FIC: The Guardian Brotherhood :: Chapter Seven :: Headlong
This chapter clocks in at 5,089 words. It's one of my shorter chapters, and yet I feel like this one's been tearing at me from every side. Admittedly, these past few weeks weren't exactly that great a time to write Guardian, specifically. I remember writing a lot in college while not being in the best of minds (Forbidden Things, The Other Side and Smoking Up Bloody Ashes come to mind) but I guess I just felt drained and incapable. I don't know if what little writing I got done suffered, but *cough* anyway. So here's chapter seven, with much ♥ to everyone who gave me words of comfort when I most needed it and who is still following this mammoth. I've been nudged a lot during this past month to get busy with the chapter so haha I guess I'm making some of you giddy with anticipation so I'll shut up now ;) Enjoy!
(By the way, I broke the 60K goal. Guess I'm aiming for... mm... 65K now?)
It's 7 years after the fall of the Dark Lord. Hermione has been trying to get on with her life and forget the night Ron Weasley died. But the night a long-ago symbol appears outside her window, she gets more mystery and excitement than she wished for.
CHAPTER SEVEN: HEADLONG
The cabin was hidden deep within the woods, nearly swallowed by thick, greedy foliage. If they hadn’t been looking specifically for the place, they would have surely missed it. Harry believed that was the point.
The shack gave him clear insight into what the man who had previously lived in it had been like. Secretive, obviously. Tidy. No-nonsense. This hadn’t been a nice little cottage, a place to sit back and relax in. It had been a cabin, simply, a place where he’d awaited instructions between missions. Everyday objects still remained in place after years of disuse, untouched. An empty beer bottle or two, here, a bag of pistachios there, waiting indefinitely until the hovel’s owner saw fit to return… if he ever returned. A good coating of dust had settled over these things and yet…
“Someone recently ate those nuts,” Harry remarked upon closer inspection. Indeed, the dust had been marred there, as if someone had closed his fingers over the bag, and then returned it to the same spot with exact precision. But the finger smudges had betrayed him… or her. No telling how recent, but someone had been in the shack and hadn’t turned it upside down in a searching fit. That someone had not been looking for Buchanan, but hadn’t been a wayward trekker.
“Hermione?” Ginny asked distractedly while shuffling papers in Buchanan’s desk. “You think she was here?”
“Nope. Buchanan himself.” Ginny looked up sharply, ambling over. “See here?” He pointed to the table. “Who would eat pistachios but return it exactly to the same spot? He was here.”
It seemed crazy to base his perception on a bag of pistachios, but then there’d been worse leads.
“When?”
Harry shrugged. “You found anything in those papers?”
Ginny returned to Buchanan’s desk, pulling out a thick manila envelope and an informal-looking letter. Dangerous missions were kept hush-hush within the Ministry. Harry stepped closer, inspecting the content of the letter. “A location and a year. Mallaig, 2002.”
Harry’s brows rose in surprise. “His last mission?”
She nodded, unfolding a tourist’s map that had been slipped inside the envelope. “That’s Mallaig,” she said, pointing to a dot that had been circled in red near a cross symbol. “And that’s the holy isle of Iona,” she added, answering his unspoken question.
Harry snorted. “Funny how a massacre allegedly took place so close to God.”
But Ginny wasn’t listening to his dry humour. Rummaging through the papers again, she finally narrowed her eyes at the cramped handwriting of one Auror to another. “Senior Auror Kurtz ordered Buchanan to Mallaig on January 5th, 2002.” Remembering her own days of battle in teeth-chattering weather, she shivered. “Man, I feel for Buchanan,” she said with feeling.
Glancing over with mild amusement, Harry plucked the order from her fingers and read: “’… given total control of any situation that may prevent itself.’ Obviously, he didn’t do his job so well if the entire team died there under his command.” Except Buchanan. Then Harry furrowed his brow in surprise. “There’s no mention of what was going down there. Either Buchanan already knew what he was getting himself into or he didn’t have a clue.”
They both had much experience with the second notion. Working for an organisation of any sort - governmental or not - they had both heard, read and seen their fair share of half-truths “for your own sake.” Should they be captured at any point during the mission, they wouldn’t know the stakes and details. Soldiers, they were, to the very end.
Harry glanced at Ginny, who was absorbed in her work beside him, and hated that she was being used - and would be used - thus so often. Theirs was an organisation, after all, and she would be a tremendous asset to it once fully trained. He almost didn’t want to keep helping her. Almost.
Racking his throat, Harry tore his gaze from her and, in the same motion, folded the map again and slipped it inside his trouser pocket. They would surely need it later to locate Mallaig precisely. “Come on,” he said, “we’d better get moving.” It was getting dark and they had classes and duties to go to.
Ginny scrambled to neaten her mess of paper clippings and official documents in the desk drawers where she’d found them, and then followed him outside.
Sunlight was scarse in the woods, even scarser now that the sun had begun to set. Dead leaves crunched under their feet while a soft breeze blew through the wild Highland grove. Harry knew that, a mere few hundred kilometres away, a suburban cityscape began. Here in these parts, however, one easily became overcome with nature’s leisurely lifestyle. So much so, in fact, that a contented silence settled between Harry and Ginny. For nothing in the world would he have shattered it with his big fat mouth.
This morning just needs to be erased, Harry thought ruefully. Sometimes he just didn’t think before he ran his mouth off. Like now. Except now was good. The quiet, the calm, the time for reflection… good things. He would not jam his foot in it for all the world. Or do something utterly too spontaneous and terrifying.
Just thinking about a potential mistake made him sweat, although there was a bit of something nice about it. It was just… he and Ginny couldn’t do that, not to Ron, not to Hermione, and certainly not to themselves. Not while he felt so goddamned responsible for everyone involved.
Ginny jarred him out of his black thoughts by touching his hand that clutched his wand. “Um, when were you planning on Disapparating?” she inquired with big apologetic eyes, reminding him once more why things could-but shouldn’t-happen. Ginny was waving the white flag and he could only breathe in relief. As long as he didn’t let loose his inner jerk again, they were both safe from tempting each other’s temperamental monsters.
“Sorry, I just…”
“Yeah.”
They fell into step with each other. Harry could feel all the heat Ginny exuded. Too much. Not enough.
“Okay. Now.” They Disapparated, nearly touching.
#
The grille doors opened and Ron indicated an empty securised Apparition section. I imagined he was powerful enough to forgo that particular technicality, even such powerful anti-Apparition spells as there were around the Ministry, but then the idea was not to attract undue attention to ourselves. So we stepped into the designated circle. Ron took us just outside in a backstreet, well away from cars and pedestrians.
“Now what?” I asked, crossing my arms against the nightly chill that permeated the crisp air.
Around us, a thin sheen of droplets fluttered down to the ground. Already the asphalt was wet enough to reflect the darkening sky and the flickering lamplights of the main boulevard. Harder rain had already fallen. An ordinary London evening.
Ron Transfigurated his clothes back to their previous state of long, dark robe and drawn hood, jamming his hands into his large side pockets.
“Now I’m here,” a voice spoke clearly out of the darkness, answering me.
We both whirled around. Buchanan was here.
Edging out of the darkness, he looked tense, staring out of narrowed black eyes. The latter flickered every so often, taking in our surroundings like a deer would in an open field. He wore somber robes like Ron, but his hood was off in an oddly capitulating way. “You’re all looking for me,” he drawled. “I had to choose who to show myself to. Since you probably already know or deduced at least half the truth, here I am.”
#
“I’ll wait for you after class?”
It was the first time since she’d asked to leave the forest that Ginny had spoken. Even as Harry had led her through the maze of Syn Wyngyn’s hallways and kept a tense one-sided conversation, she’d been quiet and even detached, as though he weren’t even there and she had nowhere she cared to go.
When it had come to part before her classroom, she’d even nodded wordlessly and walked indolently into her classroom. But now, mere seconds later when Harry had already taken a few steps to walk away, she clutched the doorframe, her big doe eyes fixed on him with something that felt like she were clutching him.
Before Harry could even take a breath to answer her query, however, the resounding voice of their director rose throughout the building. “HARRY POTTER, MY OFFICE PLEASE!”
Harry sighed. Being called was never good. “I’d better go,” he muttered before turning away.
“Will you-“
“I’ll be there,” he shot over his shoulder distractedly. Keeny’s diatribe could take long enough. Or else he could send her a note saying to meet him later.
Well, he’d work something out.
#
She waited for him just outside the classroom’s closed door. Glancing at his watch, Harry surmised that it must have been close to a half-hour since her class had ended, and he hadn’t been able to send her a note. She had obviously slid down to the floor at some point, clutching her battered leather bookbag loosely in her lap, and kicked back. Her eyes were closed and her head rested back against the concrete wall next to the doorknob.
It must be full dark, he surprised himself thinking. Normally day and night had no real meaning to him besides light and lack of lack. Not that there were any windows at Syn Wyngyn. The body was thus fooled into not producing the dopamine necessary for the onset of sleep. He went home when he wasn’t needed at school or work, not when he needed sleep. Sleep was a notion his body had learned to moderate through intense training. When on the field, one learned early on to keep alert at all times. The one split second when an heinous or suspicious act occured, you needed to be fully awake and do what you had to do when you had to do it. You learned to relax only when you were home.
Ginny’s body would soon learn all the hardships it had never encountered in her life before, even during the wizarding war. Would she crack? He knew, without a shade of a doubt, that she wouldn’t. But a man could hope. For the best. No harm, no foul, nothing to be ashamed of yet this to be proud of: her successful journey thus far.
He also knew she wouldn’t think of it that way.
Harry stooped down to call her softly. “Gin hon.”
She stirred groggily, opening tired brown eyes. “Hey,” she greeted with a yawn. “How did it go?”
“Fantastic.” He scowled. “Now Keeny thinks I’m making you slack off,” he retorted blandly.
She paused mid-yawn, eyes popping wide open. “What? Where does he get that idea?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Who the hell knows.” Then, suddenly, he sought her eyes deliberately, anxiety apparent in their depths. “Do I make you slack off? Are you still holding well in your classes?”
Now she directed her incredulity at him. “What makes you think I’m not?”
Harry looked away, shrugging. “Just asking.”
Yet she still pursed her lips and glared. “You know me better than that.”
And the truth was, he really did. “All right. We’d better get some rest.” There was no question where he would sleep. He just couldn’t stand the thought of going back to his house and facing all of her stuff. Helping Ginny up, he thought he wasn’t being fair to her, imposing himself like that, but… where else could he go? Who would welcome him but her? No one.
And although that was a depressing and slightly alarming thought-did she think he was using her?-it also uplifted him. He hadn’t slept as well as in Ginny’s bed in a long time.
But she wouldn’t always be there to be his landing cushion.
#
Being in Buchanan’s presence is like playing with fire with an infinite supply of oxygen to feed it. He scorched. He made you feel constantly in danger, even when all that promise of power was actually banked. He made you feel unsettled, as if, whatever you did, he’d get you trapped.
As he calmly gazed at us out of the darkness, however, a bit of that edge that made his presence unsavory had slipped. Beyond that hard shell was… well, I couldn’t quite place it, but he definitely looked more human than the few times I’d been in his presence.
The air electrified around us as I felt Ron tense beside me. “What do you want?” he growled at our intruder, poised to protect me.
Buchanan looked at us silently a moment longer-first me, then Ron-a shadow passing over his eyes. “Nothing like that,” he replied, nodding to Ron’s hand that grasped my arm tight.
Ron only squeezed harder. “Forgive me for not trusting you, Mage,” he said, snarling out the last as if tasted bitter on his tongue. “Talk.”
“It’s not how you think, Guardian.”
Ron snorted, then stiffened at a slithering sound, listening. Cat. He relaxed. “You know what I am. That makes you one of them in my book. Considering how you fought me before, that just cinches it.”
Buchanan offered a toothy smile that didn’t reach his eyes. They were hard, unyielding. “Suit yourself. Your girlfriend can tell you I’m not about to hex you.”
Whipping his head round to me, Ron gave me a searching glance, then whipped back, tightening yet more in readiness.
Buchanan sighed. “It’s starting to drive you mad. I see.”
“Mind your own business. I repeat, what do you want?”
The other man seemed to consider Ron, then slid his black gaze to me, narrowing his eyes in deliberation. Then he moved, fishing something out of his pocket.
The parchment!
His eyes locked onto mine. “You have a question for me, Miss Granger. The answer is no. I gave the Society a page from my family’s copy of the Codex Ardmachanus.”
Oh, wow. That one, also called the Book of Armagh, had supposedly belonged to St. Patrick himself. And he’d just chucked one page away? Was he mad?
All right, so that battle didn’t belong in the here and now. But boy that wounded my inner bookworm.
“None of them speak Gaelic, so they won’t be the wiser,” he continued, raising a brow to acknowledge my disbelief. “But you do.”
I gaped a long time at this development-the fact that he’d deliberately withheld information he’d obviously been given the mission to acquire. Implication after implication ran havoc through my brain until they collided and fused and became other ideas. This meant so many things, of which neither Ron nor I had thought. It meant he was working solo, it meant he was forsaking what he had become, it meant he was… reaching out, asking for help.
Yet so many supposedly go that way and then betray those who trust them. I certainly knew I wouldn’t make the easy mistake to trust him blindly. One glance proved Ron wouldn’t, either.
“Why the change of heart?” he asked the other, suspicion making him sound harsh, rough. Buchanan was right, this whole situation was weighing on him. I was weighing on him.
Silence settled on the night as Buchanan smoothed his thumb over the folded, priceless parchment, seeming to mull over his words. “Don’t you wonder why our Elders want this particular prophecy so badly?” he said after a time.
Ron scowled. Of course he’d wondered, I thought. But he’d been well conditioned into ignoring his own individual thought processes. “Yours want to annihilate,” Ron ground out through gritted teeth. “Mine want to protect what you’d destroy.”
The response sounded so rehearsed, I visibly winced. Where was the headstrong, bullheaded boy who’d always taken his own stance on matters of importance to him, no matter the inanity? Where was that opiniated mind that would have responded as bluntly as possible?
I did it. I rounded on Ron and scowled. “Really? Is that really what you think, or rather some trope you’ve assimilated since becoming-”
I stopped when pain lanced through my arm. Yelping, I jerked back, but the effort was futile. It was like trying to remove a hairpin from a dried cement block. Useless. And then the pain stopped, and I looked up through a sheen of hot tears, wondering Why, why?
Wide-eyed, Ron stared back, first in surprise, then confusion, and finally dawning guilt. “My God, ‘Mione, I don’t know-”
“I know,” Buchanan cut in. “I think you do, too.”
Slowly Ron turned to face the other man and studied him several seconds. Neither spoke, but vague understanding-or perhaps a sliver of trust-passed between them. I saw them both as just the essence of what they were: two men in doubt.
I can’t say as I understood the silent male conversation, nor its general lines. They were speaking a foreign language, that one where men speak all they can’t or won’t translate aloud. Fear, doubts, questions. As a woman, I dared not venture into what they might be saying. Leaning my shoulder against the wet brick wall next to me, I merely watched from the dim light.
Suddenly Ron sighed out of the conversation. “I can’t,” he muttered so softly I almost didn’t hear.
“What have you got to lose?” Buchanan replied in as quiet a whisper.
Ron glanced my way, not-quite-disguised anguish stretching his lips and marring his forehead. That look took my breath away-I’d never seen Ron’s face take on this expression. Despair, pure and unadulterated. He faced Buchanan again.
Buchanan followed where Ron’s glance had taken him, and stared at me. To Ron he said, “She’s not like us.”
Whatever. I pushed away from the wall. After all, they weren’t speaking Man anymore. “I’m plenty like you.”
He snorted. “Excuse me, but one Guardian or one Mage would make mincemeat of you.”
“I was in the war. What are you planning?”
He chose to ignore the last. “The war nearly killed your boyfriend.”
“So that’s what I have to do to be one of you? Push myself nearly to the brink of death?” God! The man incensed me. What did he see? A ragdoll?
“Hey, don’t let me stop you.”
Ron came between us before I could retort or explode. I think it would have been both. “Wait wait wait. She’s quite bright.”
Buchanan strained around him to fix me with a skeptical eye. “Been trudging through crime scenes unattended again, Miss Granger? Or do you do that only when an ex-Auror’s around?” Noting my blotchy red face, he grinned like only triumphant men could, and turned back to Ron. “She’d be a nuisance to you. I know this firsthand.”
Narrowing his eyes, Ron shook his head. “She’s in danger.”
“You thought she was in danger from me,” Buchanan corrected quite agreeably. “That problem’s quite resolved now.”
Dammit, I wanted to thump the grinning bastard.
Ron cut through my mental tirade. “How do I know you’re not setting us up?” He shook his head decisively. “No, Hermione stays with me.”
Buchanan shrugged carelessly. “It’s your funeral.” Slipping his hood over his head, he said, “I’d best be heading back. We’ll talk again… Honos.”
As soon as he had popped out-I cringed, bile rising to my throat-I rounded on Ron, a bit green around the gills but determined nonetheless. “What did you just get us into?”
#
“Y’know, you’ll have to start paying rent if you keep sleeping here,” Ginny called from the bathroom, stepping into her pyjama pants. Wincing at the nervous tremor in her voice, she then reached for the black tee shirt-white would just be risqué without a bra-and slipped it on.
She’d meant for the lighthearted joke to help her face reality without skipping nerves and bounding heart. Of course, she’d slept with him the previous night, but he’d been too tired to care. For that matter, did he want to sleep in her bed tonight? Would he prefer the couch that, admittedly, was comfortable enough? Or would he not mind her bed and they’d sleep like two platonic best friends?
She knew she wasn’t his best friend. She doubted she could call herself his friend. Past circumstances had made them quite close-his kissing her in her fifth year had opened the door to a beautiful relationship and friendship-but then… he’d thought too hard. Bitterness still crippled her though she was loath to admit it to anyone who asked, but he had re-entered her life recently and now… now he was as close as she allowed him, and he her.
A muffled sigh sounded from her room. “Sorry, tonight’s the last.”
Ginny frowned and looked up. Her reflection stared back at her. Had she sounded annoyed? Perplexed, she pushed the door open. Harry was already in bed, arms crossed behind his head. At her entrance, his head lolled to her side, inquiring.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she offered quietly. “Stay as long as you want.”
A wry smile twisted his lips. “Thanks, Gin.”
They stared.
Harry turned his head, and closed his eyes. “I won’t eat you. Promise.”
A nervous laugh racked her. “Sorry,” she wheezed, mortified. “I haven’t had a completely awake man in my bed in a while.”
Though he’d been quite immobile before, Harry now seemed frozen in time. A long moment passed before he swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Oh.” The single word sounded far deeper than she’d ever heard it.
“I mean,” Ginny amended quickly, “it doesn’t bother me. Really. Tired or not. It was all… all right.” Goodness, she was blabbering! Running a hand through her hair, Ginny attempted to regain control of herself. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered to herself under her breath. “Forget I said anything, okay? We’ll just sleep.” Together, her mind, her sick, sick mind, added.
Harry had rolled his head toward her at some point during her diatribe. Face flushed, she was acutely aware of his searching gaze planted on her. “Gin.”
“What?” she snapped as she climbed into bed. It seemed like turning her back on him might be best. “And stop calling me that,” she added owlishly.
The bed creaked as Harry moved. Suddenly he was hovering over her shoulder. With a groan, Ginny burrowed deeper into her pillow, hoping to block him out. “Look, I-if it makes you uncomfortable…”
“Hmph.”
A soft snort. “Very eloquent. Run that by me again?” She could hear the grin in his tone.
“Ugh!” With a roll she was suddenly underneath him, and as he lost his precarious balance he planted his hands on either side of her and nearly got a mouthful of pillow.
Rendered momentarily speechless, Ginny blinked up at him. Then she pushed. “Get off me.” Her heart, however, wasn’t it in, and Harry didn’t move an inch. He only looked.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Ginny wasn’t sure she believed in that, but Harry, when he allowed it, when he wasn’t too focused on others to let himself feel, could be read almost like an open book. In his expression she read doubt, guilt. In his locked shoulders she sensed tension, a fork in the road. Would he choose the well-travelled path? Her eyes slammed back to his. They locked onto hers, intense.
Her heart suddenly in her throat, deafening, she waited.
And waited.
He moved his head imperceptibly, and then stopped. Ginny didn’t.
#
I’ll tell you when we’re in the Coven.
Patience is not really one of my strong suits. I’m typically a go-getter when it comes to gaining information about a new lead, or new Muggle or Wizarding insurance laws. Naturally curious, I’ll flip through my collection of law books to jog my memory or engineering reference texts to discover new ways houses should be built. I’ll consult oil transportation specialists to learn the proper way to fill a tank. Mistakes are made, insurance companies scramble every which way, attorneys need to prosecute or defend. Information is power, but it’s how you use it that makes you powerful. I think that’s why people call us liars; we’re able to manipulate the information given us.
Because I wasn’t now given the information in a timely manner, places inside my head were becoming annoyed. This wasn’t something I could find in a book. I could make assumptions, but then all of them would be way exaggerated. I wanted truth, now.
I wouldn’t get it.
Stealthing through the Coven’s long halls with Ron, I felt untouchable. He’d proven time and again that he was capable of protecting with ten times the magical power any wizard should possess, hadn’t he?
Sometimes we’re too confident.
We were right there, right in front of Ron’s cell door, when a corporeal shadow broke away from what I hadn’t even deemed to be more than absence of light.
She couldn’t be more than eighteen.
“You’re making a big mistake.”
She was a force to be reckoned with. Bile rose in my mouth just as my head hit the floor.
#
Yes.
Heart beating an erratic tattoo in her chest, Ginny lay her head back down on her pillow and sighed when Harry followed. His eyes closed, he gave with an abandon she hadn’t thought him willing to display. He gave so much more than she’d hoped for. He took, too, took like a starving man finally given that which he desired. Framed by him, Ginny finally dared to let go of the world and her deceits, and touched him. Touch generated friction, and suddenly she had skin and hair under her fingers and yet, she didn’t even feel all of that.
Yes. Harry’s lips. His warmth, his nips, his tongue. His kiss. Merlin, she’d missed him.
Breath in, and Harry’s tongue sought the crevice on the side of her mouth where bottom and top lips met. It seemed like time had stopped just for them. No matter how much of it had passed since Harry’s dull parting words had seared her chest to the quick, now… now those words still hurt but at least here he was. Once more she could touch him without feeling the harsh sting of emotional distance.
Breath out, and slowly Harry pulled away.
Silence. Dark hooded eyes. Dark flush. Deep breaths.
“Shouldn’t-”
“Don’t you dare.” Ginny scowled.
A faint smile tugged at his lips before it vanished. “I was going to say that I shouldn’t sleep here,” he said gravely, stroking her hair and moving away slowly.
“No, wait.” Desperately, Ginny scrambled after him and clutched at his hand just as he got off the bed.
He paused, looking back inquiringly, green eyes striking in the dim lighting of her ceiling fixture.
“I mean… that is… you don’t have to… don’t go. We’ll just sleep.” Biting her lip, Ginny resolved to beg for the first time in Merlin knew how long. In a quiet tone, she added, “Please, don’t go.”
For a moment, nothing, and then…
“Please,” she murmured.
Breath in, quickly out. “Okay.”
#
Confidence is an insidious poison. The worst burn is probably discovering you’re not that safe with your trusted safety net. Your innards will twist, your throat will feel too tight, and you’ll pray to all that’s holy and maybe even not for a miracle, a Time Turner, anything, to fall into your hand and save you. Save. Safe. Safety. A vicious circle, but then we all live vicariously through our mistakes.
I was cold.
When I opened my eyes, white flooded my retinas and I thought I couldn’t see for a moment.
Emptiness. Was this heaven? I dared turn my head. Everything was so… devoid. Niggling at the back of my mind, however, was a feeling. I hadn’t been here before, but this place looked vaguely familiar…
Ron!
His name, fished from the recesses of my memory, seemed to bring lucidity to the forefront. I now remembered my last moments of clarity. I’d been with Ron, about to enter his cell… that looked so like this room. I was still in the Coven, somewhere.
Was was this place? Where was Ron? What did the Brotherhood want with me? Sitting up suddenly, I found myself face-to-face with a lithe, hooded figure that exuded so much power that she took my breath away. She. Her long, graceful fingers were clasped together loosely before her in a peaceful gesture, but she didn’t fool me. She did not want me here.
The young girl? No…
“Who are you?” Definitely not the young girl. This woman spoke with experienced grace and poise.
Though the room was sparse, I could now see edges. Ceiling, walls and floor delineated themselves, and I saw that I had been brought into a large, circular room. The ceiling reached extravagant heights, and I sat on an elevated dais in the middle of the room.
Remembering the woman’s query after my visual exploration, I snapped my gaze back to her. She hadn’t moved an inch. Eerie. “Er, Hermione-Hermione Granger.”
She said nothing, but performed a silent spell that, strangely, didn’t make me feel nauseous. I only felt… pleasantly numb, as though the twisting pain were seeping out of me rather than inside. I wondered at the spell, thinking I sure needed to know it for future reference, but I said nothing at all. An intense silence fell as the Guardian woman stared fixedly at me from her shadowed face.
Then she smiled. It was the smile of a predator, one who has found a weakness in its prey. “You are nothing, witch.” She removed her hood.
She was tall, blonde, ageless. Clear blue eyes gazed back at me with disdain out of a pure face. Power seeped out of her. People obeyed and respected her. Despite all that, I hated her on the spot.
“Mistress Aine?”
We both turned our heads toward the intruder-a young woman with long blonde locks just like Aine’s. Her daughter?
“Yes,” snapped Aine with obvious irritation.
The girl bent her head in deference. “He is ready, my lady.” And she retreated without another word.
Facing the woman once more, I only had time to see her slow smile before I was suddenly in my bedroom at Number Eight, Belmore Avenue. There I remained stoic a long moment before cold dread finally took its place.
(By the way, I broke the 60K goal. Guess I'm aiming for... mm... 65K now?)
It's 7 years after the fall of the Dark Lord. Hermione has been trying to get on with her life and forget the night Ron Weasley died. But the night a long-ago symbol appears outside her window, she gets more mystery and excitement than she wished for.
CHAPTER SEVEN: HEADLONG
The cabin was hidden deep within the woods, nearly swallowed by thick, greedy foliage. If they hadn’t been looking specifically for the place, they would have surely missed it. Harry believed that was the point.
The shack gave him clear insight into what the man who had previously lived in it had been like. Secretive, obviously. Tidy. No-nonsense. This hadn’t been a nice little cottage, a place to sit back and relax in. It had been a cabin, simply, a place where he’d awaited instructions between missions. Everyday objects still remained in place after years of disuse, untouched. An empty beer bottle or two, here, a bag of pistachios there, waiting indefinitely until the hovel’s owner saw fit to return… if he ever returned. A good coating of dust had settled over these things and yet…
“Someone recently ate those nuts,” Harry remarked upon closer inspection. Indeed, the dust had been marred there, as if someone had closed his fingers over the bag, and then returned it to the same spot with exact precision. But the finger smudges had betrayed him… or her. No telling how recent, but someone had been in the shack and hadn’t turned it upside down in a searching fit. That someone had not been looking for Buchanan, but hadn’t been a wayward trekker.
“Hermione?” Ginny asked distractedly while shuffling papers in Buchanan’s desk. “You think she was here?”
“Nope. Buchanan himself.” Ginny looked up sharply, ambling over. “See here?” He pointed to the table. “Who would eat pistachios but return it exactly to the same spot? He was here.”
It seemed crazy to base his perception on a bag of pistachios, but then there’d been worse leads.
“When?”
Harry shrugged. “You found anything in those papers?”
Ginny returned to Buchanan’s desk, pulling out a thick manila envelope and an informal-looking letter. Dangerous missions were kept hush-hush within the Ministry. Harry stepped closer, inspecting the content of the letter. “A location and a year. Mallaig, 2002.”
Harry’s brows rose in surprise. “His last mission?”
She nodded, unfolding a tourist’s map that had been slipped inside the envelope. “That’s Mallaig,” she said, pointing to a dot that had been circled in red near a cross symbol. “And that’s the holy isle of Iona,” she added, answering his unspoken question.
Harry snorted. “Funny how a massacre allegedly took place so close to God.”
But Ginny wasn’t listening to his dry humour. Rummaging through the papers again, she finally narrowed her eyes at the cramped handwriting of one Auror to another. “Senior Auror Kurtz ordered Buchanan to Mallaig on January 5th, 2002.” Remembering her own days of battle in teeth-chattering weather, she shivered. “Man, I feel for Buchanan,” she said with feeling.
Glancing over with mild amusement, Harry plucked the order from her fingers and read: “’… given total control of any situation that may prevent itself.’ Obviously, he didn’t do his job so well if the entire team died there under his command.” Except Buchanan. Then Harry furrowed his brow in surprise. “There’s no mention of what was going down there. Either Buchanan already knew what he was getting himself into or he didn’t have a clue.”
They both had much experience with the second notion. Working for an organisation of any sort - governmental or not - they had both heard, read and seen their fair share of half-truths “for your own sake.” Should they be captured at any point during the mission, they wouldn’t know the stakes and details. Soldiers, they were, to the very end.
Harry glanced at Ginny, who was absorbed in her work beside him, and hated that she was being used - and would be used - thus so often. Theirs was an organisation, after all, and she would be a tremendous asset to it once fully trained. He almost didn’t want to keep helping her. Almost.
Racking his throat, Harry tore his gaze from her and, in the same motion, folded the map again and slipped it inside his trouser pocket. They would surely need it later to locate Mallaig precisely. “Come on,” he said, “we’d better get moving.” It was getting dark and they had classes and duties to go to.
Ginny scrambled to neaten her mess of paper clippings and official documents in the desk drawers where she’d found them, and then followed him outside.
Sunlight was scarse in the woods, even scarser now that the sun had begun to set. Dead leaves crunched under their feet while a soft breeze blew through the wild Highland grove. Harry knew that, a mere few hundred kilometres away, a suburban cityscape began. Here in these parts, however, one easily became overcome with nature’s leisurely lifestyle. So much so, in fact, that a contented silence settled between Harry and Ginny. For nothing in the world would he have shattered it with his big fat mouth.
This morning just needs to be erased, Harry thought ruefully. Sometimes he just didn’t think before he ran his mouth off. Like now. Except now was good. The quiet, the calm, the time for reflection… good things. He would not jam his foot in it for all the world. Or do something utterly too spontaneous and terrifying.
Just thinking about a potential mistake made him sweat, although there was a bit of something nice about it. It was just… he and Ginny couldn’t do that, not to Ron, not to Hermione, and certainly not to themselves. Not while he felt so goddamned responsible for everyone involved.
Ginny jarred him out of his black thoughts by touching his hand that clutched his wand. “Um, when were you planning on Disapparating?” she inquired with big apologetic eyes, reminding him once more why things could-but shouldn’t-happen. Ginny was waving the white flag and he could only breathe in relief. As long as he didn’t let loose his inner jerk again, they were both safe from tempting each other’s temperamental monsters.
“Sorry, I just…”
“Yeah.”
They fell into step with each other. Harry could feel all the heat Ginny exuded. Too much. Not enough.
“Okay. Now.” They Disapparated, nearly touching.
#
The grille doors opened and Ron indicated an empty securised Apparition section. I imagined he was powerful enough to forgo that particular technicality, even such powerful anti-Apparition spells as there were around the Ministry, but then the idea was not to attract undue attention to ourselves. So we stepped into the designated circle. Ron took us just outside in a backstreet, well away from cars and pedestrians.
“Now what?” I asked, crossing my arms against the nightly chill that permeated the crisp air.
Around us, a thin sheen of droplets fluttered down to the ground. Already the asphalt was wet enough to reflect the darkening sky and the flickering lamplights of the main boulevard. Harder rain had already fallen. An ordinary London evening.
Ron Transfigurated his clothes back to their previous state of long, dark robe and drawn hood, jamming his hands into his large side pockets.
“Now I’m here,” a voice spoke clearly out of the darkness, answering me.
We both whirled around. Buchanan was here.
Edging out of the darkness, he looked tense, staring out of narrowed black eyes. The latter flickered every so often, taking in our surroundings like a deer would in an open field. He wore somber robes like Ron, but his hood was off in an oddly capitulating way. “You’re all looking for me,” he drawled. “I had to choose who to show myself to. Since you probably already know or deduced at least half the truth, here I am.”
#
“I’ll wait for you after class?”
It was the first time since she’d asked to leave the forest that Ginny had spoken. Even as Harry had led her through the maze of Syn Wyngyn’s hallways and kept a tense one-sided conversation, she’d been quiet and even detached, as though he weren’t even there and she had nowhere she cared to go.
When it had come to part before her classroom, she’d even nodded wordlessly and walked indolently into her classroom. But now, mere seconds later when Harry had already taken a few steps to walk away, she clutched the doorframe, her big doe eyes fixed on him with something that felt like she were clutching him.
Before Harry could even take a breath to answer her query, however, the resounding voice of their director rose throughout the building. “HARRY POTTER, MY OFFICE PLEASE!”
Harry sighed. Being called was never good. “I’d better go,” he muttered before turning away.
“Will you-“
“I’ll be there,” he shot over his shoulder distractedly. Keeny’s diatribe could take long enough. Or else he could send her a note saying to meet him later.
Well, he’d work something out.
#
She waited for him just outside the classroom’s closed door. Glancing at his watch, Harry surmised that it must have been close to a half-hour since her class had ended, and he hadn’t been able to send her a note. She had obviously slid down to the floor at some point, clutching her battered leather bookbag loosely in her lap, and kicked back. Her eyes were closed and her head rested back against the concrete wall next to the doorknob.
It must be full dark, he surprised himself thinking. Normally day and night had no real meaning to him besides light and lack of lack. Not that there were any windows at Syn Wyngyn. The body was thus fooled into not producing the dopamine necessary for the onset of sleep. He went home when he wasn’t needed at school or work, not when he needed sleep. Sleep was a notion his body had learned to moderate through intense training. When on the field, one learned early on to keep alert at all times. The one split second when an heinous or suspicious act occured, you needed to be fully awake and do what you had to do when you had to do it. You learned to relax only when you were home.
Ginny’s body would soon learn all the hardships it had never encountered in her life before, even during the wizarding war. Would she crack? He knew, without a shade of a doubt, that she wouldn’t. But a man could hope. For the best. No harm, no foul, nothing to be ashamed of yet this to be proud of: her successful journey thus far.
He also knew she wouldn’t think of it that way.
Harry stooped down to call her softly. “Gin hon.”
She stirred groggily, opening tired brown eyes. “Hey,” she greeted with a yawn. “How did it go?”
“Fantastic.” He scowled. “Now Keeny thinks I’m making you slack off,” he retorted blandly.
She paused mid-yawn, eyes popping wide open. “What? Where does he get that idea?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Who the hell knows.” Then, suddenly, he sought her eyes deliberately, anxiety apparent in their depths. “Do I make you slack off? Are you still holding well in your classes?”
Now she directed her incredulity at him. “What makes you think I’m not?”
Harry looked away, shrugging. “Just asking.”
Yet she still pursed her lips and glared. “You know me better than that.”
And the truth was, he really did. “All right. We’d better get some rest.” There was no question where he would sleep. He just couldn’t stand the thought of going back to his house and facing all of her stuff. Helping Ginny up, he thought he wasn’t being fair to her, imposing himself like that, but… where else could he go? Who would welcome him but her? No one.
And although that was a depressing and slightly alarming thought-did she think he was using her?-it also uplifted him. He hadn’t slept as well as in Ginny’s bed in a long time.
But she wouldn’t always be there to be his landing cushion.
#
Being in Buchanan’s presence is like playing with fire with an infinite supply of oxygen to feed it. He scorched. He made you feel constantly in danger, even when all that promise of power was actually banked. He made you feel unsettled, as if, whatever you did, he’d get you trapped.
As he calmly gazed at us out of the darkness, however, a bit of that edge that made his presence unsavory had slipped. Beyond that hard shell was… well, I couldn’t quite place it, but he definitely looked more human than the few times I’d been in his presence.
The air electrified around us as I felt Ron tense beside me. “What do you want?” he growled at our intruder, poised to protect me.
Buchanan looked at us silently a moment longer-first me, then Ron-a shadow passing over his eyes. “Nothing like that,” he replied, nodding to Ron’s hand that grasped my arm tight.
Ron only squeezed harder. “Forgive me for not trusting you, Mage,” he said, snarling out the last as if tasted bitter on his tongue. “Talk.”
“It’s not how you think, Guardian.”
Ron snorted, then stiffened at a slithering sound, listening. Cat. He relaxed. “You know what I am. That makes you one of them in my book. Considering how you fought me before, that just cinches it.”
Buchanan offered a toothy smile that didn’t reach his eyes. They were hard, unyielding. “Suit yourself. Your girlfriend can tell you I’m not about to hex you.”
Whipping his head round to me, Ron gave me a searching glance, then whipped back, tightening yet more in readiness.
Buchanan sighed. “It’s starting to drive you mad. I see.”
“Mind your own business. I repeat, what do you want?”
The other man seemed to consider Ron, then slid his black gaze to me, narrowing his eyes in deliberation. Then he moved, fishing something out of his pocket.
The parchment!
His eyes locked onto mine. “You have a question for me, Miss Granger. The answer is no. I gave the Society a page from my family’s copy of the Codex Ardmachanus.”
Oh, wow. That one, also called the Book of Armagh, had supposedly belonged to St. Patrick himself. And he’d just chucked one page away? Was he mad?
All right, so that battle didn’t belong in the here and now. But boy that wounded my inner bookworm.
“None of them speak Gaelic, so they won’t be the wiser,” he continued, raising a brow to acknowledge my disbelief. “But you do.”
I gaped a long time at this development-the fact that he’d deliberately withheld information he’d obviously been given the mission to acquire. Implication after implication ran havoc through my brain until they collided and fused and became other ideas. This meant so many things, of which neither Ron nor I had thought. It meant he was working solo, it meant he was forsaking what he had become, it meant he was… reaching out, asking for help.
Yet so many supposedly go that way and then betray those who trust them. I certainly knew I wouldn’t make the easy mistake to trust him blindly. One glance proved Ron wouldn’t, either.
“Why the change of heart?” he asked the other, suspicion making him sound harsh, rough. Buchanan was right, this whole situation was weighing on him. I was weighing on him.
Silence settled on the night as Buchanan smoothed his thumb over the folded, priceless parchment, seeming to mull over his words. “Don’t you wonder why our Elders want this particular prophecy so badly?” he said after a time.
Ron scowled. Of course he’d wondered, I thought. But he’d been well conditioned into ignoring his own individual thought processes. “Yours want to annihilate,” Ron ground out through gritted teeth. “Mine want to protect what you’d destroy.”
The response sounded so rehearsed, I visibly winced. Where was the headstrong, bullheaded boy who’d always taken his own stance on matters of importance to him, no matter the inanity? Where was that opiniated mind that would have responded as bluntly as possible?
I did it. I rounded on Ron and scowled. “Really? Is that really what you think, or rather some trope you’ve assimilated since becoming-”
I stopped when pain lanced through my arm. Yelping, I jerked back, but the effort was futile. It was like trying to remove a hairpin from a dried cement block. Useless. And then the pain stopped, and I looked up through a sheen of hot tears, wondering Why, why?
Wide-eyed, Ron stared back, first in surprise, then confusion, and finally dawning guilt. “My God, ‘Mione, I don’t know-”
“I know,” Buchanan cut in. “I think you do, too.”
Slowly Ron turned to face the other man and studied him several seconds. Neither spoke, but vague understanding-or perhaps a sliver of trust-passed between them. I saw them both as just the essence of what they were: two men in doubt.
I can’t say as I understood the silent male conversation, nor its general lines. They were speaking a foreign language, that one where men speak all they can’t or won’t translate aloud. Fear, doubts, questions. As a woman, I dared not venture into what they might be saying. Leaning my shoulder against the wet brick wall next to me, I merely watched from the dim light.
Suddenly Ron sighed out of the conversation. “I can’t,” he muttered so softly I almost didn’t hear.
“What have you got to lose?” Buchanan replied in as quiet a whisper.
Ron glanced my way, not-quite-disguised anguish stretching his lips and marring his forehead. That look took my breath away-I’d never seen Ron’s face take on this expression. Despair, pure and unadulterated. He faced Buchanan again.
Buchanan followed where Ron’s glance had taken him, and stared at me. To Ron he said, “She’s not like us.”
Whatever. I pushed away from the wall. After all, they weren’t speaking Man anymore. “I’m plenty like you.”
He snorted. “Excuse me, but one Guardian or one Mage would make mincemeat of you.”
“I was in the war. What are you planning?”
He chose to ignore the last. “The war nearly killed your boyfriend.”
“So that’s what I have to do to be one of you? Push myself nearly to the brink of death?” God! The man incensed me. What did he see? A ragdoll?
“Hey, don’t let me stop you.”
Ron came between us before I could retort or explode. I think it would have been both. “Wait wait wait. She’s quite bright.”
Buchanan strained around him to fix me with a skeptical eye. “Been trudging through crime scenes unattended again, Miss Granger? Or do you do that only when an ex-Auror’s around?” Noting my blotchy red face, he grinned like only triumphant men could, and turned back to Ron. “She’d be a nuisance to you. I know this firsthand.”
Narrowing his eyes, Ron shook his head. “She’s in danger.”
“You thought she was in danger from me,” Buchanan corrected quite agreeably. “That problem’s quite resolved now.”
Dammit, I wanted to thump the grinning bastard.
Ron cut through my mental tirade. “How do I know you’re not setting us up?” He shook his head decisively. “No, Hermione stays with me.”
Buchanan shrugged carelessly. “It’s your funeral.” Slipping his hood over his head, he said, “I’d best be heading back. We’ll talk again… Honos.”
As soon as he had popped out-I cringed, bile rising to my throat-I rounded on Ron, a bit green around the gills but determined nonetheless. “What did you just get us into?”
#
“Y’know, you’ll have to start paying rent if you keep sleeping here,” Ginny called from the bathroom, stepping into her pyjama pants. Wincing at the nervous tremor in her voice, she then reached for the black tee shirt-white would just be risqué without a bra-and slipped it on.
She’d meant for the lighthearted joke to help her face reality without skipping nerves and bounding heart. Of course, she’d slept with him the previous night, but he’d been too tired to care. For that matter, did he want to sleep in her bed tonight? Would he prefer the couch that, admittedly, was comfortable enough? Or would he not mind her bed and they’d sleep like two platonic best friends?
She knew she wasn’t his best friend. She doubted she could call herself his friend. Past circumstances had made them quite close-his kissing her in her fifth year had opened the door to a beautiful relationship and friendship-but then… he’d thought too hard. Bitterness still crippled her though she was loath to admit it to anyone who asked, but he had re-entered her life recently and now… now he was as close as she allowed him, and he her.
A muffled sigh sounded from her room. “Sorry, tonight’s the last.”
Ginny frowned and looked up. Her reflection stared back at her. Had she sounded annoyed? Perplexed, she pushed the door open. Harry was already in bed, arms crossed behind his head. At her entrance, his head lolled to her side, inquiring.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she offered quietly. “Stay as long as you want.”
A wry smile twisted his lips. “Thanks, Gin.”
They stared.
Harry turned his head, and closed his eyes. “I won’t eat you. Promise.”
A nervous laugh racked her. “Sorry,” she wheezed, mortified. “I haven’t had a completely awake man in my bed in a while.”
Though he’d been quite immobile before, Harry now seemed frozen in time. A long moment passed before he swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Oh.” The single word sounded far deeper than she’d ever heard it.
“I mean,” Ginny amended quickly, “it doesn’t bother me. Really. Tired or not. It was all… all right.” Goodness, she was blabbering! Running a hand through her hair, Ginny attempted to regain control of herself. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered to herself under her breath. “Forget I said anything, okay? We’ll just sleep.” Together, her mind, her sick, sick mind, added.
Harry had rolled his head toward her at some point during her diatribe. Face flushed, she was acutely aware of his searching gaze planted on her. “Gin.”
“What?” she snapped as she climbed into bed. It seemed like turning her back on him might be best. “And stop calling me that,” she added owlishly.
The bed creaked as Harry moved. Suddenly he was hovering over her shoulder. With a groan, Ginny burrowed deeper into her pillow, hoping to block him out. “Look, I-if it makes you uncomfortable…”
“Hmph.”
A soft snort. “Very eloquent. Run that by me again?” She could hear the grin in his tone.
“Ugh!” With a roll she was suddenly underneath him, and as he lost his precarious balance he planted his hands on either side of her and nearly got a mouthful of pillow.
Rendered momentarily speechless, Ginny blinked up at him. Then she pushed. “Get off me.” Her heart, however, wasn’t it in, and Harry didn’t move an inch. He only looked.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Ginny wasn’t sure she believed in that, but Harry, when he allowed it, when he wasn’t too focused on others to let himself feel, could be read almost like an open book. In his expression she read doubt, guilt. In his locked shoulders she sensed tension, a fork in the road. Would he choose the well-travelled path? Her eyes slammed back to his. They locked onto hers, intense.
Her heart suddenly in her throat, deafening, she waited.
And waited.
He moved his head imperceptibly, and then stopped. Ginny didn’t.
#
I’ll tell you when we’re in the Coven.
Patience is not really one of my strong suits. I’m typically a go-getter when it comes to gaining information about a new lead, or new Muggle or Wizarding insurance laws. Naturally curious, I’ll flip through my collection of law books to jog my memory or engineering reference texts to discover new ways houses should be built. I’ll consult oil transportation specialists to learn the proper way to fill a tank. Mistakes are made, insurance companies scramble every which way, attorneys need to prosecute or defend. Information is power, but it’s how you use it that makes you powerful. I think that’s why people call us liars; we’re able to manipulate the information given us.
Because I wasn’t now given the information in a timely manner, places inside my head were becoming annoyed. This wasn’t something I could find in a book. I could make assumptions, but then all of them would be way exaggerated. I wanted truth, now.
I wouldn’t get it.
Stealthing through the Coven’s long halls with Ron, I felt untouchable. He’d proven time and again that he was capable of protecting with ten times the magical power any wizard should possess, hadn’t he?
Sometimes we’re too confident.
We were right there, right in front of Ron’s cell door, when a corporeal shadow broke away from what I hadn’t even deemed to be more than absence of light.
She couldn’t be more than eighteen.
“You’re making a big mistake.”
She was a force to be reckoned with. Bile rose in my mouth just as my head hit the floor.
#
Yes.
Heart beating an erratic tattoo in her chest, Ginny lay her head back down on her pillow and sighed when Harry followed. His eyes closed, he gave with an abandon she hadn’t thought him willing to display. He gave so much more than she’d hoped for. He took, too, took like a starving man finally given that which he desired. Framed by him, Ginny finally dared to let go of the world and her deceits, and touched him. Touch generated friction, and suddenly she had skin and hair under her fingers and yet, she didn’t even feel all of that.
Yes. Harry’s lips. His warmth, his nips, his tongue. His kiss. Merlin, she’d missed him.
Breath in, and Harry’s tongue sought the crevice on the side of her mouth where bottom and top lips met. It seemed like time had stopped just for them. No matter how much of it had passed since Harry’s dull parting words had seared her chest to the quick, now… now those words still hurt but at least here he was. Once more she could touch him without feeling the harsh sting of emotional distance.
Breath out, and slowly Harry pulled away.
Silence. Dark hooded eyes. Dark flush. Deep breaths.
“Shouldn’t-”
“Don’t you dare.” Ginny scowled.
A faint smile tugged at his lips before it vanished. “I was going to say that I shouldn’t sleep here,” he said gravely, stroking her hair and moving away slowly.
“No, wait.” Desperately, Ginny scrambled after him and clutched at his hand just as he got off the bed.
He paused, looking back inquiringly, green eyes striking in the dim lighting of her ceiling fixture.
“I mean… that is… you don’t have to… don’t go. We’ll just sleep.” Biting her lip, Ginny resolved to beg for the first time in Merlin knew how long. In a quiet tone, she added, “Please, don’t go.”
For a moment, nothing, and then…
“Please,” she murmured.
Breath in, quickly out. “Okay.”
#
Confidence is an insidious poison. The worst burn is probably discovering you’re not that safe with your trusted safety net. Your innards will twist, your throat will feel too tight, and you’ll pray to all that’s holy and maybe even not for a miracle, a Time Turner, anything, to fall into your hand and save you. Save. Safe. Safety. A vicious circle, but then we all live vicariously through our mistakes.
I was cold.
When I opened my eyes, white flooded my retinas and I thought I couldn’t see for a moment.
Emptiness. Was this heaven? I dared turn my head. Everything was so… devoid. Niggling at the back of my mind, however, was a feeling. I hadn’t been here before, but this place looked vaguely familiar…
Ron!
His name, fished from the recesses of my memory, seemed to bring lucidity to the forefront. I now remembered my last moments of clarity. I’d been with Ron, about to enter his cell… that looked so like this room. I was still in the Coven, somewhere.
Was was this place? Where was Ron? What did the Brotherhood want with me? Sitting up suddenly, I found myself face-to-face with a lithe, hooded figure that exuded so much power that she took my breath away. She. Her long, graceful fingers were clasped together loosely before her in a peaceful gesture, but she didn’t fool me. She did not want me here.
The young girl? No…
“Who are you?” Definitely not the young girl. This woman spoke with experienced grace and poise.
Though the room was sparse, I could now see edges. Ceiling, walls and floor delineated themselves, and I saw that I had been brought into a large, circular room. The ceiling reached extravagant heights, and I sat on an elevated dais in the middle of the room.
Remembering the woman’s query after my visual exploration, I snapped my gaze back to her. She hadn’t moved an inch. Eerie. “Er, Hermione-Hermione Granger.”
She said nothing, but performed a silent spell that, strangely, didn’t make me feel nauseous. I only felt… pleasantly numb, as though the twisting pain were seeping out of me rather than inside. I wondered at the spell, thinking I sure needed to know it for future reference, but I said nothing at all. An intense silence fell as the Guardian woman stared fixedly at me from her shadowed face.
Then she smiled. It was the smile of a predator, one who has found a weakness in its prey. “You are nothing, witch.” She removed her hood.
She was tall, blonde, ageless. Clear blue eyes gazed back at me with disdain out of a pure face. Power seeped out of her. People obeyed and respected her. Despite all that, I hated her on the spot.
“Mistress Aine?”
We both turned our heads toward the intruder-a young woman with long blonde locks just like Aine’s. Her daughter?
“Yes,” snapped Aine with obvious irritation.
The girl bent her head in deference. “He is ready, my lady.” And she retreated without another word.
Facing the woman once more, I only had time to see her slow smile before I was suddenly in my bedroom at Number Eight, Belmore Avenue. There I remained stoic a long moment before cold dread finally took its place.