fingertips brushed against the backs of her right hand, hanging at her side. “Even if it is not from me.”

It’d been churning in Hermione’s mind over the past few days that Professor Dumbledore might have made a slight miscalculation in making her the sole secret keeper of the horcrux Order meeting. Severus was right. She struggled to ask for help. She struggled to imagine how she and Harry might have integrated a trip to an Order member into their mission so far, but she supposed her lack of imagination was in part because of a lack of motivation. She was scared about triggering someone’s memory, only to get them killed. She was also scared that whoever she sought out for help might judge that she hadn’t waited for a dire enough circumstance. She was always going to err on the side of independence. It always seemed like the safest way to produce an efficient outcome. Less variables to keep track of, if it were just her, Harry, and Ron.

She wondered how much of her life at Hogwarts had disguised her experiences as independence – everyone else there, Professor Dumbledore quietly manipulating things in the background, Severus keeping a close, invisible watch on Harry. Out here, no one except Severus knew for sure whether they were alive. What had felt like independence – like taking charge – in the Chamber of Secrets or the Shrieking Shack had taken place in a comparatively supportive, controlled environment. She was angry at Professor Dumbledore for apparently thinking that she, Harry, and Ron had been exposed to enough of the world to figure all this out on their own.

She nodded, smiling ruefully when Severus glared at her. “Right.”

“I don’t presume to understand–” he began, but Hermione shook her head.

“No, no. You’re right. Maybe.”

He leaned in and kissed her forehead, and she kissed him properly when he began to pull away, drawing this out with her tongue and her fingertips on his jaw. When she lowered back down onto her heels, she recalled the last time she’d watched him leave; quickly, tersely slipping out of an empty classroom into the corridor. That had been easier than this felt, really.

She took a deep, once again shaky breath. “Take care. Be safe… all… that.”

Severus tilted his head to the side, his eyes glinting in amusement. Pressing her lips against a smirk, she turned around and began to walk back through the trees. Hoping for him to say something else that might call her back, she made it all the way back to the tent without looking around once.

Chapter Text

27th December – Some potions are brewed with ingredients so toxic that simply inhaling the fumes can shorten a wizard’s lifespan. For this reason, until the mid-seventeenth century, it was taboo for Potion Masters to wed or have children. This tradition also served to uphold the ancient idea, particularly prevalent in the Middle East, that Potion Masters were sacred and therefore should maintain a certain purity through isolation, (Roberta Smythlle, 1888).

Hermione didn’t sleep for the rest of that night. Which wasn’t bad. She slipped back into her sleeping bag and lay staring up at the vague shadows flickering across the canvas roof, not thinking very much, calm. But not able to turn her mind off completely. She repeated what she could remember of her conversation with Severus over and over in her head in an attempt to imprint it there, something to tide her over.

In the morning, she slipped back out of the sleeping bag when the birds started chirping, around five-thirty in the morning. The boys both still sleeping, she took her copy of Beedle the Bard and Fred's trivia book outside, cast an impervious charm on the snow at the base of a nearby tree, and sat outside with the book on her lap. Instead of reading, she stared just as thoughtlessly and steadily out into the forest. Bits of black bark and dark twigs jutting out of the sheath of white.

At some point, remembering, she pulled the small block of chocolate out of her pocket. Her stomach gnawed at her, prompted, and she squeezed the rectangle tightly between her fingers. She wondered where he’d found it. Probably simply in the kitchens. She wondered whether he’d asked a House-elf for it, or whether he’d gone down himself. Had he sought it out on the day she’d sent him that message, or just before apparating into the Forest the night before? These details felt very important to her, though not in the sense that she desperately needed the answers. It felt very important to her to have the space to wonder about them.

The third time she was distracted by the mouthful of saliva that had pooled over her tongue she gave in and used a fingernail to break the seal. Peeling the wrapper back the tiniest amount, she bit off a small chunk of the top right corner, exhaling heavily through her nose in bliss and rocking herself gently from side to side. Temporarily placated, she slipped the bar back into her pocket and resumed studying the trees.

The book still hadn’t shifted from her lap when Harry emerged from the tent about an hour later, his glasses askew and his hair mussed. Spotting her, he made a half waving gesture and trudged over, easing down onto the ground beside her with a wince that spoke to stiff legs.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Hermione glanced down at her lap. Fred's book, small and faded green, sat atop the well familiar cover of Beedle.

She usually read her daily ‘fact’ first thing when she woke up, scanning it in bed and then tucking the book straight back into her handbag. Still, it seemed strange that it was the first time either of the boys were noticing it, or bothering to ask at least. It seemed to her to speak to how narrow-focused and insular they'd gotten carrying around the locket. She wondered if it were too soon after the locket's destruction to notice changes like that.

“Oh. Something from Fred.” She handed it over. “See?”

Harry took the tiny book and opened it, flipping quickly through the entire thing before reading the single paragraph on the first page. Hermione had already memorized it. Potion Masters. As if the book knew.

Harry looked at her, his expression intrigued and serious, looking like he did when he wanted something to mean something more.

“What does this mean?”

Hermione shrugged, taking the book back and holding it closed, securely in her lap. “It’s just a fact.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

He glanced at the book again, as if he wanted to take it back. “Why's the rest of it empty?”

“I don't know.”

Harry mirrored her shrug. For a second he looked like he was going to say something more, and then his expression reset and he leaned against the tree, tipping his head back. He needed another haircut. The number of times she'd thought that – too many. Too long out here.

She sighed, her breath whitely condensing and her lips buzzing. She closed her eyes and pictured, briefly, burying her nose into the fabric of Severus’ shoulder. The coat he'd been wearing hadn't been as coarse as his usual teaching robes. Those familiar robes had been under it, though, which was something to note. He hadn't exchanged his teaching robes for something more fitting the role of Headmaster. She wondered whether he pretended, when he had a quiet moment to himself, that he wasn't. Almost definitely not. Too fanciful, impractical.

She wondered whether the coat was new – she doubted this. And if it wasn’t, whether it was something he’d always kept in his wardrobe at the school, or whether it was something he’d just brought this year for some reason. She wondered whether he’d been to the Highlands often over the summer – somehow she doubted this too – and if he had, whether he’d taken anything back to Hogwarts with him.

She opened her eyes in a rush, a heavy intake of breath, and tipped her head to look at Harry. He'd closed his eyes too. She wondered where his mind went when it had the luxury of wandering to things beyond the mission. It wouldn’t be too hard to guess. His knees were bent and he'd rested his forearms on them, frosty pink fingertips hanging limply. She could feel his warmth against her shoulder. He’d pulled two shirts snugly over the top of one another instead of his jumper, which she realized she was still wearing. He hadn't mentioned it.

Her heart sinking a little, though also very decided, she pulled the chocolate bar back out of her pocket with an air of finality. She nudged his shoe with hers and he opened his eyes, straightening. He seemed so much older than he was, an old man. And she was an old woman. Tired bones, and they would inevitably both wince and crack their backs when they stood back up.

“Would you like some chocolate?” She asked, pulling back the wrapper to expose the thin bar. Harry's eyes widened and he leaned back, almost as if she'd hit him.

“You’re kidding, Hermione, right?” he laughed. “How–”

Hermione broke the bar in two and handed him half. He received it like one might receive an ancient, glass vase.

“I was rearranging my bag this morning to find somewhere to put the locket. I smuggled this when I was packing at the Weasley’s. I’d completely forgotten about it.”

Harry took a bite and rolled his eyes, groaning in a way that could've been exaggerated, and could've just been the kind of sound one makes the first time they eat something good in half a year. He then sobered, glancing over at the tent guiltily. Hermione glared.

“If he wants chocolate he can bloody well wake up. I’m sure he got very used to long, slow, sleepy mornings during the past few weeks.”

Harry shot her a look that made sure to let her know that he disapproved, but was also quite ready to defer to her lest he find himself on her bad side.

“I don’t think he was staying at luxury hotels, Hermione.”

“Well he sure wasn’t waking up in a bog full of leeches either.”

“He wanted to come back,” He tentatively insisted, “he–”

“I know, Harry.” Hermione was squeezing the half-chocolate-bar too tightly. It was collapsing under her fingers. “I’m just going to be pissed for a little while. I’ll get over it.”

Harry watched her for a long moment, and then shrugged one shoulder, popping the rest of the chocolate into his mouth. “Okay.”

Hermione followed suit, rolling her tongue around the sugar and staring at the tent. She wasn't as angry as she was putting on. It was hard to be too angry after the previous night. It wasn't only the effect of seeing Severus – which she couldn't deny had left her feeling ten times lighter – but also the hopeful look in Ron's eyes as he stepped back into the tent and began unpacking his bag. He was still Ron – goofy, comforting, clumsily sweet, genius when she least expected it. But because he was those things – he was Ron – and he'd left at all, because she'd missed him and had been kept up at night worrying herself sick, she was still a bit angry.

She closed her eyes again. The thin layer of damp covering the bark of the tree pressed cold into her hair. The chocolate had melted entirely. One more swallow and she'd have to start running her tongue around her gums in order to track down the lingering taste of it.

She felt – when she did this, and the experience of the chocolate shifted from present to past – a kind of gritty determination. It wasn't a new feeling. It'd really taken hold the moment she turned away from Severus the night before, but it had started at some point before Godric's Hollow. And now it was the most pressing thing in her thoughts. In part, she suspected this had something to do with the space she felt freed up in her mind without that near constant recoiling feeling of wearing or anticipating the locket. Her toes curled in her shoes and she felt as if the mossy, snow covered ground was sucking her down, anchoring her.

She turned, angling her torso towards Harry, and he raised a lazy morning eyebrow at her.

“We need to do something. Go somewhere.”

The eyebrow was no longer lazy but cautiously enthusiastic. “Oh?”

Hermione felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn't exactly been a source of boundless supportive energy for him over the past few weeks. She supposed Harry was well used to her tentative, cautionary influence on the mission.

“Yes. Right.” She nodded. “Like Godric’s Hollow. I know it went badly, and I know we didn’t learn anything, but I think we should keep up that momentum. Where are some other places Voldemort might hide a Horcrux? What about the orphanage he grew up in? Did Professor Dumbledore ever mention whether he had a foster family before Hogwarts? What about the Malfoys? Do you think he’s close enough to any of his followers to entrust them with something so important, regardless of whether he’d tell them what it was?”

The questions just started flowing. She'd – they had – thought about these things before, but always as a couple of steps down the line. Deal with the locket first. Now finding a second horcrux was the immediate next step, and she was confident that they could figure it out. They had to.

Harry had straightened, angled himself towards her too. She admired his ability to be ready for action at a moment's notice. She imagined that he was always humming, just underneath the surface, and all anyone had to do was extend an olive branch of interest for him to bubble over with enthusiasm.

“I don’t think Godric's Hollow was a complete waste. I mean, that photo I found in Bathilda's living room, that seemed important. I think we should talk about that. I don't know about Malfoy Manor, though. I get the sense that they're more like pawns. He doesn't trust them, even though he uses them. But you might be onto something in regards to the orphanage. I wonder if Dumbledore would've tried that already, though.”

He'd been staring at his hands as he said all this, but he then glanced up at her and made a face. He looked cautious again, eyeing her as if she might start shooting down these thoughts with logic. “We don't have to do anything now, I mean right now, though. We did just destroy a horcrux. I get it if you don't want to throw yourself back into the real hard stuff right away. We could keep the tent set up here for a few days.”

Hermione shook her head. She was surprised at her energy, even though everything Harry was saying was true. She should be exhausted.

“I just– I want to get this over with. That’s not a complaint!” She assured, remembering all the accusations that had been thrown around the night Ron left. “I just think with the last few weeks being so hopeless we might’ve slipped into a kind of acceptance of this dragging out for a long time. I don’t think we have to. I think we can finish this soon, if we really focus.”

Harry looked relieved. He surprised her by reaching out and briefly squeezing her hand. “I think you’re right. I don’t want to be naive just because we had a success last night, but… I feel like we’re getting somewhere now.”

“Me too. Good.”

She smiled at him, and he nodded, looking strong. He took a deep breath, and she thought he was about to say something else, but then he slapped the sides of his legs and made to stand.

“Should we go wake up Ron, then?”

Hermione made a face. “You do that. I’m going to stay out here for a few minutes.”

“Yeah. Right.” Harry stood properly. Hermione was struck by how safe his presence was, even towering above her. Since leaving Grimmauld Place she'd started to feel like the closeness of the mission was doing more harm than good, but that wasn't the case.

“Thanks for the chocolate.”

She nodded, and Harry started back towards the tent. Before he disappeared inside, however, he half-turned back around and gestured at the books in her lap, frowning.

“For a second that kinda reminded me of Vol– of You-Know-Who's diary. I mean it's obviously not, and if it came from Fred it's probably safe, but be careful. You probably know more about the kind of magic behind that sort of thing than me – books that can write themselves and all – but still.”

Hermione opened her mouth and closed it again. It'd never crossed her mind to be wary of the book. It still didn't, but Harry's observation struck some kind of chord.

“Yeah, I will. Thanks, Harry.” She replied, and he gave her an awkward half-smile. “I'll be in in just a second.”

He disappeared inside the tent, and a moment later she heard the deep, muffled sounds of male voices conversing behind layers of thick canvas. She looked back down at the book in her lap, trying to see it from Harry's perspective. Opening it, she rifled through the empty pages, just like Harry had done.

She'd never really questioned all the blank space. Based on Fred’s brief explanation when he’d given it to her, she'd had the sense that it might have once had a different purpose specific to whoever created it, but that it was now a gimmicky, less-than-itself kind of thing. The blank pages no longer mattered. And then she, Harry, and Ron were living alone at Grimmauld Place, planning a break-in at the Ministry of Magic, and the mission had never slowed down enough for her to think about things like gimmicky books that could write themselves. It had just been a small reminder at the beginning of each day that there was a real world and real people beyond the limits of their mission.

Hermione smiled to herself, feeling excited to have a comparatively unimportant, harmless mystery on her hands. On a whim, she reached for her wand, which was lying in the snow by her left foot. She encouraged the book to fall open somewhere around the half way point and touched the tip of her wand to the old paper.

“Revelio.”

Nothing happened. Not that she'd expected it to. She narrowed her eyes, relishing something about this new puzzle that perhaps didn't even exist. Just to reset her mind, she lifted her wand off the page and replaced it before trying something else.

“Reveal your secrets,” she commanded. Again, the book remained blank. Hermione pointed her wand at the tent.

“Accio quill”, she muttered, still leafing through the empty pages of the book. She looked up in time to see the quill flying through the air towards her, and waved her wand again, immobilizing it before it could smack into the tree above her head. She plucked it out of the air.

“Oi, what the bloody hell was that?” Ron's bewildered voice pierced the peace of the morning.

Hermione smirked. She could very clearly picture him half way through pulling a shirt over his head, hair sticking out on its ends, staring wide eyed after the item just having whizzed past his nose. She had to remind herself that she was still angry. And she was.

“Nothing!” She called back. “I needed a quill.”

“Take my eye out, will you?” The still bewildered, though much quieter reply only just reached her. She ignored it.

The book was open to the first page again, the fact of the morning staring harmlessly up at her. She flipped over to the next page and sat with the quill poised in the top left corner. Writing in a book, even a book with only one page of printed material, seemed sinful. It made something under the skin of her fingertips genuinely crawl. Steeling herself – only half ironically– she pressed the nib of the quill to the paper.

She realized, and she watched the ink balloon slowly outwards, that she hadn’t actually thought about what to write. Hurriedly, she scribbled down the first thing that came to mind.

Hello, my name is Hermione Granger.

In the long, unhappening seconds that followed, thoughts about revealing her name, anonymity, tracking or location jinxes, all fitted across her mind. She dismissed them. Her gut told her that the book was benign. If there was anything to discover about it, it wasn't going to alter the course of her life – it was a puzzle to solve, fun. After about a minute of nothing, Hermione sighed. She stared regretfully at the messy scribble scaring the paper.

After a little more thought – because the damage was now already done – she started a new line underneath her name.

Why are there so many blank pages in this book?

Again, Hermione was met with nothing but her own, more carefully printed hand writing. Clicking her tongue, she flipped the page back over and re-read the trivia printed in fine, curling ink on the first page. She then flipped back and replaced her pen under her first two lines.

Does Roberta Smythlle mention why the taboo against Potions Masters having families ended after the mid-seventeenth century?

She gasped with delight and triumph when almost immediately, words began appearing on the blank third page of the book in the same, tidy but curling handwriting as the original trivia. Her excitement was quickly replaced by intent focus as the scrawl quickly filled up the entire page.

According to Smythlle (1888), the taboo fell into decline for two reasons. First, the invention of filtration spells which stripped a certain chemical from ash of hoopoe tongue, which becomes toxic when burned. The ingredient fell out of use in potion-making altogether in the early 1800s, markedly reducing the dangers of brewing-related poisoning. This made potion making significantly less risky to begin with. Second, the expanding influence of the Spanish school of alchemy on the global stage reframed the discipline from one of ritual purity to one of scientific inquiry, undermining notions of sacredness that dominated in the Middle East. Smythlle notes that remnants of the old taboo still linger—particularly in Anatolia and Persia, where the concept of the “pure master” still carries cultural weight—but she concludes that by 1850 the idea of the Potion Master as a prophetic figure was entirely displaced by the model of the innovator. Marriage became increasingly common among this new generation of Potion Masters, who worked in less risky conditions and were not imbued with the same cultural sacredness as their predecessors.

When Hermione finished reading and looked up, she had to take a second to get over the mild shock of finding herself surrounded by snowy woods as opposed to the comforting sight of rows of desks and the stone walls of a classroom at Hogwarts. It hadn’t taken her very long to lose herself in the style of writing she was used to soaking up from her textbooks. For a fleeting moment, she thought about how glad she was to be missing out on the experience of Hogwarts under Voldemort’s rule. It was preserved for her as a comparatively safe, exciting place. It was a nice, if fleeting, perspective.

These thoughts only preoccupied her for a second, however. The new development of Fred’s book was too delicious to ignore. She re-read the large chunk of text, paused to think again, and then began scribbling out another question.

What is The Wizarding University of Bologna? She printed in small, squished letters right at the bottom of the page, referencing the title of the little book. It was something she’d wondered before. There weren’t a massive number of wizarding schools and universities throughout the world, and she was pretty sure she would recognize most by name. She hadn’t heard of any academic institution in Bologna before Fred had handed her the gift. She was thrilled when she turned the page to find that the book had once again decided to respond, already two sentences in and counting.

The Wizarding University of Bologna, or Universitas Arcanum Bononiensis, was founded in the late fifth century AD, in the unstable years following the collapse of the Muggle Roman Empire, (Arcturus Adameus, 1549). During this time, a parallel conflict broke out within the wizarding world; those wizards who had tied their wealth and influence to the Roman state sought to preserve various Imperial magical cults, while a self-proclaimed ‘pacifist’ progressive movement resisted what they saw as traditional, repressive dominance.

Libraries and research institutions became targets in this struggle: manuscripts were seized and destroyed, professors accused of allegiance to either faction were imprisoned or executed, and whole branches of magical inquiry—often labeled “blasphemous” and “heretical”—were in danger of disappearing altogether. To protect magical scholarship, a similarly-minded cluster of witches and wizards established the University in Bologna, hidden from both muggle and wizarding conflict, where learning could continue in safety, (Arcturus Adameus, 1549; Iuliane de Moone, 1855).

From its inception the university conducted its affairs with the utmost secrecy, shielding its scholars from what it sees as the always changing, transient world of wizarding politics. The University stopped admitting students in the fifteenth century, effectively vanishing from public memory. Since that time the University has admitted only established academics and post-graduate researchers, always by private invitation. Those invited may pursue their studies with unmatched resources, on the condition that their memories of their residence and research within the University are removed should they ever choose to leave, (Herbert de la Forge, 1895). While the institution is not technically a secret, no-one outside beyond its staff or student body has ever been able to locate it (Herbert de la Forge, 1895).

Hermione read this multiple times as well, still excited, but increasingly puzzled and even a little intimidated by the nature of the book. She struggled to shake the feeling that it was somehow a trick – perhaps engineered by Fred, or perhaps whichever joke shop it’d been shipped from. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but it seemed incredibly unlikely that she’d been lugging something so precious across England for the past few months. In her handbag, beside the jar of possum feet she’d taken from Severus laboratory, no less. If it was still precious at all. She tried to remember the latest date she’d seen in the book's citations. Nothing past the 1950s, she didn’t think.

Her head now buzzing with more questions than she’d expected to contemplate so early in the morning – a morning she’d anticipated whiling away with a quiet sense of sadness – she plucked the most obvious one out of her head and transcribed it onto the page.

What is the purpose of this book?

She waited, but nothing followed. Frowning, she brushed the feather of her quill along her lip. It seemed only particular kinds of questions were going to be answered.

Does this book belong to the University of Bologna?

This, apparently, warranted an answer.

This book was created within the walls of the Universitas Arcanum Bononiensis, in the year 1863, by Professor Salvatore di Nerezza, (di Nerezza, 1863). Then Chair of Arithmancy, di Nerezza argued that…

Hermione turned the page…

...the University’s tradition of exclusivity had become problematic. In the words of di Nerezza, “What is the worth of knowledge that is only locked away? Scholarship is for the public, the majority, for whom it must serve,” (di Nerezza, 1863). Di Nerezza claimed that the university bred intellectual stagnation and elitism.

Acting without the consent of his colleagues, he created three enchanted volumes, each linked to the University’s library catalogue. These books are designed to answer any question relevant to research undertaken within the institution, so long as that research is recorded in the University Library archive. The book is charmed to only reveal its true nature to a reader with both ‘the heart of a scholar and a heart for the people’, (di Nerezza, 1863). Di Nerezza was discovered in 1865, and expelled from the University, his memories removed. One book was traced to a public wizarding library in Spain five years later, and returned to the University of Bologna. The other two remain in circulation. If you have procured one of these two remaining copies, contact your national Ministry of Magic as soon as possible, (Chancellor of the Universitas, 1865). Unreported possession of either copy carries a minimum punishment of three years imprisonment in your country of origin, and the erasure of all memory of the book, (Chancellor of the Universitas, 1865).

Hermione took a deep breath, suppressing a grin. Before exploring any further, she closed the book and tapped the cover with her wand, casting a simple masking spell. The next time she had a free moment she’d look through the text books she’d taken from the Hogwarts library for a more complex protection, but for now she wasn’t too anxious. If the book was traceable, surely it would’ve been found by now.

She couldn’t believe Fred had just handed it to her, in the middle of a crowded wedding tent. She supposed whoever the last owner had been hadn’t figured out what it was for. She wasn’t quite sure she brought the whole ‘heart of a scholar, heart for the people’ spiel – it sounded a little embellished and hard to prove – but if everything else the book claimed was only half true, it was thrilling.

Her first instinct, after processing her new discovery, was to message Severus. Her hand free hand had come up to her throat and located her pendant before she thought better of the urge. If the book was legitimate, and if there was any danger in possessing it, then sending an excited message flying across England probably wasn’t the wisest of ideas. And he had many more important things to think about. She supposed, as her excitement began to settle, that it wasn’t much more than a magical trinket for girlie swots. Still, her thoughts quickly turned to how she might utilize this new fountain of information in a way that might advantage the mission. She scribbled down her next question with barely containable hope.

Does any of the research in the library records involve horcruxes?

She waited, with baited breath, the few seconds between the end of her sentence and the beginning of the response expanding out into what felt like hours. But there was a response.

The following authors have conducted and published research in the library’s archive on ‘Horcruxes’; Bianka Wojciechowski, 1503; Arabella Anouilh, 1699; Emilia Wafflebrook, 1777; Ahote, 1778; Enrique Zapatella-Smith, 1906.

Hermione stared at the list of names, her heart beating in a new way – not just in excitement but nerves. This could actually be important. She could learn something, finish the mission, and get back to Severus. The list didn’t seem that long. She wondered whether it was strange that only five witches and wizards had researched and published about horcruxes since the 1500s. Especially seeing as the research was being conducted in, according to the book, one of the most prestigious and protected magical universities in the world. Frowning, reminding herself not to hold her breath, she posed a follow up question.

Why have so few academics published studies on horcruxes over the past few hundred years?

She waited. Nothing happened. She sighed frustratedly, tapping her quill against her knee. It was becoming hard to write – the cold having sucked enough of the life from her fingertips to make them feel swollen and stiff. It was increasingly difficult to form proper, legible letters.

Could you please elaborate on the writing of Enrique Zapatella-Smith? She asked, picking the last name at random. She could work her way backwards.

Enrique Zapatella-Smith published a paper on horcruxes in 1906, titled ‘On the Ethical Paradox of the Study of Horcruxes’, after a ten year research mission. Zapatella-Smith set out to address what has been considered for centuries the ‘central paradox’ of Horcrux scholarship: the subject of study itself cannot be fully researched in a practical sense without committing the very crime (soul-splitting through murder) that renders its existence ethically abhorrent. This limits research in formal, legal-bound institutions to case-studies. However, even case studies are limited and in most instances too little is known about those case studies to draw meaningful conclusions. Zapatella-Smith (1906) set out not to explain the mechanics of horcruxes, but to conduct a philosophical discussion on the moral boundaries of research on this subject.

Lacking direct access to horcruxes, Zapatella-Smith conducted a comprehensive literature review. He examined historical case studies, secondary accounts of supposed Horcrux-users, ancient cultural traditions and mythology that references soul-fragmentation, and prior speculative writings in the Bologna archives, primarily ‘Fragments of the Self’, (Wafflebrook, 1777).

Zapatella-Smith argued that the study of horcruxes involves an intrinsic ‘Epistemological Barrier’; that they cannot be studied in any direct manner without reproducing their evil. He develops this argument further, even, than predecessors in the field who have come to similar conclusions (Wafflebrook, 1777; Wojciechowski, 1503), by claiming that even the indirect study of horcruxes is morally questionable. Zapatella-Smith critiques previous scholars on their indirect research methods in regards to the study of horcruxes, and theorises extensively on the link between the research of Emilia Wafflebrook (1777) and her later, unexplained disappearance in 1781. Zapatella-Smith propos–

The text cut off when it reached the end of the page, presumably continuing onto the next, but Hermione shut the book with a slow, deflated thud which made it sound at least three times thicker than it was. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting…

For the book to sketch out a golden arrow in the direction they had to start trudging in order to stumble across the next horcrux? Voldemort had been born at least a decade after the final publication that the library archive seemed to offer. She wasn’t ruling out the very likely possibility that research prior to Voldemort’s case would prove somehow helpful to their hunt, but she needed a second to process her illogical disappointment before she could begin meticulously scouring every word the book had to offer.

She was just about to open it back up when the tent flap she was absently staring at flickered, and Harry’s disembodied voice shouted through,

“Hermione!”

“Hmm?” She replied, her vision focusing.

“Have you frozen to death yet? I thought you wanted to talk about the next step!”

“Oh,” she cried out, louder, “I do!”

“Hurry up then!”

She jolted, having lost track of time. Her butt was numb – not, for once, just from cold but instead from sitting in one unmoving position for too long. It was a bit of a relief to push herself to her feet and head towards the tent with the intention of slipping Fred’s book back into her handbag. Pouring through it had jumped near to top of her list of priorities, but she wasn’t in the right headspace for that just yet. She wanted to talk to the boys, to plan out the next step in their hunt as a group. She was surprised at this urge – for physical action rather than study, as if her body had acclimated to this way of life and grown less tolerant of the idea of hours hunched up in bed reading academic papers. Or perhaps, after seeing Severus, she just needed to feel like she was moving quickly. Their brief meeting in the forest had not been nearly enough.

Chapter Text

28th December – There is strong evidence that magic and grief are intrinsically linked in some way not yet explained by wizarding scholarship. It is a well documented phenomenon that wizards who have recently lost a family member are able to produce stronger charms and hexes for up to three months after the event. The current dominant theory is that grief acts to temporarily disintegrate the boundaries between emotion and spell work, though perhaps the emotion simply provokes an increased focus and urgency in mourning witches and wizards ( Livius Delacourt, 1811).

“–But for the love of Merlin, Severus, Astronomy. Where does it end?” Severus tightened his jaw even further, staring resolutely at the end of the corridor. Minerva was the only other member of staff who could match the pace at which he walked while still maintaining a conversation without getting out of breath. “I can stand, if I must, the dark arts being taught in Herbology, History of Magic, lo, even Magical Creatures if the right protection is put in place for the students. In subjects where dark magic already exists. In times like this, perhaps it would be foolish to pretend it doesn’t. But Astronomy–”

“Minerva–” Severus snapped, though not as pointedly as he could have. If she had not finished her point, it was easier to let her continue until she had. He had limited energy to stoke or follow through with a proper argument, though she certainly seemed to be in the mood. There was too much on his mind. He hadn’t slept the night before.

When the Carrows had first proposed introducing the cruciatus into the school’s menu of detentions, he had woven a ward around the Dark Arts classroom that would absorb some of the effect. Enough, at least, that students would suffer minimal aftershocks. The list of high-order detentions submitted by Alecto for that week, however, exceeded the capacity of the Dark Arts classroom.

Two nights ago, the Dark Lord had summoned him with a proposition that a large portion of the Forbidden Forest be cordoned off to make room for a new dementor breeding site. He had provided various reasons why this wouldn’t work, but the Dark Lord had given him the impression that he was to figure something out, or else.

And Hermione was doing something. A message the night before had arrived, informing him that the trio were branching out. ‘Finally asking someone for help’, she had said. She had talked to him for a moment about the stars – words that he’d wanted to carve out of the air and keep. And then, right at the end, she’d asked him to find a way to alert someone in the Order if she had not confirmed their safety within the next forty-eight hours.

“– magic is created through the stars!” Minerva finished, elegantly restrained outrage evident in her tone. “You aren’t enlightening, you’re damn well recruiting!”

Severus had always admired that about her – her ability to make disapproval look poised and anger look dignified. She did not debase herself despite her current comparative powerlessness.

“I have less control over the syllabus than you presume.” A statement both true and untrue. “I simply enact the wishes of the Ministry.”

“It’s indoctrination!” Minerva insisted, as if she had not heard him. More likely, she had made a very pointed decision not to. They often conversed in this manner – two separate conversations happening in close vicinity to one another. Severus allowed the arguments to continue because she was the kind of rival who, if left without a vent, would simmer until she erupted, causing more trouble than he might be able to contain. And it pleased the Dark Lord when Severus had memories of her discomfort and powerlessness to show.

“It is as it always has been.” He droned, tonelessly, in the manner he occasionally used purposefully to provoke her. Though he did not want to provoke her now. He wanted to slip into the dungeons and read another few chapters from the newest order of books he’d received from Denmark on ward casting. Minerva was drawing a provocative mood out of him. “Different than the syllabus that any previous Headmaster has selected to teach at this school, based on their lived experiences and their political leanings? I think not.”

“You know that isn’t true. Albus–”

“Do not wax lyrical to me about Albus, Minerva. You and I both watched his biases play out in real time, and judged them similarly.”

“We did.” She quipped, smartly, and he could hear the tight press of her lips and the setting of her jaw.

She would be thinking, he was sure, about their quiet, unacknowledged, conspiratorial alliance. The awareness that they, more than anyone else in the school, could read Albus’ moods and knew enough of his history to understand his greyness. She, perhaps, had seen herself as Albus’ watchful guardian, knowing deep down that she had no real control over him. Severus, perhaps, had seen himself as Albus’ subtle regulator, knowing deep down that Albus would go as far as he pleased. Minerva would be thinking about Severus' betrayal of that alliance. Perhaps she was regretting how wrong she had been, or was feeling ashamed of her inability to see the wool that had been fitted snugly over her eyes. It was difficult to imagine Minerva shameful, however.

After a moment of silence, nothing but two strong pairs of footsteps echoing along the corridor, Severus raised a cool eyebrow.

“Is that all, for once? How refreshing.”

Minerva sucked in a sharp breath.

“I used to–” She began, but cut herself off to say, just as hotly, “Severus, you are undoing this school!”

“Any complaints you have you are free to voice at the next staff meeting. Until then, you will follow orders.” He stopped in his tracks, turning to acknowledge her properly for the first time since she had slipped out of the dining hall and initiated the inane argument. For the first time, too, he made his voice into something low and menacing. He didn’t have to put effort into looming. He was aware, without any overwhelming sense of pride or dismay, how intimidating he could look. And even if she drew herself up – straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin – he could see the effect of this cultivated villain in her eyes.

“You and I both know how precarious things are becoming. You mustn’t say that I didn’t warn you, if you find yourself unemployed.” He did not plead with her, in his mind, to hear the genuine caution in his words. But he did hope she would. He then turned back around and continued striding towards the dungeons as if the little interlude hadn’t taken place, his voice once again toneless and bored. “You should assign one of the other staff members the task of resistance, for once, unless you plan on taking the fall for all of them. Share it between you. Filius–”

“You see insurrection where there is none. I pity you–” She began, undeterred, though a note of spite had worked its way into her tone, which confirmed that his efforts at intimidation had been successful.

“– I have seen the way Pomona glowers,” he interrupted, as if she were not speaking, “surely she has an opinion of her own,”

“– unable to move through the world without looking over your shoulder. Incapable of relying on anything good, trust–”

“ –Or perhaps even Sybill.”

There was a pause, and Severus wondered if she were going to peel off and leave him in peace when they reached the end of the hallway, but then she added, “You cannot justify everything you have allowed yourself to become with the start you had in life, Severus.”

“Enough, Minerva.” Severus instructed. The finality of the statement was not only because he disliked the reminder that she had seen and known him when he was young, damaged, and vulnerable. It was also because he could hear raised voices coming from the corridor beyond.

They turned the corner to find Amycus leering over a student, whose identity was obscured by the death eater’s broad, leather-clothed back. The flicker of a blue tie suggested Ravenclaw. Whatever Amycus was snarling was unintelligible, not because of the volume but because of the tight, grueling way he liked to mince his words together. Minerva huffed a protective breath and they both swept forward, personal vendettas on hold, to investigate the all too familiar scene.

“Amycus,” Severus drawled, commanding but not antagonistic. “Must you raise your voice quite so loud. What have we here?”

Amycus spun around and stepped aside – a glint in his eye – to reveal a resolute though shaken looking Mr. Boot.

There were layers of caution that Severus had learned to entertain when it came to dealing with these kinds of situations. If the Carrows had cornered a Gryffindor, this usually warranted more caution than any of the other houses. Pureblood students were rarely ever assigned detention, and they warranted far less concern. He had reason to suspect, however, that Terry Boot was one of those members of the original Dumbledore’s Army who had decided to join the students' resistance against his reign by reforming the group. This warranted an immediate, higher-than-baseline level of caution.

“This little bitty is wandering the halls with illegal contraband.” Amycus crooned. “He refuses to hand it over. I thought, perhaps, a round of veritaserum–”

“There is no more veritaserum in stock at present, the last of it having been sent to the Ministry early this week–” Severus began, flicking the hand at his side in a half movement when Amycus took a sharp, eager breath “–if, however, what you say is true, then I am sure you will figure something out.”

“Leave Mr. Boot with Professor Carrow?” Minerva hissed, indignant, the last two words spoken with a sarcasm both explicit and very much deniable. She had taken a protective step closer to the boy already.

Amycus twisted around to bestow Minerva with a knowing, hateful glower. “Illegal contraband, Minerva. Do I really have to repeat myself?”

“It's just a coin. I was going to use it at Hogsmeade.”

Severus glanced down at Mr. Boot, sneering at the quiver in his voice, while Minerva flourished a pointed hand in the boy’s direction, as if some point had been proven.

“Are we punishing students for carrying spending money, now?”

“It's not spending money.” Amycus snarled, whipping back around to face Mr. Boot and tapping the boy’s hand sharply with his wand. Severus felt his face tighten, but the gesture seemed to have been purely for show. “Open your hand, boy. This isn't any coin I've ever known them to accept at Hogs Head, now, is it? The chit is lying.”

Mr. Boot had opened his fist to expose a silver coin, slightly larger and thicker than normal, with an unfamiliar rune engraved in the centre. Severus’ private analysis of the amount of caution the situation required hitched up a notch. The object was familiar. His eyes flicked over to Minerva, and a subtle tightening of her mouth suggested that his suspicions were accurate.

“It would appear so.” Severus drawled, outwardly unmoved, though navigating his way through the situation had quickly become more difficult. He would not be able to leave Mr. Boot with Amycus, not unless he was willing to let the entire D.A. movement come to an end. For now, it provided a safe haven for too many vulnerable students, without actually being much more than a peripheral nuisance. Not having to leave a student alone with a Carrow, at least, was always somewhat of a relief.

“Let me see that, dear.” Minerva demanded, extending her hand palm up towards Mr. Boot, whose shoulders softened as he dropped the silver coin into his Professor’s hand.

Minerva held the coin up to her face, and then tapped it twice with her wand. It shivered, lifting an inch into the air and then dropping back down into the centre of her palm. An imitation of a Revelio charm, except that if the coin was what Severus suspected, the charm had lied. She looked up, a triumphant glint in her wide, innocent eyes.

Clever, he thought, as he raised a cool eyebrow. He wondered how she'd managed that.

“This is harmless. A joke coin at worst.” Minerva announced, handing the coin back to Mr. Boot, who tucked it hurriedly into the folds of his robes. Amycus, much to Severus’ annoyance, though not to his surprise, did not let the matter drop.

“Then why hide it when I confronted him?” He sneered, flourishing his wand hand and leaning mockingly, threateningly towards Minerva. The most frightening thing about Amycus was the transparent, unhinged way he moved. The most frightening thing about his sister was how steady and focused she seemed in comparison.

Minerva leaned fractionally away, her face twisting in distaste, failing to address the Carrow sibling altogether and angling towards Severus instead.

“Se–

Severus held up a hand. He could not leave Mr. Boot with Amycus, but nor could he let the situation slide altogether. Amycus would be displeased. The Dark Lord would hear about the Headmaster’s leniency, one way or another.

“Would you have me disregard my own rules?” He turned sharply, dismissively, towards his smirking colleague. “What do you intend, Professor Carrow?”

“I was on my way to the hospital wing for a vial of veritaserum, but if we're out, I'm sure I can find another way to loosen his tongue.”

“Leave him with me.” Severus decided in a sharp, clipped manner, almost cutting off Amycus' last word.

“Excuse me?” Amycus responded, his grin now a stretched, complaining grimace. Severus narrowed his eyes. There were times, very infrequently, when he could understand the thirst some acquired for all-consuming authority. He never felt that thirst himself, but he could understand it.

“I may be able to find a stray vial of veritaserum in my laboratory. I had thought you were scheduled to patrol the West Wing tonight, regardless.”

Amycus straightened. “I believe so.”

“Well then,” Severus turned and raised an eyebrow at Mr. Boot. The colour had drained from his cheeks, and Severus used a sneer to cover up the way his own eyes flicked quickly away from the fear in the boy’s expression. “I will escort Mr. Boot to the dungeons.”

“Severus,” Minerva took a step forward, half raising her hand, as the party began to break up. “If this really does call for a detention, let me oversee it. I'm not on the roster tonight.”

“Enjoy your night off, Minerva.” Severus replied, gesturing for Mr. Boot to walk ahead of him.

Mr. Boot shot his Transfigurations Professor a quick, wide-eyed look, and then stepped out in front of Severus and began walking down the corridor as instructed. Severus waited for the briefest of seconds, a small part of him almost wondering whether this would be the moment Minerva cracked. But she did not. She stood stock-still in the center of the hall, hands tightened into fists and lips pursed, glaring at him until he spun on his heel. Mr. Boot glanced back at the end of the corridor.

“You know the way to the dungeons, Mr. Boot.” Severus snapped. Boot trained his eyes on the floor, and they managed to make it all the way to the Potions classroom without having to communicate. Horace was absent from the Potion’s classroom – still chewing off Filius’ ear in the dining hall, no doubt.

Severus knew there was veritaserum in the laboratory – two vials, stored behind a jar of banshee teeth and two vials of frog's blood. He was loath to fetch either vial for two reasons; first, because no one but he or Hermione had set foot in the laboratory for the past three years at least, and he had no desire to change this, and second, because as much as it might please the Carrows and the Dark Lord, he had no desire to expose the D.A..

Even so, while Mr. Boot stood with his back pressed firmly against the door – not quite cowering but certainly as close to the exit as humanly possible, Severus occupied himself for a few minutes sifting through Horace's’ desk and shelves, as if he might have risked hiding unreported veritaserum in the incompetent Potion Professor’s territory. His silent rifling had the additional bonus of heightening Mr. Boot’s apprehension without actually doing any real harm.

Finally, he dropped the pretense and spun on his heel, making the obviously terrified Ravenclaw flinch. Severus was tired, his mind not as clear as it might have been after a night of rest, which made figuring out how to navigate the interrogation difficult. He placed a fist on Horace’s desk to mask a slight wave of dizziness – he hadn’t wanted to deal with the dining hall that night – and held out his other hand.

“The coin.”

Mr. Boot hesitated long enough for Severus to raise an eyebrow, and then hurried across the room. He dropped the silver piece into Severus’ palm.

“Please, it’s just–”

“Quiet.” Severus murmured, placing the coin on the desk and letting his wand slip from his sleeve into his hand. He did not need to speak whatever spell he chose to cast out loud. He could cast something harmless, irrelevant, something that wouldn’t reveal the true colour of a chameleon, let alone the true nature of a jinxed coin. But this would undermine his performance. Mr. Boot would expect him to expose something. Either Minerva had managed to mask whatever nature the coin had to expose during her brief contact with it, or he was going to have to figure out how to catch Mr. Boot with contraband without then uncovering the entire D.A..

Or this would be the night the D.A. ended in earnest. It wouldn’t be too long, he supposed, before the students established an alternative. But it would be difficult to let the incident slide without expelling vulnerable individuals. Both Miss. Weasley and Miss. Lovegood, for example, came from families who were already perilously high up on the Ministry watchlist.

Repressing a sigh, Severus tapped the coin with his wand, articulating clearly, “Revelio.”

Nothing happened. Only after trying two other basic revealing spells, both of which also failed to produce any effect, did he allow himself a moment of relief. He had not been too worried. Minerva was, of course, a formidable rival. Occasionally she had the unwitting grace to make his job easier. What he was more troubled by was how to follow through with the expected interrogation.

“See,” came Mr. Boot’s obviously relieved, vaguely surprised voice, “I said it’s nothing. It’s just–”

Severus rounded on the Ravenclaw sharply, who instantly snapped his mouth shut.

“– spending money.” Severus finished, his tone dripping with disbelief. “One might wonder why you were so unwilling to present it to Professor Carrow.”

“I…” Mr. Boots started floundering, which made Severus curl his lip in annoyance. It frustrated him that any student would submit themselves to the risk of the D.A. or any such organization without first becoming confident weaving even basic drivel. Finally the boy finished, “... don’t have much.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. They both knew this to be a falsehood.

“I will give you one opportunity to admit to the truth, Mr. Boots, and then I will take matters into my own hands.”

“I... don’t know. It’s just spending money. I’m sorry.”

There were certain suspected members of the D.A. – the majority of them, in fact – who would have replied with defiance. Mr. Boots seemed to be the exception, despite his determination to hold his tongue. This was a second relief. Defiance warranted harsher punishment.

Gritting his teeth against another brief surge of dizziness, Severus raised his wand, resolved to get this over with. Mr. Boots began to shrink away, eyes widening with alarm. Severus felt the way the boy's mind panicked as he wordlessly entered it, no doubt unfamiliar with having to accommodate a second presence. Quickly, before the panic to take hold, Severus reached out and stopped the unfurling thoughts–

Is he going to use the cruciatus? Is he in my head! Katie was in the infirmary for a week. I can’t look out for Johanna if I’m in the infirmary for that long. Neville would understand that, right? Can he– is he– Merlin, my head’s–

–forcibly emptying Mr. Boot’s mind. He then spoke aloud into the room, weaving a series of moments into the boy’s memory as he did.

“After you failed to admit to the existence of the D.A., I used the imperious curse in an attempt to force you to reveal the nature of the coin, to no avail. You were confused by this, naturally, but relieved. Having not revealed anything unusual about the coin, I could not justify using the cruciatus curse, however I continued to question you, threatening your family, your position at the school, and the safety of your younger sister, for another thirty minutes.”

Severus paused, the narrative spilling out into the boy's mind, taking hold and having real emotional consequences. There was fear, distress, hurt. After a moment of reflection – the false memory needed to be believable to Mr. Boots himself – Severus continued.

“After this last threat, you were on the verge of revealing the truth. Your saving grace, however, was that at this point I received a message from one of the house elves that I was needed elsewhere in the castle. I do not leave immediately. I use a curse that creates a crawling, itching sensation until your skin – it is almost painful, but not quite – and question you one last time. ”

Severus paused again, seeing both the false memory playing out in Mr. Boot’s head, and also the tears running down his cheeks. The boy's eyes were unblinking, watery, staring blankly at the far wall. Severus allowed the memory to settle, before tying together the last part of the narrative, his voice softening. He didn’t like to wonder if he was trying to justify himself with a pathetic, useless apology.

“Despite all of this, you held your tongue. You are shaken and frightened, but a stronger resolution has taken the place of your previous lack of self confidence – you did not betray Dumbledore’s Army. You were loyal. All you want is to return to your common room, speaking to no-one. The next time you find yourself in close vicinity to one of the Carrow Professors, however, you might admit to a classmate that I interrogated and hurt you.”

These last few instructions were only half-hearted. Severus could weave a false memory but he had no real control over Mr. Boot’s emotions or future actions. All he could do was suggest, and hope that the untrained mind was impressionable enough to hold onto those suggestions until the following day.

With a wave of self-contempt, Severus withdrew from Mr. Boot’s mind. The boy took a sharp breath as his eyes came into focus, hurriedly bringing up a hand to wipe away his tears as he shrank, his shoulders hunching. Severus turned dismissively away, picking up a stray book lying on Horace’s desk – one of his own that had not been returned.

“Enough. Return to your common room.” He opened the book to a page that had not previously been dog-eared, frowning, waiting for the sound of retreating footsteps.

“Can I– have the coin back?”

The request was made in a small, though now unwavering voice. Severus shut the book with a sharp snap.

“You may not.”

Footsteps immediately followed, and then a soft thud of the door. Standing in the room alone, Severus noticed the hot ache in his shoulders, and tried to roll it out, to no avail. Feeling discomposed by the room he turned, book clasped in one hand, and strode towards the small door in the far wall. He swiped the silver coin from Horace's desk as he passed. He had only used this entrance to the laboratory two or three times throughout the year, generally avoiding the Potions classroom unless he had decided to oversee a detention.

He descended the staircase with some trepidation, the root of which he decided not to try and articulate to himself. Listening to the familiar sound of the curtain falling back into place behind him, he stood just inside, surveying. The room was very straight, tidy, even sterile. All appearances, even those that were not visible to others in the castle, had to point towards his loyalty to the Dark Lord. His private quarters included.

A slight fizzing sound undercut the silence of the room; congealing Stillstep Serum, still two days away from cooling enough to be handled. Two lamps cast a dull orange glow, not strong enough to expel most of the shadows. The room was the setting for the long, wakeful night that stretched out ahead of him. If a day went smoothly – if there were no confrontations with the Carrows, no detentions, no communications with the Ministry, and no manipulations with the memories of students, then he would attempt to sleep. But the day had been rife with obstacles.

His eyes flicking briefly over to the nail in the fair shelves where Hermione used to hang spare bunches of hair ties, he crossed the room and replaced the book in his hand. It was difficult not to look for her when he was here. Very occasionally, if he was able to maintain a quiet, meditative internal state for long enough while brewing, he would feel her company emanating from one of the other cauldrons in the room, or perhaps behind him at the desk. If he looked up, or tried to grasp it, the feeling would disappear. If he hoped for it, it would never arrive.

Severus moved to his desk, opening the second drawer across and retrieving a small, pink marble. Holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he tapped the marble once with his wand, at which point it expanded, peeling open like a flower bud until it had become a bowl. He placed the coin in the centre alongside a fingernail sized vial of silver memories, one of the gold galleons previously used by the D.A., and a tiny shard of mirror. When he replaced the bowl in his desk, removing his touch, it automatically shrunk and folded back up into a sphere. He placed it back in the drawer, which he closed and locked with another flick of his wand.

Chapter Text

27th December – The creation of new spells generally occurs during certain points in the astronomical landscape. Periods of significant magical innovation tend to align, in particular, with the heliacal rising of Sirius and the conjunction of Mars and Mercury. Stars, it seems, amplify magical creativity, and likely impacts the formation of new magic within wizarding communities. It has even been theorised that this is because wizarding physiology on a molecular level contains a different form of stellar matter not present in non-magical populations. Hence, the ancient archetype of the ‘mother/girl/woman made of stars’, which arose independently in magical mythology at least eighty percent of ancient wizarding communities. (Qiguang, 1904).

Hermione was reclining on her bunk, frowning at the pages of the copy of The Life and Lies of Dumbledore she’d taken from Bathilda’s house in Godric’s Hollow. It was painful to read. She would readily admit to having been disenchanted with Dumbledore, but something about Rita Skeeter taking her pen to his history made Hermione fiercely defensive of the flawed wizard. Skeeter’s childish, leeching writing had actually overwhelmed her to the point that she’d stopped actually reading about ten minutes ago, and was now simply turning pages every few minutes for the sake of it.

She was feeling frustrated. Her optimism the morning after seeing Severus – Ron’s return, unlocking the secret of Fred’s book, and having confirmed with her own eyes Severus’ continuing existence – had since received a slow pummeling.

Over the past twelve or so hours she had read the first two articles offered by Fred’s book on horcruxes in full, and started the third, but so far no information of value had presented itself. She was surprised, in fact, by how little each paper actually said. Yes, she was learning a little – the creation of horcrux magic still hadn’t been traced back to one single witch or wizard, though the consensus seemed to be that it originated within vampire circles; there was a general agreement among scholars that the splitting of the soul decreased an individual's ability for compassion; for over three thousand years historic paintings had depicted horcruxes symbolically as either black mirrors, three pronged crowns, or dying bluebells. But none of it was helpful to their specific cause.

She hadn’t told the boys about her discovery of the book yet. She’d started to a number of times, but had stopped just short. If she was being honest with herself, it was because it seemed like the kind of thing she wanted to tell Severus about, not Ron and Harry. He would appreciate it, probably even be excited by it. She’d imagined what it might be like to sit down with him by the fire and pore over it for ages, figuring out which questions it would answer, which it wouldn’t. She’d wondered about asking it about shared magic. To try, perhaps, to find answers to some of the unanswered questions about the connection. That idea was so tempting, in fact, she’d sometimes caught herself tuning out of actual conversations with Harry and Ron. But it didn’t feel quite right to spend time exploring the connection when they were still trying to figure out what the next step of the horcrux hunt was going to be.

On another note, the anger she’d felt at Ron’s sudden reappearance hadn’t abated very much at all. Every time he offered a shy smile or glanced worriedly her way and she noticed her fondness for him bubble up, the idea that he’d left in the first place kicked her in the gut again with twice the strength. She suspected that this had to do with the fact that he’d been so careless as to throw away the opportunity they’d been given to actually trudge through the war together, like so few others. She wouldn’t have realized this before seeing Severus again, and before having to let him go again.

Finally, she, Harry, and Ron had discussed alternative horcrux locations for honest-to-god hours since the previous morning, but were still no closer to deciding on a next step. Every potential location was such a risk. She felt a lurking pressure in the background of their discussions, whispering at her to get it exactly right. She could tell both Harry and Ron seemed to feel the same. And Severus’ reminder replayed in the back of her mind too – to ask for help. But she wasn’t sure how, until they’d actually come up with another plan. Who would know more than them about horcruxes at this point? What questions should they even be asking? How would they be able to track down any of the members of the Order? According to Ron, even Kingsley Shacklebolt was on the run now.

So she was lying in bed, trying to hold onto the fading scraps of her positive mood. Turning pages mindlessly, listening to the sound of Ron both tapping his wand on and muttering at his radio. She was silently hoping that he’d find whatever channel he was looking for – not so that he’d shut up but so that they’d have some concrete news to soak up.

She was about ten minutes into this pointless, mindless entertainment, when she turned a page over to expose an image of a young Albus Dumbledore, his arm wrapped around the familiar face of a young Gellert Grindelwald. Both smiled confidently at the camera, and the motion of the photo cut off just as Dumbledore began to turn his head toward his companion, an elated, admiring smile beginning to form on his lips. The smile and the way Albus’ eyes twinkled with the same confidence, but less wisdom, than the wizard Hermione had known made her chest squeeze.

The adjacent page, however, was what caught her eye. It was a photograph of a letter from Dumbledore to Grindelwald. The former had signed his full name at the bottom of the page, but instead of a normal ‘A’ had drawn a symbol now too familiar to Hermione for her to continue dismissing her gut feeling. It was the same symbol drawn on the inner cover of Beedle, and on the gravestone in Godric’s Hollow.

Hermione thought back to the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding, the half-uncomfortably silly, half-jovial feeling she’d had dancing around with Luna and Mr. Lovegood. There was one particular snapshot of an image that had retrospectively stuck in her mind; she’d tilted her head to the side and leaned over, mirroring Luna in some strange waving movement. At the same time, Mr. Lovegood had spun around on one foot, waving his arms in the air, and the pendant he’d been wearing on a long chain had swung out from his body into her line of vision. Thin, gold, and strange. The only reason this moment had stuck in her memory well enough for her to recall later was because, for a brief second, she’d thought it was going to collide with her nose.

Nodding to herself, Hermione pushed herself upright and jumped off the bed. In her periphery, she saw Ron glance up at her movement, but she ignored him, making a beeline for Harry.

“If it’s annoying you, I’ll stop!” Ron insisted, and she figured he must be talking about his muttering and tapping. She debated snapping back that she couldn’t care less, but decided that this would be a little too callous.

“We need to talk,” she said instead, addressing Harry, who looked up apprehensively at her.

“What?” He asked, his eyes darting down to the book in her hand, his expression growing even more apprehensive.

“I want to go and see Xenophilius Lovegood.”

As she said it, she felt a rush of rightness. Asking for help. Connecting the dots. Satisfying the curious feeling that had gradually intensified into urgency each time she saw that strange symbol. Harry was staring at her with a look of bafflement.

“Sorry?”

“Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna’s father. I want to go and talk to him!”

“Er–” Harry started. “Why?”

As she raised the book for him to look at, she felt a twinge of nerves. She had pointed the symbol out to Harry multiple times, and he’d never shown much enthusiasm. She wondered if this was how he’d felt about asking her to go to Godric’s Hollow. Anticipating her immediate and overriding disapproval.

“The signature. Look at the signature, Harry!” She insisted, noticing how he was instantly distracted by the picture of Dumbledore. Once again, she felt a little guilty for drawing his attention back to the painful subject, the betrayal of his mentor, but she was sure she was onto something.

“Er–” Ron ventured from behind them, “What are you–”

“It keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?” Hermione interrupted. “I know Viktor said it was Grindelwald’s mark, but it was definitely on that old grave in Godric’s Hollow, and the dates on the headstone were long before Grindelwald came along! And now this! Well, we can’t ask Dumbledore or Grindelwald what it means— I don’t even know if Grindelwald’s still alive—but we can ask Mr. Lovegood. He was wearing the symbol at the wedding. I’m sure this is important, Harry!”

She had to step when her breath ran out. She wasn’t quite sure whether the ramble had started in an attempt to convince Harry or to drown out Ron’s voice. She hoped it wasn’t the latter.

“Hermione,” Harry started, sounding unsure, “we don’t need another Godric’s Hollow. We talked ourselves into going there, and–”

“But it keeps appearing, Harry! Dumbledore left me The Tales of Beedle the Bard, how do you know we’re not supposed to find out about the sign?”

“Here we go again!” Harry exclaimed, sounding like he always sounded when he was hurting about Professor Dumbledore. “We keep trying to convince ourselves Dumbledore left us secret signs and clues— ”

“I think Hermione’s right, I think we ought to go and see Lovegood.” Ron piped up. Hermione pursed her lips in response to the clear attempt to win back her favour. It worked, a little. Her face obscured from Ron, she widened her eyes and raised her eyebrows at Harry pointedly.

“It won’t be like Godric’s Hollow,” Ron continued when Harry ignored Hermione in place of throwing him a dark look. “Lovegood’s on your side, Harry, The Quibbler’s been for you all along, it keeps telling everyone to help you.”

Hermione was surprised to find how much Ron’s assurances actually settled her nerves. This was going to be the right call. She wouldn’t have to unnecessarily bring in anyone from the Order and they might get one step closer to finding another horcrux without having to revive anyone else's memories of the horcrux meeting.

“I’m sure this is important!” Hermione insisted.

“But don’t you think if it was, Dumbledore would have told me about it before he died,” Harry reasoned, which was a good point. Surely if Professor Dumbledore had given Hermione Beedle because of the symbol he’d drawn in it, then would he’d have tracked down Mr. Lovegood already. If Mr. Lovegood had anything important to say, at least.

“Maybe…” Hermione admitted, annoyed at her weakening argument. “... maybe it’s something you need to find out for yourself.”

“Yea, that makes sense,” said Ron, and Hermione’s annoyance flared up again. Because it didn’t make sense – it was everything that had annoyed her about the way Professor Dumbledore had operated – and she’d disliked hearing herself say it. If Ron was going to try and slip back into her good graces he could at least avoid patronizing her and embarrassing himself.

“No, it doesn’t,” she snapped in a self-contradicting manner. “But I still think we ought to talk to Mr. Lovegood. A symbol that links Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Godric’s Hollow? Harry, I’m sure we ought to know about this!”

She was beginning to get properly annoyed at Harry too. How easily had she seen his point of view and agreed to go follow his instinct by going to Godric’s Hollow? Why did he feel the need to put up such an argument? Just so that he could say ‘I told you so’ if it came to nothing or went wrong? So that he could drain her of her burst of self-confidence?

“I think we should vote on it,” Ron suggested before Harry could say anything. “Those in favor of going to see Lovegood–”

Hermione turned to look at him in time to see his hand shooting up into the air. It looked stupid, comically so, and he was very determinedly not looking at her. She had to fight a smirk as she raised her own hand. Ron visibly relaxed a fraction, and he shrugged at Harry apologetically.

“Outvoted, Harry, sorry.”

“Fine,” Harry relented, and Hermione could hear a vein of amusement in his voice too. “Only, once we’ve seen Lovegood, let’s try and look for some more Horcruxes, shall we? Where do the Lovegood’s live anyway? Do either of you know?”

“Yeah, they’re not far from my place,” Ron shrugged again, to Hermione’s immense surprise. It was strange to imagine The Burrow being in the vicinity of anywhere. “I dunno exactly where, but Mum and Dad always point toward the hills whenever they mention them. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”

This seemed to settle things. Hermione was pleased, and as she crawled back into her bunk all the nerves and tension that had risen over the last day since seeing Severus settled back down. She listened to the unintelligible chatter of Harry and Ron for a while, and then roused herself again to make dinner. A few dried mushrooms, some hardening bread, and a jar of peanut butter Ron had brought with him from the outside world. Ron’s cherry pretenses dropped a little for the first time, apparently remembering how bland and bare the food situation was.

After dinner she left the boys to clear up, pulling both her and Harry’s jerseys over her head and then shuffling through her handbag for the invisibility cloak.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

Both boys glanced up at her. Ron looked surprised – he had denounced the miserable weather outside twice over dinner – but Harry just shrugged. He was used to her small walks.

“Yeah, okay. Be careful,” he warned, eyeing the cloak – a clear sign that she planned on venturing beyond the wards of the tent.

“Of course,” she said distractedly as she unzipped the tent and stepped outside.

The weather was miserable – the sun was setting, but whatever beauty this might have involved was obscured by the trees. Instead, the forest was a mess of ominous shadows and greyness. Hermione pulled the invisibility cloak around her, deciding that she wasn’t going to go very far beyond the wards at all. Just enough to be out of earshot.

She knew she was going to find it difficult to leave the Forest of Dean behind. She almost felt like, because Severus had been here, if he was going to be anywhere at all outside of Hogwarts it was going to be here again. Which was silly, but she had become very used to her mood hinging on silly, nonsensical feelings.

She wandered about ten meters beyond the perimeter of the wards before stopping and leaning against a tree and taking out her wand. A single butterfly fluttered in her stomach, and instead of trying to prepare what she was going to say in advance, she just closed her eyes and focused on the feeling of the connection. She hadn’t put her walls back up around it yet, and she didn’t think she would. She didn’t even really remember deciding to in the first place, though it must have happened in The Burrow before they’d even left for the mission. When everything had been too painful to process. She suspected she’d probably even been hiding the grief she was feeling over her parents from his detection. It was hard to come to terms with how long she, Harry, and Ron had been out here.

She couldn’t feel anything across the connection – of course she couldn’t, he was too far away. But it still somehow felt nice. It felt optimistic and companionable, like her person didn’t finish with her body, but extended outwards towards something else. The opposite of loneliness. She opened her eyes and touched her wand to her throat. Mitte verba mea she spoke into her mind, and then recorded her message out loud.

“Hello Severus. I just wanted to let you know that we’ll be leaving the forest tomorrow. We’re finally going to go and ask someone for help, actually. I feel really good about it, partly because we’re going to try and confirm a feeling I’ve had since very early in the mission.”

As she’d been speaking, she’d absentmindedly been looking up for a hole in the snowy canopy. There was a spot almost directly above her, a little to the left, where she could look through to the sky, and she stood staring up at the two stars glinting there.

“Do you know what I read this morning? Apparently there’s a theory that magical people are tied into the stars on a biological level that muggles aren’t. I don’t know how true that could be, given that two muggle parents can have magical children – genetically that doesn’t seem to add up. But I thought it was a really nice idea. Anyway, I hope you’re okay.” The messages hesitated along with her for a moment, and then she added, “Just in case, would you be able to find a way to contact someone from the Order if I haven’t messaged you again two days from now?”

She tore her eyes away from the sky before she removed her wand from her throat and sent the message away. Pulling the cloak tighter around herself, she started back towards the tent. It was a lovely feeling, being able to hear both Harry and Ron’s voices bantering through the canvas before she stepped back inside.

28th December – There is strong evidence that magic and grief are intrinsically linked in some way not yet explained by wizarding study. It is a well documented phenomenon that wizards who have recently lost a family member are able to produce stronger charms and hexes for up to three months after the event. The current dominant theory is that grief acts to temporarily loosen the boundaries between emotion and spellwork, though perhaps the emotion simply provokes an increased focus and urgency in mourning witches and wizards ( Livius Delacourt, 1811).

The Lovegood’s home was a thing in and of itself. One of the first, and certainly the most persisting, impressions that struck Hermione was that it seemed delicate. Paper creatures hanging from the ceilings, gently flapping their strange wings. Flowers, insects, and birds painted over everything; the stove, the bookshelves, the wallpaper. Piles of precarious books and papers balanced on every flat surface of the second floor. So even though the outside of the castle-shaped dwelling was solid stone, the home inside was exactly that; delicate.

Two death eaters smashed right into it, blasting through the curved stone walls like tissue paper. Or perhaps it was Mr Lovegood’s own spell hitting the Erumpent horn hanging on the far wall of the living room. In any case, she, Harry, and Ron were showered with bits of rock and wood. This wasn't too bad. What was worse was the dust that immediately followed, sprinkling painfully down into her eyes and coating the inside of her mouth, turning her initial scream into a coughing fit.

Trapped under what she guessed was half a coffee table and perhaps the fragments of a bookshelf, Hermione blinked her eyes open and found herself staring at a single silver earring that had landed on the floor about a meter from her cheek. It looked heavy. A series of silver droplets dangling from a large, glinting ruby. For a moment she thought she heard it singing softly, except she couldn’t confirm this above the noise of still-shifting bits of house and the whoosh of a broom. As soon as she thought about noise, however, it struck her that the scene had become quiet very quickly.

Tugging her leg gently – relieved when it came free from the debris easily – she pushed herself onto her forearms and looked around. The house was actually still standing. She couldn’t see Mr. Lovegood, but Harry had fallen onto his side a couple of meters in front of her and was pushing himself into a seated position on the floor. She raised her fingers to her lips, and just that second that sound of a door crashing open on the first floor punctuated the eerie quiet.

“Ron?” She whispered, but the sound was drowned out by a rough, low voice from below.

“Didn’t I tell you there was no need to hurry, Travers? Didn’t I tell you this nutter was just raving as usual?”

There was a bang, and then Xenophilius screamed. Hermione winced, closing her eyes and dipping her forehead to the carpet, her next breath half dust, half oxygen.

“No . . . no . . . upstairs . . . Potter!”

“I told you last week, Lovegood, we weren’t coming back for anything less than some solid information! Remember last week? When you wanted to swap your daughter for that stupid bleeding headdress? And the week before when you thought we’d give her back if you offered us proof there are Crumple Headed Snorkacks?”

This was all punctuated by a series of sharp cries and thumps. Hermione squeezed her eyes impossibly tighter at each sound. Only a few minutes before she’d been ready to sock Luna’s father in the jaw for serving them that god-awful tea and wasting their time with a children’s story.

“No—no— I beg you!” Xenophilius’ muffled sob came from below. “It really is Potter! Really!”

“And now it turns out you only called us here to try and blow us up!”

“This place looks like it’s about to fall in, Selwyn.” A second, calmer voice interspersed Mr. Lovegood’s wails. “The stairs are completely blocked. Could trying clearing it? Might bring the place down.”

The first death eater – Selwyn – seemed unconcerned by this observation. He continued yelling with increasing volume at Mr. Lovegood. “You lying piece of filth! You’ve never seen Potter in your life, have you? Thought you’d lure us here to kill us, did you? And you think you’ll get your girl back like this?”

“I swear . . . I swear . . . Potter’s upstairs!”

“Homenum revelio,” Hermione heard the calmer voice mutter, sounding like he was half-way up the stairs already. She flinched and gasped in another mouthful of dust, opening her eyes and looking up at Harry. She could see Ron’s arm and a chunk of his hair, too. He had started to claw his way out from a massive pile of debris in the corner of the room. The remains of a wardrobe, she thought.

“It’s Potter, I tell you, it’s Potter!” came Mr. Lovegood’s ragged voice. “Please . . . please . . . give me Luna, just let me have Luna. . . .”

Hermione began to stand, slowly, picking bits of wood from her limbs before they could thunk to the floor. On one of these chunks someone had painted a tiny ear and part of a freckle-speackled cheek; a fragment of the image of Hermione that Luna had painted onto her ceiling. Another chunk of the ceiling, lying at her feet, read, ‘friends, friends, frie’ in tiny painted gold lettering. Hermione’s stomach twisted. She should not have asked for help. She hovered in a crouch, listening to exactly what she had feared would happen play out down stairs; the painful consequences of bringing anyone else into their mission.

“You can have your little girl, Lovegood,” came the calm voice, “if you get up those stairs and bring me down Harry Potter. But if this is a plot, if it’s a trick, if you’ve got an accomplice waiting up there to ambush us, we’ll see if we can spare a bit of your daughter for you to bury.”

This was followed by a wail and then the beginnings of a scuffle – bits and pieces of the house being shoved aside as someone began to clear the stairwell.

“Come on,” Harry whispered, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

Under the cover of the noise made by Mr. Lovegood, she and Harry got to their feet and started pulling pieces off Ron, ultimately needing to combine their strength and a hover charm to haul a chest of drawers off his chest. Both boys were covered in a thin, white, dust. They looked ghost-like in the musty room. She glanced hurriedly towards the door. Mr. Lovegood sounded mere meters away, though she couldn’t see him beyond the bits of furniture and rubble blocking entrance into the hall. They couldn’t leave without proving that they’d been here, for Luna. And they needed to wipe Mr. Lovegood’s memory, or else they’d be leaving behind too much about their mission for the death eaters to discover.

“All right,” She breathed out a shaky breath, turning back towards the boys. “Do you trust me, Harry?”

Harry nodded, and she reached towards him. “Okay then, give me the Invisibility Cloak. Ron, you’re going to put it on.”

“Me?” Ron’s face twisted into a frown. “But Harry–”

“Please Ron!” She hissed. Not because she was upset at him. That was all gone. There just wasn’t very much time. “Harry, hold on tight to my hand, Ron, grab my shoulder.”

“Hold tight,” she muttered when Harry’s hand tugged at hers, clearly agitated by the sight of the broken printing press lodged in the doorway shifting. Her heart was beating a million miles too. “Hold tight… any second…”

Mr. Lovegood’s face appeared through a crack in the rubble blocking the doorway. A vessel in his eye had burst. Hermione pointed her wand at him.

“Obliviate! She shouted, and then directed her wand at the floor. “Deprimo!”

She waited for the alarmed cry of the death eater’s voices before she disapparated.

Chapter Text

31st December – At least fifteen percent of all magic performed in the first fifteen millennia of wizarding existence is now impossible for witches and wizards now to replicate, simply because the resources – roots, seeds, languages, stars – drawn on to fuel certain magic no longer exist, (Laila Al-Zayer, 1903).

“Xenophilius Lovegood.”

Hermione bowed her head, bringing her hands up to her face and digging her palms into her eyes, as if she could push the tears back into her tear ducts. They squeezed out regardless. She felt Harry’s hand on her back.

“Miriam Wimblepod,”

“Jaya Patil,”

“Sadie Ki–”

“Turn it off, Ron,” Hermione muttered, and the radio immediately sizzled into silence. Neither of the boys broke the silence. She wondered whether they were equally upset, or whether they were just waiting awkwardly for her to pull herself together.

When she looked up, sniffing wetly, Ron was staring at his shoes and Harry was staring at the sky. From what she could see, Harry did look visibly upset. The moonlight showed his eyes to be faintly glassy, and he was wearing a deep frown.

Hermione shook her head, the initial rush of emotion eaten away by a shock that was far more bearable. “I can’t believe they killed him.”

“Well he did…” Ron started. He trailed off, kicked a thick tuft of grass with the toe of his shoe, and then started again. “He tried to turn us in, Hermione.”

“Because they have Luna,” Hermione whispered, a lot of emotion rushing back as she wondered whether Luna knew yet.

“Yeah.” Ron apologised, looking up. Hermione forgave him instantly – his expression was anything but callous. “I know.”

Hermione sighed a shaky breath. She’d sent Severus a very brief message after they’d set up their tent and washed off all the dust of the Lovegood’s house four days prior, just to ensure that Mr. Weasley or Kingsley or some other Order member didn’t start hunting them down. This was the first moment she itched to message again.

Until now, she’d been determinedly holding back the dreadful feeling that she’d made a terrible mistake by going to see Mr. Lovegood. Messaging Severus had seemed one step too close to the kind of emotional relief or distraction she might indulge in if she were upset. Now, very upset, the inevitable onslaught was so strong that she struggled to resist the urge to sneak away from the boys immediately and walk out into the field to send a message. She didn’t though. She didn’t really want to. She felt too guilty to admit to anyone just yet what had happened.

“It’s not your fault, Hermione.” Harry said, and she smiled at him.

“I know.”

“I wonder where Luna is,” Ron said, and she groaned, returning her face to her hands.

“Nice, Ron,” she heard Harry mutter.

Her vision pitch-black under the press of her hands, Hermione couldn’t keep images of Mr. Lovegood and his house from bubbling up into her head. All the tiny little flowers painted onto the small, black stove, and the rows of unfamiliar insects painted along the rim of the tea-table on the first floor. The face Luna had painted onto her ceiling – Harry, Neville, Ron, Hermione, herself. And the little gold lettering weaving the faces together. Friends, friends, friends. She could hear it in Luna’s voice. It became ominous and spectral very quickly, said like an accusation in Luna’s high, clear, singsong tone. Hermione groaned again and looked up at the sky and sniffed. She wished she hadn’t gotten so agitated at Mr. Lovegood when they’d seen him. She wondered how he’d died.

“It’s so weird. I mean…” Ron sounded like he was badly stitching each word together. “We saw him just a few days ago. He looked mad as a Bowtruckle, but he was… And I guess he’s not anymore.”

Harry was peering at her cautiously, as if expecting her to find offense in this remark, but she didn’t. Articulating shock or sadness in a thoughtful way had never been Ron’s strong suit. She wasn’t going to snap at him for being a little clunky.

The fire they were all sitting around popped. It was the first fire they’d lit in a long time. They hadn’t discussed the decision to make one. It was the first quite cold night since visiting Mr. Lovegood, and Hermione suspected the venture had made them all feel a little more careless. The fact that they had been betrayed and nearly captured the moment they sought someone else out almost made Hermione feel, paradoxically, impenetrable. When they were on their own, they were invisible. With anyone else, they didn’t need the help of a fire to make them a burning hot target. She knew the logic of this was flawed. She didn’t care.

The fire popped again, and Harry jumped where he sat, apparently startled out of deep thoughts.

“Alright, mate?” Ron asked, looking up from his shoes at Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry mumbled, sounding anything but alright. “I just… this just sucks. I wish we knew where Luna was.”

Hermione wondered whether Harry was thinking about the other people at Hogwarts that they’d just been assuming were safely living in the school. Who else might be being held captive somewhere, surrounded by death eaters? She was certainly thinking it. She shivered. She’d never thought herself lucky to be sitting in the middle of a freezing field facing an impossible mission before. But the fear she knew she’d be feeling herself if she were in Luna’s place was too gut-wrenching to even imagine.

“I wonder whether Xenophilius had anything helpful about where we might find the Deathly Hallows in all those papers he had piled everywhere.” Harry mused after a long lull in the conversation. Hermione huffed half-heartedly and glowered at him.

“Harry, enough of this Hallows thing. They can’t possibly be real. Forget about them.” She insisted.

Ever since talking with Mr. Lovegood Harry seemed to have got it into his head that Dumbledore must have intended them to find the Deathly Hallows – that this was the way he was going to defeat Voldemort – and she was starting to worry that he was prioritizing a fantastical chase over hunting down and destroying horcruxes. Even if the Hallows did exist, and they could use them to kill Voldemort, that wasn’t going to be possible until all the horcruxes were gone.

“What if you’re wrong, Hermione, what if–”

“Hey!” Ron interrupted, and they both turned to look at him. He didn’t look half as sharp as he’d sounded, his hands hanging limply and his forearms resting on his raised knees. “Let’s not do this,” he insisted, and the calm, pointed way he said it exposed an image of a long night spent arguing a circular argument. Hermione took a deep breath in, and then let it out. Agreeing not to go there. She’d forgotten the mediating role Ron sometimes effortlessly played when she and Harry were getting each other riled up. Before the locket, at least.

She sighed, and turned her eyes to the fire.

“Let’s just–” She paused, wanting to word this carefully. Because the discussion did need to be settled somehow. Today or tomorrow – it was going to affect what they did after they’d packed up the tent in the morning. “Let’s just do what we were doing before. Track down the horcruxes, because we do need those eventually. But we’ll be on the lookout for anything that even remotely feels related to the Deathly Hallows. Maybe it’s all tied together.”

She saw Harry shift in her periphery, and then nod. “Okay.”

“And maybe…” She continued, feeling uncertain. “Maybe we should think about trying to reach out to someone in the Order.”

“What?” Harry said immediately. “You mean tell them about the horcruxes?”

“Well maybe.” She regretted saying it instantly. She didn’t want to think about it now.

“I don’t think…” Harry started, sounding passionate. But he paused, and the next time he spoke he sounded far less heated, as if he knew they were all too tired for the conversation to really go anywhere. “Dumbledore would’ve told us if anyone in the Order was going to be any help. I don’t want to bring anyone else into this. It’s too dangerous.”

Hermione rested her elbow on her folded legs and her chin on her fist. She was too uncertain herself to protest, after the blow to her motivation that Mr. Lovegood’s death had caused. She’d think about it more herself, maybe talk with Ron, and then bring it up again.

Earlier in the evening, before it’d gotten dark, they’d found a couple of logs in the field and placed them around the fire to sit on. Her butt was getting numb from sitting in one spot for too long. Still, she didn’t feel like moving. She tried to figure out whether she was going to message Severus about Mr. Lovegood. She wondered whether he kept track of all the wizarding deaths taking place. She couldn’t imagine he didn’t. She wondered whether he’d piece together where they’d gone. He probably had, given that the two death eaters at Mr. Lovegood’s house would surely have reported back to Voldemort about coming so close to Harry.

She hated not being able to explain herself to him properly, or to ask advice. To just talk through the whole situation with him, if only to process her own feelings. She knew, quite deep down, that his advice about relying too much on herself was still just as valid as it had been when he’d said it. She shouldn’t rule out asking for help just because it had gone so badly this one time. But knowing something wasn’t going to make it any easier to put into practice. Until they had a concrete, specific question, they were just going to make it on their own again. She wasn’t sure how she’d express any of this to him. She wasn’t sure why she suddenly felt like she needed to.

She decided, however, that she was going to tell Ron about the Order meeting and make him a second secret keeper. She’d been unforgivingly stupid not to do it before now. After visiting the Lovegood’s, she was quite sure she was going to go mad with the responsibility of it unless she could talk it through with someone else. She just needed to wait until Harry had gone off by himself for a while.

“I think we should bury something, right?” Ron said, after a while, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

Ron looked at them both, shrugging and tossing his radio between his hands absently. “For Mr. Lovegood. I mean, it would seem weird to have a whole ceremony and all, seeing as it’s just us, but I feel like we should do something.”

Hermione stared at Ron for a long second, being very grateful for him, and then stood up and hurried into the tent. She grabbed Beedle from her bed and flipped open to the first page, retrieving the photograph she’d wedged over the symbol of the Deathly Hallows after their visit to Mr. Lovegood and returning outside. She sat back down, beside Ron this time, holding the photograph with both hands.

“What’s that?” Harry asked, standing and moving over to join them. The three of them sat hip to hip on Ron’s log.

They were all peering down at a grainy, faded, coloured photograph of a very pretty woman. She had long white hair reaching down past the edge of the photo, which cut off at her knees, and was wearing a white-lace shift fastened around her waist by at least three lace scarfs all of varying shades of green. She also had on a black waistcoat, unbuttoned and handing open, and netted, fingerless gloves reaching up to her elbows. The photograph began with her in profile, revealing a long, roman nose and a cheek dimple despite her serious expression. It ended once she’d turned towards the camera, a hand with long, painted fingernails coming up to brush a strand of hair out of her face. She was wearing the same massive, ruby earrings Hermione had seen on the floor in the wreckage of Luna’s bedroom.

“A photograph.” Hermione said in response to Harry’s question. “I was looking at it when you went off to find Luna’s room, and then I got distracted and must’ve put it in my pocket. I’m sure it’s her mother.”

“Whacky.” Ron muttered, though he sounded somehow impressed by the woman in the photo.

“Well, yeah.” Hermione said. She wasn’t really sure what her thoughts were doing. She couldn’t help thinking, as she studied the picture, that all three of the Lovegood’s had such an uncomfortable strangeness about them. But together, they would’ve been the perfect unit. And then she couldn’t help but think about the fact that Luna was now an orphan.

“I don’t think we should bury this, though.” She said finally. “I think we should give it to Luna, when we see her.”

Neither of the boys theorised about the likelihood of that happenstance out loud.

“The whole house could be destroyed,” Hermione murmured as a follow-up, even though there wasn’t really any point saying it. Thinking about Luna’s house being destroyed was a much more tolerable thought than thinking about Luna dying.

“What should we do, then?” Harry asked. Hermione frowned. Now that Ron had suggested it, it seemed not only obvious but imperative that they did put together a memorial of some sort. She wished she’d picked one of the many flowers that had been growing in the lawn outside the Lovegood’s garden.

“Oh,” she announced, as something popped into her head. “I might have something. Pass me the handbag, Harry.”

She reached in up to her armpit, shuffling around until she felt a small chest of vials and jars that she’d taken from Severus’ stores the year before. Important ingredients that weren’t contained in any of the potions she’d made in preparation for the mission. She had a clear picture of the order she’d packed the trunk in her head. She trailed her fingers around until she found the second jar from the bottom right, and pulled it out.

“What’s that?” Harry asked, and then leaned in closer, reaching out to touch the small fruit she’d tipped out of the container into her palm. “Is that one of those funny plums Luna’s always wearing? They were growing outside the house.”

Hermione nodded. “Dirigible plum. It’s used in munimentum potion–”

“Muminemtum potion?” Ron questioned.

“Yes,” Hermione continued over the top of them, “and the seeds have medicinal purposes against some forms of snake venom.”

Ron shrugged, a movement she felt against the side of her right arm. “Sure.”

“I stole some from the stores at Hogwarts before we left at the end of the year.”

“I said sure.” Ron repeated. “You don’t have to explain that kind of stuff anymore, Hermione. You’re you.”

Despite herself, Hermione shot him a wry, half-amused grimace.

“It’s good. That’s really good, Hermione.” Harry said.

They walked away from the fire to dig the grave, right to the edge of the wards surrounding the tent. Harry dug a small hole with his hands, while Ron used a piece of string to tie two of the sticks they’d gathered for the fire together into a cross and staked it into the ground. When they were finished, Hermione dropped the dirigible plum into the hole, and filled it back up again with soft dirt. Clenching her empty hands, she looked back over her shoulder at the flickering fire.

“Where’s my wand?”

Ron strode back over to their log and retrieved it from where it lay in the grass by her handbag.

“Here,” he said, handing it over. Everything seemed half-real. He didn’t ask her why she wanted it. There weren’t any words to waste in the kind of half-real, in-between reality where one of your best friends' parents could die.

“Herbivicus.” Hermione cast, and a small tendril pushed its way out of the dirt. It began winding its way up the cross Ron had fashioned, and kept growing until it had curled all the way around the sticks and one single leaf was flickering gently in the breeze at the top. Two small, fat plums were weighing the vine down on the left arm of the cross.

“Yeah. That’s good.” Harry repeated.

They all stood in silence for a minute, and then Hermione took each of the boys by the hand and they wandered back over to Ron’s log. Ron wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they sat, and she felt him relax when she didn’t flinch away. She experienced a very strong moment of dislike for herself for how negative she’d been since his return. She rested her head against his shoulder, grateful that he was allowing things to be easy now that she’d worked through her anger towards him. Either she or Harry took the other’s hand.

The heat of the fire flickered across her cheeks, and she was infinitely glad that they’d lit one. She felt very strange. Grief that didn’t hit too hard because it was dispersed by the warmth of the fire and the comfort of the boys being so close, as well as the comfort of being still after hours of walking during the day.

Ron’s arm tightened around her shoulders, and then he said, “It’s New Years Eve, you know.”

Hermione straightened a little, just as surprised as she’d been when they’d turned up at Godric’s Hollow to find that it was Christmas.

“Oh god, is it?”

She couldn’t believe she’d lost track of days again so quickly. She would’ve sworn at least a few weeks had gone by since then. That made it less than a week since she and Harry had been mere metres away from Voldemort. And less than a week since she’d last kissed Severus. Both of those things seemed too significant to be anything but distant memories.

“What time is it?” Harry asked, and Ron shifted to check his watch.

“Half-eleven.”

“I guess we’re staying up, then?” Harry said, kind of saying it like a question, so Hermione nodded.

“Can you turn the radio on again?” Hermione asked, and Ron bent down to retrieve it. “Dad always used to listen to the radio right up until midnight.”

“You want a muggle station, then?”

“Yes please.”

Ron frowned, bringing the radio up to his face and squinting at the actual dials. “I guess that’s possible.”

“Petunia and Vernon would often go out to some fancy dinner thing with his work friends on New Year's Eve,” Harry started to muse, and Hemione tilted her head against Ron’s shoulder so that she could watch him. “Which would give me the house to myself.”

“What about Dudley?”

“For the last few years at least, he’d sneak out to the park or something to see his friends.”

“And what would you do?”

Harry’s profile frowned, and the fire-light shifted across his features. It was a picture she associated strongly with Severus, which made her chest inevitably squeeze.

“Pull the ice cream out of the freezer, play around with the Marauders map, go for a walk. I dunno.” Harry shrugged, wrapping his arms around his knees. “If I was at Privet Drive, it never really meant much to me except for being a night off. Sometimes I’d wonder about what we might’ve been doing if mum and dad and I were still a family. Like, if it was a holiday they’d have enjoyed it or something.”

“I bet they would have,” Hermione said. “I think it’s quite a significant deal in the wizarding world.”

Ron hummed in confirmation, and they all jumped as the radio suddenly crackled into life. They were joined by a calm, older man’s voice very loudly moralizing about the turn of the year.

“–curtain, we find ourselves pausing — not just to look back at the trials and triumphs behind us, but to tilt our faces toward the quiet promise of what lies ahead."
"The turning of the calendar reminds us that there is always room — room to grow, room to forgive, room to begin again with a little more grace than we managed last time.”

The sound faded to background noise as Ron hurriedly fiddled with the dials and figured out how to adjust the volume. “Sorry, sorry!”

They were quiet again, and Hermione listened to the almost unintelligible tones of the man on the radio. It was that kind of generic voice she associated with the Christmas holiday season, or with the kinds of channels that read stories aloud for children. The voice sounded like they wanted you to close your eyes and imagine yourself in a cozy sitting room in the company of your infinitely wealthy grandparents, a thick rug on the floor and a massive fireplace, and furniture adorned with plush velvet pillows.

“This time last year,” Ron said after a moment, “I think I was crammed on the couch with a massive cup of hot chocolate, complaining to Harry about Lavender.”

Harry snorted and made an affirmative, dismayed sound. “I mean you were more… Never mind.”

“What? What?” Hermione asked, perked up by the tantalizing prospect of something someone didn’t want to say. Harry had flushed red, and glanced at them only to apparently catch Ron’s eye and look quickly away again.

“I said never mind.”

“Spit it out, mate.” Ron pushed, and Harry directed a glare at him.

“Well I was going to say you were more complaining about Hermione. I remember Ginny asked you how things were going with Lavender, and you responded by saying that Hermione was ignoring you and how Lavender had said that Hermione was really private in the girl’s dormitory and all. And then Ginny got bored and left, and I was stuck listening to you for another thirty minutes by myself!”

Hermione started to tense, angling herself a little away from Ron just in case he was made to feel awkward, but instead he snorted and patted her on the shoulder.

“Yeah, I was a bit head-over-heels,” he admitted in a self-deprecating, amused tone. “You were a good sport putting up with me that holiday.”

Hermione relaxed again and huffed through her nose. She hadn’t realized they had gotten to a point where they could acknowledge Ron’s previous feelings without things going south. She supposed that after everything they’d been through since, it would be ludicrous to get embarrassed by that sort of thing.

“What were you doing then, ‘mione?”

“I was probably just reading.” She responded simply. She and Severus had stayed up all evening and well into the new year, talking beside the fire. She remembered she’d felt self-conscious because she’d had quite a few cups of tea and needed to excuse herself to tiptoe off to the bathroom more times than she would’ve liked. She couldn’t remember the particulars of the conversation, other than that she had been blissfully happy to the point that she’d once or twice been on the verge of tears.

They’d had so many lingering, lovely conversations over those winter holidays, and she wished she had a better memory for what had been talked about on any particular night. That might have been the night, she suspected, that he’d said something about being honored to have had the opportunity to know her.

She took a shaky breath, deciding that her memory was accurate. She remembered him saying that in particular because the words themselves had struck her as so formal and dignified in isolation, but they hadn’t felt that way to hear. She remembered being taken by surprise, being at a loss for words. She remembered that she’d just stared at him – it’d been one of the moment’s she’d teared up – and then he’d smiled softly. She remembered feeling surprised that she’d needed reassurance.

At the time, the sentiment had also struck her as something someone would say when they were expecting a relationship to come to a close. But the way he’d said it hadn’t felt like that either. He had sounded, for a moment, like someone who never took anything for granted. She hadn’t thought about him in that light before, and she remembered feeling incredibly drawn to him.

Hermione took a deep breath, running the line over in her head again, in his voice, and then letting it go for now. It was difficult to reminisce. Harry and Ron had somehow moved on to talking about the socks Mrs. Weasley had given everyone for Christmas the year before.

“–they were so scratchy.”

“I know.”

“And no one ever says anything.”

“I know.”

“You’d think that one of us would just tell her, and then maybe we’d get ugly, baggy, soft clothes for Christmas instead of socks that feel like a nest of spiders have hatched between your toes.”

“Well maybe your skin is just extra sensitive. Maybe no one else has a problem with it.”

“Oh, come off it, Harry. Don’t tell me Ginny hasn’t complained about it too. No, it’s everyone, believe me. We’re just all scared to say anything.”

“Well don’t tell that to the sorting hat–”

“Hey, no way, this isn’t about bravery or anything like that. Mum absolutely dotes on you, you’ve never seen what she can–”

“Oh, be quiet.” Hermione interrupted, though she was enjoying listening to the light banter. She waved her hand at the radio as the boys shut up. “It’s Auld Lang Syne.”

“What?” Ron asked.

“It’s a muggle song.” Harry replied, leaning over and turning up the volume of the radio, and then tugging the sleeves of his jumper over his fingers.

Hermione noticed how dark it really was. She could see the vague lumps and bumps of the field beyond the wards surrounding the tent, but not even the peaks of the mountains in the distance were visible. The moon was just a sliver, and the light of the fire meant that her eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to make much else out. She looked down at her hands. Her skin looked very golden, and details like the dirt under her nails and the roughened callouses of her palms had been concealed by the firelight.

“I’ve heard this before.” Ron muttered after a moment. “Our version has different words, but it’s on the radio every year in our house too.”

Hermione took Harry’s hand again – at some point, probably during the heated sock discussion, one of them had let go. The song roused something melancholy and heavy in her, and she closed her eyes. She felt a bit tipsy, though she hadn’t had anything alcoholic to drink since Bill and Fleur's wedding. She hadn’t felt like this – like time had stopped and everything was thick and deep – since the last night she and Severus had spent together at Hogwarts. She was sure, in that moment, that she was going to message Severus again before the morning.

When the boys retired to the tent a few minutes later, she said she’d linger outside to put the fire out. Instead of standing immediately, however, she cast a silencing jinx on the tent and then brought her wand to her throat.

“Mitte verba mea.”

A silvery thread began to spill out of her mouth, glittering in the firelight, looking very vividly magical.

“Happy New Years, Severus. Harry, Ron, and I have just been walking a lot since I last messaged you, and listening a lot to the radio. I didn’t realize it was New Year’s Eve until Ron mentioned it tonight. It’s hard to believe how much has happened in a year.”

“When we were in the Highlands, a tiny part of me did wonder whether we’d both still be alive by now. Whether you’d be alive, I think. I’m so happy that you are. Which sounds a bit silly, I suppose. Of course I’m happy that you are. But… I guess I’m just really, really grateful that you’re doing everything that you are at Hogwarts despite… everything. Despite how isolated you are. You’re more isolated than me, really. I do think so highly of you.”

“Can you perhaps let us know, at some point, whether Luna is in immediate danger?”

She watched the tiny silver ball float gently in front of her nose for a minute, and then flicked her wand at it. It flew off over her shoulder, which was an odd feeling because she’d been imagining that Hogwarts was in front of her, not to her back.

Severus, standing, was hit with a wave of dizziness so intense that he was forced to lower back down into his armchair before he had taken a single step. He pressed his forehead against his glass, annoyed at his body, and annoyed at himself for expecting persistence out of a body that he hadn’t fed in about thirty hours, aside from a single dram of whisky.

He very rarely drank, especially since Potter had begun his schooling. He had self-medicated with alcohol for a very short period of time after meaningfully leaving the ranks of the death eaters, when his self-loathing was so great as to overwhelm any anxiety he had about stumbling down the same drunken path of his father. He had been forced into sobriety when the officially war ended, during his brief experience in the Ministry's custody, and then never picked the habit up again.

He was not entirely sure what had made him pour a glass that evening. Perhaps it had something to do with the small celebration taking place in the Great Hall somewhere above. Though that had certainly disbanded. He began to turn his head towards the cloak on the mantle but stopped when the dizziness, and now also a twinge of pain, intensified. Under Albus’ reign, curfew had always been lifted on New Year’s Eve. Not so this year.

It had been a relief, at first, to feel the blurriness of the liquor begin to soften his internal state. He was waiting to be summoned, and with half the student body having returned home for the winter holiday, it had not felt so dangerously imperative that he stay sharp. Now, however, he regretted the decision. When he was summoned – it was almost certain later in the night if the Dark Lord was in a celebratory mood – he would prefer to arrive with all his faculties intact. Especially after last time. He had not been aware of Miss Lovegood’s capture before he’d arrived at the last meeting to find the shadowy, silhouetted outline of her dead father lying in the centre of the circle. Perhaps that had contributed to his reunion with the glass.

Perhaps he had also given in to the discomfort he’d felt after leaving the Forest of Dean. It had been possible – not easy, but possible – to imagine that Hermione was better off, safer, on her ambiguous mission than she would have been at Hogwarts. But after feeling the exhaustion and the confusion in her mind, he could no longer convince himself of this. Each day since, self-disgust had compounded. She would never be safer at Hogwarts under its current administration, of course. But the wrongness of whatever she was doing instead was undeniable.

He did not want to admit that this, this single night, was the lowest point he had fallen since the school year had begun. There was no good reason for it. More had suffered and died than Xenophilius Lovegood. Whereas, in the past, he’d simply had to trust that the raids and rumors circulating the newspapers had not directly involved the trio on their mission, this time he knew for certain that Hermione had survived whatever incident had taken place at the Lovegood’s home. He had eaten meals and patrolled the grounds in the throws of the aftershooks of the cruciatus – far worse than this meager light-headedness.

Yet, still, he found it difficult to conceive of standing. He tried to think whether he had stored anything edible in the laboratory. He would prefer to avoid putting himself through the embarrassment of harassing a House-elf for something from the kitchen. And, he could admit to himself, the hunger was not altogether unwanted. It helped to satisfy the loathing in him.

In the space of a few hours, the year would be over, and everything that had required his perseverance to this point would bleed over into 1998. Severus’ hand tightened on the now empty glass, the lumps of the patterned, diamond texture of it pressing into his forehead. He was discomforted by the awareness that this night was the first time since leaving the Highlands the previous winter that his decision to persist beyond the course of the war was wavering.

It would be much easier to get an additional night of rest, rather than spend one night each week ensuring his personal medical supply of munimentum, blood-replenishing, and calming draught was fully stocked. It would be easier to trust in the steps that Albus had put in motion, to rely on the wards already surrounding the castle instead of building upon them, and to simply conduct himself along the bare-minimum lines of Albus’ instruction. Most significantly, it would be much, much easier to close his mind off to all the uncertainty, fear, and discomfort that came with keeping it unprotected. It would be much easier to unfeelingly drift through whatever remained of his usefulness without fearing the end.

For a moment he felt so heavy and hot – welded to the chair, melted into the dungeons – that his breath no longer worked through his throat. This and the dizziness morphed into a sensation like tipping forward. The feeling passed quickly, and he was still in his chair, though he was no longer holding his glass. He was able to recall the sound of it hitting the carpet, which was strange, because he didn’t think he’d heard it to begin with.

He stood. He was able to stand because he did not think about it until it had already happened. The dizziness intensified, but not so much that he had to take his seat again. He stripped off his outer robes, folding them carefully and placing them on the seat of the armchair. The fireplace had burned down to embers. He was aware that if he lay down on his bed, he might struggle to wake if he were summoned. It was not an entirely reasonable thought – the burning of the dark mark would eventually become too intense for an exhausted, alcohol-addled mind to ignore – but it still made him hesitant to contemplate sleep. He might be able to brew something basic. He could brew anything for the medical wing without having to think.

He’d had this thought, and to have another would require more energy, so without questioning himself he crossed into the laboratory and began selecting ingredients from various shelves and organizing a work station. He had two cauldrons of partially brewed potions stewing already, both of which needed another few days to sit untouched.

He began to dice a strip of boomslang skin into small squares. With every downwards motion of the knife his hand felt like it was moving through something thick and sticky. And yet, when he watched the movements, they looked as streamline as ever.

He had just lit a dull, blue flame under the cauldron when he caught the motion of a silver, glowing light in his periphery. It flitted across his vision and disappeared under the fabric of his waistcoat.

Severus stilled, his wand hand dropping to his side, and closed his eyes. There was something about this moment – before he’d reached up and opened the locket, and before he was actually hearing her voice – that was difficult to let go of. The unexpected relief of being reached out to without the anticipation of the end of the message.

He hooked the tip of his thumb under his collar, drawing free the silver chain and opening the metal pendant. He let it fall back to his chest once the silver ball of light had burst free. Planting his hands on the workbench below him he bowed his head and closed his eyes again, picturing her sitting on one of the other benches in the room, idly swinging her legs.

“Happy New Years, Severus,” her voice began, and he released a heavy breath. “Harry, Ron, and I have just been walking a lot since we last messaged you, and listening a lot to the radio. I didn’t realize it was New Year’s Eve until Ron mentioned it tonight. It’s hard to believe how much has happened in a year.”

She sounded at peace in a way Severus didn’t think he had heard before in one of these messages. Not happy – far from it – but her words lacked both the fatigued anxiety and dispassionate grit that he’d grown so used to. He dipped his chin further to his chest.

“When we were in the Highlands, a tiny part of me did wonder whether we’d both still be alive by now. Whether you’d be alive, I think. I’m so thankful that you are. Which sounds a bit silly, I suppose. Of course I’m glad that you are. But… I guess I’m just really, really grateful that you’re doing everything that you are at Hogwarts despite… everything. Despite how isolated you are. You’re more isolated than me, really. I do think so highly of you. Can you perhaps let us know, at some point, whether Luna is in immediate danger?”

Severus had started holding his breath again not far into the message, but he released it with a small grunt at the message’s end. He tipped his head back, now toward the ceiling. He wasn’t surprised that her thoughts had wandered a similar path to his own that night. It was impossible not to compare this New Year's Eve to the last. But she had managed, perhaps, to avoid the wretched effect of that comparison. He opened his eyes and looked down at the limp, putrid boomslang skin lying between his fists. He gazed, unimpressed, at the beginnings of his work for about a minute, and then left the laboratory.

The grounds were covered in a very thin layer of snow, though nothing was falling from the sky. Severus didn’t stop once he stepped outside, but continued straight on towards the Great Lake. Whereas he usually continued around the edge towards tree cover, this time he picked his way down the outcrop of rocks that rose straight up from the lake and bolstered the castle.

He stopped about a meter above the water, balanced on a small but flat ledge of rock. Though it was close, the water was black enough to give the illusion of a deep nothingness below his feet. If it weren’t for the sound of waves gently lapping at the crags, he might have taken a further step right into it.

He leaned against the rock behind him in response to another small wave of dizziness. He had forgotten to find something to eat before leaving the castle. This thought branched out and became a memory of the Ministry employees who had visited the school two days prior, sweeping through the Forbidden Forest and collecting all the blue-capped and staghorn mushrooms for some classified experiment being conducted in the Department of Mysteries. The memory made him angry. Stripping the grounds for resources that would surely go to waste.

He still felt overly hot, though he knew objectively that the temperature was close to zero. Without thinking very much, he stripped and dove into the lake. He surprised himself with the urge, and then his hurried execution of it. Finally, it had the instant effect of evaporating the heat from his body.

The temperature of the water made him aware of every pore. His skin tingled with a sensation that was simultaneously burning and freezing, and when he instructed the fist of his right hand to close his fingers twitched and curled in slow motion. The feeling of his body struggling against the cold overwhelmed the feeling of the hunger.

Treading water, he looked up at the sky. It was full of many, many stars. He sought out Alnilam and fixed his eyes on that point. The castle was a massive, towering shadow far above him. Monstrous. He thought about how very deep the lake was below him, and about all the species within it that could swallow him whole, drag him under, or peel his skin off. These weren’t thoughts associated with anxiety.

He thought about how he might respond to Hermione in regards to Miss Lovegood. She was not safe, though as far as Severus had been able to gather she was being kept in Azkaban. As unpleasant as the idea sounded, it was far safer than anywhere else she might have been held. Azkaban, at least, was still subject to some impartial Wizarding regulation. And it meant that her capture was not personal to the Dark Lord. She was not on his mind.

But Hermione, having had none of his experience interpreting the Dark Lord’s patterns, would likely be just as upset. Though he knew her to be realistic, he would rather not tempt her or Potter to undergo a doomed rescue mission.

He shivered, and let the worry fall away with that movement. He replayed everything else she had said. He tried to decide whether he felt very much about the fact that she seemed to have been less certain about his survival instinct the year before than he had originally assumed. He was mildly taken aback. He had often, and perhaps would continue, to be surprised by the capacity she seemed to have to understand very dark things. He supposed that if she didn’t have this ability, they never would have made it as far as they had as a pair.

He was not unmoved by hearing her say that she thought highly of him. Recalling the sentiment here, outside of the oppressive heat, felt far more concrete than hearing it in the castle. Still, recalling the words felt like watching the sky begin to rain from a distance. At the same time as the message had stopped him from sinking too low into the night, it also failed to reach him completely. He wondered whether this was a feeling that would fall away after eating something and sleeping properly. It struck him that it had been a long, long time since he’d last thought of Hermione as reachable.

The buzzing in his limbs began to tip over into something painful. Returning to the rock-face, he pulled himself back up onto the small ledge, his fingers barely able to feel the solidness under them. Retrieving his wand, he dressed with a flick of his wrist. Instead of returning to the castle, however, he lowered himself down until he was perched above the water, leaning against the wall of rock behind him and tipping his head back towards the sky.

He began working his way through the list of things that made Hermione unreachable. Her muggle identity, ensuring that she would never be safe at Hogwarts. Albus’ plan for him, ensuring that he had to oversee the school himself. Albus’ plan for Potter; unknown, isolated, obviously dangerous. Her constant movement. The fact that he never quite knew where she was. The fact that he, as a traceable death eater, risked exposing her position if he went to her. The fact that they had only spoken in person once since he had killed Albus. The fact that he had only asked for her forgiveness after that offense, rather than her understanding before it.

He went through this list a second time. With each item, he tried to decide how real the obstacle was. Each one seemed far less real than her companionship in the years prior to the war. He was angry with himself, with his passivity. Not for the first time, and this was the worst thing. He had pretended repeatedly – with his wards, his locket, and his anger for Albus – that he’d been reclaiming agency. He wondered where she was. He brought his wand to his throat.

“Mitte verba mea.”

He paused, watching the thin, silver thread begin to spill from his mouth.

“I believe Miss Lovegood,” he started, beginning with the only concrete thing he needed to say, “is being held in Azkaban. You must believe me when I say that it is the safest place she could be as a captive of the Dark Lord. I was not aware of her abduction until two nights ago. If she is moved from there, I will make you aware at the very least.”

He stopped, but didn’t remove the wand from his throat. He wanted to say something else, something that was not clipped and practical. He wanted, in some way, to apologize.

“It was conflicting tonight–” he murmured, closing his eyes, “to hear that you think so highly of me. I find it difficult to respect the path I have taken this year. But I thank you for saying it.”

It certainly did not encapsulate the heart of what he wanted to convey, but his wand fell away from his throat as if it had an agenda of its own. He sent the small, pulsing light away.

As he watched it fly out of sight, a stuffy and constricted feeling his chest eased for the first time that night. He was not surprised that it had taken reaching out to Hermione for this to happen, but it was humbling that it had taken him the length of the night to do so.

He listened to the sounds of the water, occasionally clenching and unclenching his fingers in a half-hearted attempt to monitor his blood flow. He hadn’t expected to become so protective over the castle grounds as he had during the course of the school year. But there was a soft, paternal feeling that came with looking out over the dark shapes beyond the castle, after doing so much to strengthen the wards and appease whatever magical energy pulsed through the lake, trees, and hills. It was, perhaps, the better thing he had done that year.

Only a few minutes had passed since he’d watched his message flit away, when he caught sight of another blue ball flying back towards him. For a moment he assumed that his message was returning back to him, and the thought was accompanied by a rush of adrenaline that twisted in his gut, and he flinched up in a movement to stand. He was not certain what a message would do if Hermione was not alive to retrieve it. The moment of alarm, however, ended when the silver-blue light zipped to a stop in front of him and began to speak.

“I didn’t expect to hear back from you!” The sound of her voice was so unexpectedly light, enthusiastic, that a smile twitched at his lips before he was able to catch himself. He relaxed back down onto the ledge. “I've been sitting here trying to convince myself to go to bed, but I’m feeling strange tonight, and I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep very much. Nothing feels quite right. I think it's a product of the new year, and of having seen you for such a tiny moment. And we heard tonight that Mr. Lovegood was killed. You might’ve already known. I – we all – feel responsible. But thank you for telling me about Luna. I really hate– anyway. It's all awful when you think about anything for very long. So you mustn’t feel bad, Severus. No one else could do what you're doing at Hogwarts. It has to be you, Professor Dumbledore was right about that.”

Severus reached up to touch his pendant. It was still hanging open, hence the message had played for him straight away. He noticed an odd, aware feeling – he hadn't expected to hear back from her either. A small but sure part of him had not felt like he was sending his message to someone real. But she was sitting outside her tent somewhere, having listened to his voice, responding.

His first instinct was to reply straight away, and his second was to hold himself back. It was, therefore, a decidedly conscious decision to bring his wand to his throat. Still, he hesitated. Having felt the beginnings of her realness for the first time in months, he had an immense urge to follow that thread. But it was not the kind of conversation that would flow naturally when he could not look at her.

“I was not referring to my role at Hogwarts. I have, at least, protected the students to the best of my ability without revealing where my loyalties lie. I was referring to you, Hermione. I was not even aware of your parents until a few nights ago. I’m ashamed that you had to deal with that on your own.” He considered his next words. The path of self-reliance – of resilience against the plans laid out by Albus – that they had determinedly started down was one he had since failed to pursue. This was the heart of the matter. “I have been strengthening the wards around the castle, as if dressing it up as a stronghold might disguise the fact that you are elsewhere, and that I have left you there. It does not live up to the implicit promise I made to you when we were exploring the connection in the months before our separation.”

He cut himself off there, increasingly frustrated. He did not like to send these words flying across the country, but he did so anyway. He was not wedded to the idea of dragging her into such a conversation at a distance. He would have liked to read her expression. These were all things he should have said when he met her in the Forest of Dean. In the moment, however, relief at seeing her immediately safe had overwhelmed concerns about what he had felt across the connection.

It was even less time before her response came flying back through the night. Her message began with a small sound, like the beginning of a word withdrawn, and then a pause.

“I've been neglecting the connection too.” She finally began, and Severus released another frustrated breath. He recognized the pattern she had previously shown of appeasing him instead of reckoning with his misdeeds.

“I shut my mind down before we'd even left the Weasley’s…” She continued. “I lost a lot of the progress that I’d made in regards to commanding my mind, I think. I've been putting time into strengthening that muscle again recently, but it's harder to want to when you're so unreachable. The part of your magic that I have in my mind feels sluggish. I don't know, I could be making it up.”

She took a deep breath, audible across the message. It made him feel, for a moment, that he might look to the side and see her sitting on the rocks just below him. He closed his eyes and imagined this. Immediately, it became easier to compose his own response.

“And I didn't tell you about my parents on purpose. You don't have to respond to this, by the way. I know you have to be cautious about how many messages you send. I suppose the most relevant thing to say is that what Harry, Ron, and I are doing has to be done. Regardless of whether or not it's on Professor Dumbledore's terms. It is hard, and I do wish we weren’t doing it alone sometimes. That’s the part I’m less and less sure of – whether we need to be doing it alone. Most of the time there’s quite a strong part of me that feels like we need to figure it out independently – because it’s dangerous, because Harry’s the best person for the mission itself, because everyone else has their own role to play, and because we are capable. Then there are other times when I wonder if we might’ve made so much more progress if someone else had come along from the very start. But I don’t know how to get from right here, right now, to a point where we’ve got company. And if I’m worried about burdening other people with this, you wouldn’t believe how stubborn Harry will be. Well you would, actually. And… and you didn’t leave me. Maybe a little. I don't want to talk about it anymore, though. Not because I'm upset! I just don't… really want to think about what we've done wrong when we're so far apart. It's too lonely.””

Severus brought his wand to his throat again, deciding that if the trace of his messages were discovered, it would provide a reason to end the entire charade. He would direct her to the Highlands and have someone from the Order meet her there. That series of events was unlikely. He had been overcautious.

He wondered whether Hermione would have withheld the situation with her parents had he not betrayed her trust long before she arrived at The Burrow that summer. He had a strong sense that she wouldn’t have. He did not say this, however. He didn’t want to belabor the point. He focused, instead, on what was relevant to the moment in time that they had found themselves in now. The enormous unknown of Potter’s mission was a blindfold tied over his eyes – it made any advice he could think to give sound either patronising or groundless. He pictured her sitting in the armchair in his quarters, legs folded underneath her. There were things he wanted to say in response to the earnest, determined look that he remembered coming into her eyes when she’d spoken about her role in the war in the past.

“Without having more information about what you are doing, I won't offer an immediate solution. But what I would like to do instead is to plant the notion in your mind of returning here. It would be difficult, and require careful consideration and planning, but there is a version of reality in which Hogwarts becomes a place of refuge for everyone fighting against the Dark Lord. Either because I have been forced out, or because I have renounced my role as a spy. Though I believe it would be easier to let the Order take the school from me than to convince them of my loyalties.”

It was both unnerving and freeing to say. Unnerving, because it would be an utter inversion of everything Albus had indicated should happen. And yet it was the very possibility he had been preparing for as he wove his own additions into the wards surrounding the castle. A version of reality in which he could have her back before the end of the war. On a less personal scale, a version of reality in which the Dark Lord’s opponents, currently weakened by distance and concealment, could become a focused force. For him alone, it would mean letting go. This was what made it freeing. Letting go of either the responsibility of the castle or the complexity of his role as a spy.

He didn’t open his eyes as he waited for a response. He waited, in the dark, for her voice to arrive. Paying attention to his breath helped to disguise the prolonged minutes which reminded him this wasn’t a proper conversation. Listening like this, he heard her near silent cue of her breath before her words began.

“Severus, I’m not going to ask you to give yourself over to You-Know-Who just because I don’t know exactly how to bring someone else into this yet. That’s– I mean, what you’re saying is huge. Have you really strengthened the wards around Hogwarts to that level? It could be months before we get to a point where we could fight You-Know-Who properly. They would have to hold out that long. And how would you give up your position there without betraying yourself? Even if you could, he would be so angry. You’d have to go into hiding and even then… I– sorry. It’s a lot to think about. It’s such a big idea. I’m not asking you to do that.”

He recognized the familiar, spilling way her words came when she was distracted by a mind full of excited thought.

“I know you’re not asking. I am proposing a very real possibility. It does not have to be now, if you aren’t ready. Keep it in mind as a solution. Minerva, I am sure, would not be hard to provoke into outright revolt if it came to that, and I am almost confident in the ability of the school’s wards to withstand prolonged attack. I have been strengthening them since the beginning of the school year, experimenting with wards that have not been used in this part of the world yet. I would need a little more time, perhaps a little over a month.”

It has been my distraction, he thought, but did not say. Each time he reached a point where he wanted to say too many things at once, he flicked his wand and sent the message away. The reply took longer, this time, perhaps five minutes.

“I’ll think about it. I really will. How much warning would I need to give you, if we decided to do it?”

Severus nodded to himself. He felt on the edge of something, finally.

“After I have finished with the wards, a few days, perhaps. It would depend in part on how Minerva decided to organize her coup.” He would need to spend time thinking about other ways to banish himself from the school too. He shifted this thought to the side, energized, instead, by this strange conversation they had found themselves participating in, and wanting to hear her voice again. “How could I be of better help in the meantime? It is always a risk, but I could come to you again.”

Sound seemed to have been sucked from the air as he waited for her reply. It was just his breath in his ears. The cold and his dizziness were getting to a dangerous point. He did not want to return to the castle.

“I can't believe… is that really an option? I want to see you more than anything.” Severus’ fingers flexed around his wand. “I don't want to be stupid, though. I feel very vulnerable at the moment to making a stupid decision just because– we'll, honestly, this is the first time you've felt real to me in a while. I want it so much. Are you… how are you tonight? I wouldn’t have expected this in a million years.”

Severus made a gruff noise. Irony, or perhaps self-loathing. But far less intense that it had been earlier in the evening. He knew, if she had been there, that he would have held his tongue. She would have smiled wryly and provoked him until he’d submitted an answer. He thought back to what she’d said in the Forest of Dean, about changing. She was wiser than he was in so many ways.

“I think I also may have been losing something of myself. It–” Severus made a hissing sound through his teeth, only just managing to keep from flinching and sending the message prematurely when the skin of his forearm began to burn. “–I’m being summoned.”

He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to end it there.

“I have been overcautious in my interactions with you to this point. I would like to think of tonight, not as an anomaly, but as the beginning of a new way of navigating the war. Think about the kind of danger that would come with revealing the nature of your mission to me, or another member of the Order. How real is it?”

He opened his eyes, and the image of Hermione disappeared. It had been a long time since he’d needed to effortfully clear his mind of her presence in preparation to face the Dark Lord, and it was a burden he was grateful for.

Chapter Text

1st January – In the early 15th century, certain magical communities used the sap of bowtruckles as a cure for smallpox, (Bertie Gibbernackle, 1915).

7th January – In the decades immediately following the muggle Great Plague, many dark wizarding families took to hiding heirlooms in plague-pits, believing muggle superstition would deter their discovery. An estimated million galleons worth of these items were discovered by the Department of Magical Catastrophes in 1650, when a Ministry experiment went awry and resulted in all objects containing bone-fusion charms suddenly appearing in the Ministry atrium, (Elore Elorian, 1903).

11th January – For most of mankind, the Thames, at each new year, was charmed so as to run clear and clean of all wrongness for a fortnight, in celebration of the shared land between magick and nonmagick folk. This custom was observed by London wizards until the Year of the Plague, whereupon it was abandoned under the weight of death, (Vrizin Oduxium, 1672).

14th January – During the First Great Purification, many a magick being took to disguising his wand as a walking-stick, lest the Puritans recognize him as a ‘devil’. It is a habit still performed by many dark wizarding families even now. The wizards of Alman have reportedly named the walking-stick a man’s ‘third horn’, (Oroharad Surrgeon, 1696).

15th January – Sea wizards once spoke of “the Mirror Below,” a calm depth of the ocean that reflects the sky above perfectly. Its location has been lost for centuries, (Harold Fairblyth, 1896).

27th January – After the invention of the Self-Stirring Cauldron, potion accidents across Europe were halved, though apothecaries complained it ruined the burn-salve trade. Due to the political traction of this complaint, the law requiring manual stirring was not overturned until 1801, (Germaine Scholfish, 1875).

5th February – In Spain, Grindlows were for a brief period kept as household guards, often frozen in stone until the unwitting visitor took to the front steps. This trend lasted only one year, as it was then forbidden by the Ministry, which cited rising injuries among errand-boys, post-owls, and careless guests, (Larkishan Odis, 1844).

10th February – Since its discovery in the early eighth century, no Wizarding authority has ever been able to implement a floo tax for more than twenty-four hours, (Betty Shoo-rinket, 1888).

21st February – The infamous British figure, Jack the Ripper, while feared by some muggles and by others labeled fictitious, is by many wizards believed to have been a rogue vampire operating in Whitechapel. This rumour has been confirmed by the Vampire Covenant in the United Kingdom on multiple occasions, though they refuse to reveal the identity of the individual unless he once again perpetrates against the muggle community, (Jake Boglart, 1914).

26th February – At the close of the century, many young American witches took to riding bicycles alongside their muggle counterparts. Similarly, this scandalized older magical generations, who insisted polite wizarding women should fly, not pedal, (Rosetta Silverstone, 1907).

11th March – During the South American War of the Triple Alliance, it was common for whole wizarding villages to retreat behind Fidelius Charms to avoid contamination of their development, and fearing that muggle weaponry might breach their weaker wards. It is thought that at least four of these small villages became trapped within these Fidelius Charms when the secret keepers ventured outside the boundaries of the wards and were killed. It was only following these incidents that the Fidelius Charm was adapted to keep people out, but not prevent people from leaving the bounds of the protected space, (Aurora Fabulary, 1900).

12th March – The first global, magical wireless transmission was sent this year, from a small sacherl in Prussia. The signal was so strong it briefly caused spontaneous spellcasting in infants within a two thousand mile radius of the dwelling, (Markus Gwenney, 1889).

29th March – A minor panic swept wizarding London when an experimental levitation charm lifted an entire street of Muggle hansom cabs into the air in March, 1803. The Statute of Secrecy Taskforce worked for two weeks to set matters right, but it is the only recorded instance in British wizarding history where the amendments to the memories of muggle witnesses is thought to have been potentially incomplete, (Harold Hazengard, 1853).

Chapter Text

March 30th – Several merfolk colonies were observed to migrate from the Mediterranean Sea to waters near Cornwall this year. This would be the first view of merfolk in Britain since their mysterious disappearance from all observable bodies of water in 1701, (Snow Fogs, 1862).

Hermione sat on her bed with her legs crossed, leaning back against her pillow with the Sword of Gryffindor lying across her knees. Bubotuber pus, according to something she’d read in a potions book she’d taken from the Hogwarts library, had a polishing effect on silver. She wasn’t so sure. She’d been at it for about an hour, and she was only half-convinced her efforts were having any effect. Still, the activity was having somewhat of a quietening effect on her brain.

She was jittery. If she stopped doing something with her hands they would shiver noticeably. That had been the case ever since Severus had messaged with the word ‘horcrux’. She’d had a feeling his mind was ticking over their mission for weeks, perhaps even trying to fill in the blanks of the snippets of information she’d given him with his own research. She couldn’t be sure those snippets had been given entirely innocently on her part. On some level she’d wanted him to find out, and on some level she was glad she hadn’t had to tell him. It felt, even though it wasn’t true, out of her hands.

She couldn’t tell whether the shivers running through her hands and up her arms and down her spine were because he knew, or because she was going to see him again. She glanced at her watch. It was only just now the evening, only just now getting dark. She would wait ten more minutes, and then send him a message to tell him exactly where they had pitched their tent for the night, and exactly what time to come. She hadn’t been able to think up a good reason to leave the boys for a decent period of time, so she was just going to wait until they were asleep, like last time.

She squeezed her eyes shut and took a shaky breath. Unlike last time, this time it was going to feel completely real, she could tell. Part of her had been trying to hold out until April before giving into the urge to see him properly again – a stupid, self-induced boundary that she’d frequently resented. But the anxiety of unexploited time slipping by had been increasing with each new morning, and her mind had started to race with regrets. She’d tried to meditate more, but she often didn’t have the energy or the personal space. She’d known that trying to live a double life – sneaking out to meet Severus at night and then wake up to hours of walking and plotting with Harry and Ron in the day – wasn’t something she wanted. But since the New Year, the simple fact that seeing him was an actual possibility had made the horcrux hunt a million times more bearable. She’d reached for her locket a hundred times to ask, and then stopped just short, because she could ask. It was okay.

But still, she’d gotten to the point about a week ago where she was hoping that she, Harry, and Ron didn’t make a breakthrough before April. She wanted the plan she and Severus had hatched to arrive now, even if it was a terrifying prospect to invert the course of the war. Part of her, a part she felt guilty about, didn’t even care whether it was better for the horcrux hunt if they were on the move or based at Hogwarts, and didn’t even care whether it was safer for the Order-aligned wizarding community to live within the school-grounds or outside of them. Part of her – the deliberate part of her – just wanted to go back to seeing Severus everyday. There was no way she was going to let him continue to stand with the death eaters. She wasn’t sure yet how she would stop him, if that’s the decision he made, but she would.

Hermione sucked in a sharp breath, flinching, when her hand absentmindedly slipped and she nicked her skin with the blade of the sword. She placed it on the bed beside her, a startlingly heavy weight, and held her finger up to the light. It was just a tiny pinprick of blood. Her study was interrupted when Ron, crouched on the floor in the middle of his tent, abruptly shouted out,

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it! Password was Albus’! Get in here, Harry.”

“What? Potterwatch?” Hermione asked, slipping out of bed and joining him on the floor. They’d been tuning into various Order-aligned radio stations most nights, most of which had reduced their content to just listing the names of missing or dead victims of death eater attacks. Ron had been trying to tune into Potterwatch since his return. He swore by it, but Hermione had decided that any channel that made it so hard to guess the password was going beyond caution and crossing into the realm of uselessness.

“Yeah…” Ron tailed off, carefully turning a dial on his radio, and the blurry static of noise gradually became something identifiable as a human, male voice. Harry burst into the tent at that moment, hurrying over and dropping down onto the floor to join them as the voice rattled off what seemed to be an enthusiastic welcome.

“... must apologize for our temporary absence from the airwaves, which was due to a number of house calls in our area by those charming Death Eaters.”

“But that’s Lee Jordan!” Hermione exclaimed, hit with an unexpected rush. The idea was such a positive one. Someone else from Hogwarts, not at Hogwarts, making their own way on the run, making an actual difference. It made her feel a little less alone, even though she’d never really exchanged more than superficial conversation with Lee. It made her proud too. Someone else from their generation taking things into their own hands.

“I know!” Ron glanced at her, a grin splitting his face, and she wondered whether he was thinking something similar. “Cool, eh?”

“...now found ourselves another secure location,” Lee continued, “and I’m pleased to tell you that two of our regular contributors have joined me here this evening. Evening, boys!”

“Hi.” Said another voice, and Hermione squinted with a tip-of-her-tongue recognition. Lupin her brain supplied a moment later.

“Evening, River.”

“‘River’ - that’s Lee,” Ron said, talking over the voices of the radio. “They’ve all got code names, but you can usually tell–”

“Shh!” Hermione flapped a hand at him. Obviously they’d have code names.

“But before we hear from Royal and Romulus,” Lee was saying now, ““let’s take a moment to report those deaths that the Wizarding Wireless Network News and Daily Prophet don’t think important enough to mention. It is with great regret that we inform our listeners of the murders of Ted Tonks and Dirk Cresswell.”

Hermione covered a silent gasp with her hand. They’d know Tonks’ father had been on the run. She met Harry’s eyes, and could see her horror mirrored back at her.

“A goblin by the name of Gornuk was also killed. It is believed that Muggle-born Dean Thomas and a second goblin, both believed to have been traveling with Tonks, Cresswell, and Gornuk, may have escaped. If Dean is listening, or if anyone has any knowledge of his whereabouts, his parents and sisters are desperate for news.”

Hermione shut her eyes to squeeze away the burning feeling beginning behind them. She could just imagine how awful Dean’s parents would be feeling. How useless and disoriented. At least he wasn’t reported dead.

“Meanwhile, in Gaddley, a muggle family of five has been found dead in their home. Muggle authorities are attributing their deaths to a gas leak, but members of the Order of the Phoenix inform me that it was the Killing Curse—more evidence, as if it were needed, of the fact that muggle slaughter is becoming little more than a recreational sport under the new regime.”

In her periphery, Hermione saw Ron glance quickly at her, but kept her eyes firmly trained on the radio. She didn’t feel like thinking about her muggle identity at this exact moment. She wasn’t sure how to feel, except sick. The fact that she’d already been so shaky before the radio announcement wasn’t helping at all. She felt, all of a sudden, so desperate to talk to Severus face to face that she had to squeeze her fists shut in order to resist reaching for her locket.

“Finally, we regret to inform our listeners that the remains of Bathilda Bagshot have been discovered in Godric’s Hollow. The evidence is that she died several months ago. The Order of the Phoenix informs us that her body showed unmistakable signs of injuries inflicted by Dark Magic. Listeners, I’d like to invite you now to join us in a minute’s silence in memory of Ted Tonks, Dirk Cresswell, Bathilda Bagshot, Gornuk, and the unnamed, but no less regretted, muggles murdered by the Death Eaters.”

She, Harry, and Ron all participated in the silence, staring eagerly and fearfully at the faintly crackling radio. Hermione was half tempted to stand up and tiptoe outside the tent before Lee could start talking again. She was hoping dreadfully that whatever news came next was more uplifting.

“Thank you,” Lee’s voice began, and Hermione jumped. “And now we can return to regular contributor Royal for an update on how the new Wizarding order is affecting the muggle world.”

“Thanks, River,” said a third voice, and Hermione perked up. Since they’d rescued Harry from Privet Drive, she’d recognize Kingsley’s voice anywhere.

“Kingsley!” Ron shouted, and Hermione rolled her eyes at his bubbling, distracting enthusiasm.

“We know!” She shushed.

“Muggles remain ignorant of the source of their suffering as they continue to sustain heavy casualties,” said Kingsley. “However, we continue to hear truly inspirational stories of wizards and witches risking their own safety to protect muggle friends and neighbors, often without the muggles’ knowledge. I’d like to appeal to all our listeners to emulate their example, perhaps by casting a protective charm over any muggle dwellings in your street. Many lives could be saved if such simple measures are taken.”

Hermione noticed that she was nodding along, her lips clenched tightly, staring at the radio as if it might turn into Kingsley himself.

“And what would you say, Royal, to those listeners who reply that in these dangerous times, it should be ‘Wizards first’?” Lee asked, and Hermione held her breath, though it was obvious that Lee was prompting Kingsley to make a particular point.

“I’d say that it’s one short step from ‘Wizards first’ to ‘Purebloods first,’ and then to ‘Death Eaters,’” We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”

Hermione released her breath.

“Excellently put, Royal, and you’ve got my vote for Minister of Magic if we ever get out of this mess. And now, over to Romulus for our popular feature ‘Pals of Potter.’”

“Thanks, River,” said the voice Hermione had recognized earlier. Ron made a half movement, but she slapped his knee without taking her eyes off the radio.

“We know it’s Lupin!”

“Romulus, do you maintain, as you have every time you’ve appeared on our program, that Harry Potter is still alive?”

Hermione glanced up finally, looking at Harry. He was wearing a strange expression – a frown and a look of longing combined.

“I do,” Lupin stated in his calm, no-nonsense, kind voice. Harry nodded. “There is no doubt at all in my mind that his death would be proclaimed as widely as possible by the death eaters if it had happened, because it would strike a deadly blow at the morale of those resisting the new regime. ‘The Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are fighting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting.”

“And what would you say to Harry if you knew he was listening, Romulus?”

“I’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit. And I’d tell him to follow his instincts, which are good and nearly always right.”

Hermione didn’t really try to suppress the tears welling up in her eyes this time. She was so relieved to hear Lupin’s voice. She was so relieved for Harry that someone outside of their small group, someone he loved, had affirmed what he was doing. He needed it. And she’d also needed to be reminded that the people they were fighting for were still out there in an actual, concrete way. She wanted to scream at them all that they didn’t have to hold on much longer, that they were going to be together and safe in Hogwarts in less than a month.

“Nearly always right,” she repeated when Harry looked at her.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Ron added. “Bill told me Lupin’s living with Tonks again! And apparently she’s getting pretty big too…”

Hermione smiled, pressing her shaking hands together.

“...and our usual update on those friends of Harry Potter’s who are suffering for their allegiance?” Lee prompted again.

“Well,” Lupin responded, “as regular listeners will know, several of the more outspoken supporters of Harry Potter have now faced consequences, including Xenophilius Lovegood, former editor of The Quibbler. We have also heard…”

Hermione tuned out for a moment at the sound of Mr. Lovegood’s name. Listening to the channel was an emotional rollercoaster she hadn’t expected. She was surprised the energy coursing through her system hadn’t burned a hole into the floor. She was only half-listening, staring at the radio as if it might turn into Lupin or Kingsley themselves, when another familiar voice jolted her back to full-alert.

“‘Rodent’?”

Hermione jumped an inch off the floor and cried out in delight. All three of them, in fact, made a series of happy exclamations that morphed into a happy chorus.

“Fred!” Ron shouted. Hermione didn’t think she’d ever heard him sound so unironically, purely delighted in regards to his older siblings.

“No– is it George?” Harry said.

“It’s Fred, I think,” Ron assured, leaning towards the radio. Hermione agreed.

“I’m not being ‘Rodent’,” the radio was complaining, and Hermione smirked, momentarily only happy. “No way, I told you I wanted to be ‘Rapier’!”

“Oh, all right then, ‘Rapier,’ could you please give us your take on the various stories we’ve been hearing about the Chief Death Eater?”

“Yes, River, I can,” said Fred. “As our listeners will know, unless they’ve taken refuge at the bottom of a garden pond or somewhere similar, You-Know-Who’s strategy of remaining in the shadows is creating a nice little climate of panic. Mind you, if all the alleged sightings of him are genuine, we must have a good nineteen You-Know-Who's running around the place.”

“Which suits him, of course,” added Kingsley, and Hermione shook her head slowly in disbelief. She couldn’t believe they were all there – somewhere – together. Talking, seeing each other. She was imagining them all sitting around the table in the warmly lit kitchen of Grimmauld Place, though of course that was impossible. “The air of mystery is creating more terror than if he actually showed himself.”

“Agreed,” Fred continued. “So, people, let’s try and calm down a bit. Things are bad enough without inventing stuff as well. For instance, this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill people with a single glance from his eyes. That’s a basilisk, listeners. One simple test: Check whether the thing that’s glaring at you has got legs. If it has, it’s safe to look into its eyes, although if it really is You-Know-Who, that’s still likely to be the last thing you ever do.”

Hermione felt like she was listening to a snippet of morning radio. She realized, with a deep respect for whoever organized Potterwatch, that Fred was the perfect messenger for content covering Voldemort. He spoke with a kind of earnest levity – half-jokingly, without giving off the impression that he was taking the topic too lightly. Of course he would be perfect for reassuring people. Hermione looked up sharply, surprised, at the sound of Harry laughing. It had been a long time. They listened to Fred speak genial reassurances into the radio for another few minutes, before Lee brought the conversation to an end.

“Thank you very much for those wise words, Rapier. Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch. We don’t know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: The next password will be ‘Mad-Eye.’ Keep each other safe: Keep faith. Good night.”

The radio hummed for a moment, and then the light and sound went out altogether, as if it knew they were finished. Ron and Harry were both grinning. She realized she was too. She brought her legs up to her chest and hugged them, tipping her head back against the edge of the chair behind her.

“Good, eh?” said Ron, sounding like a child showing off a school prize.

“Brilliant.” Harry assured.

“It’s so brave of him,” Hermione sighed. She wasn’t entirely sure which ‘him’ she was referring to. She still couldn’t believe they were all gathered together somewhere, this very moment. “If they were found…”

“Well, they keep on the move, don’t they?” said Ron. “Like us.”

“But did you hear what Fred said?” Harry asked. He was waving his hands at the radio and in the air, giddy. Hermione smiled gently, watching him, feeling like a contented parent for some reason. Which was stupid. She didn’t claim to be any more experienced than him at any of this, or any less desperate for the reassurance of familiar voices. She’d just watched him get very low. At least she’d had the suggestion of Severus to keep her company.

“He’s abroad!” Harry continued, “He’s still looking for the Wand, I knew it!”

Hermione groaned, a little of her good mood fading. She didn’t want to talk about the wand again.

“Harry–” she started.

“Come on, Hermione, why are you so determined not to admit it? Vol–”

Hermione let go of her legs in a full body flinch at the start of the word. Ron, at her side, similarly jolted and shouted out,

“HARRY, NO!”

“–demort’s after the Elder Wand!”

“The name’s Tabbo!” Ron roared. He was already on his feet. Hermione was staring at Harry, aghast, as Ron continued to ramble, urgently gesturing, “I told you, Harry, I told you, we can’t say it anymore– we’ve got to put the protection back around us – quickly – it’s how they find–”

Hermione was about to yell at Ron to shut up, but he cut himself off first. Immediately, the sound of low, gruff voices from outside the tent reached her ears. Her chest was shot through with an ice-cold fear. She jumped to her feet at the same time as Harry, but they all seemed to freeze there. All the lights in the tent went out, and Hermione glanced over at Ron, blinking through the sudden darkness at the image of him slipping his Deluminator back into his pocket.

“Come out of there with your hands up!” Someone rasped from beyond the door of the tent, and Hermione’s face drained of blood. The voices hadn’t sounded that close. Harry glanced back at her, wide eyed.

“We know you’re in there! You’ve got half a dozen wands pointing at you and we don’t care who we curse!”

Her breath incredibly loud in her ears, Hermione darted over to her bed, snatching up her handbag and her wand. She stuffed the handbag down her shirt. The first thing that crossed her mind was to just grab ahold of the boys and disapparate. But the wards still surrounding the tent wouldn’t let them. She heard the vague sound of another shout, but the rushing in her ears muffled the specifics. A haphazard plan forming in her mind, she pointed her wand directly at Harry’s face.

Aculeum, she thought, and a white light leapt out of her wand and hit him squarely between his brows. Her let out a muffled groan, doubling over and bringing his hands to his face. She turned, trying to distinguish Ron’s silhouette in the darkness, but the tent was suddenly full of people. Before she could process how many, her arms were being yanked painfully behind her and then she was no longer holding her wand. That was a second feeling of terror.

For a brief moment, she was plunged into a moment of deja vu. She was thinking about the time Severus had reached into her mind and turned her magic off. How limp and empty and defenseless she’d felt. Which didn’t make any sense, because she’d been without her wand before. Still, that was the feeling.

“Get up, vermin.” A gruff voice barked out.

Her eyes adjusting, Hermione was able to make out a massive figure grabbing Harry by the shoulders and yanking him upright. The unknown figure behind her started dragging her out of the tent, and it only took about a second of wriggling resistance to determine that whoever it was was at least a foot taller than her, and incredibly strong. She stopped resisting, letting her arms go limp.

“Get– off– her!” Ron was shouting, and she tried to turn towards his voice, disoriented. She caught a glimpse of the interior of the tent just as she was dragged outside – dark shapes of the bunk bed and the radio on the floor.

The sword, she thought.

At the same time, she heard the crunching sound of flesh against flesh, and Ron moaned out a pained sound.

“No!” Hermione shouted, horrified as the prospect of violence became an actuality. “Leave him alone, leave him alone!”

“Your boyfriend’s going to have worse than that done to him if he’s on my list. Delicious girl…” Hermione shrank back as a tall, bulky man took a definite step towards her, close enough that she could smell something damp and fishy. “What a treat . . . I do enjoy the softness of the skin. . . .”

Instinctually, Hermione’s arms jerked against the ropes secured around her wrists, and in response whoever was standing at her back tugged sharply. She was being held snuggly with her back and legs flush against the very definitely tall, solid person behind her. She closed her eyes and took in a steadying breath. It was uneven and caught in her throat, unhelpful.

“Search the tent!” Someone else had shouted, and the sound of clattering pots and thuds followed. Hermione started reciting a list of everything there, everything she’d taken out of her handbag. Sword, sword, her pajamas, Beedle, the radio, the box with the things she’d taken from her parents house, the stone with the fossil in it, the pink giggle-pill Fred had given her the year before, dried mushrooms she’d wanted to give to Severus, Harry’s broken wand, a few D.A. coins, two pots and a stirring spoon she’d used to cook dinner, their blankets, a pair of socks…

“Now, let’s see who we’ve got,” said the man who’d called her soft. He’d wrapped his fist into Harry’s hair, pulling his head back in order to stare into his disfigured face. It wasn’t going to be enough. If only, she thought, if only she’d messaged Severus earlier.

“I’ll be needing butterbeer to wash this one down. What happened to you, ugly?”

Harry just stood silently, staring at the man. Hermione tried to wrench herself out of the grip of her captor again, and again, she was pulled roughly back. She winced as the bones in her wrists ground together.

“I said”, the man repeated, snarling, “what happened to you?”

Come on Harry, she thought, at the same time as he said, “Stung. Been stung.”

His voice had changed too, as if his throat had swollen. She hadn’t meant to do that. She wondered whether she could’ve killed him. An image of Harry choking to death in the tent, Snatchers on the outside, swam into her mind.

“Yeah, looks like it,” said the man holding Hermione. He was slurring his words together, as if slightly drunk.

“What’s your name?” Snarled the first man.

“Dudley,” Harry supplied.

“And your first name?”

“I– Vernon. Vernon Dudley.”

“Check the list, Scabior.” The man said, and then rounded on Ron. Hermione felt a twinge of hope. As long as Harry wasn’t identified quickly, she could come up with another plan. As long as they weren’t taken to Voldemort, it would be possible to worm out of this. If she didn’t contact Severus soon, perhaps he would worry enough to come anyway.

She hadn’t told him where they were.

They were outside of the perimeter of the wards. If she could get close enough to Harry to touch him she could disapparate and deal with whoever came with them on the other side, at a better advantage. She might have to leave Ron behind. Her knees buckled a bit at the thought. Maybe their disapparation would distract everyone enough that Ron could get away by himself.

“And what about you, ginger?” The man was saying.

“Stan Shunpike,” Ron said without hesitation.

“Like ‘ell you are. We know Stan Shunpike, ‘e’s put a bit of work our way.”

The dark outline of the man landed another punch right into Ron’s stomach. Hermione began to struggle. This time, when she was pulled back, the man behind her ground his pelvis into her lower back. It was so unexpected and frightened her enough that she froze. The next few seconds were blurry. The kind of fear she was experiencing changed, now a hot and outward pressure on her chest. She was now imagining what kinds of things could happen, in the forest, in the middle of nowhere, and felt that it was a fraction harder to breathe.

“I’b Bardy. Bardy Weasley.”

“A Weasley? So you’re related to blood traitors, even if you’re not a mudblood. And lastly, your pretty little friend…”

The man turned and loomed towards her. There was a certain excitement in his voice as he leaned in, and a chorus of jeers sounded out from her right, just beyond her periphery. At least three other men. She swallowed, but her throat was sticky, and she choked for a second.

“Easy, Greyback,” said the man behind her.

“Oh, I’m not going to bite just yet. We’ll see if she’s a bit quicker at remembering her name than Barny. Who are you girly?”

Hermione was distracted by the horrible realization that this must be the werewolf, Greyback. It explained the smell. And it also meant that these weren’t just regular Snatchers.

“Penelope Clearwater,” She whispered, the first half-blood name that came to her head.

“What’s your blood status?”

It took a significant amount of effort to keep her face still under the smell of his breath. There was a definite coppery taint to it. Somehow, this fortified her nerves. The ground became a bit more solid.

“Half-blood.”

“Easy enough to check. But the ‘ole lot of ‘em look like they could still be ‘ogwarts age–”

“We’b lebt,” Ron interrupted, and Hermione let out a breath when Greyback straightened and turned away from her.

““Left, ’ave you, ginger?” said the man with long hair tied back at the nape of his neck – Scabior. “And you decided to go camping? And you thought, just for a laugh, you’d use the Dark Lord's name?”

“Nod a laugh. Aggiden.”

“Accident?”

The scarily unseeable group of men behind Hermione jeered again.

“You know who used to like using the Dark Lord’s name, Weasley? The Order of the Phoenix. Mean anything to you?”

“Doh,” Ron shook his head.

“Well, they don’t show the Dark Lord proper respect, so the name’s been Tabooed. A few Order members have been tracked that way. We’ll see. Bind them up with the other two prisoners!”

Hermione tripped over her feet, dragged forwards, and then was roughly spun around so that her hands could be fastened to Harry, Ron, and two other people that she hadn’t properly seen.

The man who had been holding her was very tall. He had a muddy cap on, and a ring in one ear. He held her eyes the whole time he was binding her hands, leaning in and reaching around her. She held her breath, trying to focus on being thankful that she was at least close to Harry and Ron again. She wondered whether she could disapparate with her hands bound. Splinching seemed like a small price to pay for getting away, but she didn’t want to kill them.

When the man finally leaned away, she took a second to count the rest of the Snatchers. There were seven of them in total, all men.

“Anyone still got a wand?” Harry whispered.

“No,” Hermione whispered back, at the same time as Ron.

“This is all my fault. I said the name. I’m sorry–”

Hermione began to shake her head, but someone else spoke first. The person to her left, and Hermione instantly recognized the voice.

“Harry?”

“Dean?” Harry said, his tongue barely pronouncing the word.

“It is you! If they find out who they’ve got– That’re Snatchers, they’re only looking for truants to sell for gold–”

Hermione zoned out of the exchange, lost in her own thoughts as she tried to figure out what to do next. She had very little confidence in her ability to disapparate if she was tied up to four other people. If she could work the knots free and get rid of one or two– She scanned the ground for anything remotely sharp. Not that she expected to find something, and not that she thought she’d be able to bend down and pick it up even if she could. Her mind was racing over nothing. She had a creeping, awful feeling that they were just going to have to wait to see what happened next. Greyback lurched across her line of vision.

“–Slytherin.” Harry answered an unheard question.

“Funny ‘ow they all thinks we wants to ‘ear that.” said Scabior – despite Greyback’s looming presence, this second man struck Hermione as the leader of the group. “But none of ‘em can tell us where the common room is.”

“It’s in the dungeons,” Harry replied. “You enter through the wall. It’s full of skulls and stuff and it’s under the lake, so the light’s all green.”

There was a silence. A couple of twigs snapped under the weight of uncertain men.

“Well, well, looks like we really ’ave caught a little Slytherin.” Scabior drawled, sounding deflated. “Good for you, Vernon, ’cause there ain’t a lot of mudblood Slytherins. Who’s your father?”

“He works at the Ministry,” Harry said, quickly. Hermione was thankful that he seemed to be thinking fast, despite what was probably an incredibly distracting, painfully bloated face. “Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.”

“You know what, Greyback,” Scabior said. “I think there is a Dudley in there.”

When Greyback spoke again, Hermione thought she could hear an edge of nerves in his voice. She wondered whether they could lean into this angle. Penelope Clearwater was a Ravenclaw, every Weasley was a Gryffindor, but if they let Harry go– she hoped to god he would have the sense not to try and free them too. She knew he would, though.

“Well, Well. If you’re telling the truth, ugly, you’ve got nothing to fear from a trip to the Ministry. I expect your father’ll reward us just for picking you up.”

Hermione's heart sank, and Harry began to protest.

“But if you just let us–”

“Hey!” Someone shouted from inside the tent. Eight. Eight men, in that case. She supposed it didn’t really make a difference at this point. “Look at this. Greyback!”

Hermione didn’t need to see the glint of silver in the approaching figure's hand to know what it would be. It made her think of Severus. She wished she had seen him walking through the Forest of Dean and placing the sword into the bottom of that lake. It was a thought with no purpose, but she had it.

She was clenching her jaw progressively tighter, and unexpectedly her upper teeth slipped and she bit her tongue, making her squeal. Greyback and the other men were distracted, though, having grouped around the sword.

“It’s my fathers,” Harry was saying. “We borrowed it to cut firewood–”

Hermione, trying to watch all eight men at once, noticed Scabior dig into his pocket and pull out a square of paper, which he unfolded. Though she couldn’t clearly see the parchment, her heart sank further.

“Ang on a minute, Greyback! Look at this, in the Prophet!”

Greyback loped over to Scabior, peering at the paper.

“‘ermione Granger” Scabior sounded out. Hermione closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She tried – though in the untrained, jittery mess of her fear she struggled – to reach for Severus magic. Ron stiffened against her right arm. “The mudblood who is known to be traveling with ‘arry Potter.”

Hermione’s eyes flicked open at the sound of a snapping twig. Greyback was crouching down in front of her. He was holding a ripped, stained page of the Daily Prophet.

“You know what, little girly? This picture looks a hell of a lot like you.”

“It isn’t.” Hermione shook her head, glancing down at the sliver of the portrait she could see moving across the page. It was her unmistakable mess of hair. “It isn’t me!”

“...known to be traveling with Harry Potter,” Greyback breathed to himself. He sounded like someone about ninety percent sure that the chest they’d dug up was stuffed with gold.

Without closing her eyes, this time, Hermione reached back down into her mind. She tried not to rush it. She tried not to claw at what she was looking for. She’d never reached across the connection and used Severus’ magic before without also casting a spell. She didn’t even know if it was possible. She wondered if she could send a message through her pendant without her wand. Could she just touch her fingers to her throat instead? But she'd need her hands free. She tried to think of nothing.

She was reaching down for something she very much wanted – that was all she told herself. Wanted, because it felt good to be surrounded by the dark, rumbling feeling of his magic, to let it gently, calmly balloon through her skull. It would make her feel less alone, and it was the thread that led to the connection, which was a more tangible proof that she wasn’t ever alone. He was always reachable, if she wanted, and all she needed was her own mind. Her awareness brushed against something that crackled lightly – the mental equivalent of walking through rain that hung in the air and smelled like a deep shade of purple.

“It is! We’ve caught Potter!”

Hermione cursed quietly. She took another deep breath, which shook, and refocused before the feeling could slip away. It felt like she was holding onto the edge of a thread so thin she couldn’t actually be sure whether she’d dropped it or not. The awareness that she needed to move faster was like the weight of a boot pressing down on her back.

The sound of Harry grunting in discomfort was the next thing to distract her. She didn’t think anyone had touched him. She wondered whether he was also distracted by the second presence that occasionally shared his mind. The effort of trying to block out everything happening around her was becoming a quickly impossible obstacle to getting anywhere with her mental efforts. She changed tack, directing less energy towards walling herself off from her surroundings and instead let the conversation flow over her as she continued to focus.

“To hell with the Ministry. They’ll take the credit, and we won’t get a look in. I say we take him straight to You-Know-Who.”

“Will you summon ‘im? ‘ere?”

“No. I haven’t got–they say he’s using the Malfoy’s place as a base. We’ll take the boy there.”

“You’re completely sure it’s him? ‘Cause if it ain’t, Greyback, we’re dead.”

“Who’s in charge here? I say that’s Potter, and him plus his wand, that’s two hundred thousand Galleons right there! But if you’re too gutless to come along, any of you, it’s all for me, and with any luck, I’ll get the girl thrown in!”

Breathe, Hermione she narrated to herself, as if she wasn’t herself. As if she could talk to and soothe the girl who could no longer distinguish the individual heart-beats thudding in her chest. She reached deeper, still with urgency, but with more clarity than before. She needed to be urgent without feeling like she needed to be urgent. The fuzzy scene she wasn’t looking at shifted as someone pulled her to her feet. She felt the weight of the others struggling to find their balance tug at her wrists.

“All right! All right, we’re in! And what about the rest of ‘em, Greyback, what’ll we do with ‘em?”

“Might as well take the lot. We’ve got two mudbloods, that’s another ten Galleons. Give me the sword as well. If they’re rubies, that’s another small fortune right there.”

Feeling calm became a little easier when the tingling, warm, crackling, violet feeling began to creep upwards into her thoughts. She pushed through it like a fog, and imagined she could feel it on her cheeks. She was walking.

“Grab hold and make it tight. I’ll do Potter!”

Someone was touching her, wrapping an arm around her waist. Her hands were being separated once again from the boys, secured more tightly behind her back. Her breath caught, and she realized she’d run out of time. Instinctively, her body struggled, while her mind folded hurriedly further down into itself. She needed to open the connection now.

“On three! One… two…”

Desperate, she squeezed her eyes shut and shouted a wordless spell in her mind, anything to make the connection available to her for even a moment. She pictures one of the D.A. coins she’d practised polishing before moving onto the sword earlier that night. It was sitting on her pillow.

Accio coin!

“...three!”

In the second she felt her magic shift out of her mind and into her fingers she plunged down as far as she could, screaming into her head so frantically that the words didn’t differentiate well through her thoughts.

Severus, help! Help! Snatchers! Harry!

Also in that same moment, the ground under her feet fell away and her body sharply wrung itself out. For a moment she felt as if her skull had opened up and left her mind hovering in the forest – she could physically perceive all the space between her empty skull and her mushy, membrane coated pouch of a brain, and also something open and crackling that extended through and beyond both of those things. She wondered whether you could splinch the organs out of your body. And there was a feeling she didn’t recognize from previous disapparations – like she was drowning, her lungs filling with water. A feeling like waves pulling at her hair.

Then she was standing in front of a dark silhouette of a mansion. Her view of the building was cut up by the straight, soldier-like lines of a wrought-iron gate. She was fully intact and mostly dry.

She blinked, her vision clearing a little as tears – the kind that gathered in the eyes in the wind – fell away. Greyback was shouting at the gates, his voice rasping and triumphant.

“We’ve got Potter! We’ve captured Harry Potter! Come on!”

A large hand wrapped around her bicep and dragged her through the massive gates, which had swung enthusiastically open at the sound of Greyback’s announcement. She glanced down at her feet as she started moving and saw a small, gold coin lying on the cobblestones near the toe of her shoe.

“Vernon?” She whispered. “Vernon?”

Harry didn’t answer, but when she gleaned over her shoulder she caught a glimpse of him stumbling along behind her. He was both very swollen and seemingly barely cognizant; white-faced and wide-eyed, staring at nothing in particular. He looked like he was very much distracted by whatever vision was playing out in his mind. The man leading her towards the mansion yanked her forwards by the hair.

She took a deep breath and tried to reach back down into her mind again. She’d lost all her progress during the disapparation. She wasn’t sure whether whatever she’d done had worked or not. Something had opened up, but she wasn’t sure whether she’d managed to reach across it. The sensation of disapparating had overwhelmed her ability to tune into the fine-grained sensation of the connection.

Her shoes crunched over dry gravel, and the air was wet with drizzle. Not like the feeling of warm, suspended water that she loved. It was cold and prickly, and smelled like a sickly-sweet kind of tree she couldn’t name. They were approaching a large front door, wooden and adorned with strings of iron that curled up it in a sharp, floral pattern. It opened before anyone had knocked, revealing the tall, thin outline of a woman. The light spilling onto the gravel was orange tinted.

“What is this?”

“We’re here to see He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!”

“Who are you?”

“You know me! Fenrir Greyback! We’ve caught Harry Potter!”

There was no familiarity or warmth in this exchange. Greyback sounded hot and resentful, and the woman sounded tonelessly irritated.

“I know ’es swollen, ma’am, but it’s ’im!” Scabior’s low voice insisted from somewhere behind her. “If you look a bit closer, you’ll see ’is scar. And this ’ere, see the girl? The mudblood who’s been traveling around with ’im, ma’am. There’s no doubt it’s ’im, and we’ve got ’is wand as well! ’Ere, ma’am—”

There was a long pause, and then the woman announced, cautiously, “Bring them in.”

Hermione was pushed forward first. The woman’s hand flinched up and latched onto her arm as she tripped over the doorstep, and for a quick second Hermione could feel bony fingers and the tips of long nails dig into her skin, impossibly cold even through her shirt and sweater.

“Follow me. My son, Draco, is home for his Easter holidays. If that is Harry Potter, he will know.”

Draco, the word echoed in Hermione’s head. It was from another world.

The hallway was long, dark, and narrow, forcing the large crowd to squeeze together as they flowed towards a door at the far end. With so many bodies pressing into hers, Hermione curled her shoulders, trying to make herself as small as possible. The attention of the men had clearly moved to bigger things, but she was still shakily spooked by the earlier attention. It seemed to her like a self-oriented, less pressing thought, but she couldn’t help but wonder what might happen to her if Voldemort came and took Harry away, leaving her behind.

“Hey,” said Ron’s voice. She turned her head towards the person pressing into the back of her left shoulder, relieved. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know.” She whispered back. And then, rushed, hushed words spilling out automatically, “It’s probably not safe to disapparate in here but if you get to Vernon just do it. I’d wager you can disapparate within the perimeter of the house. Go to just inside the gates and then try climbing over or something.”

She wasn’t entirely sure she was whispering quietly enough not to be overheard, but the situation had progressed beyond the point of caring. She heard Ron draw in a breath, but he didn’t get to respond. They were separated again as they all spilled into a large room and Mrs. Malfoy's cold voice announced, “They say they’ve got Potter. Draco, come here.”

Hermione watched, strangely mesmerized, as Draco rose from a black satin armchair near the back of the room. He looked as miserable as she remembered him being when she’d run into him in the corridors the year before. She couldn’t believe they occupied the same room again. It was so impossibly different to the kind of life they’d been living over the past few months. She watched him quickly scan the crowd. His attention landed on her and hovered, she thought, for a second, before he focused on Harry.

“Well, boy?” Greyback practically growled.

Draco didn’t say anything. Hermione started scanning the room, trying desperately to figure out whether anything in this new environment provided the opportunity for escape. She startled at the sight of Mr. Malfoy seated in another black armchair, leaning forward interestedly, hands steepled. His cane rested against the arm of his chair, glinting. Hermione looked up at the two massive, multi-layered chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling.

The room was incredibly sparse. A long table to their right, a fireplace and a doorway to their left. A balcony at the far end of the room, over which hung a massive mirror. No ornaments, only a couple of lamps with round, creamy bulbs decorating the dining table. She focused on the fireplace. She couldn’t see a pot for floo powder. There were a few tall windows on the far side of the room. They were still on the first floor. She could grab Harry and jump.

She should have apparated in the forest, when they were all tied together. Even if she’d killed Harry in the process, at least he would’ve died before his mind was exposed to Voldemort. Only one of them would’ve needed to live in order to tell someone else about the horcrux hunt. Standing near the back of the crowd, all the attention focused on Harry, she tried to clear her mind again. She needed to try reaching for Severus again.

“Well, Draco? Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”

“I can’t— I can’t be sure.”

“But look at him carefully, look! Come closer!”

“Draco, if we are the ones who hand Potter over to the Dark Lord, everything will be forgiv—”

“Now, we won’t be forgetting who actually caught him, I hope Mr. Malfoy?”

“Of course not, of course not!”

“What did you do to him? How did he get into this state?”

“That wasn’t us.”

“Looks more like a Stinging Jinx to me.”

“There’s something there, it could be the scar, stretched tight. . . . Draco, come here, look properly! What do you think?”

Hermione grit her teeth in annoyance. All the voices were hostile to her focus, and so was the trembling that she couldn’t quite get rid of by clenching her fists. Her mind latched onto bits and pieces of conversation, scrappy and frightening.

“I don’t know”

“...summoning the Dark Lord… Ollivander… Dolohov?”

Hermione pictured the unshaven, frozen face staring up at her from the floor of a diner. And then the same face leering down at her in the Ministry of Magic, just before she reached across the connection to draw on Severus’ magic for the first time. The thing she couldn’t do now. She couldn’t even sense his magic anymore. Her ability to maneuver through her own thoughts was becoming sticky with the stress of the situation.

“Mudblood”

“... the Granger girl!”

“... the Weasley boy!”

“Yeah.” This was Draco’s voice. “It could be.”

He sounded like he didn’t want to be there. Hermione wondered how she might feel in his place. She couldn’t even really imagine what the scenario would be; some scene in which Draco’s life depended on what she said or did. It was hard to fathom being on opposite sides of a war with someone you had watched repeatedly fail at turning a mouse into a snuff box. She gave up on her mind. It wasn’t going to happen. She watched Draco, trying to force nostalgia or guilt into him. They had grown up together. She could only see a sliver of one half of his face through the group of men surrounding her, but he looked, somehow, like he was about to cry.

“What is this? What’s happened, Cissy?”

Hermione tensed. The group standing just inside the doorway parted, jostling Hermione to the side, to let the speaker pass. All Hermione could see was a mass of black, curly hair, but she recognized the voice from the night Sirius had been killed. It sounded madder than it had then. The whole room seemed to understand this. There was an uncomfortable shifting as Bellatrix began weaving through the crowd.

Hermione held her breath, waiting for her to pass, but the witch stopped right in front of her. Bellatrix’s eyes were rimmed with shadows and hooded, as if tired. She didn’t look tired. Her gaze was too alert and darted about too much to look tired. Hermione met her eyes by mistake for the barest of seconds, before ducking her head.

“But surely, this is the mudblood girl? This is Granger?”

Hermione had to start breathing again. She did it as quietly as possible. Bellatrix was wearing a very strong scent, something rosy, but it didn’t quite mask a musty, dank smell. As if she had found her clothes in an ancient chest under the house. Even looking at the floor, Hermione could feel the way the woman vibrated, less than a foot away from her.

“Yes, yes, it’s Granger!” Mr. Malfoy dismissed. Hermione pictured him waving a long, manicured hand. She wasn’t going to look up until Bellatrix’s pointed, tightly laced shoes stepped out of her vision. “And beside her, we think, Potter! Potter and his friends, caught at last!”

“Potter?” Bellatrix squealed, girlish and hungry. She took a quick step back and the group billowed, shifting like moths around her. Hermione looked up in time to see Bellatrix peel away the lank, black lace of her sleeve to reveal a blue-white, bruised forearm and her dark mark. A shot of adrenaline abused Hermione’s chest.

It struck her, abruptly, that she might be able to cause some chaos if she was able to enter someone’s mind. Not one of the nameless Snatchers, but Mr. or Mrs. Malfoy’s, or Bellatrix’s herself. It was the first kind of plan that seemed vaguely achievable. They wouldn’t be expecting it.

Pressing her teeth together in determination, she trained her focus on Bellatrix’s face and began clearing her mind. She might only have a second. If she could just force her way in for a moment, she could disorient one of them long enough to create a distraction. She wasn’t sure what the next step would be, but Harry and Ron were always good at taking advantage of a moment of chaos. She just needed to create a moment. If she could just force her way in…

She’d never done it with anyone but Severus, but she’d been good. She knew she could do it. She wondered whether she might be able to cause pain, somehow. She wondered if she could possibly reach down into the level of the mind where she knew magic existed, and hurt that. She wondered whether you could kill someone through legilimency.

Outside the bubble of her focus, Bellatrix and Mr. Malfoy were arguing about who was going to summon Voldemort. They were facing one another, leaning towards one another, like pack animals sizing each other up. They were not looking at her anymore. Hermione kicked herself for not thinking of this sooner. She switched her attention to Mrs. Malfoy.

And then Bellatrix screamed, her lips peeling back over her teeth in a horrifying grimace and her hand coming up in front of her as if she were blocking a sudden bright light. Lucius, whose fingers were hovering above the exposed mark on his arm, froze.

“STOP! Do not touch it, we shall all perish if the Dark Lord comes now!” Her voice started loud and screechy, but by the end of her sentence had become a rasping whisper. She strode forward, pushing men aside until Hermione couldn’t see her anymore. “What is that?”

“Sword,” grunted a deep, unfamiliar voice.

Hermione went cold. She looked away from Mrs. Malfoy, who had retreated to stand beside the fireplace. She had forgotten, in the awful wrongness of everything, about the sword.

“Give it to me.”

“It’s not yours, missus, it’s mine, I reckon I found it.”

There was a moment of silence. The rushing in Hermione’s ears seemed to be the loudest thing in the room. And then a flash of red light. She blinked. She assumed, according to the colour and the following thump of a heavy body, that Bellatrix had shot someone with a stunning spell.

“What d’you think you’re playing at, woman?” Another man started yelling, and Hermione was pressed into the person behind her as the group of men stumbled backwards. The end of his sentence was drowned out by Bellatrix’s high-pitched screech and more flashes of light.

“Stupefy! Stupify!”

Hermione squealed when, unexpectedly, a tall man who had been blocking her view crumpled suddenly to the floor, almost crashing into her legs before she jumped backwards. Almost simultaneously, the man behind her shoved past, raising his wand at Bellatrix, only to be blasted back into the wall a second later. In no more than ten seconds, Hermione found herself standing with the other prisoners, surrounded by the limp forms of seven men. Greyback was the only Snatcher left. He’d leaned forward, his stance threatening and coiled, but he’d almost backed his way out into the hall.

“Where did you get this sword,” Bellatrix hissed, stepping over men and slinking towards him until she was less than a foot away. She punctuated the question by bringing her hand up and catching Greyback’s jaw.

“How dare you?” Greyback snarled quietly, leaning down towards her with bared teeth. “Release me, woman!”

“Where did you find this sword?” Bellatrix asked again, swinging the heavy weapon up between them, releasing him and leaning back just in time to save her nose. She was wild, and it was clear that everyone in the room was tensed, uncomfortable with her unpredictability and her anger. “Snape sent it to my vault in Gringotts!”

Hermione squeezed her hands, still tied behind her back, into fists.

“It was in their tent,” Greyback snapped, clearly startled by the close flash of the blade. Bellatrix hovered for a long moment, her eyes wide and darting about, not meeting Hermione’s. And then she took a step back – it almost looked as if she were falling – and spun around.

“Draco, move this scum outside.” She was picking her way back across the fallen, frozen bodies of the Snatchers. “If you haven’t got the guts to finish them, then leave them in the courtyard for me.”

Mrs. Malfoy stepped away from the fireplace, speaking for the first time since Bellatrix’s arrival. “Don’t you dare speak to Draco like–”

“Be quiet!” Bellatrix screamed, and her sister flinched. Hermione, too, felt the witch’s voice like nails dragging along her sternum. “The situation is graver than you can possibly imagine, Cissy! We have a very serious problem!”

She knows about the horcruxes, Hermione thought. Which meant that even if they did get away, Voldemort was going to know about their mission. Hermione wasn’t sure what she was meant to feel, as everything crumbled and became redundant, useless, a million times harder, impossible, hopeless. If she died without sending a message to Severus with the code word, their side wasn’t even going to find out about the horcruxes until it was too late.

“If it is indeed Potter, he must not be harmed,” Bellatrix was muttering. “The Dark Lord wishes to dispose of Potter himself. . . . But if he finds out . . . I must . . . I must know. . . . The prisoners must be placed in the cellar, while I think what to do!”

“This is my house, Bella, you don’t give orders in my–”

“Do it! You have no idea of the danger we’re in!”

A faint, black spiral of steam drifted up from the floor, where Bellatrix’s wand had burned a mark into the wood. Mrs. Malfoy glared at her sister, and then turned on Greyback, not looking Hermione’s way for a moment. Even if she had, Hermione wasn’t sure her mind was focused enough to have been able to make anything of the opportunity.

“Take these prisoners down to the cellar, Greyback.”

“Wait,” Bellatrix stopped, sounding marginally calmer. “All except… except for the mudblood.”

Another hot flush throbbed in Hermione’s skull. She told herself this was good. She was going to be able to meet Bellatrix’s eyes. And if the boys were taken off somewhere and locked away they would have the opportunity to talk, to plan something.

“No!” Ron shouted as he was dragged away. “You can have me, keep me!”

Bellatrix lunged forward and struck him hard across the face. Hermione squeaked a small, startled scream and her hands jerked behind her as she tried to cover her mouth.

“If she dies under questioning,” Bellatrix hissed, “I’ll take you next. Blood traitor is next to mudblood in my book. Take them downstairs, Greyback, and make sure they are secure, but do nothing more to them—yet.”

Hermione watched the boys disappear into the corridor. Ron looked winded, but still struggled weakly. Harry looked stunned, his face puffy and obscure his vision as he stumbled into the hall. He glanced back over his shoulder just before the door slammed behind them.

Before Hermione’d had the chance to take stock of the new situation she felt the ropes around her wrists slacken and then the stinging sensation of broken skin along her left palm. She began to turn, filling her lungs in preparation to shoot a wandless spell at whoever had freed her, but someone grabbed a fistful of her hair and started pulling her backwards. She lost her footing, falling heavily to the floor. Her eyes welled up as a sharp pain bloomed in her tailbone, and her arms came up automatically to scratch at the hands in her hair.

Bellatrix didn’t look strong. Despite the volume of her voice she had looked thin and jaunty, her skin sunken in to reveal too much of her skeleton. But she was strong enough to drag Hermione into the middle of the room with alarming speed. Hermione felt like her hair was going to be ripped out of her skull.

“Tell me, sweet,” Bellatrix spat as she let go of the hair. She stepped one foot across Hermione’s torso, standing right over her. “Where did you find my sword?”

Hermione braced one hand on the floor and pointed the other one up at the tower of black lace and leather above her.

“Stupef–”

“Arghhh!” Bellatrix screeched, a sound that combined with Hermione’s surprised shriek as the witch dropped down, trapping Hermione's arm between their chests. It was so unexpected that Hermione lost her breath and for a second forgot how to draw another in. Bellatrix lowered her lips to Hermione’s ear and whispered in a hurried, furious voice,

“How dare you try to use what isn’t yours! How dare you think about turning magic on me. You filthy mudblood, you filthy gutter-bitch.”

Hermione sucked in a breath. Her lungs were being compressed by one of Bellatrix’s jutting ribs. She tried to create some space by pushing up with the arm trapped between them. The musty rose smell was so strong that the air she did manage to gasp stuck in her throat and she coughed. Somewhere in the distance she could hear Ron screaming her name.

Bellatrix pushed herself up so that her face was positioned a few inches above Hermione’s. Hermione’s thoughts raced. This was the moment. She might only have this one chance, she didn’t have time to clear her mind properly. She met the wide, bulging eyes that reminded her much too much of Mrs. Gaunt for comfort, and thought as hard as she could,

Legilimens

The moment she sensed the familiar barrier she mentally pushed forward, finding that she slipped with surprising ease into the alien mind. It was full of genuine disgust. And a hatred, and also an airy, disjointed fear. Nothing was still.

Hermione caught a glimpse of her own face – trails of clear skin where tears had cleaned tracks into the layer of grime on her cheeks, skin turning a little red with lack of oxygen and the pressure of someone lying atop her, tangled hair, lips peeled away from her teeth in a grimace. There was also an image of a pale hand coming down, and then Mrs. Malfoy sitting in front of a wooden vanity, brushing her hair out, and then a picture as if she were looking down at herself – bare breasts and a wand digging into her neck – and then an unfamiliar screaming woman at her feet, sprawled across a red carpet. There were the words mudblood, and traitor, and punishment. It was so untrained and chaotic that Hermione felt squeezed. Severus’ mind was always so calm.

Then shock, horror shot through the mind. Hermione pulled herself together and tried to reach down, extending her presence, latching onto the image of Mrs. Malfoy at random and tugging. Another memory filled the mind – Mrs. Malfoy at the end of a long dining table. It was the room they were in now. The table was lined with filled seats – figures in dark robes and silver masks.

The back of Hermione’s head was slammed into the ground. Bellatrix let out an ear-splitting shriek that filled the room. The connection was broken. Hermione blinked her vision clear and looked up. The weight on her chest lessened as Bellatrix rose, straddling Hermione’s hips. She brought her wand down and dug it under Hermione’s jaw.

“You little bitch! You little–”

Whatever words followed were drowned out by the feeling of Hermione’s entire body going up in flames. She screamed. For a moment she couldn’t fathom how to feel the kind of pain this was, and it all blurred into a blissfully, tingling cold feeling. Then it returned with clarity. It was as if all her layers of skin were both melting into one another and solidifying into a single slab. In her skull it felt like her hair was growing inwards, in her hands it felt like her nails were slicing her fingers into halves, in her chest it felt like her skin was being stretched apart until it came away in globules like melted cheese.

She stared up into Bellatrix’s face. The witch’s eyes had finally fixed on a single point, and her mouth was wide open in a pretend scream, as if she were mocking the sounds coming out of Hermione’s own mouth. Her tongue made a full circle of her teeth, and then she flicked the wand to the side, away from Hermione’s skin. The pain ended.

Hermione’s back, which had arched off the floor, slumped down with a wet thwack. Sweat had soaked through her jumper. She wanted to remove her clothes, because her body was so hot. She shook her head to the side in disbelief and caught sight of Mr. Malfoy and Draco, leaning against the far wall. She hadn’t realized they were still in the room. It struck her, properly, that she was alone in the room with three death eaters. She’d never had a chance. She didn’t want to have all the thoughts that accompany, ‘I’m going to die’. She’d had them before, and she knew they involved Severus, and she didn’t want to think about him now.

Bellatrix leaned back down and shouted in her face.

“You little bitch! How can you do that?”

“I don’t know.” Hermione said, nonsensically, and Bellatrix hit her.

“I’ve always been able to do it.” Hermione gasped as soon as she caught her breath, stopping herself just in time from saying she’d learned it. She wondered how quickly her ability to perform legilimency might be linked back to Severus, regardless. She didn’t think any of the other living staff at Hogwarts could do it.

“Lies!” Bellatrix screamed. “Lies! You are a wand-whore, a thief, an imposter. There’s no magic in your blood.”

Hermione sucked in another breath as Bellatrix straightened again.

“I learned it. I read about it in the library. I knew Harry could do it and I thought I could–”

“Quiet!” Bellatrix lifted her wand again, and Hermione shook her head.

“No! Don’t! D–”

She bit her tongue instead of screaming. It didn’t go on for as long as before, but by the time the curse ended she had lost feeling in her hands. She tried to lift them but somehow it felt like they were only attached to her wrists via a thin string, so she didn’t have enough leverage.

“We can do it again and again and again! We can do it all night, girl. Tell me how you got the sword!”

“We found it.” Hermione said.

“Lier!” Bellatrix shrieked, leaping to her feet. She then dropped back down immediately, as if she’d simply been expelling a surge of energy. “I know you didn’t find it. It’s in my vault, which means you took it. How did you take it?”

“We didn’t take it. We found it.” Hermione said.

“You stole it,” Bellatrix cut her off, leaning back down. Black, limp hair fell across Hermione’s vision. “Like you steal everything from this world. It’s in your nature, wand-whore. Draco! Go and bring the elf to me!”

Hermione was shaking her head again, partly in response to the words, partly to try and shake the hair out of her eyes. Partly because the muscles in her neck were weak and twitching. She heard the sound of footsteps crossing the room and then the door opened and shut. She mouthed ‘no’ but her voice cracked. Bellatrix was wriggling on top of her, turning her face away and twisting as if she were reaching for her feet. Hermione wondered whether she could trigger Severus’ memory of the horcrux meeting by sending the word across the connection. She didn’t think she had the energy or the presence of mind to make an attempt, but it was the only thing she really had to do. Everything else Harry or Ron could do.

She thought about the muggle woman she’d seen in Severus’ mind, an entire year ago. She wondered if she looked much like that woman now – pale and bloodshot, her back making a dangerous bow off the ground. She wished Severus could be there to reach into her mind and bring a good memory out to end with.

“I’ll teach you a lesson about who you are, mudblood, and you can tell me about how you stole my sword.”

Hermione frowned, confused, and Bellatrix slid down her body until they were chin to sternum. Hermione glanced down, but her view was blocked by the black mass of hair. She felt Bellatrix take a hold of her wrist, pulling her arm out and flat against the cool, wooden floor. She struggled, tense and uncertain, at the feeling of teeth dragging along the skin of her forearm. A flash of silver was all the warning she got before something sharper bit into her wrist.

Hermione gasped and then tried to wrench her arm away as Bellatrix slipped a knife through her skin. The hold on her wrist was iron-fisted, however, cutting off blood supply to her hand so that it pulsed steadily. Her eyes fluttering, Hermione tipped her head back and screamed. The pain shot throughout her arm so that she couldn't feel what Bellatrix was doing with the blade, but it seemed deliberate. It seemed like forever before it stopped. She was on the verge of passing out, she knew, and it was almost upsetting when it did stop because she felt herself slip back from that edge.

“The sword is meant to be at my vault in Gringotts how did you get it?”

Hermione imagined what it might be like to tell her. She would never say that it was Severus who gave it to them. She could just say that a member of the Order had. She really believed that if she did say it, Bellatrix would probably get off her.

“I didn’t take anything.” She was dry sobbing. Bellatrix had moved back up to her body and was hissing and breathing right in her ear and drowning everything out.

“Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies,”

The grip around Hermione's wrist tightened, and she tossed her head from side to side. “Please, I didn't take anything–”

She screamed again as the knife cut into her skin. Bellatrix was pressing the side of her face into the floor. The only possible relief she could fathom was reaching for Severus’ magic, but the task seemed impossible. She wanted him. Even if it meant he had to watch her scream and die, she wanted him. His name was very loud in her mind. He could sit down above her head and hold it still. The sound of her hands spasming against the floor made her think of the heavy slap of Nagini against the walls of Bathilda Bagshot's bedroom.

“I will cut this into every inch of your body, mudblood, until–”

Hermione was only vaguely aware of these words, and only vaguely aware that they had stopped abruptly. There was a bang, and a loud shout in a man's voice. The knife left her skin and she heard the high-pitched, distressed sob of relief she made.

She felt a familiar, deep tingle in the back of her mind, and realized that she must have somehow managed to reach Severus’ magic, perhaps through sheer will. The relief of this was replaced with panic when her vision backed out, and then she was somehow looking at her own limp body on the floor. She wasn't dead, but she wasn’t being held down by anyone anymore and she was just lying there.

Her vision flashed and she saw a cross in the sand, made of two pieces of driftwood tied together. She saw pale-pink skin stretched over massive, bony wings. She saw hundreds of men running towards Hogwarts. She saw a flash of red hair peaking out from under a canvas sheet. She saw Severus, slumped against the wall of the boathouse, blood gushing down his throat. At this, she screamed again.

At some point, someone shouted,

“Don’t you bloody touch her, you snake!”

Chapter Text

March 30th – Several merfolk colonies were observed to migrate from the Mediterranean Sea to waters near Cornwall this year. This would be the first view of merfolk in Britain since their mysterious disappearance from all observable bodies of water in 1701, (Snow Fogs, 1862).

Severus was standing in the lake. The water came up to his waist. He was soothingly cold.

He did not have to tilt his head back to look at the stars, because the sky had been pulled down, as if someone had taken the corners of a limp canvas and stretched it taut over and beyond the horizon and the mountains that should have been there. The sky formed a dome around the floor of the lake, and so Severus simply had to stare straight ahead to watch the stars.

The stars were innumerable, no discernible pattern. He had picked out three Alnilams since arriving here. A pinprick of light from every star was reflected in the black water below it, and a tiny, silver streak of light seemed to hover suspended out of the lake for each one. Like an inverted reflection above the water. The effect was blurry.

He felt something slither around his ankles. Seaweed, or perhaps a pearl-spitting snake. Blue, luminescent shrimp nibbled at his fingertips, which drifted in the water by his sides. The only sound was the flourish of water once in a while when one of their tails would wriggle with their efforts and break the surface.

He had, blissfully, avoided thought for a long time, when something pulled at the base of his skull. His first thought was that he must have sunk to the bottom of the lake and one of the shrimp was now tugging gently at his brain matter. Except he was still staring at the stars. He glanced down, and still his body only disappeared under the water at the waist. His torso was a pale reflection rippling across the surface of the water in front of him. The bright, blurry bodies of the shrimp darted about in quick stops and starts.

There was another tug, or a shifting sensation. He frowned at the water as the lights of the shrimp began to allow him glimpses of a writhing mass of black scales on the floor of the lake, twisting around his ankles and spilling over his feet. He had not noticed them before. The cold had changed, no longer a tingling sensation but a kind of biting, suffocating cold.

He observed this all with a certain calm, puzzled more than anything else. What snatched this calm away, making him double over and groan, was a sudden rush of fear. It pinched his nose in an acidic way. The sound of the water shifting around him with his movement was loud, like an ocean in his ears, and now he was aware of the way his fingertips throbbed with all the skin that had been eaten off them.

Bent over, staring into the water, he saw a flicker. Some mass of dark, fine seaweed was thrashing around just below the surface. It revealed slivers of white which became glimpses of Hermione's face staring up at him, bubbles of oxygen rushing and bursting just below his nose. She was suffocating.

Severus tried to kick himself free of the twisting, long bodies at his feet. He reached below the water for her, but her pale face was now a rippling blur. She was being pulled down. He dived, and something bit into his calf.

Under the water he couldn't see a thing. Fangs in his legs anchored him to the spot. The water was somehow churning, tugging at the hooks in his legs as it tossed him around. He could still glimpse flickers of pale skin, Hermione disappearing into depths of the lake that were too dark to reach or see, and then there was nothing.

The water began to still. From underwater, the points of starlight hitting the lake extended below the surface, fading silver tendrils. Severus waited, breathing hard, his hair drifting around his face. If he didn’t struggle, the fangs in his legs were a bearable pain. Then a distant, waterlogged sound of distress reached him.

There was a sharp tug in the back of his mind. It coincided with a violent toss of the water. He grunted, a mass of bubbles spilling from his mouth and getting caught in the movement of the water. It was salt. The next intake of breath filled his lungs with it.

“Severus, help!”

His skin flushing hot with the sound of her panicked voice, he tried to wrench his legs away, even if it meant losing chunks of skin, but neither the fangs nor the flesh would give. Something golden, a thin chain, flickered across his vision and he reached for it. It floated just out of his grasp.

“Help!”

Severus stopped trying to swim. He stilled, closing his eyes. He could feel the inside of his skull through the pulses of fear coming across the connection. He twisted, reaching his hand towards his feet, which were lost among a mass of writhing black and the occasional flash of a fang.

Reducto

The slippery bodies burst apart, and a dark cloud of blood billowed out around his legs. It smelled of burning wood and flowers.

“Snatchers! Harry!”

Severus woke and swung his legs over the side of the bed, the warm, wet sheet peeling easily away from his skin. He snatched his wand from the bedside table and dressed in a matter of seconds. Other items raced through his head as he made towards the door – minumentum, polyjuice, anti-venom, soothing balm, goats teeth. All things that might be necessary, all things that might not. It depended on exactly what had happened, and it would take additional time to locate or summon them.

He had dressed in his death eater robes, at least. Just in case. He hoped the consequence, at worst, would be to frighten her, rather than that they would become necessary. He hoped that the dream had been nothing, a product of his tired and increasingly stressed mind. The anticipation of seeing her later that night, perhaps, had bled into his dreams. He knew, however, that the feeling across the connection had been real.

He took the quickest route towards the front doors. Every step he took within the castle seemed like a dangerous waste of time. But using the pendant to locate her inside the castle would be too easily traced, especially with the Carrows on alert. He was almost sure that they were on alert.

He had reached the ground floor and the steps that would lead him to the front doors, when he was confronted with an obstacle in the form of Minerva, climbing the stairs below him. He flinched, the presence of someone else in the castle conflicting with the way his identity had narrowed; not the Headmaster of Hogwarts, but the person on the other end of the connection Hermione had reached across.

He made a series of quick assessments, and decided that dealing with a small revolt in the castle upon his return was preferable to risking the safety of the golden trio. Minerva had stopped in her tracks, four steps from the landing.

“Severus, I–”

Severus raised his wand and pointed it at her chest. Her eyes widened, and he didn't fail to notice the bright look they took on as she raised her own hand. Not her wand hand, however, but an empty hand, palm facing towards him. On instinct rather than conscious thought, he hesitated for a fraction of a second.

“Don't!”

Severus tensed, raising his wand arm another inch, though something in the way she said the word stopped him from stunning her immediately. His initial assessment of the situation was confused. He had the sense, as he searched her face for something, that she was doing the same to him. After a few seconds, he dropped his wand. Minerva dropped her hand.

“What's happened?”

Severus shook his head, taking to the steps. “I do not know yet.”

“What can I do?”

“Stay here.” He paused at the bottom of the staircase, looking back up the way he'd come. Minerva had rested her non-wand hand on the banister, her stance poised and straight. “I will send a patronus if I need assistance. It’s better that I go alone until I know what it is. You might tell Albus that I have left the castle, however, and ask him whether Phineas Nigellus has heard anything worrying. The password is ‘Leptospermum scorparium’.”

She pursed her lips – an expression she adopted when she was displeased with the level of understanding she possessed about a given situation. She was also studying him very carefully.

“You're worried,” she observed.

“Minerva, there is no time.”

He spun on his heel, flicking his wand at the front doors. He would have preferred not to have been distracted by thoughts about how long Minerva had known, and how she had found out. He would have preferred not to have been distracted by the self-doubting sense that it would be wiser to send her after Potter instead – if Snatchers or death eaters were to be encountered, she wouldn’t have to wrestle with the hidden truth of her loyalties. But if Hermione was in the company of death eaters, he would only trust himself.

As he brought his hand to his collar and pulled the chain around his neck free, one of many tensions in his mind relaxed. It felt less risky to leave the castle with Minerva, apparently, aware of the full picture.

He opened his pendant and pressed the tip of his wand into its inner shell. The enormity of finding Hermione weighed heavily in his chest.

“Revelio praeterita”

The pendant seemed to vibrate softly, and then the small claw holding the tiny glass sphere in place unfurled, animated. The sphere fell to the ground, now useless. He watched a pale steam rise up from the surface of the open metal claw, condensing as a small, silver ball of light that hung in the air. He pointed his wand at the light.

“Retrace your steps,” he commanded. The tiny ball zipped away, quickly engulfed by the night.

He waited on the front steps of the castle, a light drizzle beginning to coat the skin of his face and his hair in a thin sheen of water. His heart raced, irritated by the comparative stillness of his body. He assumed they still had to be within walking distance of Savernake Forest. Within Wiltshire. He wondered how long she had been in trouble. She hadn’t messaged him with their location over the course of the day, which he had taken to mean that they were on the move, that she would send for him late at night once Potter and Weasley were asleep. He couldn’t strip the panicked tone of the words in his dream from his head. His left fist tightened around his wand.

So close, his mind kept providing him. Of course they would not be allowed to implement their own course of action. The fear of this – of upsetting Albus’ careful, unknowable balance and losing what he had found in her – was in part what had fueled his complacency for too much of the year. Of course they would only get so close, before it all began to unravel.

Just over a minute later, the metal claw that he still held pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand pulsed hotly. He released it and disapparated, not stopping to contemplate whether this untried method of tracking would work.

He could not see anything when he reappeared. The ground was soft and uneven beneath his feet, and the rustling around him was unmistakably the sound of dense forest. His eyes soon adjusted enough to make out the unnatural, low shape of a tent. He swept towards it, pushing low, thin branches out of his way. Closing the distance between himself and the campsite he prayed that he would find three, sleeping figures inside. Perhaps she had been dreaming, flickers of a particularly vivid nightmare bleeding across the connection. Perhaps, in anticipation of seeing her, he had conjured the nightmare himself. Perhaps this last month – the near-impossible amount of energy he had channeled into Hogwarts' wards, the hope in her messages, the research and the realization that she had been sent into the world to hold and destroy fragments of unfettered evil – had all been a single, long dream.

This hope died as he stepped into the small clearing and found the tent hanging wide open, one canvas flap clapping to itself in the breeze and the other ripped away, crumpled up at the base of a near-by tree. A pillow, a smashed lamp, and a faded pink and green plaid scarf lay discarded amidst the leaves and blocks of used firewood. A single card, four of clubs, was trodden into the dirt beside his right shoe. He ran his tongue over the backs of his teeth and flicked his wand at the scene.

“Homenum revelio.”

The spell revealed nothing. It had been a long time since he had felt this kind of distress.

“Accio sword,” he tried, though of course this had no effect either.

If Snatchers had taken the time to pillage the tent, there was a chance Potter hadn’t yet been identified. If that were the case, they would have been taken to the Ministry, where the boy's identity would be uncovered in a matter of minutes. Severus did not stand a chance in the Ministry, either. If any of the trio had been recognized here, in the forest, they would either have been taken to Malfoy Manor or straight to Azkaban.

These three, most likely scenarios took turns stabbing at his gut. If he had to follow her to Azkaban, he would lose his soul before he could reach the second floor. This would in no way stop him from trying, but it was not the wisest first choice. He disapparated again.

Severus had no doubt in his ability to cross the grounds of Malfoy Manor undetected. His dark mark admitted him through the majority of the wards, and through a series of guesses and trials he had learned to disable the others. His obsessive study of protective magic over the past six months had not been for nothing. He narrated a series of counteractive enchantments as he crossed the lawn and the threshold, his voice an unpleasant droning in his ears.

“Confractus,” he murmured, waving his hand over the invisible seal on the door. His mask materialized his waiting hand, and as he stepped inside he lifted it into place.

The house was still and cold as ever. The smell of burned rose petals and the cool air of people who, like him, thrived in the vacant, suspicious corner of the world that a lack of warmth suggested. The door clicked quietly shut behind him and he took a single step forwards, listening. When the obnoxiously loud crack sounded to his left, he wasted no time.

“Immobulus.”

He stalked down the corridor, footfalls soft and slow against the hard wooden floor, a frozen house-elf in his wake. There was a dull thud somewhere below him, and he paused. Two more near silent thuds – this time from the dining room – and then an excruciated scream. It had a clarifying effect. It had the kind of effect on his mind that made it hard to be rational with himself.

The thoughts he had as he crossed the remaining length of the corridor were so quick and so terrified that they were more like concepts than complete sentences. If he burst into the dining room the entire war might fall apart. If Potter was on the other side of that door, he would need to be saved for the war to be won. If Severus were killed before he could pass Albus’ message onto the boy, was there a back-up plan? Could he disguise himself somehow? If he had brought polyjuice…

He had never heard her voice used in this way. He would do anything to make it stop. Albus had been right – Potter was no longer his first priority, and had not been for a long time. Since before the Highlands, since before the second prophecy, since before Mrs. Gaunt had left his mind.

As he reached the end of the hall the screaming stopped, though his ears continued to ring at the same acute frequency. There were loud, desperate sobs forming unintelligible words. There was harsh, shrill whispering. He drew his wand and pointed it at the door,

“Alohomora.”

There was a second of celestial silence – all separate actors in the house pausing, by coincidence, at the same time. The single exception was the click of the lock. It coincided with a resolution – as he flicked his wand again and the door crashed open – that dissolved all his questions and also snatched away his vision.

He was black, and then he saw himself from above. He saw himself lower his wand a moment before breaking down the door, and turning away. He saw, from a vantage point at the top of a cliff, the limp form of the House-elf Dobby clutched in Potter’s arms. He saw Minerva step back into a defensive stance, raising her wand against him. He saw the wet, mossy concrete slabs of the boathouse. He saw Potter’s eyes.

Hermione screamed again. It was an unreal warping of the sound of her voice.

This, and the sound of the door slamming into a wall brought him back, though his wand arm had dropped with the shock and the speed of the unexpected visions. Hermione was lying in the centre of the room. Her hair was splayed out across the polished wood, and her arm spasmed uncontrollably against it. She was pinned beneath the blank swamp of Bellatrix’s skirts, which swished and assembled around the latter’s rising body.

Lucius, who had been standing in front of his armchair, cried out in surprise and lurched forward. Severus sent a wordless Immobulus curse straight at his chest. It struck him before he had even raised his wand. Bellatrix let out a furious, unintelligible shriek, leaping away from Hermione’s form before Severus could send her flying across the room himself.

“Stupify!” She screamed, and the red spell crackled towards him. He caught it and threw it aside with a second wordless curse, advancing towards her with an unfamiliar focus. There was a freedom to the next flick of his wand. That freedom wasn’t even diminished when Bellatrix blocked his curse and sent something back that broke through his shield and tore away his mask. Her eyes widened and her lips parted. It was already far too late for anonymity.

With every curse she blocked she cried out, hot sparks dispersing around her and lighting up the deep hollows of her face. The sounds, the wild way she danced about the room, were all meant to distract.

“You bastard! I knew it, I told him! You are going to paaaayyyyyeeeeee,” she screamed as she hurled a jinx at an armchair. The furniture blasted into fragments of velvet and wood. Severus used the opportunity to edge another meter towards Hermione. He was steadily working his way towards her, a straight path slowed by Bellatrix’s dancing, unyielding onslaught.

“Protego!” He growled as a particularly forceful spell sizzled towards his chest. “You knew nothing.”

He didn’t know why he responded. There was something about the end of his charade that compelled him to bite back at Bellatrix’s gleeful confidence. A quick glance at the floor revealed a black knife lying next to Hermione’s splayed arm. It was a weapon he recognized, and it made him white-hot with anger.

Wordlessly, he threw a slicing spell at Bellatrix. She deflected it easily, cackling a high-pitched laugh.

“Confringo! Tere Sursum! Avada Kadavra!”

Severus ducked out of the way of this last one. It smashed through a window behind him.

“How long have you been a traitor, sweet?” Bellatrix sang, spinning out of the way of his next curse with disjointed grace. “Since the very beginning?”

“Not the very beginning.”

“Since he killed that red mudblood!”

Two nonverbal spells collided.

“Yes, Lestrange. Since then." Severus released the bind of the spells with a flick of his wrist. Bellatrix was her strongest when her opponent’s wand arm was tied up. "Do not use that word."

He took a step, almost a lunge, forward.

“Traitor! You were never strong enough for him!” She shrieked again, gleefully, leaping over Lucius’ frozen form. “And you’re throwing it all away on another useless mudblood? I’m going to cut her to pieces while you bleed out in the corner!”

He had started circling around the edge of the room, trying to steer the conflict away from Hermione’s body. She was alive. He could feel her magic reacting to his own.

“Expolso,” he hissed, and Bellatrix threw herself behind a chair, the spell smashing into the fireplace. Severus sent another blasting curse at the armchair, but she’d already slithered across the floor. “You will do nothing of the sort.”

“I promise!” She spat, casting a golden spell that twisted a spiraling path towards him. “I promise I will!”

Severus blocked the curse with an effort, casting another in quick succession which smashed into the second golden flash of light from Bellatrix’s wand. Again, he tried to break the bind of the intersecting curses quickly, but she anticipated the move, bringing her wand arm up above her head and bearing down. The sound of the fireplace caving in on itself had been a mere rustle in the periphery of Severus’ focus, but he anticipated the rest of the household would now come running.

Bellatrix’s face was alight, wide and mad. She was making small, disconcerting purring noises with each heavy breath.

“You’re a mudblood's whore, Severus. Infected by their weakness. You deserve to have them suck your magic dry.”

She punctuated this speech with a little skip forward, and her spell golden spell crept an inch towards his wand. Severus curled his lip, a cold, calm, fury-driven sneer. He saw precisely what was about to happen.

“You were never going to survive, Bellatrix. Even if the Dark Lord were to win, you are too unstable. Did you never see it in the way he looks at you?”

This was her weak point. A flash unease flickered across her features. Severus reached down into the heart of his magic and pulled it forward, along with Hermione’s – not drawing from the connection but from what was already in his mind. His magic surged across the bind of their intersecting curses in a series of quick, short jumps. Green swallowing gold. Bellatrix’s eyes widened, startled. Severus flicked his wrist, letting the bind go with a loud crack that echoed around the walls. It sucked all the noise from the room like

“Sectumsempra,” he hissed into the otherwise eerily silent house.

Bellatrix screamed in expectation of the curse, raising both her wand and empty hand in preparation to throw her full weight into a counter-spell. She was hit before she had the chance, thrown backwards into the remaining pillar of the fireplace. She slumped to the floor, whining a bubbly, glugging sound.

Without stopping to assess the damage, Severus rushed to crouch down beside Hermione. She was lying with her arms splayed out, her head turned to the side to reveal a forming bruise on her cheekbone. One of her sleeves was pulled up to expose her forearm, where wicked letters had been cut into the skin. Severus groaned, holding back a wave of physical sickness that closed his throat. He brought his fingers to her neck, finding a slow pulse. She whimpered. As if responding to his touch, she began to curl very slightly in on herself, her face contorting. Severus recognized the slow beginnings of the aftershocks of the cruciatus.

“Her–” He began, but was interrupted by a loud crash and a skid which drew his attention to the doorway.

“Don’t you bloody touch her, you snake!”

Severus stood, his wand raised, in time to see both Potter and Weasley burst through the open doorway. He blocked Weasley’s stunning spell, gritting his teeth in frustration and glimpsing Draco’s blonde hair in the corridor beyond.

“Lucius!” Screamed a sharp woman's voice, and then Narcissa and her son spilled into the room after the others. Narcissa made an anguish sound of dismay at seeing her husband buried beneath the rubble of the fireplace. Draco had raised his wand against Potter, and with mounting distress at these multiplying variables Severus intercepted.

“Empressura!” He snapped, and the air behind Potter and Weasley exploded, sending them both skidding more or less safely across the floor.

“Draco,” Severus snapped, hoping to eliminate as many threatening parties as possible and wanting nothing but to freeze everyone in the room until he could get Hermione out. “Leave!”

The boy shot Severus a quick, dark glower, though the underlying set of his lips betrayed his disconcertion. He began to lower his wand, but at that moment Fenrir Greyback emerged from the corridor, roughly grabbing Draco’s collar and pulling him forwards.

“You will fight, lordling. That’s Harry bloody Potter!”

Practically throwing Draco across the room, Greyback made an animalistic leap towards Hermione. Severus, with the advantage of the ambiguously aligned, had not yet been attacked. He hit Fenrir straight in the chest with a blasting curse. The werewolf was thrown across the room with a loud, enraged bellow.

“Severus!”

Narcissa’s surprised shout marked the sure end of his espionage. He rounded on her, preparing to confront them each one by one until he was either struck down or had killed every death eater in the room. She was pulling her groggy, debauched husband to his feet. If it weren’t for Potter, Severus would simply have picked Hermione up and disapparated without a seconds delay. Behind him Potter announced a disarming spell, presumably at Draco, for Severus’ wand remained securely in his hand. He directed it at the Mistress of the house.

Before either had time to engage, there was a sharp crack and a surprised squeak, and then Dobby of all beings burst into the line of fire. Glancing hurriedly around, the House-elf scampered to the side, escaping a furious curse hurled at him by Lucuis.

“Mr. Potter!”

“No Dobby, we can’t leave Herm–”

“Dobby has returned to save you, Mr. Potter.”

“Dobby I swear I will ki–”

“Protego,” Severus blocked a curse from Narcissa, whose face had finally hardened in some form of understanding. He glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of the House-elf reaching for Potter, who was standing over a fallen Mr. Weasley in a defensive stance. He was holding his non-wand hand up as if to prevent the House-elf from touching him.

“Noooo! Dobby!”

Reassured, Severus sent a final blasting curse in Narcissa’s direction and dropped to his knees. He pulled Hermione into his arms and disapparated, the hot green flash of a curse entering his periphery just before the familiar tug in his gut.