think there's something on the grounds here, maybe in the cellar-'
'Hermione,' cut in Ron. 'They're just dreams.'
'No.' Hermione spoke firmly. 'They're not just dreams.' She reached out, took hold of the Lycanthe, and held it out to Ron. 'This connects me to them. To Harry and especially to Draco. I could dream what he was dreaming, maybe I can see what he's seeing.
Anyway, I'm learning from it. I'm beginning to understand how everything is linked together — how what happened in the past is affecting what's happening now.'
She paused. Ron was looking at her steadily, and she thought she saw concern in his clear blue eyes. 'Hermione,' he said slowly.
'Don't take this the wrong way, but — you seem a little too — intense about this. I don't know what that thing is-' he jerked his chin towards the Lycanthe — 'but you're looking at it the way Draco looked at that sword of his. I don't like it.'
'Not all power is bad, Ron.'
'Maybe not,' he said, detaching himself from her and standing up.
'But how can you tell the difference?'
She shivered a little, although it wasn't cold in the room, and tugged at her sleeve. Ron had given her a pair of Fred's old pajamas, and over that she wore the sweater than Mrs. Weasley had knitted Harry for Christmas their fourth year. It was emerald green with an embroidered dragon that snaked across the front. Harry had worn it once last summer at the Burrow and they had all laughed at him -
he had grown so much that the sleeves of the sweater rode up over his wrists and an inch gap of skin showed between the bottom of the sweater and the waistband of his jeans. Laughing, Harry had stashed the sweater in the back of Ron's closet, where it had remained until tonight.
She liked wearing it — it was warm, it was familiar, it smelled like Harry. She had always thought people pretty much smelled like the soap they used, but had come to realize that wasn't true — Ron always smelled like a combination of cut grass and buttered toast, Draco like cloves and pepper and lemon zest, and Harry smelled like soap and chocolate and some other scent that was just uniquely Harry and somehow alleviated the sick sense of missing him. Not entirely, of course. But a little.
'I don't know,' she said finally. 'I'm not sure I can.' She raised her head and looked at Ron, who was standing by the window now, looking out at the garden. 'And I'm afraid.'
Ron looked over at her. Faint moonlight traced the shadows under his eyes, lined his lashes with silver, turned his hair black. 'Come here,' he said.
Hermione stood up and went to join him at the window.
'Look outside,' he said.
She followed his gaze. Outside the moonlight was so piercingly white that the garden almost looked as if it were buried in snow. The trees were edged in silver; the light of the moon so bright it snuffed out the stars. But that wasn't what Ron had been pointing at; he was indicating the solid line of black-cloaked figures that stood in a ring around the garden, their backs to the house. Aurors. They stood so still they resembled standing stones.
'Doesn't that make you feel a little bit less afraid?' asked Ron, and Hermione looked at him, thinking that he still didn't understand that she wasn't afraid of what was outside so much as she was afraid of what was inside — inside her, inside Draco, inside Harry and Ginny, what engraved pattern of history, genetics and destiny they might carry inside them, inescapable, endlessly repeating. She looked past him, out of the window, towards the garden where the moonlight glinted off the water of the quarry in the distance.
Suddenly she swung around, and looked wildly at Ron. She found that she was clutching the Lycanthe in her right hand, so tightly she could feel the points digging into her palm. 'Ron. The quarry.'
'What about it?'
'The wards.'
'What about the wards?' asked Ron, sounding vaguely exasperated.
'Or is this one of those games where you say a word and I'm supposed to respond with the first thing that pops into my mind?'
'No, it's not a game. Ron, you said that every time your parents tried to empty out the quarry it just filled itself up again, right? It's got some sort of magical wards on it, really powerful ones if your parents couldn't break them. Now what if those wards were put in place to protect something that's under the quarry? Something that was put there…a thousand years ago?'
Ron stared at her for a moment. Then a grin flashed across his face, lighting his eyes. 'And all this time I thought you were just faking being clever.'
Hermione grinned back. 'Have you got a shovel?'
Sirius stood in the dungeon, the demon at his back, through the bars of its cell he faced the werewolf that had been Lupin. It had ceased flinging itself against the bars some time ago and now crouched, narrow-eyed and whimpering at intervals, at the far side of the cell.
Sirius stood, an object in each of his hands, and looked at the wolf, and heard Mad-Eye's voice in his head. It's not a pleasant process, being Called. It's agonizing, and it goes on and on until the one being Called either answers the summons, or dies.
Slowly, he raised his left hand, in which something flashed and glittered through the murky underwater light of the dungeon. 'I found this in my vault at Gringott's,' he said softly, not looking at the wolf, but at what he held in his hand. It was a key, made out of brass, with a head carved of bone into which had been set a number of sparkling dark jewels. 'James gave it to me to give to Harry. The problem being, of course, that Harry isn't around for me to give it to him and James isn't around to tell me what it's supposed to be for.
And I don't know what to do with the blasted thing myself. It's obviously magical, but a key, even a magical key, isn't much bloody good without a lock, is it? Now, I know what you'd say, Moony.
'Sirius, you're being obvious.' 'Sometimes a key isn't just a key.' And sometimes a boy isn't just a boy, sometimes he's a wolf, too. That's something I learned from you. I always told you it wasn't that important. But maybe I was wrong.' Sirius paused, aware that he was rambling, and leaned his head against the cold bars of the cell.
'Oh, what's the point? You don't understand a word I'm saying.'
As he leaned forward, the wolf whimpered, and skittered back.
