Paradise Lost: Chapter Six

Paradise Lost

Chapter Six—If You Come Softly

If you come softly

as the wind within the trees

You may hear what I hear

See what sorrow sees.

--Audre Lorde

When Harry awoke that morning, he realized with a start that she had gone. Squinting a bit, he glanced about the room... and then relaxed. In the armchair nearest the door sat Hermione, thumbing through a huge book and frowning. Next to the chair, there was a stack of books nearly as high as her head.

He reached for his glasses and she looked up with a smile.

"Good morning, sleepyhead."

"Good morning to you too, sunshine. Why aren’t you still in bed with me?"

"Because," grinned Hermione, "you were snoring in my ear."

"You never complained about that before."

"I was always far too exhausted to complain before." Still smiling, she winked at him, making his heart skip a beat. Then she sobered quickly. "Not that I’m not exhausted now, what with the schedule I’ve been keeping."

"Then why up so early?"

"Because I wanted to look through all these. I woke up and decided a trip to Dona Helena’s library was in order. Makes no sense to head off to Manaus until we know what we’re up against."

He sat up then, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and allowing the sheet to fall to his waist. "Find anything useful?"

"No. This disease is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Ever."

"How can it differ so much? There are only a certain number of ways a bug or sick-spell can invade the human body, right?"

"Yes, but this one is causing no visible effects on the cellular level. Which is odd—even magiparticular infective agents show some effects in tissue samples. But it seems that absolutely nothing has been killing off my patients."

Harry cocked his head to one side, lost in thought. "Think it could be related to whatever they did to you and Eva?"

"In a way. What I think is that the Cabalistica is trying to test a vaccine—I remember feeling feverish and having strange dreams after my first routine injections. Whatever it was didn’t kill me, but now I’m not so sure that it was supposed to. It did, however, either block or strip all of my witch abilities. And Eva’s as well.

"The most interesting thing that I’ve learned since our escape is that everyone there was a wizard or a witch. Eva says they were mostly Muggleborns from poor areas of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela... areas where they would not be missed, since the local governments are in the Cabalistica’s pocket and are restricting spell use amongst non-purebloods." Hermione frowned. "I have no idea how this could have happened in so many places, so fast."

"If you’d been around about a year ago, when Hogwarts was stormed, it wouldn’t seem so farfetched. People do desperate things when they’re afraid. Fear is the worst sort of evil there is, I think." Harry yawned, then removed his glasses to rub the sleep from his eyes. "Right, then. That brings us to the twenty-four thousand Galleon question. What is the method behind this latest madness?"

Sigh. "That is exactly what I don’t know, Harry. The only other lead I’ve been able to stumble upon is that those "test subjects" upon whom the vaccine fails are returned to the favelas and poor country villages they’re kidnapped from. To die, presumably."

Glasses back on, he shook his head. "No idea where this disease came from?"

"Only guesses. Whatever it is, it’s being manufactured, and those eerie green orbs I saw in Texas have got something to do with it all. One of the side effects seems to be loss of magical ability, if Eva and I are any indication... but thanks to Danae, I’m certain that the condition isn’t irreversible. I also figure that Heath and his friends have got something to do with it, and the Cabalistica is dying to find out what."

"Mmm," Harry said, stretching as he thought. "Think Heath’s a Death Eater, then?"

"Somehow, I don’t think so. He’s acting out of his own self-interest. But whether those interests coincide with the Cabalistica’s or ours is the ultimate mystery... which makes me wonder why on earth you are trusting Zach."

"Because he hasn’t done anything as of yet to prove himself untrustworthy, Hermione. That’s why."

"‘Yet’ is the operative word."

"It isn’t like you to automatically believe the worst of everyone, beautiful. That’s Malfoy’s job."

"Easy to believe the worst of anyone who’s got that infuriating Heath character as their brother..."

Something about her tone caused Harry’s smile to fade. "If I didn’t know any better, I’d be seething with jealousy."

"As well you should be," Hermione nodded. "Heath is simply gorgeous."

Harry’s jaw clenched. "Gorgeous, you say?"

"Yes. He’s every girl’s dream. Tall, dark-haired, and devilishly handsome..."

"Is he? So what am I, then?"

"Same as you’ve always been. Just Harry." She ducked and missed the first thrown pillow, but the second one lopped her on the ear. "All right, all right! Allow me to clarify, please. You’re just my Harry. And you’re all of the above except devilish."

"Ouch!" He placed his hand against his heart. "Nice guys always finish last."

"Which in this case is a good thing," remarked Hermione casually.

Yet he caught her hidden meaning. "Hermione."

"Slow and steady wins the race every time if you ask me..."

And she licked her lips.

Harry leaned forward.

"Remind me again why you’re not still in bed?"

"Because it is nearly eleven o’ clock. They’ll be calling us down for café da manhã at any minute now."

"But in the meantime..."

"Yes, Harry?"

He proceeded his request with a pitiful sort of mock groan. "I’m in a fair amount of pain still... got any more of that potion?"

Hermione smiled. She took her time standing up from that chair, and slowly made her way to the dresser. Knowing that in the austral morning light, the white linen of the borrowed nightgown was translucent.

She lifted the alabaster vial which had held the creamed potion and opened it so that Harry could see.

"Sorry, all gone." She took a couple of steps towards the side of the bed to show him, holding the jar out so she could see. "Perhaps you ought to get up and walk around."

"Perhaps you ought to help me, Hermione."

"Mmm. Perhaps."

That was enough for Harry. He almost lunged for her, all but standing up so that his arms encircled her waist... just before pinning her to the bed and capturing her lips with his own.

This was home, he thought. There was nothing in the Thousand Worlds that was better than having her here in his arms, soft and warm. Instead of her usual vanilla-spiced rosewater scent, her London scent, there was a tropical tang about her skin, citrus blossom sweet. Instead of her usual sugared milk-and-honey taste, that morning she tasted of orange and papaya and guava and passionfruit...

"Let me know," she whispered into his hair as he stroked her brown tresses, "exactly when I’m supposed to close my eyes and think of England."

He was lost, lost in the silken curve where her neck met her shoulder. "I’ll do no such thing," he murmured hotly against her skin. "I don’t want you thinking of England. Every time you close your eyes from now on, I want you thinking of only me. Only me, Hermione. I want you to dream of me. I want you to whisper my name in your sleep. I want you to... think of me."

But here were her hands now, gently, softly caressing the side of his face and drawing it above her own to gaze down upon her as his words slowed, then stopped.

"Think of you? Harry, honestly." Her eyes sparkled with affection and smouldered with the gathering heat she was feeling. "Whatever else in this world is there to think about?"

Soon, kisses were not enough. Neither were their hands. And in the meantime, she was far too dressed for his liking—he wanted to feel her skin next to his. All over his.

Melting into his.

This was not only home, it was heaven. And she, she was his darling angel. In her arms he found the only healing potion that he’d ever need...

They stayed like that for quite some time.

*************

Daily, there was something new to add to his shrine.

Hermione Granger’s sudden appearance in Diagon Alley after three years, then subsequent vanishing, fueled wizarding gossip.

Opinion generally fell into three camps. When pressed, the British wizarding elite would only say that Hermione was back on sabbatical again... and safe.

"After everything she’s done for magic, I think we’d all agree that Dr. Granger deserves a holiday. I hope she’s somewhere enjoying a magical mudbath," Mrs. Virginia Malfoy, chairwitch of the Malfosoft Foundation, was quoted as saying.

However, the general populace’s faith in the veracity of anything the upper classes had to say regarding one of their own was virtually nil. The events of the past few years—and the coverups in high places—had seen to that.

So the bulk of magical sentiment was that Hermione Granger’s one-day appearance had to mean something. Something sinister.

First, there was the report that she’d been spotted in two different Muggle airports—London Heathrow and Miami International. In Heathrow, she was with her Muggle father.

And in Miami, she’d been with a Muggle.

At first, the public was split. Either Hermione was in the gravest of danger... or she was herself dangerous to the wizarding world.

The former camp consisted of Sponge survivors, ambitious young career witches, and admiring wizards of all ages who valued brains over beauty... and were of the personal opinion that the famous mediwitch wasn’t completely lacking in the second category. All believed that something was badly wrong with their sweetheart. And that the government as well as the elite were covering up a kidnapping.

Or a murder.

The latter group was filled with Hermione’s enemies, mostly members of the now-openly registered Cabalistica satellite orgs and their sympathizers. Their "private sources" did a bit of digging. What they turned up shocked everyone.

Hermione had not been on sabbatical, as the Muggle-loving elite had asserted.

She’d disappeared to work in the Muggle world.

More pictures were produced. Of Hermione in a lab coat, investigating Muggle diseases. Of Hermione at a party, whirling around in the arms of the Muggle man she’d been spotted with. Of Hermione interacting in that world as if she were part and parcel of it.

Suddenly, her brief appearance in Diagon Alley at Harry Potter’s side made sense. What better source of information was there than an old friend who had unrestricted security clearance everywhere?

And the Muggle doctor--the wizarding press quickly uncovered his name via a series of charms--was not only romantically involved with Hermione, but he also had Muggle political ambitions. Jack Calhoun was friend and financier to Georgia’s Republican senator and Congressional representatives.

Members of the very same voting bloc who’d pushed Congress into supporting the United Nations’ 2010 storming of Hogwarts.

The wizarding world was incensed.

It had long been suspected that Victoria Jenkins had received help from the outside. It all made sense to the average wizard and witch on the street. Dr. Granger never had seemed the type to play kidnapped damsel in distress... but was she really a coldhearted Mudblood whose first loyalties were to the Muggle world?

On the morning of 1 November 2012, the day after a national wizarding holiday, Minister of Magic Brian Riordan addressed the assembled delegates of the International Confederation at Tir Na Og. The WWN broadcast the press conference to the furthest corners of the globe.

"We are asking that Dr. Granger report to the authorities here at Tir Na Og by 30 November. If she fails to comply, a warrant will be issued for her arrest. As she will be a fugitive, anyone caught aiding or abetting her in any way will be similarly charged."

Audible gasps from various Confed delegates were heard over the WWN. If even the heroine of the Second Voldemort War could dabble in such vile, sickening intrigue, endangering the lives of mere children, surely the end of their world was near.

Then came the calm, alluring voice of Sebastian Borgin, newly elected head of the Confederation Security Council, over the WWN.

"We are all shocked and deeply saddened by the possibility of Dr. Granger having committed treason of the highest degree, a willful violation of the International Compact on Wizarding Secrecy. Our world would not be the same without Dr. Granger—she was the epitome of a mediwitch, a researcher, and as her well-documented acts during the last war show, she was also the quintessential Auror and friend.

"Yet if the laws that govern our great way of life do not apply to the high as well as the humble, we might as well return to the lawlessness of previous, less-civilized Ages. Be assured that Dr. Granger will receive a fair and public Confederation hearing, and in the event that she is charged, she will receive a fair and public trial as is her right as a fully registered terrestrial witch. We will get to the bottom of this. Until then, may whatever gods there be bless you and yours... and may all of magic be forever enchanted."

Needless to say, after that address, Sebastian Borgin’s stock rose to the stratosphere. The son of a Death Eater was the frontrunner for Secretary-General in the Confed’s general elections in December.

Yes, yes.

There was much to add to his shrine these days.

***********

we cannot alter history
by ignoring it
nor the contradictions
who we are...

***********

Half a world away, Harry and Hermione were interrupted by an insistent knock.

"I thought we were done with that last night," she panted impatiently, sitting up and trying to regain her breath. From the look on his face directly below her, she could tell he was even more frustrated than she was. If that was possible.

"No. Obviously there is a Clouseau Charm at work."

"Clouseau Charm?"

"Yes. Guaranteed to Summon every breathing, meddling person under a given roof to a bedroom door whenever a couple tries anything."

Hermione laughed. "Well, it’s a Catholic country."

"With beaches like Ipanema? That’s no excuse. France is Catholic as well and there’s topless beaches up and down the Riviera. I’ve seen them." His hand went to the hem of her nightgown, lifting it. "Speaking of which..."

A squeal escaped from her lips, then a giggle as they returned to what they’d been doing before the knocking began.

But the rapping on the door didn’t stop. It died down for a minute, then started back up again. Hermione thought that Marcos was just about the rudest servant she’d ever met, what with the barging in the night before and now this latest insanity. As head of the staff, he seemed to enjoy throwing his weight around and was likely used to getting his way.

Well, he wouldn’t get it this time. She was finally reunited with her love after all this time, and there was no telling when they’d next get the chance to be private and alone. This would be one for the road, so to speak...

Still the knocking went on.

"They’re not going away, are they?"

"Apparently not."

"Shouldn’t we answer?"

"Nah. They’re likely selling something..."

"Harry!"

Again, he kissed the laughter away from her lips, and slid his hands beyond the hem of her nightgown... up... circling over the smooth plane of her belly and ribs a few times just before cupping the full weight of her breasts in his hands. Her teeth found the shell of his ear as his thumbs stroked the tips, then his mouth found each one through the thin linen. When the squeaky sound she made hit his ears, he pulled the gown over her head... and...

"Even if fresh clothes are of no use to you in that room, garota, I’ve brought you some anyway," rang out Juliana’s voice just as the rapping stopped. "So unless you don’t mind going from here to Manaus naked, open up."

Before Harry could stop her, Hermione yelped and snatched the gown up from where it had fallen on the floor and slipped it back on. Then she jumped up and opened the door.

There stood Juliana and Eva, fully dressed, grinning from ear to ear. Hermione, greatly annoyed, took the bundle of clothing from Juliana without further comment... until she saw Ron standing right behind them.

She blushed and froze in place as Ron scowled at her. Meanwhile, Juliana and Eva had pranced into the room, Eva with a change of clothes for Harry, and Juliana with teasing.

"Bom dia, Harry. Did you sleep well?" she could hear Eva ask, ever so innocently.

"The question you should be asking him is ‘did you sleep at all?’, Evinha," Juliana said, winking at Hermione who scowled back at her friend. "And from the looks of death they’re both giving us, the answer to that would be no."

I’m going to kill her, thought Hermione.

But she didn’t get that chance. While the girls teased a grumpy Harry with bawdy comments in English and giggly asides entirely in Portuguese, Ron glanced into the room once, then looked down at Hermione, blue eyes cool.

"We need to talk."

"Can’t I take a raincheck?"

"No. We need to talk, Hermione. Now."

Her lips were set in a thin little line. "Don’t you order me about, Ronald Weasley. I’m not even dressed yet..."

"From the looks of that gown, you weren’t trying too hard to do that a few moments ago, were you?"

She glanced down. The bodice of the nightie was completely unbuttoned down the front, revealing quite a bit of skin... and two strategically placed damp spots on her front told the rest of the tale. Flushing red, she snatched up a bathrobe from a hook on the door and threw it on, belting it tight.

Ron wasn’t trying to hear any further protests. "Let’s go."

Down the corridor and around the corner was another, smaller room. Ron beckoned for her to enter, then closed the door behind them. She sat down in a chair. He took the bed. Both of them crossed their arms over their chests.

"I want to know what is going on between you and Harry, Hermione," he said without preamble, without even the barest hint of a smile.

Great Merlin, if I only had a Galleon for every time a person’s wondered that over the past twenty years...

"Absolutely nothing," she replied, voice oozing sarcasm. "Isn’t it obvious?"

"No, what is obvious is that you’re playing some sort of silly game. I never would have believed it of you, Hermione."

"What?"

"He’s mad in love with you. You know it, I know it, half the bloody wizarding world knows it. Yet you insist on playing game after game with him. So I want to know what the hell is going on."

"How dare..."

"I’ll dare anything when it comes to my best friend. Especially after the last time you did this, you left him high and dry for the rest of us to pick up the pieces while you went off and took up with some ancient Muggle bloke." He stared at her, hard. "It isn’t fair to make him suffer over what happened between you and me."

"Shut up, Ron! You don’t know what you’re talking about!"

He nodded slowly. "No, I think I do. Listen, Hermione. You can be angry at me forever if you want. You can blame me one hundred percent for hurting you... in fact, you should, because I was the one to blame. But Harry had nothing to do with it."

"Don’t you think I know that, Ron? Don’t you think I know?" Her voice was raised, sparks flying from her brown eyes.

"Then why do you keep taking it out on him? Why do you keep on leaving when you know what that does to him?" Ron roared back

"Because I was... you don’t understand! You never did!"

"Try me. Because you were what, Hermione?"

"Because I was..." here her voice dwindled to almost nothing, "frightened."

Ron smirked, disbelieving. "Oh, come on. Surely you can think of a better lie than that."

"You forget, Ron. I was never as practiced at lying as you."

"That’s a load of rubbish, Hermione. Don’t try anything so pathetic with me. It’s Harry, for Merlin’s sake. What on earth were you frightened of?"

"Do you really want to know? All right, then, you’ve asked for it. I was frightened of loving him, because deep down I knew that loving him would be nothing like loving you or anyone else I’ve ever known. You see, Ron, you loved me but you were never in love with me. In fact, you never minded much about what was in me at all. You only loved the idea of me, the surface of me, and you always made me feel as if I were some sort of obligatory placeholder in your life. Your girlfriend, your fiancee, your wife. And before Harry, I thought that was all there was to love.

"You were right when you said that Harry was in love with me, Ron. But you were so wrong about everything else that it makes me wonder whether you truly know anything about either of us at all. I did not leave back in ’09 and last month because I wanted to hurt him... I left because I was afraid of hurting him. Because I am in love with our friend, Ron, and have been in love with him for what seems like forever. Because I love him so much that it aches. Because loving him would require not just a small part of me, but everything I ever was and everything I will be. Because I didn’t know if I was capable of that kind of love. Or worthy of it..."

As Hermione spoke, it was if she was excising long-trapped ghosts, and little by little she calmed down. Her eyes filled with tears. Ron seemed to relent somewhat, and the anger in his eyes was replaced with unspeakable sadness as well.

"You... did you... you knew you felt that way about him during the whole time we were married, didn’t you?" It wasn’t a belligerent question. Rather, it was one he’d been wanting to ask forever. Distance and time only now made it safe.

"No, I didn’t know, Ron. In the beginning I married you in good faith. But... towards the end, I think I knew. Even before that awful day when Sirius told what happened all those years ago between me and Harry, somewhere deep down I knew."

"Then why did you marry me? Why did he let you?"

"You never asked him?"

"We don’t talk about you any more. Neither one of us is rational when it comes to you, Hermione, and you know that."

"Hopefully, Maureen’s helped your sanity somewhat..."

"Maureen’s irreplaceable and I love her with all of my heart. But you and I have our strange and eventful history... and when we’re not half-killing each other with what we do and say to one another, we’re decent enough friends."

She asked in a small voice, "Do you... do you still consider yourself my friend?"

"Right now I have a pregnant wife who resents the hell out of me for being gone and two sproglets at home who miss their dad. I came nearly ten thousand miles to help Harry find you, and I’m sitting here right now. What do you think?"

Hermione sighed, tears falling. "I think... I wish we’d all stayed friends, Ron. I wish I could have prevented this from happening somehow. I wish I could have..."

"Prevented us from falling for you? Hermione, quite a few of the blokes you know have fancied you at some time or the other. No, no, don’t shake your head at me. You’re just that kind of girl, you are. Odds were that at least one of us would have, and it’s not so farfetched that both of us did."

"But..." She bit her lip, dashing away the tears that fell with impatient fingers. "I still feel responsible. Things will never be the same between the three of us, ever again."

"You’re right. They’ll always be different. But I think they’ll be better someday."

"Better? Before all this we were all just the best of friends. Now you’re my ex-husband, and he’s... he’s my... he’s..."

The sadness hadn’t yet left Ron’s eyes, but he nodded helpfully at her attempt to express the inexpressible. "I know, ‘Mione. I know."

"Then how can it be better? No, it can’t possibly be."

"Yes, it can. Things were never the same after the first five years we were friends, Hermione. After that we all pretended. We spent years and years pretending as if everything was just like it was when we were eleven and twelve years old. And it wasn’t."

"I think I get your point." The last of her tears dried, she folded her arms again stubbornly. "I can’t believe you thought I wanted to hurt him, Ron. How vile of you."

"You know I’m overprotective of the git."

"Oh, as if I’m not." She shook her head. "What would he do without us?"

"Been killed twenty-seven thousand different ways, likely." They both laughed. "It’s a wonder we all lived to be this old, you know."

"We’re only thirty-two, Ron."

"And half a lifetime ago we were sixteen. You haven’t changed a bit, Hermione. You’re every bit as annoying and clever and gutsy as you were then. And you’re just as pretty."

"I’m not pretty at all," she chided. "I just have good PR."

"Really? Give me the name of your consultants... my rep could do with a bit of repair."

Laughing, Hermione came to hug her old comrade, ex-husband, and forever friend around the neck. He returned the favor, dropping a kiss on her hair just above her ear... and his stomach grumbled.

"Let’s table this discussion and get something to eat," said Hermione. "You sound like you’re starving."

When they came out of the room, Harry was waiting. His arms were full of Hermione’s clothing, and his eyes were impatient and questioning.

"Are you two done?"

"Yes, I think so," said Hermione, planting a kiss on the side of his neck. "The fortunate thing is that I’m not nearly finished with you..."

The blouse and jeans dropped to the floor, and she plucked off his glasses. The better to engage in yet another lengthy and shameless snog with him.

"Now, that’s... that’s just going to take some getting used to, I suppose," murmured Ron dryly. "And I get used to things faster on a full stomach... catch you two later?"

Neither Harry or Hermione responded. Shrugging, Ron left his two best friends in the corridor, clinging to each other. Pretending to himself that he did not care.

*************

The high priests have been ready and waiting
with their incense pans full of fire.
I do not know the rituals
or exaltations
nor what name of the god
the survivors will worship
I only know she will be terrible
and very busy
and very old.

*************

From their station deep in the thirsty reaches of the Negev, the Watchers, upon receiving the latest transmissions from their informant, searched for the specific holo that they’d been requested to view.

It was so obvious that no one understood why it hadn’t occurred to them before. Of course as Watchers who held doctorates in late American Hegemonic history, and specifically in pre-genocide British wizarding culture, they’d all watched the holos recovered on the formation of the last Covenant so many times that they had the sequence of gift bestowal memorized. As Heath’s dissertation had been on the life of Hermione Granger, he had devoted an entire chapter to the event.

Yet no one had thought to look to the decision-making process, to look at why the witches and wizards of their age decided to use three teenagers to save their world.

When they found it, its seal had not yet been broken. As it contained no actual words from Dr. Granger, they had overlooked it before. There had been so much to recover from the lost and buried archives of Azkaban that there had simply not been enough time to view it all before they’d made this leap.

Heath Canyon was only thankful that they’d brought it along with them. After putting the disc into the ViewTower, he sat down, running his fingers over the label as it began to play.

23 May 1998 (ADS).

Ayr Island.

The members of the Order sat around the table, still yet stone. Clad in their cloaks of brown, grey, green, and dark blue. Hoods drawn up. Wands resting perpendicular to each of the grooves. Ready to be placed in their appointed slots should a decision be reached.

Yet the deliberations had continued for hours, and it seemed as if they were further from adjourning than they were when they first commenced.

"You ask the impossible, brethren," said one solemnly. "They are not yet ready…"

"Yeah, but we don’t have time to wait," another said.

"The May Day Massacres proved that the Dark adepts are not content to slowly gather followers as in the last struggle. Instead they wish to enslave our world via a firestorm of terror… and comrades, they will succeed if we do not act."

"Have you even heard a word that’s been said? If we send them before they are ready, we are sending them to be murdered while writing our own death sentences in the process."

Sirius made a motion for silence. "We have heard from their teachers and masters. They have done all that we have required of them... what more can you ask?"

"We can ask, Sirius," said a venerable witch from the Far East, "for a coven that is worthy to sit at this table and partake of the Covenant of Ages. This one is not."

"How can you say that?" thundered Alastor Moody. "He was chosen, and then he chose his companions. That’s the way it has always been…"

"It may be what has always been, honored brother, but this coven is… different somehow. For one thing, it’s much smaller than any of the others. Seven is the usual quorum…"

"Since when does size matter?"

"They are but children… yes, seventeen is the majority and the trickster is a year past that, but certainly seventeen isn’t what it was in my day…"

"Some of those who sit at this very table are but children by that reckoning," someone observed, nodding in the direction of the pale blond youth sitting in Severus Snape’s place.

"This dissent is utter nonsense. The one chosen for the task has faced the Dark Lord time and again and lived to tell the tale. Can anyone else in this august company say the same? Did anyone protest that he was but a babe when he stalled the most recent Dark advance for thirteen years?"

"Yes, but that was all prophesied."

"And speaking of prophecies," another said, "has anyone considered the fact that this very age seems to uncannily parallel the Prophecies of the End? That alone ought to cheer us…"

"No, it ought to sober us. They’re called the Prophecies of the End for a reason…"

"They don’t seem to apply very well to this coven or this task anyway. Certainly the first few might with a bit of twisting, but as the one chosen is overyoung to be thinking in terms of true love and so forth…"

"Overyoung? He’s a teenaged boy. Which of the Thousand Worlds have you been hiding in this century, my friend?"

"Harry’s quest is his sole focus at this time," Sirius said. "Dumbledore began shaping him for this moment more than sixteen years ago, and he is ready to seek out Voldemort."

"What of the tracker, Drakkar? You’ve told us all about the tricks you’ve taught him… and we’ve seen some demonstration of that. But tell us, how is his heart? How is his character? Is he worthy to drink?"

Drakkar’s eyes seemed like two onyx points, glittering from the depths of his hood.

"My charge has more than proven his loyalty to Harry, and to goodness and truth," said the Chalybian. "When offered the chance to betray his friends and all of us, he turned it down by planting a sound Surefire Hex on the messengers that they’ll not forget in a hurry." Laughter. "Ronald Weasley has the sight of an eagle, the cunning of a fox, and the steadfast heart of a lion. He is worthy."

There were nods all around the table. Some of the tension seemed to break momentarily.

"But what of the girl, the healer? Nephthys, you’ve been unusually silent, my dear… what do you sense?"

She looked at them, turning her sparkling purple eyes first upon one, then another.

"I sense… a terrible price to pay," she replied. "We cannot ask it of them, and yet we must."

"A price?" someone asked. "Whatever are you talking about?"

"I can’t sense my way around it," replied the witch-hyperempath. "My daughter is fully trained in the Pattern… I have led her to her center, and she can now cope with any physical or emotional calamity that they may face. And yet… and yet… she is troubled."

"Troubled? What is this of which you speak?"

Nephthys’ eyes were luminous, glowing. "She is troubled because like so many girls of her age, her heart is divided."

"Then it’s simple, isn’t it? We choose another."

Remus shook his head. "What do you mean, ‘we choose another’? Harry will not go without both of them! He has made that more than clear…"

"He knows his destiny as well. Tartarus is not for the faint of heart. Only the strong can…"

"She is their strength!" said Remus. "They’ve been together since the beginning of their wizarding training. They trust each other implicitly and are used to working together. If you send them without her, they will fail to the peril of us all."

"No one is irreplaceable, Remus, no one!"

"Her own trainer says she doesn’t have the stones for it…"

"She hasn’t got stones at all!" shouted young Jocelyn Capulet. "She’s a girl. Surely that can’t be the real reason behind this dissent?"

Silence.

"None but the pure in heart will be able to complete this task, my honored young sister," said the witch from the East. "There is a potential danger there, Sirius, isn’t there? By binding such a small group under Covenant --binding one young witch with two young wizards, you know what you risk..."

"No, Chen. The Covenant makes brethren, not lovers."

"The trickster already loves her, and she returns his love. That sort of love blinds, Remus, no matter what the lovers’ age. How can they be our chosen’s strong right and left arm if what they feel for one another blinds them so that they cannot see the true path?"

"Easily. Harry is the leader. He does not have such silly cares to distract him. I’ve made sure of that. They trust his judgment, and always he will have the final say. I am certain that his focus will ensure…"

"A terrible price to pay," replied Nephthys, and all fell silent. "There are things that you do not know, dear friends, things that I have seen over and over again during the long years of my life. If you send these children forth in the manner that you intend, they will destroy Voldemort and yet this Covenant will destroy them in the end."

Everyone stared at her.

"Dear friends, the old Covenants are no longer needed. You speak of the children’s purity of heart, their gifts, their destinies. Yet you do not speak of their friendship, of the simple and quiet way that it formed without our interference, of the chosen’s ability to find two friends who have been gladly willing to die for him for years past… indeed, for seven long years.

"Harry, Ron, and Hermione do not need your Covenants. You wish to bind those who have already pledged their faith to one another in friendship with an alien thread. It will not be a help to them. It will hinder rather than aid their quest. It will be a yoke. And in the end, they will throw it off and curse the day that they drank."

"They need what we have to offer them…"

"No, they do not. All that they need is the Source that my consort and I have led them to…"

There was some commotion then.

"Nephthys, dear girl, your advanced age has gone to your head. Perhaps you think that the majority of witches and wizards still hold to the Old People’s infernal mystery religion, but…"

"No, they do not. And more’s the pity," said Nephthys. "This is a strange age in which men and women, magical or not, believe in nothing outside of themselves. Introspection is without value unless one recognizes that the deepest part of their own spirit is inextricably knit to that of their brother and sister, and to the One Who gave us spirit in the first place."

"Superstition and lies," said one of the others. "We make our destiny, not some thundergod riding atop the clouds."

"Certainly," said Nephthys. "Men have the free will to choose their own fate. And yet surely you do not believe that human ingenuity is responsible for this cavern, for all the Thousand Worlds, for our breath, for magic itself?"

"Spare us the sermon…"

"I did not come to advocate any particular belief system," said Nephthys. "Like Drakkar and the other Old Ones who hold the Ages in living memory, I have seen too many religions arise and then pass away to advocate any one faith. Yet you cannot deny the truth that I have led my daughter in the Craft to discover, the truth that every witch-hyperempath knows with every breath that she takes… that all the universe is overflowing with something that shapes, that binds, that loves.

"I say to you, dear friends, that Harry, Ron, and Hermione have tapped into this Source of goodness and light without our help. They will succeed without any Covenant."

"How?" asked Sirius. "Please, enlighten us."

Nephthys looked over at Drakkar and sighed.

"The Chalybian and I have shaped covens of great power since the lost Golden Age. We have been seated at this table every time it was made gold for millennia. And yet we’ve hardly seen the like of this coven since…"

"Never, my own," replied Drakkar. "Never."

"A new time is dawning even as the old passes away," said Nephthys. "This will be the last time my consort and I will sit at the table with you. You have no more need of a ritual that binds together hearts and minds and souls and abilities. Not when those who will shape the next age have already been chosen by the Source."

"The last time? Why… where are you going?"

"Our time in this world has passed," said Drakkar. "We will appeal to Morgan so that we can abide with her for a time, but only for a time. We wish to rest alongside the other Old Ones…"

"And yet the Lady Morgan remains in Avalon still," said Sirius sharply. "So does old Atlas down in Atlantis. So do a great number of the Old, maintaining the last vestiges of the Golden Age throughout the Thousand Worlds…"

"They have not remained," said Drakkar. "Not as we have. Not on the wretched shell that this Earth has become. Not walking alongside you as we have."

"Mankind was never meant to be divided the way that it has," said Nephthys sadly. "You witches and wizards place all the blame on the shoulders of the non-magical when there was offense on both sides before the Compact."

"They cannot survive without you," said Drakkar. "We said that at the end of the Golden Age, when we were young and so was the Craft. We said it during the Receding Ages. Now the end of the Age of Partition draws near… and for that I am glad."

Some general expressions of alarm around the table followed the Chalybian’s announcement.

"My dear friends," said Nephthys, "this is why we strive against the Dark One in all her guises, the most recent being this diabolical Lord Voldemort. My consort has said to you many times before that the non-magical cannot survive without you… but do you not understand? You cannot survive without them."

The youth sitting in Severus Snape’s former place bowed his head.

"Certainly we can! We’ve…"

"You think that because you are different from them, you are better than them. We Old Ones are different from you, and the case can be made that we are much more powerful than you are. Yet we do not treat you with as much derision and disregard as you treat those without magic. Even your clandestine dealings with their governments are rooted in intimidation and fear and subterfuge… and that is from the so-called ‘good’ among you.

"The whole of magic is coming to a time of trial and testing," Nephthys continued. "If these children succeed, it will be at great cost to themselves, but our world will have a moment’s rest. However, you must continue to be vigilant. For after a short time the Dark One will rise with all her might and cover the entire world with a shadow the like of which has not been seen since the end of the First Age, when the eldest of our kind formed the First Covenant and bound her in Tartarus for five thousand years."

Drakkar’s face was nearly completely obscured by his hood. "When that time comes, you will have one hope."

"She has already been born," said Nephthys.

Everyone looked around. She?

"The Age of the End can only be transformed into the Age of New Beginnings when she comes," Nephthys continued. "We Old Ones have been waiting for her return for centuries."

A collective gasp.

"Not… surely you are not referring to…"

"The daughter of Inanna!" said one. "The first of our kind… the Queen of Heaven!"

"The ancient legends state that signs and wonders will follow the daughter of Inanna’s return. They say that she will be cloaked in mystery, that she will come as a night storm, defend her children, and strike the Dark One into perdition with suddenness and surety. Where is she now, in our darkest hour?"

Nephthys looked at Drakkar, then laughed.

"She is in the world. Only she is yet a girl and does not yet know her destiny or power."

"A child? The why haven’t any of our Magic Quills worldwide notified us… why haven’t our seers…"

"The Old Ones have obscured the line intentionally," said Drakkar. "The Dark One and those ensnared by her wiles tried to destroy all of that great mother’s blood. Yet we have watched over the family, watched the female line from the babe that was born from Inanna’s own womb, watched it as the women caravaned over ancient Mesopotamia, then north into the Caucasus and east into old Russia. These Wise Women kept their knowledge of the Craft to themselves, preferring to pass down their knowledge from generation to generation in secret rather than to seek formal training.

"There was a daughter born at the turn of the century to this line who had to flee from the sanctuary in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution when she was but a young orphaned girl. She wandered through Europe, only to end up here in Scotland, long one of the world’s great sanctuaries for magic folk.

"This daughter married a wizard who was fighting against Grindelwald. Unfortunately, he was seduced and tricked into joining forces with the Dark One. Her husband was killed and Helena, a powerful Divinator herself, sought help from those with the True Sight to determine her newborn child’s fate. And a frightening prophecy came forth… all paths led to the baby, Caroline, becoming the consort of our present Dark incarnation,

Voldemort. For the Dark One had learned from Helena’s husband about the strange continuity of Helen’s line, and wished to taint it so that Inanna would never be reborn.

"There was only one thing to do. Helen went on another journey with her newborn, seeking for a way to remove the magic strain from her daughter’s blood. No one knows where she went or whom she met… that she would not say. But when she returned to Scotland, little Caroline was no longer a witch, her future lines looked a great deal brighter, and Helen raised her daughter in relative obscurity as a non-magical."

"When young Caroline grew to womanhood," said Drakkar, "she took a non-magical husband. Times were dark in the wizarding world, unbeknownst to her of course, and we Old thought that not only would the heir of Gryffindor never be born, but we’d miscalculated and ended any chance of Inanna’s rebirth. Little did we know… little did we understand the strength of that line, and its magic…"

"She was born seventeen years ago," said Nephthys gravely. "Inanna’s true daughter is sitting in the next room as we speak, along with the Seventh Son of the Prophecies and your chosen, heir to Gryffindor, he who will be known as the twice-blessed man.

"The Source drew them together when they were yet children. They have no idea of who they are, and will not until the appointed time, if ever. So you see, dear friends, there is no need for your Covenant, honorable though it may be. The Covenant will be a most unnatural fetter, and will cause them to stray at a time when we will need them most. The Dark Ones wish to destroy them, and failing that, will try to twist and corrupt them into mere shadows of their former selves. Please understand what you may be doing to those who already have much to bear."

"Stop it, please," said Heath, letting the case drop to his lap, then burying his face in his hands.

"That is just... just..." Dale seemed at a loss for words.

"That is just a reminder that our situation is more dire than we had originally thought," Seal finished sagely. "Why didn’t they tell Dr. Granger then and there about who she really was?"

Autumn, Logan Lovelady’s daughter, had been sent back to headquarters just in time to view the holos. "What I want to know is where the first Inanna is... how come there’s never any mention of her?"

Seal waved his hand. "Come now, Autumn, I thought you received accolades in your Anthropology of Magic course. The Inanna was killed by the Dark One millennia ago. Then the Dark One tried to go after the Inanna’s firstborn daughter, but the other Old interfered and obscured the line... a line that ends in our favorite mediwitch and doctor."

"One wonders if the bloodline of magical origins would continue in her children."

"Well, as that’s a purely rhetorical question, I suppose the answer would be yes."

Autumn nodded. "Interesting to contemplate, isn’t it?"

"It is indeed."

Seal and Autumn continued to discuss the implications of this latest discovery. But Dale was most concerned about their boss. "Heath? Are you all right?"

He nodded. "Sure. Tell Vick to start another coordinate run... yes, I know the last ten reports have been the same, but there’s always a chance of causality interference. In fact, it’s probably best if we go back to doing routine runs."

Dale started to say something else, but decided against it. "Sure thing, sir."

Heath continued to stare into space long after everyone else had left the ViewTower room.

The more I learn about you, doc, the further you get away from me.

Will you always be so elusive?

But thinking about Hermione ultimately was a cover. Seal had called his number. His obsession with Hermione Granger allowed him not to think about the woman whose name he swore would never cross his lips again. The woman who’d betrayed them all... who’d betrayed him. Even knowing the reasons for the betrayal, it still rankled that the woman who’d taken his heart and mind and twisted it around her lovely little finger had slept with that damned Harry Potter for over a year... and was now screwing the brains out of the Cabalistica’s head wizard.

Well, you gave her those orders, Heath, four hundred forty years hence. Seduce Sebastian Borgin, infiltrate the Cabalistica, stop the doctor from being assassinated. Those very words came out of your mouth. You saw the hurt on her face. You shut yourself off from her, telling yourself that you had to separate your work from her, even if she was your Lenore.

Serves you right, doesn’t it, that you see red every time you think of her and Harry... or her and that slimy Sebastian... or her and anyone other than you.

Heath put his fingers in the corners of his eyes and squeezed, trying to alleviate some of the pressure there.

Oh, what a tangled web they’d all woven.

Time would only tell if it would unravel... or if they’d strangle to death in it beforehand.

************

"Have you seen my mother today?" Eva asked, waiting in the front vestibule when Harry finally descended the stairs just behind a fully dressed Hermione. Instead of her outlandish Panteras costume from the night before, the young girl was wearing a lovely yellow dress.

"No, haven’t," Harry replied, then turned to Hermione. "Love...?"

Hermione shook her head. "She didn’t make it to work? Strange, doesn’t seem like much like your mother to take off without notification."

"Yes, that is what Dona Helena says as well."

"Have you tried phoning Dona Alvera?" Patricia Alvera lived just across the road from the de Souza household, yet her Rocinha home was equipped with many of the amenities found in middle-class neighborhoods. She was a generous woman who Hermione liked very much.

"Sim, about a half hour ago. She knocked and knocked and got no answer." Eva’s tiny, delicate features twisted into a worried frown just before she shrugged. "Obrigada. Shall we have the café da manhã now?" Without waiting for any response from them, Eva dashed down the corridor and out of sight.

At the bottom of the stairs now, Hermione turned around to face Harry.

"We’ll go right after breakfast," he replied, answering the question in her eyes.

"Muito obrigada, senhor," replied Hermione gratefully, lacing her fingers through his.

Everyone was already seated around the table of the breakfast room and eating when Harry and Hermione entered. Dona Helena Medeiros was chatting confidentially with her daughter, broke off to greet them cordially.

"Ah, bom dia! And how did you two sleep? Well, I would hope."

"Very well, thanks," said Hermione, sending another pointed look in Juliana’s direction.

Although Eva was still so preoccupied that this remark completely flew over her head, Juliana and Zach both snickered.

Ron didn’t. Hermione noted that he’d split up the last two seats at the table so that they would have to sit on either side of him. She supposed he had reconsidered his earlier position, and wasn’t as okay with the situation as he purported.

After sliding into her seat between Ron and Eva, Hermione reached for a baguette... the only problem was that Harry had reached for the same roll, and their fingers brushed.

The electric current shot through them both. Evidently ten minutes of kissing before Hermione disappeared into the bathroom to dress, and five more minutes of the same afterwards, hadn’t been enough to dispel the thrill yet.

She shuddered. He let out a deep breath.

Ron stood up abruptly.

"I think I’m done now. You were mentioning the senhor’s collection of classic cars, Dona Helena? My father fancies automobiles himself... I should very much like to see them, if you don’t mind."

Helena Medeiros looked at Ron, then at Harry and Hermione in turn. "I certainly don’t see why not."

"I’ll go with you," Juliana volunteered.

Zach, who had been gazing at the preoccupied Eva from across the table with something new in his eyes, pushed away from the table as well.

"Come, Eva, show me the gardens. I’ve heard that they’ve got no parallel in Barra da Tijuca..."

Harry didn’t speak until they were alone. When he did, it was with some annoyance.

"Are we going to have to deal with this until we get back to England, or just until he gets it through his thick skull that neither of us care about his tantrums?" Harry asked her.

Hermione frowned. "Harry, I do think we could be a bit nicer to Ron."

"Do you? I rather thought we were being just lovely to the man, all things considered."

"There was nothing lovely about what you said to him last night."

Harry’s fork clattered to the table. "What was I supposed to have done, Hermione, invited him in for a chat for old times’ sake?"

"You didn’t have to rub it in that we’re together, Harry..."

"I wasn’t rubbing anything in!"

"Oh, come on, Harry, you were positively gloating!"

"My gravest apologies, Hermione. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t allowed. I didn’t realize that I had to forget all about the times before you left when he was absolutely beastly to you and took every opportunity to snog Maureen whenever you were around. I didn’t realize that I had to be respectful and understanding and bloody perfect!"

"No one expects you to be perfect, darling, especially not me," she said in a small voice. "Please, let’s not argue, okay?"

After a moment, he turned toward her and leaned in so that their foreheads touched. "Okay."

"I hate it when we argue," she whispered after planting a kiss on his neck. "Arguing with Ron is strangely invigorating... but fighting with you makes me scared."

"Scared? Of what?"

"Of hurting you, even unintentionally. Of making you angry. Of not being what you need me to be."

"Hermione, I’m not that much of a prat. There’s nothing you can say to me that will hurt my feelings so badly that I’ll go and do something rash." There was a wicked twinkle in his eye. "Well, perhaps I ought to take that back. I seem to remember spending two long weeks making love to you and then you questioning my sexuality immediately afterwards."

Her laughter rang out. "Oh, don’t I remember that! Fred and Angelina’s wedding... the night Ron and I got engaged." She nudged him in the ribs. "Silly man, you ought to have just snogged the life out of me and responded to my foolishness later."

"Bloody hell, I wasn’t thinking clearly. My pride was wounded. Some lover I was, if a mere two weeks later you were asking me if I preferred men."

Hermione planted a soft kiss upon his lips. "The loss would have been mine if you did. All mine."

"Well, perhaps if you had been another boy, I would have been sorely tempted to..."

"Harry!"

"What? I’m sure I would have loved you no matter what package you happened to be wrapped in. But Merlin, was I ever fortunate to have you come in the wrapping I’ve got... this lovely wrapping..." His fingers brushed her cheek and she smiled. "Remind me again why we haven’t shagged yet?

She threw her arms around his neck. "Because good things come to those who wait, that’s why. Last night we were tired and this morning we were interrupted. Tonight I’ll make damned sure we’re neither."

"Mmm. Can’t wait."

"Neither can I."

Just as they were about to lean in for another kiss, they were interrupted by two masculine voices.

"Senhor, we did not expect you back from the northeast so soon!" That was Marcos, frantic but speaking loudly and plainly... likely to warn any English speakers who were in the vicinity. Another, unfamiliar man was responding back in rapid Portuguese.

Before Harry or Hermione could react, the pair were upon them, emerging through the wide doorway. First, a tall, imposing-looking man with gray hair and mustache. Then Marcos, panting and looking something less than smug for a change.

Harry stood up quickly, folding his arms and meeting the man’s harsh stare. He glared first at Harry, then at Hermione. Then he turned to the servant he’d just been chastising.

"Quem são eles?" Who are they?

"Guests of the senhora, senhor," Marcos said quickly. "Eles são da Inglaterra."

Hermione stood up then, determined to take charge of the situation.

"Bom dia, senhor. Sou Hermione, e este é meu marido Harry." She didn’t blink at the fiction making. She had heard enough from Juliana about her ultra conservative father to know that it would be best if he assumed she and Harry were married.

Senhor Carvalho nodded stiffly. "Muito prazer," he grated out. "And what brings this young couple to Rio? It’s such a long way from your home."

"Business," Harry said, not blinking. "Minha esposa and yours are acquainted."

"So it would seem," Senhor Carvalho replied.

Zach and Eva came in from outside, swinging hands, breathless and laughing. When she saw Senhor Carvalho, the laughter died from her lips and she dropped Zach’s hand very quickly.

Senhor Carvalho glared at his maid’s child. "Você é casada também, Eva? Perhaps that explains why you disappeared from the Ferreiras in Recife without explanation last year."

Eva was frozen in place. Hermione had gathered that her new friend held an almost reverential fear for the head of the Carvalho household. Well, she wasn’t going to have her bullied.

But it was Zach who defended the girl, speaking in precise Portuguese.

No, sir. Rather, perhaps it is because Eva has finally realized that she is not a slave to be bought and sold. She is priceless..."

"She is worth less than nothing. Your foreign name might wipe her clean of the stink of the favela in your country, but here she will always be uma favelada..."

Zach lunged for the man, but Harry and Marcos stopped him, each grabbing him by a shoulder. Hermione reached for the sobbing, embarrassed Eva, glaring at Juliana’s father.

"Marcos! Have this animal removed!" Senhor Carvalho ordered.

"He will do no such thing!" said Dona Helena Medeiros, coming into the breakfast room. "Young Zachary is a guest of mine, and this is my home, Gustavo."

"You forget yourself, wife."

"No, it is you who have forgotten courtesy, husband." Helena Medeiros’ eyes glittered. "You are a great man, Gustavo, a great and generous man. When these young people depart for their own country, you want them to remember carioca hospitality, not your iron fist."

"You forget yourself, wife," Senhor Carvalho repeated.

"No, it is you who have forgotten our pain! Your bitterness has left our house desolate. We were blessed with two beautiful children and you destroyed them both because of your prejudices. The one because he loved a girl who was not of our class, the other because you could not accept her just the way she was."

"My children had the best of everything. My children spat upon their inheritance. Such children are not worthy to call me father."

"Such a man as you does not deserve children..."

Gustavo Carvalho raised his hand to strike his wife. With reflexes as quick as they had been in his long-ago childhood Seeker days, Harry whipped out his wand and shouted "Shrivelfigatus!"

And the august Senhor Carvalho’s hand withered, useless as an old man’s. His other was shriveled by Zach when he saw him raise it.

"Bando de demônios!" the older man screamed. "It is your doing, sua bruxa! You married me when I was oblivious to your wicked ways."

Dona Helena Medeiros stood proud and tall. "No, I married you when you were dashing and handsome, and young and arrogant... and I was too blind and foolish to see what kind of man you really were."

"Father?"

It was Juliana, walking into the charged breakfast room. There was no trace of the bold stripper who was the star of Panteras at night. In her place stood the demure daughter of a patrician carioca family. Her face was devoid of makeup and scrubbed so clean that it glowed. Her hands were folded and the sparkle in her eyes was somewhat subdued.

"Father, it’s so good to see you again," she said quickly.

Gustavo said nothing.

Still Juliana continued. "You will be happy to know that I am keeping up with my studies. I am near the top of my class. I am enjoying my course in psychology... I only have one year remaining before I head to medical school. Trouxas medical school, Father... not the witch one, I know you wouldn’t have liked that much."

No reaction from Gustavo. His vision didn’t even register her.

"My friend Hermione... she is a doctor too. Such an inspiration. She’s a pathologist, but I am still going to specialize in psychiatry. You always said I was good at understanding people, at wanting their minds to be at ease. Remember how I used to sit at Grandmother’s knee, even after she was so far gone that she did not recall who any of us were? Neuroscience, Father... it’s what you steered Marcelo towards, but since he is... he’s gone, you still have another child..."

Her long honey blonde hair was scraped off her face and pulled into a demure chignon at her nape. The dress she was wearing was white, and sprinkled with tiny wildflowers that matched the tiny floral jewelry she was wearing.

She was a daughter that any man could be proud of.

And yet... Juliana’s father turned his back on her.

"I shall go and wash from my travels," he said in a low, commanding voice. "When I return, I want these people gone, Marcos. I want my hands restored, wife. And I want to have my lunch in peace."

He walked out without giving the assembly another glance.

"Bastard," Harry said angrily. Zach had his hands stuffed in his pockets, fists balled up. It was evident that both men were exercising a great deal of self-control so that they wouldn’t pulverize Carvalho on the spot.

Hermione and Eva turned to Juliana. So did her mother.

"Querida," she said tenderly, going to embrace her daughter.

Juliana took a step back from all of them.

"It’s all right," she said in a mechanical voice. "I expected no less. When I told him, he said that he would never look at me again. If nothing else, my father is a man of his word. And I... I am an obedient daughter. I shall gather some things for myself and the other girls, and then I shall be gone for good."

With that, Juliana turned around and walked upstairs.

"He’s a boor. How can she still love him, after all he’s done to her?" said Hermione incredulously.

"Easily," said Dona Helena. "I still do."

And there was nothing more to be said about that.

************

There are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves -- along with the renewed courage to try them out.

************

They stayed. Deliberately they stayed. Dona Helena had a maid fix them cafézinho in tiny, dainty cups. There was more fruit and pastry to go along with it, but no one partook. They just sat around as Juliana finished packing her things, then came back to tell her story.

"I realized that I was different when they sent me to Salvador to attend my magical school. The other girls giggled and sighed and batted their eyelashes at the boys. I wasn’t interested in any of that. This is not to say that I was a Quidditch-loving tomwizard either. I was very much a girl... but I realized that I felt different about other girls than they did."

"Different in what way?" asked Hermione.

"Different in that I wasn’t just friends with them. I had crushes on them."

Hermione’s lips rounded in surprise. "Oh!"

"My first infatuation was with a senior. I was but a lowly first year, and she shone like the sun. Her name was Cristina and she was from Venezuela. All of my roommates swooned over her boyfriend, Diego, but I... I wanted Cristina to notice me. But she never did."

"But Cristina had a little sister. The year after she graduated, young Magdalena came to our school. We called her Lena, or Nene, for short. Lena was all knees and elbows and nothing like the glorious Cristina save for her lovely hair... at least at first."

"And so I passed through school. There wasn’t much that could be done about my feelings. Wizarding society is notoriously conservative here, and you understand that heterosexuality is generally assumed... being gay defies the conventional Latin machismo, I suppose, in which real women are supposed to want a strong man to marry and cook for and have babies for. So I resolved to be more natural in my feelings, and to force myself to date and have fun with boys."

"It was very difficult for her," said Eva. "She was trying to be someone she was not."

"Evinha was the only one I told," she continued. "We had that in common, at least... we both loved where we could not... for she and my brother were falling for each other at the time. And I was terrified. Terrified of disappointing you, Mother..."

"You could never disappoint me, minha querida," said Dona Helena quietly.

"...and terrified of what Father would do or say if he found out. My father was the world to me as a child. Marcelo and I worshipped him. I thought Father was the wisest and most powerful man in the world, even if he was Trouxa..."

"Was Marcelo magical?" asked Zach.

"No, only my mother and I. Marcelo attended the best secondary school in all of Rio, the Colégio São Bento. And oh, the girls loved him! They knew he was a great catch, as my father’s business enterprises are well known to all who live here. But he saw little Eva in secret, and gave her roses, and held her hand as they walked through the gardens, unseen... it was all very sweet.

"Anyway, so I went through school. My closest friend was Lena, or Nene as I called her. We gossiped over teachers and classes, over boys and how silly the girls we knew acted when it came to them. I invited her to Rio often to stay over, and then the summer she was sixteen and I was seventeen she invited me to her home in Caracas for Christmas, for her sister was getting married.

"Cristina was the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen. I cried for the duration of the wedding. Then I cried through the reception. But when I was still crying once Nene and I got back home and upstairs to her room, she asked what was wrong. And... I told her."

"Did she react as you expected?" Harry said, not quite able to hide his interest in this tale.

"No, she did not. She told me I ought to have told her long before that. She told me that Cristina was blind if she didn’t take one look at me and fall in love straightaway..." Juliana smiled to herself. "Then she kissed me."

"I see," said Hermione slowly. Still a bit surprised at the revelation.

"We didn’t much know what we were doing. But that night I learned that Nene had grown even more lovely than her older sister. I spent every night telling her so until I left to spend Carnaval the rest of my holidays here at home. And I dreamed about her every night until we returned to school that March, for my final year of classes."

"We were together as much as possible. And no one at school ever learned of it. I had quarters away from the school, but once in a while I’d stay with her in the dormitories. We were very cautious, and no one ever suspected."

"No offense, Jules, but I find that difficult to believe," Harry muttered. "You say that no one ever knew at your school? Ever?"

"I don’t bother hiding it now, if that’s what you mean," Juliana said. "I don’t advertise it. any more than you advertise the fact that you’re heterosexual. Nene was my girlfriend, and I loved her. Who she was as a person mattered more to me than what gender she happened to be."

"How did your father learn of it?" Hermione asked.

"Well, the December after I graduated, she came to visit me. And I think we were a bit indiscreet on the beach--perhaps kissing a bit--and someone who knew the family saw us. But my father is sly, very sly. He bided his time, and waited one night... and, well, he caught us."

"Caught you doing what?" blurted out Zach.

Everyone turned and stared at him.

Zach reddened. "Okay, never mind."

"And that was that," said Juliana. "Father disowned me on the spot. Said that his Juliana was no more. Was dead to him. And that he would never look at me again." She looked down. "I suppose he kept his word."

Silence. Then Eva said, "You didn’t tell them what happened to your Magdalena, Ju."

"Not now," she replied. "I don’t want to remember Nene like that to them, understand? I want them to only remember the good. Nothing but the good."

A few moments of quiet, broken only by the ticking of the clock. Dona Helena took her daughter’s hand between both of hers and stroked it. Zach and Eva held hands as well. Harry’s arm was around Hermione’s shoulders as she curled slightly into him, sipping her cooling cup of cafezinho.

Footsteps on the stairs, at the same time that the back door opened.

"Marcos, they had better be gone..."

"Senhor, the gun is not necessary, nor is it advisable."

Several chairs crashed into the wall or backwards into the floor at once as everyone stood up. Hermione put the coffee cup down quickly.

Juliana, Harry, and Zach drew their wands.

"Hey!"

Everyone jumped and turned out. Harry’s arm was raised, ready to cast, when he saw what the rest saw... that it was only Ron, dangling a set of keys.

"It worked, Dona, it actually worked!"

"Did it, now?"

"All pumped up and magicked and ready to roll!"

Dona Helena’s lips tugged into a half smile. "Well, as I told you in the garage, I suppose you need it more than Gustavo does... you may drive it around to the front..."

Ron nodded. "Already done."

But a loud boom stopped anyone from asking Ron what exactly he had been doing. Senhor Carvalho had used his semi-automatic Glock to shoot into the ceiling so that the hole rained down splinters and plaster. Everyone stood up.

"Cristo, I said I wanted you gone, didn’t I?"

"So sorry, senhor," Hermione said quickly before anyone could retaliate. "We lost track of the time. Thank you for your hospitality. We’ll all be going now."

"Yes, thank you," they all echoed, standing up and backing out of the room.

Gustavo Carvalho looked rather surprised. Juliana took advantage of this. "Good-bye, Father," she said, and kissed him on the cheek.

That snapped him back. He jerked away as if a snake had bitten him, extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the side of his face.

Juliana sighed, then followed the party out, the last to leave.

The second they were all clear of the back door, Ron beckoned for them to quicken the pace.

"Unless you fancy dodging bullets in this heat, you ought to hurry!"

It took a few minutes to race from the back gardens to the front of the house. And when they got to the front, what they saw was absolutely beautiful...

"Whoa," said Zach. "Sweet!"

"That was always my favorite of the lot," Juliana said. "I wanted to drive it for my formatura party, but Father wouldn’t let me."

"I always liked it, também," echoed Eva.

"My cousin Darice had one like that when she was in secondary," said Hermione. "I reckon it wasn’t in mint condition though."

Harry was frowning.

"Ron, it’s pink."

Ron’s jaw clenched. "Harry, would you care to select another, considering the timeframe we have? Would you?" Pause. "Didn’t think so. Shut it and hop in."

So they all piled into the classic 1957 Cadillac convertible. Ron in the driver’s seat, Harry riding shotgun, Hermione in between. Eva was in the middle of the back, and Juliana and Zach were on either side of her.

Ron started the car.

The front door flew open. Out stepped Gustavo Carvalho, cursing up a storm in Portuguese as his wife and his butler were unsuccessfully trying to stop him from cocking his gun and aiming it at them.

"This would be a good time to duck!" Ron shouted, just before stepping on the gas. The first bullet hit the windshield seconds after Hermione and Eva took cover along with the rest. Then came a fair volley of others until they were out of range.

"Close the gate!" Senhor Carvalho screamed behind him.

"Ron, just take off and fly over it," Hermione said.

Harry echoed her. "Yeah, Ron, lift off... Ron, lift off... Ron... Ron!"

Ron was ignoring both of them. Instead, he revved up the engine and stepped on the gas fully, aiming the car towards the closing front gate.

Zach, Eva, and Juliana just screamed and ducked again... and the iron gate shut milliseconds after Ron had cleared it.

Hermione thwapped the back of Ron’s head just before he pressed the silver Invisibility Booster that he’d just installed. "I ought to throttle you. What were you trying to prove?"

"Always wanted to drive a car like this. And if you bap me again, I’m going to fly this car upside down all the way to Manaus."

Although no one could see it, Hermione could feel herself turning green. "You’ll do no such thing, Ronald Weasley." She turned in the direction where she knew Harry would be sitting if she could see him. "Tell him."

Harry’s laughter sounded in her right ear. "Oh no, love. You’re not getting me in the middle this time."

Ron turned around to look in the direction of now-invisible Juliana, Eva, and Zach. "Ever flown in a convertible before?"

"No, but sounds a lot more comfortable and fun than a broomstick," said Juliana’s voice. "Tell me, how’s the air up there?"

"Quite lovely, actually," said Hermione, chortling because Harry was taking advantage of their temporary invisibility but missing her more often than not. "I’m not much for flight, but you can breathe nicely at reasonable altitudes."

"You’ll soon find out," said Harry. "Fasten your seat belts."

No one did. It was more fun to enjoy the sensation of lifting off. First they were on the ground, driving like normal motorists down the black-topped streets of the Barra da Tijuca district. Then they were rising, rising through the air, higher than the trees, higher than the houses... so high that the houses seemed like dollhouses and the cars seems like toy cars.

"We’ll not lift any higher than this for now," Ron said. "Another fifty feet up, we’d be at risk of running into the lower-dipping flyways."

"Makes sense," Harry said, pulling out his map again. "Where to first? Manaus’ll take more than one day. It’s quite a distance from here by car, even if we are flying."

"Rio to Brasilia, I think," Juliana remarked. "Then Brasilia to Teresina, Teresina to Belém, Belém to Santarém, and Santarém to Manaus. That takes us around the perimeter of Amazonas and Pará, and then up the river itself. I’d say it will take a week of hard travel, ten days to a fortnight if we want to slow up the pace."

"That might be in our best interest," Harry said. "We don’t want to take the most obvious route, as the Cabalistica now knows we’re here."

"Good point," Hermione said. "Also, it’ll take more than a week, Juliana. Remember, Eva and I were not actually held in Manaus. From our estimations, we think the facility is north of the Equator, somewhere near the border... granted, we can’t be sure if it was closer to Venezuela or Guyana, but we’d switched hemispheres."

"How can you be so certain?" asked Harry.

"Isn’t it obvious, darling? The stars were different. The stars were in different places, but still... the sky looked like home. Through the window of the facility, you could see the Dippers, the North Star, very low on the horizon... once or twice I climbed the wall and looked through the bars. But then when we got to Santarém, I noticed the Southern Cross. It was hard enough to tell underneath the trees, but claro once we thought about it."

"I’m impressed," said Ron. "Likely there’ll be other landmarks once we get closer to it."

Then came Eva’s voice, very small, from the back. "Hermione?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"My mother... I know we would like to get on the road, but what of her? She never arrived at work, remember?"

"Oh!" everyone said at once.

"How could we have forgotten?" Hermione asked, chiding herself inwardly. "You’re right, let’s pop by Rocinha and make sure she’s comfortable. She needn’t even go in to the Carvalhos, if she’d like a holiday until that beastly Senhor Carvalho departs again. I’m sure that the men have enough gold or cash along to see to that."

"Or we could bring her along with us," Harry offered. "We could even take her to visit family if they’re on the route. If not, we’ll make sure she’d safe in Manaus. From what Hermione’s told me, she’s a good woman who deserves a holiday."

"No, she will not want to leave her home or the Carvalhos. She is quite devoted to Dona Helena. But obrigada, anyway."

They couldn’t drive on the narrow street that the de Souza household was located on. So they parked a few streets away, leaving Ron behind with the car.

Eva scrambled ahead, up the single broken step, to turn the doorknob as usual. It was broad daylight, and if Rosângela was home, she wouldn’t have locked it anyway. In fact, it was quite a surprise that it was closed up on such a hot day.

She touched the doorknob, and was instantly knocked off the porch. She would have sprawled in the middle of the dirt road if Juliana hadn’t blocked her fall.

"Mãe!" Eva screamed.

Harry and Zach drew their wands. Hermione pulled out the gun she’d used the night before... she hadn’t let on to anyone that she still had it, and planned to keep it handy until she could use a wand again.

"Hermione, help me hold her!" said Juliana, trying to restrain the struggling Eva. "You can’t do anything with that Trouxas weapon... I have a wand... Hermione!"

Hermione ignored Juliana. After Harry and Zach blasted the door open, and stepped inside, Hermione followed them...

Her first thought was that it would have broken Rosângela’s heart to see her always neat abode in such ramshackle condition. Drawers were overturned, paper and clothing was everywhere. There was an incredible odor, too... the stench of sweat and blood and urine and feces and decaying flesh... odors that Hermione was accustomed to because of her lifework, but still retched at anyway.

Yes, Rosângela would have been displeased at the condition of her home.

However, Rosângela de Souza would never again know anything at all. At least, not in this world.

They found her body in the back room that served as her bedroom. They had to step over the decapitated corpse of João from Panteras first... whether there as friend or foe, none could say. Had he come to warn Rosângela of the threat? Or had he come as the lackey of the Cabalistica, who then discarded him when he was useless to them? Whatever it was, he had taken the mystery to his grave.

But it was the sight of Eva’s mother that made Zach gasp in horror, and Harry groan with enraged disbelief, and Hermione, whose eyes had been trained to look at death and gore, to scream out her horror.

And when she screamed, it was not for Merlin or any other wizard, either. The cry that came from her lips was straight from her Muggle childhood, the same cry she heard her mother utter when Grandmother Helen died, the same noise that came from her father’s throat when her mother breathed her last...

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

The poor woman had obviously been tortured. Rosângela was seated in her favorite rattan-and-bamboo-stick chair, something she’d told Hermione with pride that she fashioned herself. Her wrists and ankles were tied down with what Hermione recognized as enchanted rope, something that they themselves had in their packs and that they had used on every quest.

Yet she wasn’t tied fast to the chair anymore. That was because she had been severed, digit by digit, joint by joint, and scratched and bitten. Hermione could only wonder when the Rat decided that he was going to get no information at all from the poor gardening maid, that she knew absolutely nothing of the identity of the woman she harbored... and finally, mercifully slashed her throat.

The carnage was unbelievable. At St. Mungo’s, at Hogwarts infirmary, and at Paracelsus, Hermione had seen Sponge victims and Avada Kedavraed corpses who appeared to be dead of absolutely nothing discernible at all. At St. Ormond’s she’d often dealt with victims of Muggle violence, usually gunshot and knife wounds, once or twice someone blue from strangulation.

But what kind of inhuman monster would delight in such barbarism? She could see even through her tears that the cuts had been caused by the Secaro spell that she’d seen in action the night before. Dark Magic that cut purposely to maximize bleeding...

The work of the Priesthood of the Flowery Death.

Here, in Brazil?

She was still whispering "Oh, my God". But it was okay, for Harry and Zach hadn’t moved yet either. They just stared. If there had been any lurking agent of the Cabalistica around, they could have finished them all off easily and with little resistance.

"Their idea of a message, obviously," said Harry woodenly. "Not even the innocent will be spared."

"We’ve got to take care of the body before Eva sees," Zach said, just as robotically. Making no move to do so until it was too late.

"Mãe! Mãe!" Eva cried, running inside, having broken free of Juliana’s grip.

Juliana ran after her. "No, Evinha!"

That snapped Harry, Hermione, and Zach out of it. They instantly turned around and did their best to stop her from coming into the room. But Eva was like a mad, wild deer, bucking and thrashing and biting and scratching and punching... and in the end, she got her way.

She went to the chair, and placed her head in what remained of her mother’s lap. Crooning something soft, something not in Portuguese, but in the Indie language of the Yanomami people that her mother’s mother had taught her long ago... both lullaby and elegy.

A swan song.

****************

All over the world, wizards and witches are buried very differently from Muggles. Whereas Muggle burial customs vary between cultures and over time, wizards and witches traditionally are buried one way.

Cremation.

Witch and wizard corpses retain vestiges of magic long after life has left them. Therefore, with a simple Animatus spell or whatever the regional equivalent, a magical corpse runs the risk of joining the ranks of the undead, of those who walk the shadows, for souls find no rest in the afterlife if their bodies are captured for unnatural use after their spirits have taken leave of them.

Wizards and witches traditionally ask their loved ones for what was called in the Golden Age the Blessed Flame. Even if there is a traditional grave site, with a normal gravestone, all that will be in the coffins are mere ashes, their souls and their magic released to the afterlife for all eternity.

Wizards and witches do believe in an afterlife, by the way. They believe in several of them, to be quite exact, but these particular wizards and witches were only concerned with one... the one that they would ensure Rosângela was off to that day.

Paradise.

There was a different word for it in every tongue that crossed magic lips. The great Albus Dumbledore called it the next Great Adventure. On her own deathbed Helena Blavatsky told her young granddaughter stories of the Abodes of the Blest, where some day in the hazy, distant future little Hermione would see her again.

It was a place even lovelier than verdant Avalon or even the long-lost shining Atlantis, the Isle of Fountains, which no mortal eyes had seen for Ages. It was a place where sorrow and misunderstanding were no more, where all shortcomings were made perfect, where the petty foibles of this life were rendered quite silly and insignificant indeed.

In the end, it was Ron who took charge of the situation. After a muttered "bloody hell" and a sorrowful headshake, Ron scooped up Eva (who was now covered in her mother’s blood), handed her to Zach, then took the bedsheet and draped it over the chair. With a few waves of his wand, he cleaned up the blood and gore, then pointed to João.

"Bring him too," Ron ordered.

They did so, wrapping head and body together in sheets. Then they Levitated both of the dead, and brought them outside.

In another, less enlightened place, the sight they made when they emerged would have caused quite a bit of consternation. Not so in Rocinha. The favela had more sorrow and magic than it could hold. Obviously these were powerful witches, and the de Souza household was cursed. One would have to be careful passing by it in the future, they knew.

They built the funeral pyres halfway up Corcovado Mountain, in a small clearing in the trees, halfway between the bustling metropolis below and the world-famous statue of Christ the Redeemer above. Both bodies were covered with clean white sheets, tied on with enchanted rope. It wasn’t as good as a Farewell Shroud, but Eva wasn’t in any state to weave one. Neither were Hermione or Juliana, for that matter.

While the witch relatives of the deceased wove the shrouds on looms designed for the purpose, being careful not to mix textiles, using varicolored dyes to work complicated hexes into the fabric, in Europe barges were built by the wizards of the family. It was thought best to bury the dead over water, as extra insurance that the ashes would not be recovered by enemies. Even if there was no water for miles around, sometimes a boat would be built anyway.

Yet they did not want to run the risk of detection. It would be enough work for Harry and Ron to obscure the smoke that the flame would generate.

Once the bodies were secured, it was time to begin.

There are no songs at wizarding funerals. Witches and wizards do not deem it an appropriate time to sing. The beloved will sing and hear songs in Paradise, and it is likely that the bereaved will hear them afresh on earth someday when their grief is not so new.

Very often there are words, but not many of those. For some things there is no language but a cry. Silence, usually, is best.

Runes, in whatever local magical language the deceased would recognize, are often inscribed in a place nearby or where the ashes will at last be spread.

No one said a word. Their wordlessness would be the last tribute that they would pay to Eva’s mother. João, as a Muggle and of questionable character, would be nonetheless consecrated by this as well.

Then Hermione held Eva fast as Juliana and Zach, Harry and Ron, stood at each corner of the pyres, took out their wands, and pointed them at the dead.

"Belle Inferno."

Beautiful fire. The flames that shot forth were white, opalescent. They watched as the makeshift shrouds caught fire, then the bodies beneath. They waited until the wood of the pyres themselves were burned to ash.

They waited a long time.

Then Ron did the work of sweeping up the ashes of Rosângela de Souza, while Hermione and Juliana covered João’s with earth. Zach brought a container, a silver traveling cup, for Ron to place the ashes in. These were then handed to Eva, with the usual admonition to be careful, as the very dust of the magical held potential power. But this time, only communicated by a shared glance between Zach and Eva, just before they walked ahead to the car. Juliana took Ron’s hands in hers, as if to say "thank you". He nodded once, smilelessly, then they walked on to the car.

When the last of the smoke was gone, Harry put his tired arm down and reholstered his wand. Shaking the soreness away, he made a move to follow the others... and then saw Hermione standing behind, looking at the desolation they’d done their best to cover, tears slipping silently down her cheeks.

He came behind her, softly, and heard her thoughts.

I did this. A woman is murdered because she and her daughter were kind to me when I was in need. She is dead because of me.

His arms went around her, pulling her close. No, she is dead because of hate and evil. What did you always used to tell me whenever I started thinking like that? About my parents? About Cedric? About Hagrid and Dumbledore? And...

Don’t say any more, Harry. Just hold me.

And he did. There in the clearing. Then in the car, as Eva wept over her rosary and rocked between Zach and Juliana’s shoulders, as Ron drove towards the northwest, eyes dull and unseeing and sad.

And much later that night, he held her in Brasilia as she cried herself to exhaustion and drifted off to a troubled sleep.

He watched her for a long time afterwards, as was his habit. In repose she reminded him of the girl she once was. The worry-lines of her eyes and forehead were smoothed away, and he traced the smooth skin that they had reverted to. Her eyes were closed and seeing nothing but dreams... and her ever turbulent and complex thoughts were stilled.

I’ll always hold you, Hermione.

Always.

***************

And if you come I will be silent

Nor speak harsh words to you.

I will not ask why, now.

Or how, or what you do.

We shall sit here, softly

Beneath two different years

And the rich earth between us

Shall drink our tears.

****************

"What will you give me for Hermione Granger?"

The man who tended the shrine was not himself that day, as per usual. Today he’d chosen to disguise himself as a clean-cut, British Indian immigrant, with clear olive skin, a blue Oxford polo shirt, and black slacks. His shoes were polished, his hair was trimmed, and his nails were clean.

Brian Riordan and Sebastian Borgin looked at each other. Then both wizards laughed the youth to scorn.

"Absolutely nothing," said Sebastian. "She is of no interest to us."

"Forgive my impertinence, sir, but you are lying. Unlike most, I can read the signs. If I hand you Dr. Granger, I hand you the world."

"Your enthusiasm for the Dark Way is heartening. Yet surely the key to the world is more than some filthy meddling Mudblood," Sebastian replied dryly.

"If it is, the world is worth a lot less than originally thought," Brian added.

The man narrowed his eyes. He hated to be made fun of... that was one of the reasons why he hated her so, because she seemed to have a knack for making him look utterly ridiculous.

Taking a deep and patient breath, he repeated his question.

"Why should we give you anything?" Brian asked. "It seems to me that you’re intent on killing her anyway. Good luck with that... I’d like to see a great Squib like you succeed at it."

"Since you don’t think I can do it, then what do you risk by offering a boon?"

Again, Sebastian and Brian looked at one another.

"All right, fair enough. What say you to this... if you bring us Hermione Granger, dead or alive..."

"Without anyone knowing of it," Sebastian added.

"...then you can have my office," here Brian indicated the Minister of Magic’s chambers.

The man’s eyes widened. "Wouldn’t that require your stepping down, sir?"

Again, Brian and Sebastian laughed.

"Minister of Magic is small potatoes compared to the fish I plan to fry," Brian remarked. "With the help of my old friend here, of course."

"Is that so?" The man feigned interest.

Sebastian cocked his head to the side, sizing the man up. "It is so indeed. Care to dine with us tonight? You’ll need a dinner partner of course, as we’ll have the Dianas at our side."

"Mine’s Diane," corrected Brian.

"Diana, Diane, whatever she’s calling herself these days. Asha, mostly, although it’s all getting tiresome. I hope you’re not too attached to the creature, Brian. She keeps getting in my way, and it is quite annoying."

"Not at all, old friend. There is no such thing as love. Only power. Diane Johnson was only a means to an end for me. Now that end is complete. I am now Minister of Magic for Britain, and she is the worst damned Grand Inquisitor that the Cabalistica has ever seen. Do what you must."

The man was stunned.

Sebastian noted his consternation with a smile.

"Watch and learn, dark acolyte. Watch and learn."

***************

Your hunger for rectitude
blossoms into rage
the hot tears of mourning
never shed for you before
your twisted measurements
the agony of denial
the power of unshared secrets.

****************

Harry and Hermione awoke at the same moment during the middle of the night. Both sat abruptly up at once.

"What is it?" they both asked each other. "What’s wrong?"

"You go first," Harry offered, pulling her close, trying to halt his own shivering and sweating.

"No, you go. I’m all right, really."

Before either of them could end their stalemate, there was an insistent pounding on the door. Hermione, quite used to this, got up, brushed the wrinkles from the front of her ankle-length nightgown, crossed the room, and opened it.

It was Ron, as white as the pyjamas he was wearing. His freckles were like golden-brown polka dots upon his bloodless face. Without a word, he crushed Hermione to him so tightly that she gasped for air.

"Ron? What’s wrong?" she asked, holding him out at arm’s length, finally. Harry had got out of bed too, and was standing behind them both, arms folded over his bare chest. Not exactly glaring at Ron, but not with the nicest look on his face, either.

He laughed to himself. "You’ll think I’m an idiot, mates... I dreamed that it was Hermione bound and sliced to bits in that shack this afternoon instead of Eva’s mother."

Harry gasped. So did Hermione.

"So did I," they both said together.

Hermione closed the door, and they all sat down. Ron perched himself on the edge of the bed while Harry and Hermione were propped up against headboard and pillows.

Together, one by one, they shared the horrible dream. In their vision, Hermione had perished at the Cabalistica’s hands, hacked to death as Rosângela de Souza had been, lifeblood spilling liberally onto some alien terrain. And a weeping Ginny had woven a shroud, and Draco Malfoy and the Weasley men had built a barge, and then there was the sad funerary procession, walking heavily to the seaside... and then at last her body had been pushed off into the water, and ignited her lifeless form, watching it crackle and burn as it floated away towards the horizon...

Harry and Ron had been nowhere around in this dream.

The dream was so real that it had shaken each of them in turn out of sleep.

"But what does it all mean?" Hermione asked, more to herself than to either of them.

"It means we’ve got to get you home to England, and to the MMRI, and into one of those Danae-shower things as soon as possible," Ron said. "I can’t help but think she’s in grave danger here, Harry..."

"It could mean nothing," Hermione said quickly. "Nothing but our minds trying to cope with everything that happened this afternoon. The brain deals with emotional trauma in creative ways, dreams being among them."

"That’s Dr. Hermione talking there," Ron said. "Tell me, what does witch Hermione say about it?"

"You forget, Ron. I’m not a witch at the moment. And I’m not going back to England. Not until we return to the place where Eva and I were held and we get her child back."

"We can deal with that well enough without you here..."

"I’d like to see you try! Eva’s not in any state to help you find the place, especially not after what’s just happened. I made sure to observe our route carefully. I also made Eva a promise. A promise, Ron. I don’t give my word lightly. Why on earth would I go back home before her child is secured?"

"Because we can’t keep you safe here."

Hermione’s hands swung to either side of her waist. "I don’t need either of you to keep me safe."

"Hermione, you’re little more than a Muggle at the moment. The wizards who did this to Rosângela de Souza are adepts in Dark Magic. You can’t wield a wand in self-defense. No one can be by your side every second where we’re going. What happens the next time a Cabalistica agent’s wand is pointed at you, and neither of us is around?"

"I shoot first and ask questions later, Ron." Brown eyes narrowed. "Your point?"

"Yeah, and if you shoot to kill at close range, it’ll likely kill you too, what with your Sharing and all..."

"Oh, I can’t believe I’m hearing this! I shot three agents at Panteras the other night, and here I am, breathing and none the worse for the wear!"

"But you didn’t kill any of them, did you? Hermione, have you ever killed anyone or anything before?"

She shifted a little, uncomfortable.

Harry had been rubbing his eyes, and reaching for his glasses without success. Now he yawned again, and squinted.

"He has a right to be concerned, beautiful. Can you even remember the last time all three of us had the same dream, at the same time?"

"Tartarus. But still, that was different, the war was on, we were under Covenant, we were supposed to be working in tandem..."

Harry looked grim. "The war never ended, Hermione. We nipped evil in the bud, but we didn’t get it at the roots. And what is coming could be worse than anything we’ve seen before."

"I understand your concern, darling. But when it comes to triumphing over evil, good has got quite the impressive track record, Harry."

"But this evil has learned from its mistakes. We don’t even know what their plan is this time... no one knows. Not Sirius, not any Ministry intelligence on earth, not even the Confederation. And this time, there’s no Voldemort to make my scar hurt." His arms wound around her shoulders. "Hermione, if something dire happened to you, and I wasn’t able to keep you safe, I wouldn’t be able to bear it."

Hermione pulled her knees up to her chest, folding her arms around them. Ron reached out a hand, tentatively, to place it on her hand as it clasped her knee.

"Do you understand how essential you are to us? Not just to Harry. Not just to me or any of your other friends. But to all of us. During the three years you were gone, you were missed. By your family, by your friends, by your patients... by everyone. We’d all rest easier if you were safe at home in England until we return."

Hermione sat up suddenly, and jumped down to pace the floor.

"No, that is not going to work this time. We are having the same conversation we had fifteen years ago. I thought it utter foolishness then, and I think it’s even sillier now. Anything can happen to anyone at any given moment. What happens when you ship me off to England, and the Cabalistica figures that out, and my plane crashes in the middle of the Atlantic? Or if you do raid the facility, and you get your arses killed because you do something characteristically stupid and avoidable because I’m not there to point it out?

"Or suppose the Cabalistica has tracked us here, and is listening in on us now. Suppose that Zach boy is really the traitor that you two say he’s not. Suppose someone makes Eva or Juliana an offer that they can’t refuse to betray us all. Suppose, suppose, suppose... you cannot undergo a mission, fight the Dark Arts, or do anything in life with a chorus of suppose in your head, because it has absolutely nothing to do with reality."

She turned to face them both.

"We just had a horribly sad afternoon, and then a dream that frightened the life out of us. It was coincidence that we all dreamed of me. I am certain that if the dream had been about either of you we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I am also certain that even if I did have full use of my magic, that we would be having it, as we have had it several times prior. It is more than a bit disheartening that after years and years of proving my ability to pull my own weight time after time, you still don’t think I can..."

Hermione broke off her rant and began laughing.

"Oh sod it, both of you. I can see that I’m wasting breath. Well, since I am not going anywhere near England until Eva’s child is back safe and sound, and I find out what has been killing my patients, I am going to sleep in your spot, Ron. I’m sure that Juliana won’t mind. Please, feel free to spend the precious hours that remain until morning pondering this matter. Good night."

*************

Some words are open like a diamond

on glass windows

singing out within the crash of sun

Then there are words like stapled wagers

in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -

and come whatever will all chances

the stub remains

an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.

Some words live in my throat

breeding like adders. Other know sun

seeking like gypsies over my tongue

to explode through my lips

like young sparrows bursting from shell.

Some words

bedevil me...

*************

During the day, Heath Canyon was in complete control of his mission. As Ari Golden Professor of Archaic Magic at the Sabaean Institute, he was used to mentoring novices in the field. As director of the Watchtower, he was an adept at fieldwork, conducting each foray into the mists of the past with surgical precision. Cutting and altering only enough so that good and not harm was done.

Yes, Heath was good at what he did. Damned good--the wall of his office filled with diplomas, awards, and recognitions back home in Sabera attested to that. He had both the brains and the brawn to be a most effective Watcher.

Yet at night, it was not his mission, nor the brilliant, headstrong subject of his mission that he dreamed of.

He dreamed of his Raven.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, Lenore?

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"

Merely this--and nothing more.

It was a marvel to him that one so unearthly fair had been born to a family named Raven. Both of her parents were dark, and her brother had brown hair and eyes. And it was a testament to her parents’ morbid sense of humor that they’d named their firstborn daughter after a poem traditionally associated with angst.

If she’d been born in this time, she would have been teased as a child; as it was, only scholars of the more archaic forms of High Modern English were familiar with the text. And even the name "raven" didn’t have the expected connotations back home.

This was because the bird known as the raven was extinct in Sabera, and in all of the lands of the Gaea Alliance.

But Raven was an appropriate name for her. This was because Lenore had always held a sort of darkness and mystery about her. Even when they were children together, she’d been an elusive sort of girl... all smokescreens and mirrors... and you never were quite sure if what you were getting was the real Lenore. Heath probably knew her better than anyone, and yet there were many times when he felt he didn’t know her at all.

There was always something sad about Lenore, as if she had been born empty and unsatisfied. She was a restless soul, and he had done his best to fill that hole inside of her. First with his friendship. Then with his love. Heath doubted that he had done a good job of it. He wondered if Harry had even detected it, or if he’d been so preoccupied with his own lost Hermione that he didn’t realize how desperate Lenore was to find a place of rest.

Then Heath wondered why he’d even asked that question, when he’d known the answer all his life.

When Witches and Wizards Walked. Compiled by Heath Canyon and Lenore Raven. It was his bestselling Disc back at home, his only non-scholarly text. It was used in the Free Schools all over Sabera, and parents bought copies for their children to use in their VRS at home.

Heath remembered the night of the Disc launch, when Lenore had sparkled and glittered on his arm. He couldn’t even look directly at her for most of the party--the very sight of her made his eyes and his heart ache.

And then later that night, when he handed her the Sensation Stimulation helmet and she pushed it away and kissed him directly for the first time, she was no longer a diamond but something soft and silken...

The people of their time had decided that there were several reasons why the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second centuries had been so brutal and barbaric. One of the main causes was sex.

It was all very clear to the Sabaean Council, as it was to all the nations of the Gaea Alliance. Sex was for animals, not for sentient beings who had other means for procreation and pleasure. Copulating like the primates they’d evolved from led to primate-like patterns of aggression with the technology to do more than bash someone’s brains out.

The Purges at the turn of the twenty-second century--when a billion individuals of various nations, ethnicities, races, and religious groups deemed "undesirable" for eugenic purposes were systematically eliminated--were the terminus of this upward curve of aggression.

Such horror could never, ever happen again.

By the middle of the twenty-third century, unsimulated sexual contact was illegal in all but the most unenlightened reaches of the newly formed Gaea Alliance. By the time Heath and Lenore were born two centuries later, humans no more thought about the old forms of erotic gratification than they would have thought of treating diseases with leeches.

But Heath and Lenore, as the children of American Hegemonic age historians and Watchtower technology scientists, and as scientists themselves, remembered. The memories were not theirs, but those recorded upon the holos that they watched and took notes from.

Side by side, they logged the true records of the past and transformed them into journal articles and conference papers. There wasn’t much in human history that the Earth had not remembered, that the Watchtower could not recover. So Heath and Lenore watched as men strived and women mended, as children laughed in the sunlight and trembled in the shadows of the night...

And late in the pristine evenings of their sterile future world, Heath and Lenore watched as these long-dead people stopped in the midst of all their pain and glory, their agony and their ecstasy, and came together in a way that humans of their time had long forgotten.

This was the way they sought to emulate on that night. Casting aside their Stimulator helmets and suits, feeling hands on bared skin, mouth against mouth, breaths intermingling until they were heady...

Even if they didn’t know what they were doing, their bodies did. The conscious memories, the compulsion for this act had passed from their time, and even their fellow scientists regarded watching it in the past as a dull curiosity that held no vicarious enjoyment. It was speculated that the men and women of their age could get no pleasure out of this act, simply because the inclination to indulge in it had been genetically engineered out of the human race centuries before...

Heath and Lenore proved that theory all wrong that night. And night after night thereafter they proved it wrong as they explored and touched and sought...

"Research, Raven," he’d grated out, sometime during that first time.

"Yes, yes..." she had panted, "...research."

So at night, it was not the good doctor of his academic obsession that Heath dreamed of.

When he dreamed at all, it was of his own fair Raven.

Most nights, however, he shifted and twisted in the sheets, thinking of the obscure poem that no one from their time remembered save him and her.

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And her eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er her streaming throws her shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore.

*************

Sleep fell away from Hermione the next morning like a series of fine, misty veils. As was her habit, she kept her eyes closed for a moment after waking. The second she opened her eyes she was officially "on" for the day. Her mind began racing, and unless she was shielding, her senses did as well. Keeping her eyes closed allowed her to get her bearings and shake off the drowsy disorientation she hated.

She was in someone’s arms. That much she knew. And being stroked. Now, the sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and if she hadn’t been sleeping in Juliana’s bed, she would have sworn that the hands belonged to Harry.

But when she fell asleep, she had been next to Juliana...

Uh-oh.

Hermione stretched and rolled away. She didn’t want to embarrass her friend. Likely Juliana was asleep, and dreaming of her Magdalena. That was all.

But the hands that had stroked became arms that clinched her by the waist, and pulled her back to rest against a chest. A decidedly masculine chest, lean yet broad enough for her to feel cocooned as her ear and cheek pressed into it.

"And just where did you think you were going?"

Hermione looked up into Harry’s face. Medium length black hair at the crown, every strand going in a different direction. Forehead unlined, unmarred... save for the familiar scar, favoring his right eyebrow. And there were his magnificent eyes, evergreen eyes that she was certain she could fall headfirst into, asking any necessary questions later.

So much wonder, so much to make her heart flutter... and she wasn’t even halfway down his face.

No one ever noticed Harry’s nose, usually. That was because his nose was rather nondescript and boring, as noses went. It was neither patrician nor freckled nor pug nor snub. It wasn’t pimply or warty or hooked. It didn’t have a mole. It wasn’t too big or too small. It was just a nose. His ears were about as interesting... save for the fact that they were ever so slightly pointed at the tops.

Harry’s mouth were another matter entirely. She’d only recently begun her fascination with his mouth...

But as usual, he didn’t give her much time to study it. When he saw her eyes lingering upon his lips, he gave her a good morning kiss.

"How did I get back here, Harry?" she said moments later.

He sighed with mock gravity. "Well, it turns out that not only do you snore, you also sleepwalk. It’s quite the scary sight."

She elbowed him playfully.

"Hey! All right, all right! I sent Ron to bed, and carried you back here where you belong."

Hermione seemed to vaguely remember this, murmuring a feeble protest to him in the midst of the dark...

"What are you doing?"

"Kidnapping you."

Her lips pressed together in half-hearted disapproval.

"I left for a reason last night."

"And that reason wasn’t good enough for you to sleep anywhere else other than in my arms." Harry kissed her forehead. "The truth is that I can’t sleep without you near, beautiful. I made myself some promises before I left Scotland two weeks ago to come here, and I plan on keeping every single one of them..."

With kisses like these, Hermione thought she would never have to drink again. But she drew away before she was lost. She had done some thinking before drifting off to sleep alongside Juliana, and needed to get hold of herself before she reneged on her decision.

"Harry... Harry, listen. I’m not so sure that this is the best way or the best place for us to resolve everything that’s between us."

He drew back with a frown. "What?"

She drew in a deep breath and spoke very quickly. "Everything is snowballing between us, yes... but Harry, two mornings ago I had no idea if I’d ever see you again, and you had no idea where I was. I no longer have any magical ability and we still don’t know why. Yesterday a good woman died senselessly and in my opinion, needlessly."

He was nodding grimly, listening to everything she was saying. So encouraged, she plunged ahead.

"We’re on a mission, and we were always taught that a quest is not the most appropriate setting for, well, anything amorous. You run the risk of losing your head when you most need to keep your wits about you..."

"Too late."

"I’m only suggesting that perhaps we ought to take things more slowly."

"Oh, indeed. I intend to make love to you very slowly, and very soon. I’m glad we’re agreed on that issue."

"Harry," she chided. "Don’t you believe in rewards? Don’t you want to save something for later?"

"Nah. I’d rather have mine now."

"Haven’t you ever heard of the aphorism, ‘Good things come to those who wait?’"

"Yes, and I’ve waited twelve years for this. Your point?" He hooked his finger underneath one of her gown’s shoulder straps. "Thou doth protest far too much, fair lady. Especially when you don’t believe a single word of what you’re saying."

She opened her mouth to refute his claim, but he stopped her words and her heart with his lips.

"Love, we don’t have time for this," he said finally, huskily. "What happened yesterday afternoon to Eva’s mother is a case in point. We’re not promised tomorrow, or the next hour, or anything more than the moment that we have. So if I’ve only got one more hour to live, Hermione, I want to spend it with you. Holding you. And loving you..."

Damn. It had not been her intent to kiss him this way after her pronouncement--not this deeply, not this slowly, not this intensely--but she could have no more stopped him than she could have stopped the pulsing of her own blood.

He teased her lips into opening by sliding the tip of his tongue against the trembling corners. When she moaned in breathless response, he intensified the kiss, pleasuring her at a leisurely pace. After long moments, he left her lips and began to press kisses along the line of her jaw. She had no name for what he was making her feel. All Hermione knew was that she never wanted it to end. Ever.

"I want to touch you, Hermione," he breathed hotly against her ear. "You’re beautiful everywhere. Let me only show you..."

Ah, she knew full well just how easy it would be for him to show her. Yet she was powerless to object, powerless to stop his hands from sliding over the silk of the borrowed nightgown possessively, as if what it concealed from sight was his own.

The bodice of the gown was secured with tightly knotted ribbon bows. Harry tugged at each one in turn, impatiently. Then his mouth flirted with the hollow at the base of her throat until she shivered. His lips were warm and tender, his tongue hot enough to scald.

Hermione found it difficult to remain coherent. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think. When his hands pushed aside the thin silk of her gown to cup her breasts, she couldn’t breathe. And when he kissed his way down to the coral tips, she thought she would go up in smoke. She made a strangled noise in the back of her throat as her head languorously, sensually arched back. Her own hands reached forward to touch his bare chest and back, tracing the smooth skin stretched over lean, spare musculature...

Waiting be damned. She wanted more.

Harry gave her more. He opened the last of the ribbons and slid the halves aside so he could kiss her without restraint. Her hands fisted in his soft hair, twisting and gripping as he tasted her as if she was the most delicious treat he’d ever sampled in his life.

His hands weren’t still, either. They continued to slide easily over the silken gown, each fingertip a lick of flame creating a heady burning just beneath her skin. Keeping his head buried against her chest, kissing her blindly, he lifted the hem of her gown. Sliding his hands over her bared thighs and hips, then over the bikini bottoms that were serving as her knickers...

"Harry..." she began, then gasped at the touch of his fingers, tracing the underside of her knickers before shifting the thin fabric aside to stroke her in earnest.

Somewhere in her dreams, she’d remembered this. Her senses were spiraling out of control, making her feel rather dizzy. Part of her wanted to throw caution to the wind and let him have his way, but she knew it was impossible. They couldn’t do this. Not here, not now. It was distracting, it was making them lose their edge, when one mistake could cause them all to fall into the shadow and darkness...

Yet the second the pads of his fingertips slipped against her hot center, she knew she couldn’t possibly last much longer. She hadn’t the strength.

He crushed her lips to hers again, dipping his tongue inside her mouth, mimicking what his fingers were now doing to her...

She cried out as he plunged in. Slowly, deliberately, he moved in and out with a look of supreme satisfaction on his face, obviously enjoying the sight of his ever so proper Hermione losing all semblance of sanity. All too soon, she began to shudder wildly against him.

You are my reward, Hermione. Deny this and you only deny yourself...

And she peaked hard, crying out his name against his lips, thrashing against the hands that held her fast, sweetly torturing her. Still he stroked her until the wave of her pleasure had completely subsided. Until she collapsed in his arms, weak and limp and satisfied for the moment.

It wasn’t enough, she thought to herself. It wasn’t nearly enough. What he’d just given her was only a prelude of what was to come next. It had to be...

Harry laid her down upon the soft white pillows and pulled the covers back over her, tucking her in, brushing his lips with hers until she sighed, dreamy-eyed.

"Just as I suspected."

"What, that you’re too impatient to wait until we can be fully private and alone, without obligations or Cabalistica or demons to worry about, or quest companions in the very next room?" Hermione couldn’t keep her voice from quavering. "No wonder you want to send me back home."

"I’ve changed my mind." He sat on the edge of the bed, next to her. "You know, I really ought to send you packing. You need to see your father again. You need to get to the MMRI to regain your magical ability and conduct your research. You’d be safer there than you are here. My first concern ought to be for your safety. But the truth is that I don’t want you ten inches away from me, much less ten thousand miles."

"So you’re willing..." she trailed off, trying not to melt under the intensity of his gaze. "You’re willing to respect my wishes and wait, then?"

"Of course I’m willing to respect your wishes, love. The moment you tell me that you’re ready to stop teasing, that you’re ready for more than kisses, then your wish will be my command. Here in Brazil, no less."

"Didn’t you hear a word I’ve said? We ought to wait until..."

He shushed her by kissing her soundly again. "You won’t be able to hold out until we’re back in England, Hermione. You don’t have the willpower. You want it too badly..." his fingers reached out to trace her cheek, her lips, the curve of her neck and her breast, "...you want this."

Even as her pulse fluttered beneath his eyes, her chin went up. "I’m quite used to sacrifice."

"I know. And I think it’s time you came down from your altar, goddess mine. Good morning."

She watched him retreat, then disappear into the bathroom. Feeling a strange sense of frustration and yearning. Thinking that they couldn’t get back to England soon enough for her liking.

*************

The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. . .

. . . Women have been taught to suspect the erotic urge, the place that is uniquely female. As women we tend to reject our capacity for feeling, our ability to love, to touch the erotic, because it has been devalued. But it is within this that lies so much of our power, our ability to posit, our vision. Because once we know how deeply we can feel, we begin to demand from all of our life pursuits that they be in accordance with these feelings. . . .

I believe in the erotic and I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women. We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. And when I say living I mean it as that force which moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.

*************

As the planned capital of the country, Brasilia was a neat and surprisingly modern metropolis at the westernmost edge of the sertão. The terrain looked to Hermione’s eyes much like certain parts of the south central United States and the eastern African savanna. Yet the sixty year old city in the middle of this wasteland was ultramodern, with sterile lines and an architectural style that was synonymous with technocracy gone wild.

The city didn’t have half the charm that Rio de Janeiro did, she thought as they walked along streets that were emphatically not designed for pedestrian traffic. Neither was it like Manaus, Santarém, Belém, or Recife. It reminded Hermione of an industrial American city, and not a very interesting one at that.

It took them a while to find a café that was open for breakfast, and then after scarfing down a quiet cup of coffee and roll, they were off to purchase their supplies for the journey through the Amazon.

"How much will we actually need?" Zach asked when they were in the middle of a Brazilian chain store that was much like Sainsbury’s Homebase. "I thought we were managing to travel through settled places for much of the time."

"Never know what might happen, do you?" Ron replied. "What if the Cabalistica learns our route and blocks it? Might have to rough it for a night. Better to be safe than sorry."

Because the seat of the magical government here in Brazil was not in this relatively modern Muggle capital but in historic Salvador, there was nowhere they could purchase magical supplies. So they purchased regular rope and tents, packs and flares, machetes to slice through dense vegetation, flashlights for Eva and Hermione, raingear and hammocks--everything necessary just in case they had to camp for a night or two.

"No more than a night or two," said Harry. "I expect we’ll be able to stick to Muggle settlements. I’ve been in the Amazon rainforest once before--it's not fun to get lost there."

"Eva and I managed," Hermione said. "Not anything I’m rushing to do again, of course."

They also purchased a pair of hiking boots for everyone... loafers, sneakers, and sandals were certainly not appropriate. And then they bought various non-perishable food items under Eva’s direction. She was holding up surprisingly well, other than the fact that the laughter was completely gone from her voice.

I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.

"You have forgotten the netting," she pointed out briskly, arranging things with an authority that none of them had ever seen from her. "No one goes into the jungle without mosquito netting."

They also bought hanging pots and pans, because Eva said that absolutely nothing needed to be on the forest floor. Not even themselves.

"Best to pitch the tents off the ground," said Eva as they stuffed the last of the gear into the enlarged trunk of the Cadillac. "There, only the occasional jaguar will be dangerous..."

"Okay, is anyone else hoping that we can just stick to civilization?" asked Ron.

"Civilization works for me, meu amigo," nodded Juliana.

"Then we ought to get going," Hermione said, "if we want to make Porto Nacional by nightfall."

************

They didn’t make Porto Nacional that night. In fact, they had to drive two hours in the dark before they found a place where they could stop.

"Limoeiro isn’t on the map," said Zach helpfully, once Eva finished talking to the innkeeper as best she could in her grandmother’s language and recounted where they were.

"Thanks ever so much for that newsflash, mate," said Ron. "What happened? How did we end up here?"

"Harry was reading the map upside down, that’s what," said Hermione dryly.

"If you realized that, then why didn’t you say something before we were a good four hundred and fifty miles off course?"

She shot him a tired glance. "I’m joking, Harry. I was supposed to be navigating as well, remember?"

"I say that neither of them gets the map next time," said Juliana, snatching it out of Hermione’s hands. "Next time, Evinha and I will do the honors."

They were all cross and cranky, and hot, as they were now at the edge of the rainforest. It had drizzled for a great deal of the evening, too, and although Ron had put the top of the convertible up, there was a bit of leakage.

The Indian travelodge wasn’t air conditioned, either. It was clean, but that was about all. Even with Harry’s best Cooling Spells, the air was humid and close and uncomfortable. Hermione tossed and turned that night beside Harry, whose light snoring indicated that he was having no trouble sleeping at all. She resented it.

By the time she did manage to fall asleep, it seemed that moments later he was shaking her awake.

"Rise and shine, love," he said. "Ron’s fueling up the car. Time to get back on the road."

With a frustrated screech, she buried her head back into the pillows.

*************

After a quick gulp of guava juice and bites of several tropical fruits that obviously had never seen the light of day outside of the interior of Brazil, they were back on the road, then up in the air again. Juliana and Eva had the map, and Zach had the compass. Ron drove according to their directions, and Hermione fell fast asleep in Harry’s arms.

When she awoke to shouts, the sun was high in the sky. What she could see of it, that is. Most of the sun’s brightness was obscured by tall trees.

They were in the middle of a forest. Never in her life had Hermione seen such dense vegetation. It seemed as if every inch where photosynthesis was possible was covered in green, deep green, such green as she only seen once before--when she and Eva had scrambled out of captivity.

Everyone else was out of the car. She sat up, seeing Ron pace in frustration, running his fingers through his hair, Juliana fuming over folded arms, Eva’s face buried in Zach’s stomach.

Harry leaned against the door nearest her.

"What’s wrong?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Car stopped."

"How is that possible?" she asked. "I thought Ron..."

"He did too, love. Obviously he was wrong. There was something wrong with the pump. Or likely the station owner cheated him. And I don’t have to tell you that even magic can’t fly a car that’s out of petrol."

She stretched a bit, and allowed him to lift her out of the car. "Where are we?"

"That’s just it. We haven’t a clue... we haven’t got one fucking clue!" said Juliana, kicking the dirt viciously, then cursing at the trees in rapidfire Portuguese.

"Be careful," said Eva emotionlessly. "You don’t want to kick up the wrong thing. Some of the insects here can kill you with a single bite."

"Nice," said Ron sarcastically. "So, mates, any bright ideas on what to do next? I’m fresh out."

Hermione spoke up instantly.

"Well, it’s simple, isn’t it? We fix up the packs and we walk. Surely the Amazon isn’t all uninhabited... we’re bound to run into human settlements sooner or later."

"Or at least Indians with poisoned arrows," said Ron.

Eva glared at him. "What a dolt," she said. "What else do you think, that the savages will cook and eat you too?"

"Oh, please don’t start quarreling!" snapped Juliana. "Eva, he was just kidding, you don’t have to take everything so personal!"

"Don’t yell at her," snarled Zach. "You know what she’s had to deal with."

"As if my life is a walk on the praia! I loved her mother too!"

"Yes," said Hermione, "but it was her mother, Juliana, not yours! You haven’t any idea what it is like to lose your mother, do you?"

"How do you know what it’s like to be me, Hermione? You, with your perfect job and your perfect man and your perfect life! You don’t know anything at all!"

Soon, everyone was arguing, shouting at each other at the top of their lungs. Mean things, regrettable things.

Then came a shout. It was Harry, who hadn’t participated in the fray at all.

"Hey! All of you, be quiet and listen. We don’t have time for this. We need to find gas for the car, and we need it soon. From what I figure, we’ve got about eight hours at the most before it’s dark, and we will not be able to walk after nightfall. Most of the predators here are nocturnal, and even magic can’t do much once a jaguar has pounced.

"Now, let’s get the packs together, and let’s walk. If you don’t have anything productive to say, then keep it to yourself. Once you speak, once you say it, you cannot take it back. So best to just keep it shut and think about life." In that moment, he sounded less like the great Harry Potter of a thousand stories and a lot like someone’s father... or like the teacher that he was. "Remember what I’ve said. Let’s go."

So they walked. It was slow, hot, muggy and backbreaking work. The packs were heavy and unwieldy, because they’d purchased more than they could carry, thinking that the car would be their repository... and now they had to carry absolutely everything away just in case. There were no paths, only a tangle of vegetation in every direction. One had to hack their way through with the machetes, and some of the vines and leaves were stubborn indeed.

In four hours, they only managed to travel ten miles. By dusk, they’d only gone fifteen.

"We’ll have to camp," said Harry, "while it’s light enough to see."

Here, magic had some advantages. Magic lit their fires so that they could cook. Magic elevated their tents and transformed them into treehouses. Magic allowed them some small comfort from the relentless, sticky heat, but not much.

"Why don’t the Cooling Spells seem to be as effective here?" asked Hermione that night.

"Don’t know. My guess is that they were invented by Northern wizards for Northern climates. I can’t remember ever hearing of wizards from the tropics using them at all. I suppose they’re used to this weather."

They’d purchased three tents with the intention to buy six hammocks, but there were only four available at the store, which meant that Zach and Eva had to share one and Harry and Hermione had to share the other. The hammocks were as comfortable as could be expected, but not very large, so that there was no help but for her to recline half next to him and half in his arms even after they’d Engorged the ropes as much as possible.

There was nothing romantic about the sleeping arrangements, though. It was extremely hot and sticky, and they were all tired. Hermione could feel when her fingers brushed his arm how much he ached, and thought vaguely of offering a massage, but was far too fatigued to actually follow through.

Fitfully, fretfully they slept.

***********

They traveled for ten days like this. Backbreaking trekking by day, then camping above ground at night. It wasn’t a good way to travel, and they certainly didn’t get much sleep.

Circles formed underneath all of their eyes. Cuts from vines that lashed at them opened up on their faces and limbs. Shirts and jeans went from dirty to filthy. They all smelled something like wet garbage, but not even half as pleasant as that.

The women used vines to twist their hair up from their sweaty faces, and ripped the sleeves from their t-shirts. The men discarded their shirts altogether on the seventh day, although this caused more lashes from the vines and bites from the mosquitoes.

Their water became brackish and their food grew mold, despite their best charms to keep it from spoiling. So Eva showed them that there was food in abundance in the rainforest if one knew what to eat. Many fruits and vegetables that looked perfectly harmless were poisonous, and many that looked absolutely disgusting were nutritious and occasionally quite tasty. She even pointed out which insects and slugs were edible, and on the eighth day roasted some. Ron, Hermione, and Juliana joined her. Harry and Zach did not, sticking to the ground tapioca and manioc paste instead.

Tropical paradise? No, more like one of the more diabolical manifestations of hell.

Of course, there were some beautiful sights. Like the time on the fifth day that they found themselves in the midst of a fluttering of butterflies, and soon came upon a clearing filled with flowers. Or on the sixth, when they found a waterfall and a glistening stream, and paused long enough for a refreshing dip and to refill their canteens.

But mostly the Amazon rainforest was a savage garden, unfriendly and inhospitable to those who did not know its wonders. Even Eva, grandchild of an indigenous Amazonian, had grown up in a different world. Her grandmother’s tales saved them time after time, but even she wasn’t exactly relishing the experience.

On the night after the tenth day, Hermione wondered aloud to Harry if they would ever find their way out of the place.

"I can’t help but have these nightmares of us walking around in circles in a crazed stupor until we perish," she said wearily. "The jungle changes enough so that it’s not that farfetched."

"Come now, it’s not nearly so bad as that, love. Tartarus was worse."

"We weren’t in Tartarus for ten days, Harry. Three days Tartarus time, a week Earth time. We’ve now surpassed both."

"Well, you were trapped by Orla and Hecate for three weeks..."

"Excuse me, you’re not actually saying that you want to be lost in the middle of nowhere for three more weeks, are you? I know I’m not hearing you correctly, so what are you getting at?"

"All I’m saying is that we ought to make the best of it, Hermione. Nothing really horrible has happened, has it? No one’s been mauled by any savage beast, no one’s collapsed from exhaustion, there have been no major crises. It could get a whole lot worse, and it likely will before we can make our way home again, so I think we ought to count our blessings while we can."

She sighed. "Oh, darling, I didn’t mean to complain. It’s just that I’m tired and despairing of this ever being over... of us ever seeing anyone other than ourselves again, let alone finding the place where Eva and I were held. It’s almost as if it was a figment of my imagination, when I know just how very real it was..."

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. "You’re allowed to complain, beautiful. That’s what I’m here for... to listen and to remind you that nothing can be so terrible as long as we’re together. We’re safe, Ron’s safe, and so are our new friends. All things considered, that’s what matters most at a time like this."

She returned his kiss. "Have I told you lately how much I love you, Harry Potter?"

"Not very lately," he replied. "And I’ll never tire of hearing it."

"I’ll never tire of saying it."

Then, tired after all, they fell into exhausted, dreamless sleep.

**************

Am I reaching out for you in the only language I know? Are you reaching for me in your only salvaged tongue? If I try to hear yours across our difference does that mean you can hear mine?

**************

Harry awoke to Hermione’s screaming in his ear and clutching onto him frantically. Alert instantly, snatching up his glasses from a knot of the rope above them, he tried to make sense of her wide eyes and wild pointing.

"Hermione, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?"

She kept on pointing, not looking at him. Harry turned and faced the open, fanged, hissing mouth of the most imposing snake he had ever seen.

His first reaction was to jump, more from being startled than from any real fear. For the snake was obviously trying to communicate with him, because if it had wanted to bite them in their sleep, it very well could have.

"Who are you and why are you here?" he asked in Parseltongue.

"Esss-cusssse me, amigo, but I did not mean to s-s-ssscare your wife like that. Pleas-s-sse forgive me."

"Wait a minute," said Harry, glancing at the distinctive scale patterns on the serpent. "Do I know you?"

"No, but you s-s-ssssurely know my great father, Ricardo. He wassss captured assss a s-s-sssmall s-s-s-sssnake, and s-s-s-sssent to a cold place, far away... and he s-s-ssssaid a boy helped him..."

It turned out that the snake had been following the party for quite a few days, since their second day on the trail. He, unlike most of his brothers and sisters, was infinitely curious about the increasing number of strange humans who were venturing into the virgin forest these days. But when he described Harry to his father, his father instantly was overjoyed.

"He s-s-s-sssaid that the boy knew the language of usss s-s-s-ssserpents," said the snake. "And s-s-s-ssso would the man."

"He remembers me after all this time?" Harry asked, incredulous. "It’s been more than twenty years... surely he’s dead by now?"

"No, s-s-s-sssenhor, he isss not. He isss old and doesss not s-s-s-ssslither as far away from home asssss he once did, but he rememberssss you. My brotherssss and s-s-s-sssisterssss have protected you from many s-s-s-ssssmall pestssss and even bitten a jaguar who wassss going to make you hissss next meal, amigo."

Hermione had stopped screaming the second Harry began speaking in Parseltongue and was eagerly watching the exchange with a mix of curiosity and envy. Here was something that she could not learn... you either were born a Parselmouth or you weren’t.

"What’s he saying?" she asked eagerly, no longer afraid of the serpent now that she saw that she wasn’t going to be strangled, bitten, or eaten.

He smiled at her. "Did I ever tell you about the time when the Dursleys took me to the zoo and I sicced a snake on Dudley?"

"No..."

"Well, tuck in. We--meaning you and I and the snake--have got a lot to talk about."

************

The next morning, it caused quite a stir in the camp when Harry climbed down from their tent with a young snake twined around his arms and waist.

"It’s all right!" Harry said, as Hermione laughed at her new friends’ unease and Ron shook his head. "We’re not lost anymore!"

*************

It took another fortnight and a half of travel before they reached the Rio Madeira, a branch of the Amazon. But this leg of the journey was very different from the first, thanks to Ricardo and his progeny. There were a plethora of snakes all around to protect them, all children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the elder snake that Harry had helped, long ago as a friendless orphan boy from Surrey.

After taking a brief detour so that Harry could converse with his old friend, the snakes showed them the best and most efficient route to the great river. They didn’t have to constantly chop at vegetation any more. They had enough water to drink and food to eat... the snakes knew exactly what their human friends would need.

The snakes also introduced them to another group of their human friends, a group of Amazonia Indians who called themselves the Snake People. They shared a convivial, if not mutually intelligible, lunch with the friendly men and women, a thousand and one snakes slithering all around the village as they ate.

"Lucky you get on with snakes, Harry," said Ron, holding out a hollowed-out coconut shell filled with a frothy, fruity drink. "This is loads better than what we had to endure before. Thanks, mate."

Hermione touched her own makeshift cup to Ron’s in a toast. "No matter how odd he sounds talking to them... many thanks, darling," she giggled at the end when he reached over to tickle her for the snide comment.

And at long last, there was an afternoon late in November when their snake companions hissed with excitement, and their own steps quickened, and they caught the scent and sound of it before they got to it.

The scent and sound of the most imposing river in the world.

They reached it at sunset, at the place where the Rio Madeira (itself a river two-thirds as long as the Nile) flowed into the waters of its mother.

The snakes stopped their hissing. The humans’ breaths caught in their throat.

For there at long last before them, glistening and gleaming silver and gold in the fading daylight was the mighty Amazon.

Home