sensitive even. And there was sensitivity in his eyes, but only of the most narrow kind — sensitivity that felt only its own pain, comprehended only its own needs, suffered only when its desires were thwarted. 'How can you say that to me?' he hissed.
'Because it's true. You don't love me. You simply want me like you want more power, more knowledge, more monstrous creatures to do your bidding. And that I love Godric, that only makes you want me more. That's not love, only avarice-'
He caught her by the hair and pulled her sharply against him. She tried to pull away, pushing at his hands as he grinned at her. 'Fight me, why don't you,' he hissed down at her. 'Bite me, claw at me. But no, you can't bring yourself to hurt me. Not even in this.'
'I can hurt you,' she hissed back. 'I will.'
This had been the wrong this to say. His eyes narrowed. 'Yes, you are planning something, aren't you? You and the others. Godric, and Helga. I know it. I hear things.'
'We're just protecting ourselves.'
'Then why are you making Keys for a weapon?'
Her heart seemed to freeze inside her chest. She stared at him, her blood pounding out words: How does he know? How does he know?
His smile widened. 'I have informants,' he said. 'Don't think you can do anything without my knowing about it. And don't think that just because I've lost you as my Source, I am weak.' He grinned like a skull. 'I have another Source of power now.'
'Salazar, what-'
Her words were cut short as his mouth came down on hers. At first she grit her teeth to keep him out, but he had also cut off her breath, and eventually her lips parted to gain air. He tasted like cold metal. Horror assailed her, but even as it did her blood pounded hard in her ears and she wondered despairingly how the one person you loved best in the world could somehow become the person you most hated.
She turned her face away. 'Let me go-'
But he had already pulled away from her, releasing her, laughing as she turned to run, and his laughter was the last thing she heard as she —
The dream shifted.
She was sitting in a room she recognized: the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
Facing her across the table was a man she had never seen in dreams before, but knew immediately: dark hair, tall, dark eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. An honest, worried face. Dark green eyes. A number of items lay scattered across the table — books, parchment, quills, a mortal and pestle, the scabbard of a sword, the Lycanthe, an object that looked like an hourglass or an infinity sign.
'We're going to have to kill him, you realize,' he said.
She shook her head vehemently. 'No. I don't want to do that.'
'There's no other way, Rowena.'
'There is another way. Helga and I have been working on additions to the curse. Even should he be able to wake from it, to shake off the spell, he will not be able to leave the area we have bound him in. We will turn his own monsters against him and make them his guardians-'
'All this,' said Godric. 'All this just to keep him alive?'
'I can't kill him, Godric. I can't. There's still some good in him, something that can be redeemed, and while he is held I will discover how that can be accomplished-'
'So much effort expended to preserve a life that is worth so little,' said Godric in a bitter tone. 'The Dormiens Curse will not hold him.
It binds the soul of a man. And I am not sure that he has much soul left for us to bind.'
'There is one more thing,' she heard her own voice say, haltingly.
Godric looked up. 'What?'
She met his gaze squarely. 'Have you ever heard of an Epicyclical Charm?'
Hermione felt her own sleeping body jump in shock, and if as a result of that shock Godric's face wavered and vanished. She tried to clutch at the shreds of the dream, but heard only voices echoing in her head, clear if muffled, like voices heard in another room; Helga's, her own: 'We will have to prepare faster, that's all. The Lycanthe is ready, the Turner, now we just need Godric's Key.' The voices rose to a jumbled scream. 'What Source is he using, if not me? Where would he find another Magid willing to be his Source?'
'Maybe it's not a Magid at all. Demonic power. He could have called upon something…..' ' We need to hide the Keys.' 'Helga can hide them. She knows how to put up wards.' 'There is so little time-'
'Hermione.'
Someone had her by the wrist, and was saying a name, but it wasn't her name, or was it? She blinked her eyes open and saw a formless dark mass of shadows, which resolved itself slowly into a black-and-white Ron, sitting on the edge of her bed and peering at her anxiously. 'Hermione.'
Dizzily, she reached out and caught at him with her free hand, pulling him forward with such force that he nearly overbalanced.
'How-' she caught herself on a ragged gasp, and closed her eyes, her heart pounding. 'I was dreaming,' she said, half to him, half to herself.
Ron pulled back slightly, sitting up but not taking his hand off her wrist. 'I figured. You were shouting — actually you were yelling for, um, Godric. Would that be Godric Gryffindor, and is there something I should be telling Harry, because I really don't think-'
Hermione hit her head gently against his shoulder. 'Shut up.' Ron sighed, but didn't move. She could hear the gentle thump-thump sound of his heart, steady as a metronome, reliable as Ron himself.
'I heard all these voices,' she whispered, looking up at him.
'Rowena and Godric — they were talking about the Keys, and where they were hidden. I think Ginny's right, I
