travelers. They do not come back, no matter how much they are needed, no matter how greatly they are missed. No matter if their loss can be survived by those who are left behind.
'Its not working,' said Hermione, in disbelief, holding the Lycanthe in her hand and staring at it.
'What do you mean it isn?t working?' Ron demanded.
They were huddled together, the cloak wrapped around them, under a stairwell just outside the cell. Clutching the Lycanthe so tightly that it dug into her palm, Hermione stared at it. 'Its not picking up anything,' she said, her voice tinged with panic.
'Now what?' She could feel the tension in Rons shoulder where it pressed into hers. 'What do we do?'
She straightened up, letting to Lycanthe fall to the end of the chain around her neck. 'We go — this way,' she announced, randomly dragging Ron out of the stairwell and down a corridor. He didn?t protest as he followed her, which was, she thought, unlike him. He was probably out of ideas as well.
The hallway ended in a staircase, whose steps were so worn that many of them seemed almost no more than irregularities in the stone. Hermione wondered whose feet had originally worn them as she and Ron began racing down them. A clear memory formed in her head of racing down these steps before, hand in hand with someone else. Someone not Ron. Someone with silver hair.
She stopped, and put out a hand to steady herself. She heard Rons voice in her ear. 'Hermione, whats wrong?'
'Nothing — I?m fine.'
But she wasn?t. They turned a corner and found themselves in a broad, semicircular hallway whose walls were lined with innumerable doors. The ceiling above vanished into greenish mist.
The walls were bare, but Hermione knew, as if by memory, that once they had been hung with tapestries depicting a unicorn hunt. And the ceiling had been enameled with stars. There had been couches along the walls, long couches covered in pillows of scarlet and emerald and blue, and she remembered having lain down on those couches, and not alone, either…
Hermione felt herself turn scarlet and was very glad that she was invisible. Oh my. She looked down, realized she was clutching the Lycanthe, and released it quickly. The feeling of memory pressing in on her faded slightly. She was fairly sure that she was still bright red, though. How does one do that on a couch without falling off?
'Hermione.' It was Ron, speaking into her ear again, or near her ear.
He couldn?t see her, so he was pretty much speaking into her neck.
'Do you hear that?'
She raised her head, a little dizzy. 'What?'
'Listen. Someones crying.'
Hermione swiveled her head, listening. And heard it. The faint sound of sobbing, coming from behind one of the closed doors.
'That doesn?t sound like Ginny,' she said, positively, but Ron had already grabbed her hand and was dragging her towards the door.
She felt him glance around, then push the door open, and they went through.
This room was low-ceilinged and bare, and evoked no memories in Hermione. At least, it looked bare at first glance, and was very dark.
But then, as she stared, she saw a patch of greater darkness, a huddled shape like a puddle of shadow, in one corner, from which the crying sound originated. As she and Ron moved uncertainly towards the shape, she realized — she knew — that it was not, of course, Ginny. The crying was the weak, plaintive crying of a child, but as they drew closer it became clear that this was in fact, an adult. An adult man, short, round, and plump, whose balding head glimmered in the faint light and whose sniveling cries were very, very familiar…
'Wormtail,' hissed Ron, in astonishment.
Wormtails body jerked to attention with a rattling sound, and Hermione saw that there was a cuff around his leg, chaining him to the wall. It wasn?t an adamantine cuff, only rusty metal, but then he wasn?t a Magid. 'Whos there?' he barked shrilly.
Hermione caught at Rons arm, but it was too late. He had stepped out from under the Invisibility Cloak and was standing with his wand pointed at Wormtail, his blue eyes blazing with rage. 'You,' he hissed. 'Murderer.'
'I never murdered anyone!' squeaked Wormtail, thrashing about in his chains as if he could get farther away from Ron somehow. His eyes were huge and fearful. 'What are you doing here?'
Hermione pulled the cloak off herself and rushed over to Ron, catching at his arm. 'What are you doing?'
'I?m going to kill him,' said Ron. 'Somebody ought to have, a long time ago.'
'Ron! You don?t know how to do the Killing Curse — '
'I can try it till I get it right,' he said, his wand still aimed at Wormtails heart.
'Go ahead,' said Wormtail, in a sneering, squeaking voice. 'There are wards up all over this room. One spell, and the guards will be all over you.'
Ron looked furious. 'You?re lying.'
'Ron!' Hermione lunged at him, grabbing his wand arm and hanging on. 'Don?t!'
'I?m not going to,' he said quietly, his eyes still fixed on Wormtail.
'But I want to know what he knows. And if I can?t do a spell, I?ll break every bone in his miserable body.'
'Do I look like I know anything?' spat Wormtail. 'Do I look like I am still my Masters most trusted confidante? He said I betrayed him — I nearly allowed his Heir to die. He kept me alive but he took — this.'
And with a snivelling gasp, he ratcheted back his right sleeve, and held out his arm.
Hermione swallowed her nausea. His hand was gone; his pale, pudgy arm ended in a blackened stump of scar tissue. She had no sympathy for him — if there was any one person in the world she hated without
