Trouble in Paradise

--a *Harry Potter* fanfic by AngieJ (also known as Ebony Elizabeth)

DISCLAIMER: No magical creatures were harmed during the writing, proofing and posting of this fic... oops, wrong disclaimer... J.K. Rowling owns everything and everyone you recognize, except Cassie and Simon, who own themselves. :-)

Trouble In Paradise

Chapter Eleven – Serpentine Fire

"Going to tell a story

morning glory

all about the serpentine fire

Surely as life’s begun

you will as one

battle with the serpentine fire..."

--Earth, Wind, and Fire

It wasn’t the end of the world.

At least, not right away it wasn’t.

The sun went on rising and setting without turning into blood. The stars appeared at night and traveled their courses without falling out of the sky. The moon still traveled through all its mysterious phases with no sign of darkening. No demons were evicted from an abyss. Neither famine nor pestilence nor war immediately followed that eventful third day of April in 2009.

Life went on for the rest of us as it always had.

At least, at first it did.

There was news, of course, of what had ensued in the weeks after the Summit (as I’d termed the event in my mind). Ron had moved completely out of the house in Chelsea, splitting his time between his luxury suite in Liverpool and his and Mo’s love-nest in Canada. There was a considerable amount of tutting behind closed Weasley doors over his supposed shamelessness, but there wasn’t much that could be done.

When I ran into Janet MacCullough one day in Hogsmeade (she was visiting with a colleague who had attended Hogwarts for a Quidditch game) she said that the Professor was giving Professors Black and Lupin an unusually wide berth, so that even the youngest Dumbledore students knew that something was wrong. Reading between the lines of what she said, I gathered that some of the more astute telepathic ones might have known quite a bit more than that... Janet included.

Hermione was nowhere to be found. The unspoken assumption was that she’d gone to her parents... according to Fred, the Grangers had promptly gone on holiday the day after the Summit. Their whereabouts were unknown. One couldn’t blame Hermione for wanting to be as scarce as possible.

So at first the greatest tragedy seemed to be the end of a marriage that we all thought would last forever and a day... and the end of a friendship everyone thought would last even longer than that.

No one outside of our immediate circle knew of what had happened. This was because none of us really talked about it. Some things are beyond words... there is no language but a cry to express them. Since none of us talked about it, and neither Ron nor Hermione filed for divorce with the Ministry at that juncture, the press did not get wind of the matter.

I didn’t have time to worry about it much. For better or for worse, the march of days goes on, and a witch must keep her head even when those all about her are losing theirs.

That spring, I found much to keep me occupied... and made it a point to dwell on what had happened between Ron, Hermione, Mo, and Harry as little as possible.

My mother came for a long-promised visit in mid-April. She’d sold her London home the year before, but didn’t seem to mind taking up residence in our spare room.

Fred, however, did mind, as he expressly told me several times before we invited her. He had this way of waiting until I was in an excellent mood before bringing it up, in order to catch me at my "best moment."

"Angel," he began, pulling me into his arms as I slid under the covers beside him, "I know your mother needs a place to stay and trust me, I would love to have her here, but I'm afraid it'll cut down on private time between you and me."

"We have a five year old running around. We don't have private time now," I reminded him, resting my head against his chest sleepily.

"Angel," he whined.

"Freddikins," I whined right back. We both laughed. "Fred, what's the real reason you don't want my mother to come?"

"I'm outnumbered three to one," he said in a little voice. It took me a moment to understand what he was talking about, but then I laughed again, so hard that I fell back into my pillows. "It's not funny! The bathrooms are already overrun with all of your... girl... stuff!" I wiped the tears from my eyes, still giggling.

"Oh, Fred, I love you, I really do." He smiled uneasily as he rested his head on my shoulder.

His smile broadened as he reached out a hand and traced his thumb along my cheek. Then he moved his hand and rested it on my abdomen.

"Maybe these two will even the score a little," he said with a smile.

I opened my mouth a few times, no sound coming out. How did he know? I had tried to bring myself to tell him so many times, but never quite got around to it. I couldn’t really blame my silence on the recent upheaval. I had known that as soon as he found out, I would be in virtual lockdown. Fred Weasley was not a rational man when it came to my health. While his intentions were sweet, it got rather annoying when he practically wanted me to spend my entire pregnancy in bed.

"While you struggle for words, I'll tell you how I found out. Yesterday, the bill came in for our Gringottscard."

"Oh, bollocks, I meant to check the mail before you."

"I saw on the statement that there were a few extra charges to the Granger-Longbottom Clinic, and for more than just your physical therapy. I was worried..."

"....about the money..."

"...about you, so I went to check it out. I got there and Neville congratulated me. He also made a lewd remark I would never repeat in a dark pub, but that's irrelevant. I got him to tell me loads about your pregnancy without letting on that I knew nothing of it." I let my lashes drop to my cheeks in shame. "You're not the only detective in this family."

"I've been meaning to tell you, Fred. I really have."

"I know you have."

I chose my words carefully. "So you're not angry with me for keeping it from you, then?" He shook his head.

"I took a look at what's happening to the couples around us... Ron and Hermione broke apart because they couldn't be honest about how they really felt and what they needed from one another. Anything between Harry and Hermione is destroyed for the same reason. Harry and Ron haven't spoken since that day and they're best friends! Ginny and Malfoy... well, let's just say they're the only people who see their own relationship as 'functional.' George and Anya... well, I suppose nothing in there is really their fault. She was gone for all that time..."

"Do you know what happened to her?" I asked gently. I'd been curious since the moment she reappeared, but didn't ask a word, out of courtesy. Fred shook his head and drew me close, spooning me.

"No, she hasn't even told George. She won't talk about it... but the point is that life is too short to hold grudges over petty things, Angel. All that matters now is that I know about those babies, and that you’re all right." He kissed me. "I’m so glad about it, love."

"I am too. More than you could ever know. So Mum can stay then?" I said as Fred's eyes droopily began to close and he brought me closer into his embrace.

"Flibbertigibbet," he muttered sleepily against the linen of my nightgown.

I took that as a yes.

**********

By the time Mum arrived from Jamaica, all of Fred’s mock-objections had melted away like sugarquills left on the shelf too long. He and Malinda both were overjoyed to have her with us. Even after Mother had settled in, she seemed a bit nervous about intruding upon our privacy.

"Are you sure you and Fred don't mind me being here?"

"Oh, Mum," I laughed. "Really, the pleasure is all ours. Why don't you come shopping with Alicia, Anya and I? We were planning on stopping by Dob and Wink's."

Dob and Wink’s is a magical emporium, opened by a married house-elf couple the year after the war. In fact, their start-up capital was the reward the International Confederation of Wizards offered them for meritorious service on the House-Elf Liberation Front. (The Confeds gave boons of thank-you gold to just about everyone who found themselves on the front lines of VW2, which is the reason why they are now over three trillion Galleons in debt--although Lee always says the real reason is because the Secretary-General is a supply sider from the U.S. Department of Magic.)

The concept of one-stop shopping for witches and wizards caught on slowly in England, but when Dob and Wink’s opened its first stateside stores in Massachusetts and Louisiana five years ago, the concept spread like unchecked chitzpurflitis in a wand shop. Now one hears older magical folk who are expatriates from the States muttering about "a Dob and Wink’s on every corner--whatever happened to the mom-and-pop establishments in your friendly neighborhood wizarding shopping district?" This is why on any given Saturday from April to October, Diagon Alley is now overrun with American tourists who "ooh" and "ah" over the quaintness of it all... and why most of us Brits consequently avoid Diagon Alley on those days like the plague.

Since the old guard’s protests against Dob and Wink’s first Diagon Alley store ended in one extremist bringing in a Norwegian Ridgeback to torch the place in late 2005, Draco Malfoy invited the corporation to build in his Emerald City. After all, one of the proprietors had formerly been associated with his family in the years before the water. Thus was another black mark against Draco scored in the minds of the traditionalists. Although in the end, I had a feeling that my future brother-in-law would win the showdown.

By the time Malinda was ready for Hogwarts, I wouldn’t have to go from store to store in Diagon Alley, paying whatever ridiculous prices the proprietors demanded. I could go straight to Dob and Wink’s and buy everything she needed under one roof.

"Sacrilege," Alicia said, when she arrived a few minutes after Anya and we were on our way out the door. "Diagon Alley’s been flourishing for millennia. However could two little house-elves bring the foremost wizarding shopping district in the world to its knees?"

"You’ve never been to a Dob and Wink’s, have you?" I grinned. Alicia shook her head, muttering about being far too busy with Quidditch.

Mum grinned as well. "The one in Kingston gets more than its fair share of my gold. How I wish they had been around when I was raising children... and I daresay your mother-in-law feels much the same, ‘Lina."

I shook my head. "Oh, Molly’s satisfied with Diagon Alley. She’s done well enough by her family for over forty years by going there... and she doesn’t trust anything that’s wholeheartedly endorsed by Draco Malfoy."

"I don’t understand why everyone is so down on that poor boy," Mum said, shaking her head. "I met his father once during the war, at a conference, and he and his mother were along... I could tell at once that she wasn’t what Lucius was, and that the part of her in her son would end up being his salvation."

Alicia snorted. "Oh, come on, Mrs. Johnson! The wizard has great PR, but underneath it all Draco is still Lucius Malfoy’s insufferable, blueblooded brat. The same little snot who used to cheat at Quidditch and curse kids in the corridors when their backs were turned. Personally, I think Ginny Weasley is a fool."

"Whoever says love makes one sensible?" Anya asked in her quiet way. Once again, I realized with a pang how much I must have missed by not befriending her during our school days.

"I do," Alicia replied. "The problem with witches is that they go into situations with both eyes closed. And then they wonder why wizards come in, take whatever they want from them, and leave..." She trailed off, shaking her head wildly. The Spinnets were divorced when my friend was a small child... which just may be the source of Alicia’s commitment-phobia and highly individualistic outlook on life.

Mum laid a caressing hand on Alicia’s brown hair.

"Someday you’ll have more sense, girl."

So we set off for the Emerald City, Apparating to the Narcissus Tower and using the portal. Dob and Wink’s was spread over a sprawling plot of land directly opposite the portal exit. Broomsticks zoomed towards it so thickly that with long straw-tails and flying robes, they appeared from the ground as overlarge beezerkers.

"I thought that the pro-Diagon Alley faction in the Ministry declared Dob and Wink’s an illegal establishment, and forbade them an operating license," Alicia remarked idly as we walked the winding yellow brick path to the entrance. "I’m surprised a swarm of Ministry officials haven’t come to shut them down."

I scoffed at that notion. "Why would they? I have no way of knowing for sure, but from what I’ve gathered from colleagues, Draco likely pays more Galleons’ worth of bribes in any given year to the Ministry than I’ve ever made in my life. And besides, everyone suspects that the actual Emerald City isn’t really located in England... he’s made it unplottable, but if it really is in the States, the Ministry can’t touch him."

"Slimy git," Alicia muttered. "He hasn’t changed all that much. Mark my words, Ginny Weasley will rue the day she changed her last name to Malfoy. Old Lucius must be spinning in his grave... that is, if this marriage doesn’t make him rise out of it."

Alicia’s ominous predictions were stopped by our arrival at the threshold of Dob and Wink’s. There were no windows at all, but two house-elves outfitted in cloth-of-gold tunics opened twin wooden doors, grinning and welcoming us... and we stepped inside.

The inside of a Dob and Wink’s is a total assault on the bargain hunter’s senses. From the warehouse-like eaves hung freshly painted wooden signs indicating various departments. Apparel—Teenage Witches. Menagerie. Quidditch and Broomcare. Apothecary. WWN Music Boxes. Amulets and Charms.

Alicia’s mouth had dropped open. "I’ll never set foot in Diagon Alley again."

We all laughed.

As we made our way through the front entrance, we were accosted at once by a middle-aged witch pushing a cart.

"Fried pumpkin slices, dears? Bulstrode Foods’ latest product... a nutritious snack for children... and here’s a coupon for twenty percent off, if you like..."

She wasn’t the only one who was offering free samples that Saturday morning. Nearly a dozen new products were pitched to us before we finally made it past the entrance and into the store. Once fully inside, we all split up... Anya and Alicia were off to the Quidditch and Broomcare Department to price new brooms for Anya, while Mum and I wanted to pick up a few grocery items for my home. Before we rejoined the others, Mum insisted on looking in the toy department for a trinket despite my protests. And there were all kinds... miniature Hogwarts Express train sets, kid-sized cauldrons, even the grow your own warts kits I remembered from my own childhood.

"Hush, girl, let Malinda’s grandmother spoil her," she laughed, looking at the Quidditch action figurines and picking up the latest Ron Weasley doll, outfitted in golden Liverpool Lions robes. "Unlike my grandmother, I know how to treat my grandchildren."

I laughed, then sighed. "Oh, Mummy, I wish you’d consider moving back to England permanently. Grandmother Lavinia..."

"...needs me more than she lets on," finished Mum. "I know you and Fred despise her, but she’s all the mother I’ve ever known."

"She’s also an incredibly evil woman, Mum, and you know that. How can you excuse her involvement in the last war? How can you excuse what she’s doing now with the Cabalistica?" My mother’s mouth dropped open. "Diane all but told me about their last meeting in Egypt. How can you just sit by and..."

Mum shushed me. "‘Lina, I’m not like you. You are your father’s child... all spirit and fire and dew. You’ve always faced trouble head-on, running into a situation with guns blazing. I’m not like that. But just because you don’t see my fight, dear love," here she laid a hand on my shoulder, "doesn’t mean that your mother does not fight."

"Perhaps not, Mum, but what happens when Grandmother finally dies and Diane tries to snatch the Matronship from you?"

"Di isn’t what you think she is," my mother said, a bit harshly. "You and Di are as different as night and day... but when all is said and done, she is not the child of the Society... she is the daughter of Mark Johnson. Perhaps not his reincarnation as you seem to be," she winked at me, "but she was ten years old when he died. While you can barely remember him and he never saw Liv, Di’s memories of her father are clear as Veritaserum. In the end, those memories will help save her."

As Mum turned away to examine the new Quidditch Pitch for the ALL YOU CAN BE doll collection, I recalled the conversation I’d had the month before at the Prophet with Diane. My mother’s words encouraged me somewhat. I hadn’t quite got over the chill of learning just how deep into the shadowy Dark Arts worldwide movement my sister was...

Someone was staring at me. I looked up into a pair of pale blue eyes. They belonged to the black-haired witch who had been bartending at Draco and Ginny’s engagement bash. She was pushing a snack cart--and the moment our eyes met, her lips curled into a smirk.

"You!" I hissed angrily.

"I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about," the woman drawled. Her accent was thick--Australian. "Perhaps I remind you of someone you think you know?"

"Perhaps I ought to alert the MLE about your presence..."

"Kitty," my mother said suddenly. In my shock over seeing the mysterious bartender again, I’d almost forgotten she was with me. "What a pleasant surprise."

The witch nodded. "Linda," she said with a cordial nod. "It’s been ages since last we met. Sydney last year, isn’t that right?"

"Yes, I think so. The Australian delegation sponsored a marvelous affair. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously. And how are all the O’Rourkes?"

"Well, thanks." Kitty O’Rourke’s icy gaze flickered back on me again, and she lowered her voice. "I wish the same could be said about your family. Such a daughter as you have... forsaking the Great Society’s leading bloodlines to mix with the rabble. You have universal sympathy among our kind, Linda."

"You’ll have warty green lips and a purple pickle for a nose if you keep on yammering about my husband’s..."

My mother raised her hand in a gesture of peace. "Kitty, my daughter’s choices do not make her any less my daughter. Please relay that message to anyone concerned about my supposed humiliation."

Kitty nodded again. "Aye, Linda, you know I will. And after all, your daughters Diane and Olivia more than make up for this one. Two out of three isn’t bad."

I lunged for Kitty’s neck, but my mother’s firm grip on my wrist stopped me.

"Opinions are like wands--every wizard and witch worth their salt has one," said Mum quietly. "Good day to you, Kitty."

The minute Kitty pushed her cart out of sight, I rounded on my mother furiously. I was so angry with her that afterwards I never could quite recall everything I said. I do know I told her that Kitty was almost certainly the woman who’d tried to poison Mo, Hermione, myself, and goodness knows who else more than once.

"She may have even been in the Leaky Cauldron that day in January when Hermione was poisoned... she’s a murderess, Mum, and you’re just letting her walk away as if nothing is out of the ordinary..."

"Let me take care of Kitty," my mother said. "As I told you before, your choices don’t make you any less my daughter. What she says will not affect how much I love you."

My blood boiled.

"This isn’t about pride or families or love or daughters. This is about the fact that a woman who has attempted murder on my ownfamily is walking away without so much as a--"

"Have you any proof?" my mother asked calmly.

"Proof?" I sputtered. "How about my own two eyes, Mother?"

"Plus the two in the back of your head, Weasley," a voice said from behind me. I turned to see Alicia with a broom in her hand, standing next to Anya. "What did we miss?" I looked at mother, whose face was still calm with indifference. It only reinforced the belief that I got all of my emotion from my father.

"Nothing," I said, forcing a smile.

"You two found a broom, then?" my mother said with a smile. Alicia nodded, but Anya looked a little unsure.

"Top of the line. Fastest broomstick on the market," Alicia said proudly, as though she’d created it herself. It was a Starline 3000, with a maple shaft and redwood twigs. "Starline 3000" was emblazoned in shimmering gold ink near the handle. A Quidditch broom, for sure. "This baby can get up to 260 kilometers an hour and brake to a dead stop in three and a half seconds. Even the Cannons can’t lose with these."

"I really don’t need such a fancy broom," Anya protested. "I just need to be able to get around." She didn’t look meek or mild in Alicia’s presence, the way she always had at Hogwarts and in the years immediately following. I was surprised to see they were getting on quite nicely.

"Nonsense, Anya. What was the last broom you had? A sputtering Cloudrunner 320? It’s about time you know what a real broom rides like." She held the broom out at arm’s length and admired it.

"That was five years ago," Anya reminded her quietly. There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. Five years had been quite some time for us, but it must have been an eternity to Anya… wherever she had been.

"Anya’s not a Quidditch player," my mum reminded Alicia. "No need for all the outrageous bells and whistles you so love."

"That’s the problem with today’s society. Witches and wizards just don’t hold the same pride in the broomsticks as they used to. You’d think they were just these meaningless pieces of wood used to get from place to place. Now I’m not all for the wizards-are-superior angle, but flying is one thing we can do and they can’t."

"Some of us, anyhow," I murmured. Merlin, I missed flying. I met Alicia’s eyes and she looked stricken.

"Oh, that was so heartless, Ange. I’m sorry," she said. Before I could reply, I felt a small, soft object slam into my feet, almost knocking me over. I looked down in surprise to see a house-elf standing at my feet, brushing off the oversized apron she was wearing.

"I is sorry, miss," she said quickly. "I is not meaning to run into you, miss, but I is rather clumsy. Many apologies, miss." She bowed before me, almost dropping the washcloth she was wearing as a hat.

"It’s all right," I said, suppressing a giggle. One would think that house-elves would learn to dress properly, but I suppose some things would never changed. The house-elf at my feet was older than the average working house-elf, but still quite energetic. Something about her was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

"I is coming over here to see you. You all is gone from Hogwarts, isn’t that so, miss?" We all nodded slowly, not quite sure what to make of the little creature. She squealed and clapped her hands. "Oh, it is you then!" Alicia and I exchanged a look.

"I is Winky!"

"Winky!" Anya laughed. Winky's big eyes filled with tears and she threw both arms around Anya's legs, almost knocking her over. Alicia caught her arm and stabled her. "It's good to see you, too, Winky."

"Oh, you is Anya. You was sometimes sneaking down to the kitchens with the red haired boys. Not as many as these... two." Winky seemed confused as she looked between Alicia and me. "Where is your other? You is not lost your Bell, have you?" Her eyes filled with tears again. "Oh, I is so sorry. Bad Winky!"

"It's okay, Winky," Alicia said. "You didn't know." She patted the top of Winky's head awkwardly. Winky wiped her nose on the bottom of Alicia's robes and I had to jam my fist in my mouth so I didn't laugh aloud at her expression.

"You is Alicia," Winky said matter-of-factly. "You was always with the red haired boys and black haired boy. Always so loud." Alicia roared with laughter at this; Winky had remembered her perfectly. "And you is Angelina," she said, rounding on me. "You is always with the loud red haired boy. There was two loud ones, but one was a bit quieter. The loud one liked you lots."

"I should say so," my mother put in, "as they're now married." We all laughed, as Winky's eyes got big.

"Miss Winky, ma’am!" a voice called from the back of the store. "We is needing you to sign for a parcel..."

"I must be going," Winky said quickly. "Enjoy the day!" With this, she scampered off and out of sight.

"That was weird," Alicia said flatly. "I was always under the impression house-elves lived short lives, but if she was a house-elf at Hogwarts…"

"The life span of the average house-elf is a longer than Muggles, but not quite as long as witches or wizards," Anya spoke up. They're far healthier than we are, though, because of their-" she broke off, blushing a little. "Sorry, I got a little carried away."

"No problem, Professor," Alicia said under her breath. Anya shrugged it off, turning to look at a Skeedoodle. "Do you think the boys are back yet?" I shrugged. Fred had left early that morning, telling me that he, his twin and Lee were all going out to reacquaint themselves with their bonds of friendship, which really meant they were going to find an abandoned field and practice really dangerous Quidditch maneuvers.

"Most likely. Wonder how many broken bones this time," I mused. Anya and my mother wore identical masks of horror. "Well, if he wants to throw himself off his broomstick doing some sort of exploit, I'm not his mother and I won't stop him."

"If Lee tries something stupid without a Cushioning Charm on his broom..." Alicia began. "Well, I certainly won't deal with faulty equipment." I had a feeling that the faulty equipment in question had nothing to do with Lee's Starline 2600. Anya looked as though she was fighting down giggles and my mother just shook her head.

"Vulgar women, the lot of you," she said, throwing up her hands. It was amazing how much more animated my mother became when not under my Grandmother Lavinia's thumb. I loved her so much more this way.

"Maybe we ought to beat them home… have some sort of surprise waiting for them," Alicia said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. Other surprises in the past had included taking the Cushioning Charm off Fred's broom just before a match in third year (he never really forgave me for that), bewitching Lee's dreadlocks to dance every time someone mentioned toads and Stitch-charming the neck opening of all George’s robes shut.

"Surprise?" Anya asked innocently. Alicia roared with laughter and threw a lanky arm over her new friend's shoulders.

"I am going to love corrupting you." This time, Anya did look uneasy, but at the same time a little excited. The two turned to leave and my mother squeezed my arm before following.

I moved to follow, but felt a chill run up my spine. It was almost as though someone was watching me with an icy glare. I turned and looked over my shoulder to see Kitty leaning nonchalantly against a broomstick display, eyes boring into mine. Soon, they were narrowed into slits. I took a step forward - I was too damn old to listen to my mother - but then stopped. Now wasn't the time. I wouldn't give the ghoul the satisfaction.

I turned on my heel and walked out.

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

We arrived back at my home, laden with all sorts of miscellaneous things I should have had cleaned up in the past week. Alicia plucked a jumper of Malinda's off the couch and plopped herself lazily onto the soft cushions. Anya was far too entranced in her new broom to notice anything. My mother, on the other hand, was horrified.

"Angelina Ifeyani! What have I raised you to be?"

"Chill, Mrs. Johnson. It's not your fault your daughter married the most disorganized wizard on the planet," Alicia said with a laugh. She mused for a moment. "Although Lee does give him a run for his money."

"George couldn't find his hat under all the mess at his flat," Anya said, finally looking up from her broom. "Really, it's awful. It's all I can do not to straighten up. He won't let me lift a finger; it's actually really frustrating."

"I would love it if Fred never let me lift a finger," I giggled, falling onto the couch next to Alicia. My mother crossed my living room and walked into the kitchen.

"Are you ladies thirsty or hungry?" she called.

"Both!" Alicia chirped.

"A little hungry, Mum," I called. Anya stood and headed for the kitchen slowly.

"I'll have something to drink... but let me help you, Mrs. Johnson." It was with those words that I heard loud male laughter just outside the door.

Suddenly, I was being pulled into the kitchen by Alicia, who was giggling and hopping about as if she'd just been stung by a Billywig. She extinguished all the lights in the house, but I could see a bit from the light through the window. Anya, Alicia and I were all sitting on the ground and my mother was at the sink. Anya looked startled, Alicia excited and my mother just a bit confused.

"What on earth?" asked Anya incredulously, right before Alicia clapped her hand over her mouth.

I raised a finger to my lips, trying to stifle my own giggles. "Shh! They’ll hear us…" I whispered.

My mother was shaking her head. "You two… after all these years…"

"Mum!" I pleaded. "Please… just hush for a minute so that…"

After that, there was no time to say anything else. The front door opened with a creak, and the loud masculine voices resounded throughout the foyer.

The first voice I heard was that of my little daughter. "Daddy, Daddy, can I take my new ‘Catch the Clabbert’ game up to my room and play?"

She squealed, then giggled—I assume either her father, uncle, or Lee had picked her up and tossed her.

"Certainly," said Fred. "Make sure you figure out how to do the touch-lighting well, and be quick at it, because you’re going to have to play me before the day’s out."

"But I always beat you, Daddy," said Malinda matter-of-factly. "Uncle George and Mummy are way smarter than you are."

Apparently Lee and George were the ones roaring with laughter, for over their merriment I heard my husband say, "Right then, poppet… why don’t you go on upstairs and check it out?"

Lee recovered first. "Ah, fatherhood. Got to love it."

"Yeah, that’s why you have a parcel of kids," said Fred.

"That’s the best part of being an uncle," George sighed. "I can have all the fun of having nieces and nephews, but when they start whining, I can send then home to Mom and Dad."

"Aw, the two of you have shrivelfigs for stones," was Fred’s comment. "It takes a special sort of wizard to become a father… requires both art and finesse that neither of you two obliviated gits have."

"And you’re specially qualified to be a parent because…?" asked Lee. I looked at Alicia and winked. Whenever Lee Jordan used that tone of voice, he usually had this one-of-a-kind look on his face that involved crinkling his thick eyebrows together so that they looked like two furry caterpillars meeting headlong for a snog.

"Because I’m the leader," said Fred matter-of-factly, which set the other two off again. "No, seriously, I am. I was married first, I had the kid first…"

"You’re gonna die first," chimed in Lee.

"I’m going to d… ha, ha. Very funny. Just wait, Jordan. Your day is coming. One of these days, you’re going to wake up, and Alicia’ll have you Spellotaped from head to toe…"

George began to laugh then. No one can laugh quite like George Weasley can. He sounds like a cross between a hyena and a Fwooper with a bad head cold.

"…and all she’ll have to do is roll you down the aisle to the altar," my husband finished with a flourish.

"Sort of like the way Ange did you, right?" said Lee.

"Nah, in her case it was a dead powerful Love Potion… before I knew what hit me, I was being fitted for formal robes and looking at honeymoon packages…"

The men laughed again. In the kitchen, Alicia, Anya, Mum, and I exchanged looks as I folded my arms, stifling the urge to rush into the front room and set him straight once and for all.

"At least she didn’t Enthrall you the way Anya’s doing to George," Lee said.

Anya’s mouth dropped open. Alicia’s eyes narrowed as she mouthed, "He’s going to get a piece of my mind this evening." Again, I was glad to see that Alicia and Anya were taking to each other so quickly.

A loud scuffling noise diverted our attention back to the living room. There were grunts, groans, and then came Fred’s voice saying, "George, geroff!"

"Take that back!" said George, panting.

"Whatever is the matter with you today?" Lee asked. He seemed a bit breathless as well.

"Plenty. Have I ever, in all the years we’ve known each other, in the decade since you’ve been with Alicia, ever said anything even remotely like that about your girl?"

"George, I just…"

"You just what? Just think that I’m going to stand here and let you call my witch a whore?"

I glanced over at Anya. She’d turned beet red.

Now here came Fred’s voice again, attempting to play the mediator. "George, Lee didn’t mean anything by it, all right? He was only joking."

"Some jokes are in poor taste," snapped George. He still sounded as if all the wind had been knocked out of him. "Certain things are best left unsaid!"

"George, calm down," said Fred. "You’re acting as if someone slipped Alihotsy Extract into your pumpkin juice…"

"Don’t you tell me to be calm! Imagine if someone had called Alicia or Angelina a whore of the worst sort… imagine how you’d both feel."

"Okay, imagining," Lee said. "Not empathizing. Sorry."

Alicia’s lips mouthed to us, "That’s it. He is definitely sleeping on the sofa tonight."

But now George was continuing. "Anya Parker is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Every day that I wake up and see her sleeping snuggled up next to me, I thank Merlin and every star in the sky that for some odd reason it was me she chose. Me. And she loves me… in her eyes, I’m second to none.

"Remember back at Hogwarts, the girls who were brave enough to crush on us Jesters? Either they went for you, Lee—the exotic one with the pet who matched your hair—or they went for Fred, the louder twin. The twin who spoke first, partied hardest, and laughed loudest. Oh, sure, a few went for me after Fred was taken… Katie being among them."

Lee voiced my thoughts. "Come on, George. I’m sure Katie…"

"Katie grew to love me. But sweet as she was, Katie’s first stirrings of interest were directed at Fred. It was only after Fred started teasing the life out of Angelina in the fifth year that Katie backed off." Dead silence. "As long as we’re being honest, might as well be completely honest. Back then, we both looked exactly alike. Which twin would you have gone for, if you were a witch?"

"George," Anya whispered, under her breath and next to my ear. "No contest. None at all."

"In your dreams, love," I whispered back, low, winking at her.

"The past, all in the past," said Fred. "The question is, what are you going to do about Anya?"

"What am I going to do about her?" George’s tone of voice revealed what he thought of that question. "I’m going to take care of her, protect her, love her, marry her if she’ll have me… and then perhaps I’ll see what this fatherhood business is all about."

Anya’s mouth was wide open.

"But you’re…" began Lee with a gulp, "…you’re… you like wizards, too. Surely you’re not going to expect Anya to perform a temporary Pseudophallus Hex on herself every time you get the urge to…"

More scuffling. I shook my head. Anya was still glowing. At my mother’s look of horror, Alicia shrugged and whispered, "This is getting old fast."

Lee spoke first this time. "I see the woman’s shagged your sense of humor away. But Presh--you remember him, don’t you?--had a valid point. What’s going to happen the next time some winsome wizard showers you with his charm?"

"Same thing that happens when all those hot lady Quidditch players walk past you naked when you interview in the locker rooms, Jordan. Nothing."

"George, old boy, for the first time in his roguish life I think Jordan may have actually stumbled upon a valid point," Fred said to his brother. "You’ve not been in any relationship longer than a few years. He’s been with Alicia for nearly twelve years, and Angelina and I have been married for eight and together for going on fifteen. You are going to be tempted. And because you are attracted to both, you’re going to have double the temptation. What then?"

"Then I’ll do something that neither of you so-called ‘straight’ wizards managed to do every single time the opportunity presented itself… I’ll remember my love, and what she means to me, and how much I treasure her happiness."

"But she’s so… George, does she have any other interests besides you?" asked Lee. "All I can remember of her from the past is that at Hogwarts, she was always mooning over you but trying desperately to hide it, and then after the war she went to work for you two at your Hogsmeade store so she could pine after you some more. Don’t you want a witch who has a life of her own?"

"Anya isn’t that pitiful, Lee," Fred said, ending the ensuing tense silence. "She was the best store manager we ever had at any 3W outlet. She has a green thumb… always kept the window boxes up at Hogsmeade looking spiffy… George always said she could just look at things and make them grow. And I don’t think the girl’s ever met an animal she didn’t like… of all the people I know of, only Charlie and Liz are as good with magical creatures as she is…"

"Harry’s pretty good with them too," George murmured.

"Oh, Harry’s the exception to every rule, he’s good at just about everything," replied Fred dismissively. "He doesn’t count. The point I was making is that Anya’s a wonderful witch, and one of the sweetest creatures I’ve ever met. She may not be anything like our women, Lee, but she’s all right for George if that’s what he wants."

"She’s all I want," said George.

And here I began wondering if Anya’s face was going to stay ruby red forever.

"What do you see in her?" asked Lee, persisting.

I’m sure Fred thought the question as inappropriate as I did. "What does anyone see in anyone else?"

"That’s all right, Fred," George said with a laugh. "I can talk about Anya all day. In fact, if I were to stand here and list all the reasons why I love her, we’d be here until the last night of the world. But if that last night were to come tonight, I wouldn’t mind… as long as she was with me."

"Yeah, he’s got it bad," Lee said. "Forgive me, old friend. I had no idea."

"I didn’t either, until I saw him in the hospital with her," Fred said. "The way he watched over her… it was obvious to me that she was the one."

George laughed. "Thought you knew way before then, Fred."

"No, I only knew it for sure recently. I suspected years ago, of course."

Lee groaned. "Ah, the psychic twin link. I get it. So, George, what are you going to do? Wait a while?"

"Why? I’ve had this…" he paused for effect while in the kitchen we all gasped, "…since the day after I brought her home from the hospital. I know she’s not expecting it at all. She never expected anything from me other than maybe a ride home… she doesn’t think much of herself. She doesn’t know how wonderful she is. She doesn’t know…"

"She knows now!" exclaimed Alicia, swinging open the kitchen door. "Lumos!"

Everyone stood frozen for a moment. The men stared at us while we looked at them.

Everyone, that is, save Anya. Tears were streaming down her face. From head to toe, she was trembling as if her very soul was a harpstring and George had played precisely the right note.

Without another word, she ran into his arms.

Sometimes fairy tales, long after happily ever has faded into distant past, end with sadness and regret. Ron and Hermione were a case in point… it was only then, watching George and Anya embrace, then kiss as if each other’s lips were sustenance and life, that I realized how upset I’d been over Fred’s younger brother, his wife, their best friend, and the mess they’d made of their own lives.

Yet there are times when Rapunzel really is rescued from her lonely tower.

Once in a blue moon, a gallant prince really does present Cinderella with an enchanted glass slipper.

And once in a lifetime, Sleeping Beauty is awakened from eternal repose with love’s first kiss at long last.

This was one of those times.

For the first time in months, my heart had been privileged to witness a new love, pure and sweet... and I was glad.

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

Early the following morning, I kissed my sleeping husband, shook off my drowsiness and headed off to the Prophet. As always, the newsroom was abuzz with some sort of new breaking story that would line tomorrow’s Augurey cages. For a moment, I was worried. Had what happened at the Summit gotten out? Did the world now know of Ron’s affair and the broken Covenant?

Hiding my anxiety, I nonchalantly leaned against Tirzah’s desk and listened to the gossip for a few moments.

"—really about seven! I can’t believe no one’s looking into them!" Tirzah was saying to Colin.

"I’m sure there are Ministry wizards out looking for the missing people," Colin replied.

A laugh and then, "Oh, you are so naïve, Creevey! Have you seen the list? They’re all no-names. They are nobodies as far as the Ministry is concerned."

I stepped away from the desk, caught between relief and a sickening sort of anxiousness. The relief was for the Weasley family, all included. In some ways, the more time between Ron and Hermione’s marriage dissolution and the time the press had their field day, the better. The family could get used to the idea on a personal level, before being attacked and harassed by the press. On the other hand, it was better to get everything over with as quickly as possible; dragging out the whole ordeal would only cause deeper emotional wounds.

I wondered how long the façade was going to continue.

"Morning, sunshine!" a familiar voice called. I scowled as I recognized it.

Rachel Ratliff waved to me with long, red-painted fingernails and hugged me before I had a chance to cringe in disgust.

"You’re looking very lovely this morning," she said, voice dripping with false sincerity. "Some witches may be a little embarrassed about their figure, but I must say you carry your weight very well." I resisted the urge to tear off each one of those ever-so-lovely fingernails and shove them down her throat. Before I could let the inclination turn to action, she began to speak again. "I wanted to ask a wee bit of a favor from you, love—" (Hah!) "Since it’s been ever so quiet on the Weasley marriage – by that I mean the Red Weasel and his enchanting wife – I was wondering if perhaps you might want to, oh, you know, throw me a bit of information. Prophet exclusive. I’ll make sure you would look really good," she promised hastily.

The last time she promised she would make someone "look good," the poor young witch had been not only portrayed as a vindictive beast, but had to go into two months of marriage counseling with her husband because of all the vicious rumors Ratliff spread.

"No, thank you, Rachel. You know what I think of your articles and empty promises. If you’d like the ‘scoop’ on my brother-in-law and his wife, then you ought to ask them yourself." Never mind that I hadn’t seen Hermione since the Summit and Ron was keeping himself constantly busy and neither of them would dream of speaking to Ratliff, no matter how much it would hurt the other. For in the end of all of her writings, everyone was a villain and she was the whistle-blowing genius whose duty it was to expose the world’s injustices.

Without another word, I brushed past her and crossed the room to sit at my desk. For a moment, I missed the privacy of my office, but smiled at the picture of Fred, Malinda, and me perched on the corner of my desk near my inbox. I touched the frame tenderly.

"MRS. WEASLEY! Great wizards, have you heard?!" an excited voice called across the newsroom. For a moment, I looked around for my mother-in-law and then realized that I was the one being yelled at. I looked up from my parchment to see Danielle Walters, a young intern who’d just graduated from Hogwarts the year before, standing before my desk, clutching folders full of parchment to her chest.

"What is it, Danielle? It’s far too early in the morning to be shouting," I yawned again, wondering when I’d become so old.

"Have you heard the news?" she asked again, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Obviously, she wanted to turn this into some sort of guessing game. I sighed and rested my chin on my hand.

"No, I have not, but I’m sure you’ll tell me."

Danielle looked as though the Christmas holidays had come early as she plucked a sheet of parchment from her folder and lay on the desk before me.

It was simple copy sheet, yet to be edited (as I could tell from the absence of red ink). What first caught my interest was that the editor-in-chief, Cassandra Claire, wrote it herself. She was usually in charge of the stories that had global effect on the wizarding world, not the mere gossip that I had suspected. The next thing that caught my line was the title, neatly printed:

I gasped softly as I read the article.

I read on, hands trembling.

Beneath the article was a MMRI employee to owl and instructions on how to be eligible for partaking in the alpha group. My hands were still trembling as the parchment slipped through my fingers and fluttered with a whisper to my desk.

I would be able to fly again.

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

I waited in silence as Blaise Zabini waved a wand slowly across my abdomen, murmuring a soft incantation. The exam was almost over, and there was only one last thing to do... the casting of the bairn-revealing spell or MagiScan, which many Muggle-born witches inexplicably call an ultrasound. Sound has nothing to do with how magic helps us view our unborn.

"Fetus materialus!" he announced, and an image made up of sparkles formed in the air above me almost instantly.

"Twins," Anya stated the obvious, after a moment of awe. She had come along with me for her own check-up, and had just finished with Neville before joining me in Blaise's office. She had been waiting patiently in the chair near me, looking at the pictures on the wall with a dreamy smile. When the spell had been performed, she'd finally averted her gaze.

"Angelina, in just six months time, you are to be the mother of two very healthy baby boys," Blaise said with a smile. He rotated the image with his wand and I was reminded of the time Fred and I had come in to have Malinda's MagiScan done. I'd never seen Fred look so proud before in his life.

The image slowly faded and I sat up.

"I'd like to see you again in two weeks," Blaise said. I nodded. Next time, I would bring Fred.

I stood up and looked to Anya. She seemed interested in one particular picture of a group of silver-green lizards crawling up and down a tree.

"They're Mokes," she said thoughtfully, standing. "I used to have a whole family of them living in a tree in my backyard years ago. I never told anyone. A lot of wizards like to take their skin and make them into moneybags and the like. I always thought it was a terrible thing to do." She looked at the picture again, frowning as though trying to grasp onto some far away memory. Finally, she shook her head and smiled at me. "Ready to go then?"

"Of course. Are you sure you want to wait around during the physical therapy session? It's rather boring," I warned. Anya shrugged.

"If I go home, George is just going to make me lie in bed anyhow and bring me soup." We both laughed. If it was one thing the Weasley twins shared besides features, it was that they were both irrationally overprotective when it came to the health of their loved ones.

Anya opened the door for me. "Did you and Fred plan to have more children?" she asked idly as we started down the hallway passed other doctors and patients.

"Sort of," I replied, remembering Fred's words on New Year's Eve: How do you feel about giving Malinda a little sister or brother soon? We really hadn't had much time to discuss it, as Ron and Hermione broke out into a blazing row just seconds later.

Again, my thoughts were turned to Hermione, who no one had seen in weeks. I was terribly worried. She hadn't left the Burrow in what one could call a stable state of mind. After the horrible secrets that had been revealed, I wouldn't be surprised if she did something...

"Knut for your thoughts?" Anya asked gently, waving a hand in front of my face. I shook my head, driving the morbid thoughts out of my mind. Her eyebrows furrowed in concern. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Just a little worried about Hermione," I confessed. Anya's face changed from concern to pity.

"What Ron did to her was horrible," she said sadly, looking down at her feet as we walked. "Horrible" was an understatement and certainly not the first word to spring to my mind. "And Harry was just as wrong."

"They're men. Supposedly, they can't help themselves," I said skeptically. I knew damn well that they could help themselves just as much as women could. Men just happened to be self-serving bastards most of the time.

"That's so awful," she said in a low voice. We rounded the corner and into the lobby. Only three patients were waiting: one very pregnant blonde haired witch, holding what looked to be her husband's hand (but who knew nowadays?), a four year old girl who seemed to be by herself and a rather old wizard with a beard that might've rivaled Dumbledore's.

I watched as the old wizard stood impatiently and stormed over to the receptionist's desk.

"Has Dr. Granger made it in yet?" he asked edgily, banging a fist on the counter. The receptionist jumped, startled, and then sighed, removing her glittering glasses.

"I told you, Mr. Diggle; she's simply not available right now. I have offered to call Dr. Borowski in, but you insist upon waiting," the mediwitch assistant on duty replied, and then pursed her lips. "Dr. Granger is on emergency leave, sir. I'm very sorry, but perhaps we could reschedule with another doctor…"

"I don't want another doctor who's not familiar with my problem. I want Dr. Granger!" By now, the little girl in the corner was watching with wide eyes, and Neville, who'd appeared out of nowhere, approached the man.

"Mr. Diggle, is there a problem?" The man's face immediately softened and I felt a stab of pity. All he wanted was his doctor.

"This young whippersnapper won't let me see my doctor. Some nonsense about emergency leave," he said, adjusting his hat.

"I'm afraid Miss Gudgeon here is merely acting as she has been instructed. Dr. Granger is taking a long, well-deserved vacation. Now, Dr. Borowski is taking over her patients and is familiar with your particular problem," Neville reasoned. The man's shoulders slumped; the fight was drained from him.

"I just want to see my doctor." He looked and sounded very sad. "No matter how bad the aches and pains are in these old bones, she never fails to charm them away. And she always sez, ‘Why, there’s nothing really the matter with you, Mr. Diggle! We’ll give you a draught and a wand-tap, and you’ll be good as new!’ There’s no doctor quite like her."

Neville seemed annoyed at this. "Well, we’d like to think that all of the medical professionals at this clinic are competent and caring..."

"I didn’t say there was no one better," Mr. Diggle said tersely. "I said there wasn’t no one like her. That Dr. Granger is one of a kind. They don’t make ‘em like her..." here his voice broke. "These old bones have been around for more than a century, but she’s the best darn mediwitch I’ve ever had."

Neville laid a hand on his shoulder and the old man’s crystal blue eyes sparkled for a moment.

"I’m sorry. I wish she was here, but she isn’t. We have Dr. Susan Borowski visiting from the States, and she is one of Dr. Granger’s dearest friends. Would you like to see Dr. Borowski, or would you like to reschedule for another time?"

A long, rattling sigh. "I need another prescription for Pepper-Up Pills. I’ll see this Borowski girl, then."

Having settled the dispute, Neville smiled slightly over at us before steering the old man off down a corridor.

"I wonder if Hermione knows how many lives she affects," Anya mused beside me, again reminding me of her presence. Fred wasn't kidding on his birthday when he'd said she was the type to fade into the background. "Sorry, just thinking out loud," she apologized, blushing a little.

"It's all right," I laughed. Neville reappeared a few moments later, looking ruffled.

"Hermione deserves time off and everything -- she's been working like a house-elf for the past year and more-- but I don't think she knows how much we need her around here," he said, approaching us. I smirked, as he was echoing Anya's words just moments earlier.

"Did she tell you where she was going?" I asked. He shook his head.

"She owled at the beginning of the month and said she was taking a bit of a holiday," here he paused, "but we've not seen or heard from her in weeks. I'm getting worried about her."

"I'm sure she's off having the time of her life somewhere," I said quickly. Neville knew I was lying -- I could see it in his eyes -- but he didn't call me on it. For that, I was grateful.

"Have you picked up your application for Danae?" Neville asked brightly, effectively changing the subject. Was he kidding? The moment I'd finished reading the press release, I'd rushed to Paracelsus to get a copy. It was sitting completely filled out on my kitchen table.

"Yes, I filled it out last night," I answered. Neville's face took on a serious look.

"You do understand the risks and consequences involved, Angelina?" By this, I knew he was referring to my pregnancy. From what I understood, the risks were very minimal… but then again, so were the risks of miscarriage during a Polyjuice transformation.

"I know what the disclaimer and the fine print said… but Neville, isn't it worth having my flying abilities back? Even the Muggle version of the stereotypical witch has us on broomsticks. I've been without flight for over a decade -- I want my life back." The emotion in my voice startled even me.

"But at what cost?" Anya said quietly. "The Danae Project will still be there after you have your children. What's a few more months if it promises a little more safety?"

"Actually, Anya," Neville corrected, "There is going to be a two-year waiting period after the alpha trials. The staff in charge of the project wants to watch for side effects and other snags in the original design."

"Two years," I murmured. With the promise of returned skill, two years seemed like an eternity. But could I risk the lives of my unborn children? "I've got a lot to think about," I said, forcing a light smile. Fortunately, Neville didn't seem adamant on making the decision for me.

"All right, then. Ready for another fun-filled exam?" he said brightly. Anya giggled.

Flatly, I replied, "Oh, joy."

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

Fred, Malinda, and I had just sat down to dinner on the last day of April when Arthur’s nearly-bald head appeared in the fire. The flames that licked at his ears and reading glasses were the same color as his fringe. I also noticed that he looked extremely tired. After greeting both me and Malinda, he addressed his son in a solemn tone.

"Thank heavens you’re there, Fred," said Arthur. "I suppose you didn’t get the owl at work... George said you left before he could say anything to you..."

"George knew I was coming home early, as it was his idea," Fred replied, a little tersely. "I put in a lot of extra hours while Anya was in the hospital, so he’s trying to make it up to me."

"What has happened, Arthur?" I asked.

He glanced over at Malinda, then shook his head sharply. "Perhaps the two of you ought to come over sometime tomorrow..."

Fred pushed aside his plate. "If it’s all that urgent, Dad, I will come now."

Arthur nodded his approval and his head disappeared from the flames with a snap, crackle, and pop. Fred kissed Malinda’s cheek and tickled her, then kissed my lips quickly.

"I see you’ve made my favorite dessert... wait up for me."

By the time Fred arrived back home, it was after dark. I’d cleared away all the dishes with Malinda’s help, played hide-and-go-seek with her, then put her to bed before taking a long, perfumed bath. After I was dry, I twisted my crinkled curls up and fastened them in place with pins, then slipped on a short negligee made of rose-pink lace that contrasted prettily against my dark amber-toned skin. I hoped I didn’t look too fat in it. My stomach was slowly transforming from concave to convex again...

Out of the pantry, I extracted a few dozen scented candles. I settled them around the floor and on the kitchen table in distinctive runic patterns before using a selective Lighting Charm so that they would burn for a few hours before being extinguished for good. Goodness knew I didn’t plan for a repeat of Ron and Hermione’s Valentine’s Day front-page embarrassment.

An embarrassment, when all was said and done, that would pale next to the news story that would break any day now...

All the same, I couldn’t help but feel sad.

Trying to think of pleasanter things, I went into the kitchen for the plum-cake, a pitcher of milk, and plates. After the table was set, I headed back upstairs to grab a Muggle album or two of my father’s... since neither Diane nor Olivia were interested, I’d inherited his entire record collection. Although I loved classic wizarding rock such as the Weird Sisters, Celestina Warbeck, and Perseus, and singers like the Charmettes, Whyte Ryder, the Spellbinders, and the Wanderers, the magical world long ago fell behind the Muggles when it came to penning odes to love.

Setting an old Beatles 45, "Let it Be", into our Malfosoft MusicBox ( MuggleConverter sold separately) I sat down to the table, resting my chin on my hands.

The front door opened. In stepped Fred, looking extremely weary and haggard. At first he didn’t seem to see me, and he certainly wasn’t cued in to the atmosphere I’d tried to create. When he saw me, he managed to force a smile. I stood up and went to him.

"Darling, whatever is the matter?"

In response, he crushed me to him. Held me so tightly that after a moment I had to protest a bit. Otherwise, I feared my ribs would crack.

"Can’t... breathe..." I managed to grate out.

He eased his grip on me just the slightest bit. Now, that was more like it. Time to repeat my question. "What’s the matter?"

Sigh. "What do you think?"

I sighed too. "Which one is it this time, Ron or Hermione?"

"Hermione. But this time it’s not... silly or melodramatic. It’s serious, Angel. She’s disappeared."

"Disappeared?" I was alarmed until the events of the past five months came rushing back. "Perhaps she doesn’t want to be found. I thought she’d gone on holiday with her parents."

Fred released me so that he could take off his cloak. I took it from him, and sent it to the coat rack in the foyer.

"That’s what everyone assumed. But her parents came back from their month-long sojourn in the States--they were visiting Hermione’s aunt, who lives in Boston--wondering why they’d had no word from their daughter in over a month. They went to the house in Chelsea, of course, only to find that no one had been there for weeks and weeks. Their attempts to contact Ron were unsuccessful, as his Liverpool place doesn’t have Muggle-friendly amenities and they knew nothing of Mo and Muskoka. So they came to Mum and Dad."

"Has the Ministry been notified?"

"Yes. From what they can ascertain, the last anyone saw Hermione was the Tuesday after... well, you know, after everything happened. She was sighted by an Auror friend of hers, Lisa Turpin, in the Shepherd’s Bush area, walking out of a Muggle travel agency with an unmarked parcel in her hand. According to Lisa, they exchanged pleasantries and Hermione seemed just fine. Lisa offered Hermione a lift in her Fiat... Hermione declined, saying she was expected at her Diagon Alley office and she’d just take the tube. Then she walked down the street... and vanished."

"Again, love, perhaps she doesn’t want to be found..."

"Even so, she’s in trouble. Ron finally showed up right after I got there... most of the story came out again, for the benefit of Hermione’s parents. Mrs. Granger cried a lot, and I think Mr. Granger is ready to stick that brother of mine on a spit and rotisserie him. Some of us went with Ron to Chelsea to see if we could find anything there. Nothing save one clue—Hermione’s hand on their clock is pointing to Mortal Peril."

I sucked in a deep breath.

"It’s the Cabalistica, isn’t it?"

"Has to be. They’re the only ones powerful enough to capture a witch like her."

"Does Harry..."

"He’s still out searching. Even though the Ministry has an entire squadron of Aurors on the case. Even though Sirius immediately put a dozen Black and Potter operatives on it for good measure. Even though the initial trail went cold long before anyone knew anything was amiss. He says he doesn’t intend to stop to eat, drink, or sleep until he finds her, and somehow I believe him."

"Do you think she’s..."

"She very well could be. I can’t lie to you, Angel. George and I have been working for Sirius and Harry for a long time. The Cabalistica is fast becoming one of the deadliest Dark supercovens I’ve ever heard of... very soon even the Order won’t be any match for them. You heard what Sirius, Remus, and Harry said that day you were nosing around Black and Potter... even their operatives haven’t been able to infiltrate the Cabalistica without disappearing or dying.

"Hermione is perhaps the most famous Muggle-born witch breathing. She no longer has the protection of the Covenant... a Covenant which made her the perpetual enemy of the Dark Side. On top of that..." here Fred looked more solemn than ever, "...we know now that she is the woman referred to in the Seventh Prophecy, and the Cabalistica cannot find that out. I’m sure they all but suspect..."

Fred sat down at the table, and I took the seat next to him.

"You’ve told me all about the Covenant. Does Hermione’s disappearance have something to do with her breaking it?"

He shrugged, cutting himself a large slice of plum-cake. "Perhaps. I can’t say for certain, because I don’t know much about it. I know that the minute she broke it, something happened... because when they first entered it, the Order told the three of them that it could not be broken without serious repercussions."

I shook my head slowly. "Poor Hermione. Tell me, what is this Seventh Prophecy? I thought there were only six."

For students of Advanced Divination, there is a seventh year Magical Eschatology option. Fred and I had been taking Divination since our third year... Divination had been my mother’s best subject at the Academy, and I’d wanted to see if I had a similar propensity for it. (I didn’t.) Fred says he took it because everyone else in our crowd did... and because it amused him to poke fun at Professor Trelawney.

Studying the Prophecies of the End during the year of the Scourge was an especially eerie pastime. The Prophecies of the End had been issued by none other than Nostradamus, whom Muggles write off as an old crackpot but who was actually a great Seer in his day. (The reason why the Muggles know all about old Nostradamus is because he lived long before the International Compact on Wizarding Secrecy.) As the Prophecies of the End apply to magical folk only, they were left out of his Quartos and instead presented to the French Wizards’ Council, whose headquarters they are now displayed and where they have been scoffed at ever since.

All of the prophecies are written in extremely long passages of extremely flowery Medieval French, and we had to study the dusty Latin translation in Trelawney’s course. Interpretations widely vary, but a great number of people worldwide believe that all six of these latter-day prophecies have been fulfilled.

In a nutshell, the first referred to "the servant of perdition", a "son of a snake" who would hate the "children of the earth and strike them with a scourge". This prophecy had been applied to everyone from Faust to Grindelwald until Voldemort, who fulfilled all twenty-six verses of the prophecy to the letter. Nostradamus even mentioned Tom Riddle’s favorite childhood food (fried Re’em liver with onions, rare).

The second prophecy refers to the "twice-blessed man". The "firstborn seed of a stag and a flower," the twice-blessed man is mentioned in the Muggle Quartos as well, and again, the title had been applied to everyone from famous witch Anne Boleyn (despite her sex) to the great Dumbledore himself. When Harry defeated Voldemort multiple times, cheating certain death twice to do so, people began to murmur about the man of Second Prophecy fame. After the war, the Boy Who Lived also became informally known the world over as the twice-blessed man.

Prophecies numbers three, four, and five are supposedly more ambiguous. But most now believe the "rat’s sacrifice", the "terror that walks amongst the shadows", and the "ice for an age" referred to Peter Pettigrew’s wavering, the Scourge, and the Sponge respectively.

The Sixth Prophecy is the last and the most famous. It refers to "a pact of old made new" between a golden weasel, a carrier pigeon... and the twice-blessed one. This pact would "strike fear into the heart of the son of perdition" and "turn iniquity back again for a time." Certainly the pact Nostradamus referred to was the Covenant. Ron was quite obviously the weasel. The carrier pigeon, an ancient messenger, symbolized Hermione.

And once again, Harry was confirmed as the twice-blessed man.

At this point, the last parchment cut off. Commentators’ interpretations of what the mysterious number meant varied, and many an Arithmancy Ph.D. has written her dissertation on the subject. The vast majority believed that the Sixth Prophecy would end with 3,595 years of peace in the wizarding world... the pessimists disputed that, and believed that the number referred to weeks, which meant the peace would only last for seventy years.

Whether seventy or fifty-two times that, the Sixth Prophecy confirmed that the wizarding world was in for a longer period without war that it had enjoyed since before the Golden Age ended aeons ago. Hence, the term Pax Dumbledorica.

But Fred was shaking his head gravely.

"The reason why no one knows of the Seventh Prophecy is because the Order has kept it secret since the time of its composing. Nostradamus was sworn to secrecy as well... for he had a place at the stone table made gold in his day. As the current leader of the Order, Sirius has the rest of that parchment, Angel..." His voice broke, and he shivered a little. I placed a caressing hand on his shoulder and he continued. "Anyway, the last word was left off the Sixth Prophecy... it’s on the parchment with the seventh."

"What is it?

"Days."

"Days?" My eyes went wide. "But that means..."

"Yes. And Angel, the number is so exact that it would frighten anyone with good sense. The Death Eaters’ unconditional surrender was given on 31 May 1998, right?" I nodded. "Pax Dumbledorica was declared worldwide on the first of June, the very next day."

He pushed his cake to one side.

"Hermione broke the Covenant on the third of April, 2009..." I said.

"That is exactly 3,595 days, Angel. Leading right into the Seventh Prophecy..." He shivered again. "Angelina, remember how our world laughed at the Muggles during their Y2K scare? Karma, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."

"What’s going to happen, Fred? What is the Seventh Prophecy?"

"Death," said Fred. "It begins--at least, this was how Sirius translated the French--with a death. A very specific death, unique in its violence and brutality, a death of an individual who will be mourned the world over. And the first of it should tell you why we’re so alarmed about Hermione’s disappearance... here, let me read it to you." He pulled out a parchment out of the pocket of his robes. I could tell the writing was not his.

"Those ‘sorrows’ read like a dime-store horror novel," said Fred grimly. "In the next verse, the twice-blessed man dies defending his bird. So does the weasel ‘with regret too late’, along with a woman ‘who holds the stars in her eyes’.... and...." here he gulped, "all the weasel’s burrow, many generations of woe."

"No..." I moaned. My teeth clattered from fright.

"The rest of the Prophecy is even scarier than that. According to Nostradamus, immediately following this some terrifying epidemic is going to hit the wizarding world... a pandemic, really. ‘Silent killer, seduce us to the realms of the night’... chilling stuff like that. No witch or wizard will be able to survive this dread disease. It goes on to talk about multitudes dying... vices multiplying... and at the very end..."

I cried out.

My dream, mydream!

"...there will be no more magic at all on Earth. Only Muggles. All of the magical world--beings and beasts, flora and fauna, and people will vanish without a trace. It predicts the end of our world, Angel... and if we are interpreting the prophecies correctly, this will happen. Sooner than later. In our lifetimes."

We were both silent. I was no fatalist, but when it came to certain things, I employed a "better be safe than sorry" policy. Suddenly everything I’d witnessed since Christmas made perfect sense.

"So Hermione breaking the Covenant just might be the event that sets all this in motion."

"There’s no ‘might be’ about it. Whenever Harry finds her, we may just see things play out line by line. Powerful as he is, if those are Cabalistica agents holding Hermione, he’ll have a fight on his hands... and no Covenant to aid him. He’d have a better chance working with Ron, but Ron and Harry refuse to even be in the same room together these days, let alone cooperate in this. Ron’s hired a private investigative firm to search for her in the Muggle world while he and Mo search, because he says he will not work with Black and Potter. Even if he and Harry were to find her at the same time... again, the Covenant is broken, so..."

His eyes met mine. I read a lot of things there... fear, uncertainty, helplessness. All mingled with an abiding love for me, and perhaps even an apology for things ending up this way. As this was all somehow his fault.

In that frightening moment, being Mark Johnson’s daughter helped me yet again. For I felt a wellspring of desperate, furtive hope bubble up inside of me... hope that would not allow me to accept any words of gloom and doom.

Besides, there were two new lives growing inside of me. I felt as if I had every right to thumb my nose at death.

"I don’t believe it," I said firmly. "Hermione’s disappearance is very scary indeed, but I can’t think that it’s the first sign of the end of our world. I bet if she were here right now, or if she had been at the Burrow hearing all that foolish talk, she’d have laughed each and every one of you to scorn. You know she is not a fatalist... wouldn’t playing right into the hands of Fate only serve to annoy her?"

"But..."

"Wherever Hermione is, I hope with everything within me that she is all right. I also know that she’ll do all she can to stay alive until she can be found, and if possible she’ll either escape, leave a sign, or attempt to send word."

Fred shook his head. "She’s only one witch."

"She’s one hell of a witch. Oh, Fred, I can’t tell you why I believe this, or how I know... but I’m not afraid for Hermione. Not at all. She’s going to come out of this just fine."

He sent a sidelong glance my way. "What makes you so sure?"

"Because even as sidetracked as she’s been lately, she has a tool at her disposal that the Dark Ones know nothing about. That tool is love. Evil cannot anticipate love, because it cannot understand it. So Hermione may be surrounded by darkness even as we speak, but in the midst of that darkness she is light. That one blind spot may be all that is needed to save her in the end."

Fred sighed, then smiled a little at me. I suppose he’d finally noticed what I had on.

"You should wear pink more often, it’s your color," he said. "You look good in it."

I smiled back. "You should wear nothing more often," I said, reaching for the fastenings of his robes. "You look good in it."

Later, so much later in the night that it was almost day, we stole back down the stairs like two small children on Christmas morning, and danced to the dusty music of another of my father’s old Muggle albums. This time not the Beatles... another British group from the late seventies. Clinging to each other, soft silk brushing silken skin, footsteps moving in time to the sounds of soaring strings, staccato percussion, and seductive winds.

Heatwave said it far better than I ever could. Even if it was the last night of the world, I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than with my husband, my lover, and my very best friend... making love, dancing, and laughing.

Perfect love drives out all fear.

For Hermione’s sake, I hoped she was holding on to that truth... wherever she was.

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

"What I’d like to know," said Sonia DasGupta, settling down more comfortably into Molly Weasley’s rococo chair, "is howyou plan to get Draco Malfoy into either a codpiece or a toga."

The statement, as strange it sounded on the surface, was not as over-the-top as it seemed. Draco and Ginny were still trying to decide on a wedding theme--the current choices included either a Venetian masque or an ancient Roman ceremony--although they would tie the knot in just ten short weeks.

It wasn’t as if Ginny needed anything… she was about to marry one of the richest men in our world, and I was sure there were not many Muggles whose bank portfolios could compare to his. Draco told his beloved fiancee that she could have any type of ceremony she wanted, no matter how big or small. Ginny decided she wanted everything… yet Ron and Hermione had already had the most elaborate traditional wedding known to date and she certainly didn’t want anyone reminded of that.

Especially now that Hermione had been missing for nearly a month.

Perhaps this is the reason why everyone went all out for Ginny. This was the first of three bridal showers that had been planned for the much-beloved Virginia Weasley. The next week, her colleagues at Gladrags and throughout the fashion industry were planning another party for her… and Draco’s Rosetti cousins, not to be outdone, were in the process of putting together a surprise affair the week of the wedding, when we’d all be in their Italian domain anyway. For a little girl who’d had to settle for patched-up robes and Spellotaped textbooks less than half a lifetime before, she was doing quite well for herself.

Our own poor little rich girl sat on the sofa, decked out in another DasGupta original that I certainly couldn’t afford--light summery sleeveless robes the color of fresh butter. At the designer’s question, she simply arched red eyebrows coquettishly and smiled.

"I’m sure I don’t know what you’re getting at, Sonia," said Ginny. "My darling will look simply delicious in either traditional Roman garb or the Venetian mask he’s having made by Berridges… he has the face for both."

"He has the nose for both, n’est ce pas?" said Madeleine, with a wicked twinkle in her eye. At Ginny’s look, she laughed. "Ah, Ginny, don’t look so serious! You must admit that your wizard’s nose is rather… how shall I say?… pointy."

Molly, who was sitting next to her daughter, had to use a hand to cover her laughter. Ginny stared at her Mum as if she were the most horrid type of traitor.

"Nothing about my love muffin is pointy!" She turned to where Liz, Anya, and I were sitting on the love-seat. "Right?"

Sisters-in-law occupy an interesting position within many families. We learn quickly that we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. The lot of the usurper.

"Uh… right?" said Liz, looking extremely uncomfortable.

This was not enough to satisfy Ginny, who in the grand tradition of all brides was tripping merrily down the path towards Total Insufferability. "Anya? Angelina?"

"He does have a nice nose," said Anya diplomatically. Instead of taking it in the way it was intended--as a compliment--Ginny appeared even more annoyed. Making a mental note to later give Anya yet another Weasley family induction, I attempted to put a smile on Ginny’s face.

"Oh, come now Gin, surely you don’t expect us to believe that nothing about your husband-to-be is… well, pointy, do you? Why else did you insist on that codpiece? Hopefully for you, it won’t be too hard…I mean difficult to retain your dignity as a well-to-do bride must…" I was interrupted by the tinkling of a bell.

According to what my father told my mother long ago, in Muggle lore witches spend a great deal of their time cackling lasciviously. I suppose we all conformed to the stereotype just then.

This first bridal shower, which we sisters-in-law had sponsored for Ginny, was being held on Remembrance Day. The British Muggles have a similar holiday, but ours is a bit different. Ever since the war, all wizarding shops and schools close from sunset on the thirtieth of April until sunrise on the second of May.

But our memorial of the war dead isn’t supposed to be a solemn occasion. Neither is it very reverential. Instead, we hearken back to the distant past, to the Golden Age of Faerie in our celebrations, and we celebrate life… life that the sacrifice of our martyrs made possible. This, we are told, is pleasing to them--the sweet sounds of frolicking and revelry and song that echo from this world into the distant hereafter.

What constitutes a Remembrance Day celebration depends entirely upon the persons involved. Some use it as an excuse to get drunk and laid… usually the same ones who use any holiday as an excuse for drunkenness and sexual excess. Some use it as a time to visit the Second Voldemort War Memorial at Hogwarts (the only magical place in England which is quiet on May Day), then to enjoy a glorious picnic with alumni and current students by the lake.

As for the Weasleys, we do on Remembrance Day what we do best… we gather. It is the one holiday of the year during which none of the women cook. Arthur decreed on that first Remembrance Day, ten years ago, that he and his boys would make dinner for mother, sister, and sisters-in-law on that day every year from then on. At first, we were very afraid… and had every reason to be. Molly didn’t believe in her husband and sons being in the kitchen much, and it showed. I nearly broke my teeth on a piece of barbecue that year, and the potatoes… but there, it doesn’t do to dwell on the past.

Since then, they’ve had more practice. Even if the resulting meal can’t compare to the best of Molly Weasley, it is rather nice not to have to worry about the soup for a change.

So as our men alternated between the backyard and the kitchen (we kept hearing the back door slam, and various curses of frustration, normal Remembrance Day sounds), everyone laughed at my teasing remark. And listened to the chime of a Bell Star that sounded every time one of us said the word "bride. And laughed some more...

…until Maureen Ludlam appeared in the arched doorway of the living room.

She was with Ron, of course, and carrying their son, whose tiny dark red head rested in repose on her shoulder as his arm curved protectively around the child’s mother. She turned so that he could remove the whispery mantilla-like shawl from her shoulders. Mo lifted the sleeping child up and handed him to his father, taking a gift-wrapped box he had tucked under his arm. In exchange, Ron kissed his lover’s lips quickly and disappeared from the doorway without even glancing at us. Seconds later, I heard heavy footfalls on the steps… most of the children had been scampering throughout the upper floors ever since a light rain outside broke up their outdoor play.

Mo walked into the main room with the grace and bearing of some foreign queen, exotic and regal. Her princess-seamed robes were black print and short sleeved, splashed from collar to ankle with tropical flowers that slowly changed between various hothouse colors. Almost instantly I was reminded of the kaleidoscope robes she’d worn on New Year’s Eve at the Golden Snitch. These robes she was wearing five months later would have done nothing for any of the other women in the room… but for her dark hair and light olive skin, the effect was perfect.

"Happy Remembrance Day," she said, tranquil as a countryside pond. "Ginny, congratulations."

She walked over to where Ginny was sitting between Christina Rosetti and Molly. Both Draco’s cousin and my mother-in-law looked extremely uncomfortable.

As for my sister-in-law, she didn’t make a move for the gift. Instead she stared into Mo’s dark eyes… Ginny was wearing contacts again, green ones this time.

Finally Ginny said:

"How do you get your clothes to flash like that?"

Mo’s mouth curved into a half-smile. "I treat them on my own with Streeler dye. My godsister Danataya raises them in the Yukon… even in Canada, they do very well in greenhouses."

"I thought the dye was poisonous," said Sonia, seeming very interested. "Every time we test Streeler-dyed fabric, there’s almost always some allergic skin reaction…"

"Not if you mix powdered Graphorn horn with the dye. Neutralizes the venom, and has the added benefit of making the fabric soft and wrinkle-free."

Ginny shook her head. "Graphorn horn is too expensive even for me."

Mo shrugged. "My parents loved to hunt out West--well, I should say in the Rockies--during their off-seasons. One of the few things they left me were three Graphorn horns. I’ve only ground up one… but I’ll give you one of the remaining two if you like."

Ginny considered this peace offering. Then she reached up and took the gift from Mo’s hand.

"Have a seat."

Mo did so, sitting on an extra company chair that had been dragged in from the shed. The room was overly quiet, yet there were quiet murmurings from among the women until Penelope came in from the kitchen a moment later and began the entertainment by pulling a old, patched and frayed hat out of her robe pocket.

This hat had supposedly been in the Weasley family almost as long as the Sorting Hat had been at Hogwarts. Although it was not blessed with mindreading powers, it did make up songs for special family events; it had been brought out for every bridal shower, baby shower and baby naming, at least as long as I had known the family. Of course, we'd seen the set of photographs of Molly wearing it, first as a blushing bride, then as each son came along, and again with Ginny.

The bridal shower songs were always sung to a tune that resembled, of all things, Greensleeves, and the baby-oriented song was always to the tune of the traditional nursery rhyme Sparkling Nightlight. The guests were always glad when the tunes were done, as this hat's voice wasn't half as pleasant as the Sorting Hat's.

Plus, when the tunes were done, it was time to get on with the magic.

Earlier that day, we had filled the hat with all sorts of things that a woman would traditionally need during marriage - cookbooks, kitchen tools, a freezing compact, housekeeping things, mending charms, a Lockhart book or two, and a few untraditional things as well, including, embarassingly enough, lingerie. Before our actual presents were opened, Ginny would pull out the five things that the Hat deemed most necessary for her married life.

Ginny, for all her daily poise, looked as nervous as I remembered her when she sat on Hogwarts' three legged stool in the Great Hall, when the Hat dropped onto her head and over her eyes. Moments ticked by as she sat, and we watched, murmuring among ourselves.

"What did you pull out?" Anya asked me.

Fred, of course, had arranged for the untraditional grab bag items to be, well, very untraditional. I told Anya how I pulled out half a dozen prototypes from 3W, including a bar of soap that leapt out of my hands and began running around the floor, a walking, talking gingerbread cookie with a vocabulary of only four-letter words, and a nose-biting teacup. Of course, I did end up pulling a pretty dark blue silk nightgown. But I never figured out what the two furry circles attached to the headband were for; Fred said he picked it up in a Muggle clothing shop, and it was still sitting in the Burrow's front closet.

Finally, Ginny pulled the Hat off her head. Of course she didn't say what she had told it, or what it had told her. She simply sat it atop the coffee table and it broke into a song that garbled five hundred year old words with more modern thoughts.

As I watched Ginny pull a silvery bathrobe that glowed as if it was lit by the full moon out of the hat, the words of the song stayed in my mind. Some of that was clearly applicable to the talented Mr. Malfoy - and in this case, Greensleeves was clearly appropriate for Slytherin's former star pupil, but the balance? When had Draco Malfoy ever wagered life and land for anyone without a gain to himself -- even if it was for the benefit of Ginny?

Ginny took a jewelry box and ink bottle out of the Hat before wewere interrupted by someone stepping briskly into the room.

It was Hermione.

All conversations and motions stopped as she entered, dressed in lovely robes of periwinkle lace. Now, I was expecting to see a woman who’d apparently listened to Fwooper song far too long and had consequently been driven insane. Instead Hermione looked cheerful as a nymph high from Billywig stings. There was a hum on her lips and a bounce to her step.

"Hi, everyone!" she said. With lace-gloved hands she handed Ginny a gift wrapped in shimmery cloth-of-gold and kissing her cheek. "I’m so happy for you, dear."

"Ah… I’m… thanks?" said Ginny, looking as confused as I felt.

Hermione greeted the rest of us in turn more warmly than she ever had in my recollection. Then she faced Mo and shocked all of us.

She smiled at her.

"How are you today, Maureen?" she said, embracing her as if she were a beloved and long-lost sister. Over Hermione’s shoulder, Mo’s eyes were twin orbs.

"Well, thanks," said Mo. It was funny to see her disconcerted. One could tell that it didn’t occur very often.

"And how is that wayward husband of mine?"

Molly, who’d bent over to put Ginny's "essentials" into the basket that waited at the ready, began to choke.

Jumping up quickly, I steered Hermione away from Mo and towards my place on the love-seat. This was because everyone else seemed far too Stunned to move.

Perhaps Hermione had become a Fwooper Fool after all.

"Why don’t you have a seat, Hermione, and I’ll go get you some water."

The kitchen was a royal mess. Bill, covered from head to toe in wheat flour, was flipping a mass of dough into the air as I walked in. Unfortunately, his aim was off and the doughball landed upon my head with a firm plop.

"Sorry, Angelina," Bill said, using his wand to Summon the dough back, then set it down in order to pluck it free of hair strands before he resumed his tossing. "I’ve not made my famous meringue pie since last Remembrance Day."

"Thank Merlin for small favors," said Fred, levitating a huge double-sized roaster filled with marinated spareribs. "That famous meringue pie gave me indigestion for a week afterwards."

"At least he makes an attempt to cook," said Charlie, who’d charmed a number of knives to chop onions, cabbage, and leeks on their own. "That one in the pantry, on the other hand…"

"Don’t talk to me right now," sounded Draco’s voice from the hidden depths of the kitchen storage room. "I’m attempting to see if any of this wine is salvageable. Some of this vintage isn’t fit to clean my cauldrons with, let alone tempt anyone’s palate."

"Word is that he can cook, but won’t," Charlie said, ignoring Draco. "Ginny says he had to fend for himself in Seattle, but he won’t lift a finger to help out here."

Draco emerged from the pantry, shaking cobwebs from his fair hair, features wrinkling with distaste as he regarded the bottle of port in his hand.

"That’s what I have servants and house-elves for. Is this," he said, holding up the port, "what your father was referring to when I asked about wine?"

"Think so," murmured Fred. "Speaking of Dad, let me get these outside to him… he’s testing some Muggle contraption or the other that’s supposed to keep him dry, but I had better sneak a ImperviusCharm on him before he catches his death. That rain doesn’t show any signs of letting up."

The bottle of port was set onto one of the counters so soundly that it wobbled. Draco pulled a round gold talisman out of his pocket by a chain, almost lazily, and called out, "Nod!"

Two seconds later, a house-elf popped into the room, rearranging his tunic, monogrammed with the Malfoy family crest. "You rang, sir?" Even Draco Malfoy’s house-elves spoke with the stilted, proper accent of the wellborn.

"Yes, I did. I need a bottle of port… don’t touch any of our newest acquisitions, nor the bottles locked in special storage. A flask from the everyday dinner supplies will do quite nicely. While you’re at it, bring a bottle of what my wife-to-be likes… that pink champagne… and her father’s partial to merlot."

"Is there anything else you require, sir?"

"Not at this time."

"Of course. Right away, sir…" and the house-elf popped once more, and was gone.

Draco turned around to catch me staring at this exchange. "Was there something in particular you needed, Angelina?"

"I…" For a moment, I’d forgotten what I’d come into the kitchen for. "I’d like a glass of water for Hermione, please. She isn’t feeling very well."

Draco’s usual smirk faded. Bill stopped in mid-toss and the dough hovered in the air. Charlie, still chopping, nearly sliced his finger off. Percy and George, who’d just come in with other large roasters filled with grilled fish and lobster, nearly dropped their cargoes.

"Hermione’s here?" asked Percy. "But she’s been missing for nearly a month! She’s still on file with the Ministry’s Missing Magical People and Beings Bureau..."

"Nevertheless, she’s here now. Alive, well, and acting very strange."

A loud explosion sounded from outside, followed by shouts that sounded very much like Arthur.

Bill groaned. "What did Fred do this time?"

Leaving the dough floating a good three feet above the table, Bill headed out the back door, followed by Charlie, Percy, and George. As they left, a pair of horseflies zoomed into the kitchen… and both got stuck in the dough.

I’d been so busy watching the flies that I didn’t notice Draco fill up a glass for Hermione. The first I realized it was when he walked past me, glass of water in hand, and out of the kitchen.

He returned a moment later, sans glass.

"That is not Granger," said Draco.

I gasped. Somehow, that made a whole lot of sense.

"Then who…"

"No one you need concern yourself with," he said in a low voice. "Discretion is key. Go back in there. Do not let on that you know she isn’t who she seems. Meanwhile, I’ll summon some help she and her accomplices will not expect."

"Help? Do you think…"

He placed a finger against pale lips. "There’s nothing to think about. We’re sitting in the midst of a trap. Would you like it sprung? By all means, keep on with that tone of voice… she’ll know we’re on to her within seconds."

"Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?" I asked, whispering this time.

"You’ll have enough to do once the cavalry arrives. Remember, do not reveal what you know… and not a word to the others."

So I went back into the living room, passing Molly who was muttering something about saving her kitchen on the way. As I sat down, Not-Hermione smiled at me. A chill ran up and down my spine, but I smiled back.

For Ginny was now opening our gifts to her. When she got to Hermione’s gift, Ginny sat it on her lap gingerly.

"What pretty wrappings," she said. "The best I’ve seen so far. Of course, I expected that from you, Hermione. Only the best."

Not-Hermione smiled. "Oh, think nothing of it, my dear. The best is yet to come."

Ginny tugged at the bow… and the box came apart in her hands. Except for a swirling of fine chartreuse dust which obscured most of our vision and filled our lungs with strange smoke, nothing seemed innocuous…

…save the scales that were now racing up Not-Hermione’s arms as she began to transform into what she really was.

Anya screamed and recoiled. Liz withdrew her wand from her robes and pointed at the creature next to her, but her wand became limp as a pasta noodle. The rest of us instinctively withdrew our wands, and we found that they were also ineffective as rubber children’s toys.

Sonia screamed even louder than Anya had.

Mo didn’t seem afraid at all. She walked up to Not-Hermione, scaly, lengthening arms and all, and demanded:

"We don’t scare easily. Who the hell are you, and what do you want?"

"I thought you knew, Maureen," said Not-Hermione in a chilling version of Hermione Granger’s voice. "I have a score to settle with you… so if you’ll just come with me…"

"Not today, hon," said Mo. "Not any day."

That’s when I noticed that Not-Hermione no longer had regular legs. Instead, she was being held up by at least a dozen slimy, lizard-like coils and seemed to be half-floating, half slithering on them.

"Oh, Maureen," she said in a hissing voice that still sounded like Hermione, "you say that as if you have a choice." Several of the coils shot forth, twining around Mo’s limbs, waist and neck. I was horrified until I saw that Mo could still breathe.

Mo was beginning to seem a bit more ruffled, but not frightened. For she’d guessed the identity of the imposter.

"Orla, you bitch, you’d better let me go while you still have the chance or so help me, I’ll have those damned snake guts of yours for garters."

Orla Quirke-masquerading-as-Hermione then laughed, a hissing sound of mirth mingled with a promise of mayhem.

"You’ve ordered me about for the last time, Maureen Ludlam. The tables are now turned. Now, unless you want your neck snapped," the coil around Mo’s neck rippled threateningly, "you’ll shut that yap of yours until I give you leave to speak."

"Let her go!"

That was Ron, coming into the room, blasting Orla not with a wand, but with what seemed to be energy emanating from twin blue orbs that hovered a couple inches away from his palms. I’d never seen Ron like this… nor did I understand how he was able to focus enough to fry the snake-woman without benefit of a wand.

Orla let Mo go after only a few seconds. Mo stumbled onto the floor, limp… but Ron continued to hit Orla with the energy stream as it turned from blue to green to yellow. She began to vibrate, coils crackling, mouth opened in a soundless scream.

Whatever Ron was doing, it seemed to be draining both the she-creature and him. But just as Ron seemed to be at the end of his strength, Draco appeared in the doorway, balancing silver orbs to form a dual blast, adding his own energy stream to Ron’s and turning it rippling onyx black.

How did they do that? I had to figure it out. Such a trick was not only useful, but looked dead cool.

Orla’s vibrations grew more rapid, the scales on her body beginning to hum with an eerie otherworldly sound. If she exploded… maybe the rest of us ought to take cover…

Then a sidelong blast of liquid pearlescent light knocked both Ron and Draco to the floor. For a wild instant, I expected to see Kitty O’ Rourke… or even my sister Diane, for some reason.

It was neither of them.

Harry, staring at Orla very strangely, walked into the doorway as we all stared at him. Orla’s lips curled into a flirtatious smile. She seemed none the worse for the wear.

"Well, if it isn’t the hero," she hissed. "Hello, handsome."

"What have you done with her?" Harry asked. His voice was very cold.

"You’ll have to ask the Cabalistica, won’t you? Dr. Granger is now their cherished pet… and Mo Ludlam will soon be mine to do with as I please."

Both Mo and Harry reacted at once. Harry immediately cast another spell from his fingertips—"Ignem Inferno!"—and the blast was of red, swirling fire. But at the same time, Mo had been infuriated by Orla’s last statement and pushed her as hard as she could—catching Harry’s wandblast across the small of her back as she fell atop Orla.

Mo cried out in pain.

Ron, finally recovered from the surprise Stunning, got to his feet. Before his best friend could react, he punched Harry so hard that his glasses broke. Then he headed over to Orla, rolling up the sleeves of his robs as he went.

But it was too late. Orla—who no longer looked anything like Hermione—had completely transformed. From the waist up, she was her usual honey-blonde angelic self, save with long forked tongue. From the bottom down, she was a mass of two dozen slithering and writhing coils… each ending in a venomous fanged snake head.

"It’s about time you paid attention to me, Ron Weasley," hissed Orla. "Unfortunately for you…" two of her snake-coils looped around Ron’s ankles and tugged, "…I’m no longer interested."

Ron sprawled to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Draco, who’d now recovered from his Stunning (from what I could gather, this was because Harry hit him last and longer), tried to hit Orla again, but it was too late. She swept up Mo in her coils again, cackling, "Easy

as taking candy from a babe!" and in a whirlwind of opaque black smoke, she was gone.

Chaos ensued. Apparently Orla’s "gift" had somehow sealed off the upstairs and the backyard, for the other Weasley brothers now rushed into the room. Fred immediately searched the room for me and before I knew it, I was being crushed in a tight hug. Dante Rosetti and Nick Riordan were also there for some reason… I wondered why Draco had summoned them. Many of the children ran downstairs, including my Malinda… she ran immediately to me and her father for hugs and reassurance.

The happy reunions didn’t last long. For Harry and Ron were now engaged in a battle royale.

"Where the hell do you get off, hitting me?" Harry snarled, shoving Ron backwards. Ginny, whose wand was straight again, used it to Summon Harry’s broken and disregarded glasses to her for repair despite her fiance’s frown.

"Because one good turn deserves another, you sanctimonious, self-righteous bastard!" snapped Ron, shoving Harry back even harder. "You screw my wife and try to sweep it under the rug, then fry my girlfriend as if she’s a side order of bacon…"

"Excuse me, but isn’t there something wrong with this picture?" said Harry, voice oozing with sarcasm. "You say it as if you have the right to have a wife and a girlfriend at the same time!"

There was a sudden darkening outside… had a cloud passed over the sun? It seemed a lot more like an eclipse. And then I looked down at my feet, for I detected an ever-so-faint rumbling underneath them. I glanced back at Fred, but he seemed totally focused on the escalating conflict.

"You had no right to my wife, and you still don’t!" Ron roared.

"Ever think about this? Had it not been for a mistake I made, you wouldn’t have had her in the first damn place! And here’s some more food for thought, asshole… while you were frolicking in your love-nest with that girlfriend of yours, your wife was missing for weeks and weeks before the rest of us put two and two together and realized that we needed to search for her!"

Harry punctuated this last comment with a shove so angry and vicious that it knocked Ron straight back into his mother’s knick-knack shelf. In response, Ron threw an uppercut which landed squarely on Harry’s jaw. Before they could begin brawling again in earnest, however, they were both blasted by Percy and Penelope. Immediately their mouths were completely overgrown with skin, their hands were boneless flippers that were unable to curl up into fists, and their legs locked together so that all they could do was hop.

"What’d you do that for?" Fred said. "Best to let them fight it out…" I elbowed him in the ribs and clapped a hand over my daughter’s mouth before she could ask for clarification about why Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron were having it out. Unfortunately, I’m sure the older teens now knew what had happened, along with the Rosettis, Christina and Nick, and just about everyone else.

"Did any of you stop to ask yourselves where Mum and Dad Weasley are right now?" asked Penelope, shifting her wand from one hand to the other.

Percy folded his arms. "Look outside."

Malinda and the young twins made it to the window at the far side of the room first. What little Rave said made us know something was wrong.

"Mummy, Mummy! It’s Christmas again!"

My own daughter gasped too. "Yeah, it’s snowing… whoa!"

Gryff just clapped his palms to his mouth, giggling.

Everyone glanced around at each other. As many of us that could ran to the window… then out the front door.

The Burrow was no longer at the end of the Ottery St. Catchpole lane that it had been situated upon for centuries. Instead, it was now perched high upon a lofty mountain, situated in the midst of an imposing mountain range that stretched as far as the eye could see. I was no great judge of distances and height, but we were definitely pretty high up… definitely above the tree line. On a ledge. On a precarious ledge. A good three feet of the house hung over the void.

Molly, Arthur, and the barbecue were nowhere in sight.

Everyone began talking at once. Spouting out their theories of where we were and how we got there. Raging about how it was this or that person's fault that this had all happened. Shivering and freezing in the piercing cold... it had been May where we'd just come from, and a pretty warm day at that.

We might have continued forever like that if Draco and Ginny hadn't intervened. With a quick wave of his wand, Draco levitated his fiancée so that she was standing head, shoulders and waist over even Bill, who was the tallest of us all.

"Everyone be quiet!" she shouted, seeming in that moment very like her mother. Because of the relationship most of those in question had to Molly Weasley, she got the attention she wanted right away.

"This is not the time for us to fall apart. Now, I have no idea where we are, but I have a feeling that neither we nor the house are supposed to make it back to England. We can't Apparate out because we'll get splinched, since we don't know where we're starting from, and we can't exactly leave the kids. Now, does anyone have a portkey handy?"

Nobody answered her.

"Clearly," Ginny spoke into the silence, "whoever sent us here obviously doesn't want us to make it back alive."

"And I always said she was the brilliant one," muttered Fred.

Ginny glared at him and continued. "This is what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to figure out where we are, where Orla took Mo, and then formulate a suitable plan of action."

"I say we all go back into the house until we’re rescued," said P.J., scratching behind one ear. His mother sent a disapproving glance his way.

"P.J.’s right," said Bill. "The kids ought to stay as close to the house as possible, with perhaps one or two adults to supervise. Meanwhile, the rest of us can form scouting parties so that we can get our bearings."

"I am not going out there!" Sonia exclaimed. "My Great-Uncle Deshai was killed when he tripped over a Horklump? while backpacking in Nepal and fell into a gorge… there are all kinds of dangers in the mountains! Rock slides… avalanches.. false ledges…"

"Graphorns…" said Ginny thoughtfully as Draco lowered her slowly to the ground. One could tell that even in the midst of her pep talk, she was thinking of that Streeler dye.

"That’s why we need a good guide," said Christina, stepping forward.

"What, there’s a Sherpa hag around?" asked George.

Dante put a hand on Sonia’s trembling shoulder, and laughed. "My sister and I grew up playing in the foothills of mountains much like these. We can help you get around…"

This seemed to satisfy everyone. Dante and Christina would lead two separate scouting parties that would diverge after we were able to get off the rock shelf. Thus ensued another Great Debate about each witch and wizard’s talents, strengths, and challenges, who ought to be paired with who, and so on. The children grew rather bored with this, and after raiding the attic, ghoul and all, for old patched winter cloaks and mitts, they all came back out to build a small army of snowmen away from the ledge.

It wasn’t until Anya brushed past where I was standing that I noticed her again. As if in a trance, she walked over to the very edge of the snowy mountain shelf we were standing upon. Instead of proceeding right over the edge, she stopped about a foot short of it, kneeled down and peered over, using small hands to anchor herself to the ground.

George was only a few steps behind her. "What is it, love?"

"I think I’ve been here before," she said slowly. "And if I have, we are somewhere in the Alps… but a place in the Alps that is quite invisible to the Muggles."

Fred noticed me staring, and tuned into the conversation that Anya and George were having.

"Invisible because they don’t notice it, or because it is hidden?" prompted George.

"Perhaps both, or neither. Or perhaps this place only looks like the Swiss Alps, but in reality is somewhere else… or nowhere at all."

Anya stood up, and backed away from the ledge. The three of us followed her back to the disorganized crowd.

"Where are Ron and Harry?" she called loudly. It was perhaps the boldest tone of voice I’d ever heard Anya Parker use in all the years I had known her.

"Still inside, still hexed," Bill answered. Amidst the minor excitement of the Burrow changing locations, we had forgotten all about both of them.

Several people returned back inside, and soon Ron emerged from the front door, looking none the worse for the wear. The rescuers followed, and Harry brought up the rear. Obviously he and Ron were giving each other a very wide berth. Ginny gave Harry his repaired glasses, and with a grateful nod he put them back on.

Anya didn’t seem to care much about these subtleties. Facing Harry, then Ron, she addressed them both.

"Do either of you have the ability to track lamia spoor?"

Ron closed his eyes, frowning. "Not anymore," he said.

"What if Charlie and Liz helped you pick up the trail?" she persisted. When Ron shrugged, she turned to the other man. "How about you, Harry?"

"I never was as good at tracking and subterfuge as Ron was," he said, yet sounding as if the person he was referring to was halfway across the world instead of only several feet away. "How do you know Orla’s a lamia?"

"Orla’s not a full-blooded lamia, but her mother is," Anya replied. "Her mother… I do believe her mother was one of my initial captors. What Orla said about her mum and pets triggered something inside of me. This place confirms it. Ginny’s more right than you know. We are not supposed to get out of this alive. Not alive in any real sense of the word. Life is antithetical to a lamia’s nature."

The minute I heard the term "lamia", I began to shiver uncontrollably, and not just from the biting cold.

Chroniclers of the elder days tell of fairy creatures called lamias who appeared in numerous threatening guises--as monstrous serpents, for instance, or as scaled and clawed beasts. But lamias were perhaps most dangerous when they walked abroad as beautiful women. Although their natures were amorous and haunted by a yearning love for mortals, the lamias represented the darkest side of Faerie.

Charlie let out a low whistle, and his wife’s face had turned gray.

"Perhaps our first priority ought to be getting the Burrow back where it belongs," said Liz. "I don’t like the idea of scattering very much at all if there’s a lamia loose in these mountains."

Her husband nodded. "After the nundu, the chimaera, and the manticore, the lamia is the deadliest magical beast ever known to man," said Charlie. "But unlike the first three creatures on the Confed’s Most Dangerous List, there have been no recorded instances of anyone ever killing a lamia."

"Shapechangers," added Liz. "Other than boggarts, they’re the only true shape-shifters on earth. Their favorite guises are as serpentine creatures.… and beautiful naiads."

"But they are neither dragons nor women, not really," said Charlie. "Because of their sentience, they would most appropriately be classified as magical beings, but their bloodthirstiness precludes them having any real relationship with any but the most vile and corrupt human beings."

"Mountains are not their usual habitat, are they?" asked Madeleine.

"No. They prefer water, and often disguise themselves as harmless water-nymphs or river guardians," Liz said. "Easier to obscure their spoor. It’s distinctive. Human noses can’t pick it up though… but a werewolf-friend of ours once described it to me in old Romania. The strench of flowers rotting, he said. The lamia who had left it behind returned and killed all in his pack."

"I might be able to help you with that, cherie," Madeleine said. We all turned and stared… what secret was Ginny’s friend keeping? "I would need something to pick up the scent, though… I have been fortunate enough never to run into one of the accursed things."

"Then we need something that’s saturated with Orla’s scent," said Bill.

Penelope had a bright idea. "What about the cushion she was sitting on?" One of the children ran to get it, and Madeleine raised it to her dainty nostrils. After a while, she shook her head.

"She must not have let her skin touch it," was Charlie’s opinion.

Then Ginny suggested the glass of water that Draco had offered her. Again, this didn’t help Madeleine. I’d wondered why Orla-as-Hermione had been wearing those tacky lace gloves. Now we all knew.

We were all silent for a moment. No one seemed to know

"Daddy," said Malinda at my elbow, "I don’t like this place."

She pointed at Elizabeth Molina, who was dangling something from her hand.

"The boys," Elizabeth Molina indicated P.J., Paul, and Joseph, "told us to go get some snow from that drift way down there. And we found this. "

Charlie took the object away from his daughter. It was a watch. The band seemed to made of gold and platinum intermingled in a Greek key pattern, but the face was a plain Muggle one on the inside.

"That’s Hermione’s watch!" exclaimed Ginny.

"And you know this because…" Draco began.

"Flip the face over," she said with a nod. Charlie did so… revealing a regular wizarding clock in miniature, tailor-made for a mediwitch.

"Her parents gave that to her as a gift when she finished medical school," Ron said, looking noticeably upset. "Had it specially made for her. She doesn’t leave the house without it on. I swear, if someone’s hurt her, if they’ve hurt either of them, I’ll…"

Harry walked over to Charlie as he read the wizarding face of the watch. He muttered over some of the selections on it. Home. Traveling. Clinic. Hospital. In Surgery. On Call. Sleeping (Rare). According to Charlie’s mutterings, the hand was on Mortal Peril.

"She’s alive but still in danger… damn!"

"You can say that again, Harry," said Charlie. "Look at this."

On the side of the band which bore the magical face, there were dried droplets of blood. Red as rust.

Madeleine took the watch out of Charlie’s hands. Halfway up to her nostrils, she winced. "Something is not right! I smell not dried blood, not metal or sweat, but… rotting flowers."

This set off an immediate commotion. Penelope, Liz, and I ordered the children into the house immediately. Everyone else fanned out in all directions on the ledge and immediately above (although this effort was slowed by the fact that all of the brooms were in the shed, still in Ottery St. Catchpole), on edge, prepared to be attacked at any moment.

Once we determined the area was clear, fear turned to anger.

"How did a half-wit like Orla capture Hermione?" asked Nick Riordan, who’d been observing without comment up to that point. "More to the point, how could such a powerful witch vanish without a trace until now?"

"Broken Covenant?" speculated Anya.

Harry shook his head. "The breaking of the Covenant only reversed spells that the three of us ever did in tandem--there were only a few of those--and made it impossible for us to transfer abilities to one another, which we did quite often. Nothing that would have made her vanish from the face of the earth or made it any easier for Orla to capture her."

"Well, how about a broken heart?" asked Ginny severely, glaring from her brother to the man she’d once dated and adored. "Perhaps Hermione didn’t have the will to put up a fight when she was abducted."

"Now, vixen, let’s not get overly sentimental," said Draco. "Granger was supervising the Danae Project at the MMRI the Monday morning before she was abducted, the day after we sat around your parents’ living room and were so thoroughly entertained by the airing of all those closeted skeletons. She seemed none the worse for the wear. I doubt she has a suicide wish… I doubt if she feels either her husband or Potter are worth it."

"Mo’s also missing, let’s not forget," said Ron, glaring at Draco. "The longer we stand around here talking and not doing anything, the greater chance they have of being hurt. Two dozen witches couldn’t handle a full-grown lamia, much less two without wands. We need to find them, and find them now."

Madeleine was now pretty far up the trail. She ran back. Bill put a hand on her back as she doubled over, trying to catch her breath.

"I can smell her! I know what direction she’s headed in… right this way, and around the bend the ledge narrows and curves upwards…"

Charlie and Liz looked at each other. Again, Liz appeared ashen and Charlie looked very pale.

"Can you detect any warping in the air… like heatwaves of any sort?" asked Liz.

Madeleine nodded. "Very faint, but yes. I noticed the way they refracted the sunlight and made rainbows in the snow."

"Then we can follow the spoor and the trail until we find her," Charlie said grimly. "That is, if she doesn’t find us first."

"She had better leave her hostages intact, and take a long holiday in Fiji," snarled Ron, "if she knows what’s good for her."

"Dei! And we are going to singlehandedly kill a lamia when it’s never been done before?" asked Dante.

"There’s a first time for everything," said Harry. "We’ve got quite a team here… and if three kids could put all of Tartarus into stasis for over a decade, surely we can find two missing witches and get rid of a pest or two. Come on, it’ll be easy as caring for a caseload of flobberworms." As sure as he looked, his voice wasn't confident. He was being strong for the rest of us and for that I was grateful.

It was decided quickly that only Percy and Penelope would stay at the Burrow with the children. More wanted to stay, especially when Harry and Ron cast protective wards over the house and the rest of us collectively Summoned the Burrow off the overhang and onto what we prayed would be more solid ground.

Charlie, Liz, and Anya would have none of it.

"When we find the lamia, we're going to need everyone's help to trap it," insisted Charlie. "And you must follow the instructions we give you. No Lockhart showboating... we want everyone to come out of this alive."

"That goes for Orla, too," said Liz. "Even a half-lamia is dangerous. But I'm sure we'll be all right."

Charlie and Liz didn't sound very sure, of course. They had good reason... there were well-documented incidents in which nearly a hundred witches and wizards had attempted to subdue a lamia without success.

Draco and Bill came out of the house, their arms over-laden with all the warm clothing they could find. As we sorted through the pile and charmed what we had on to serve the purpose of protecting us from the savagery of the elements in these mountains.

Fred found the headband I'd recieved from the Hat at my own bridal shower and asked Draco, "Why did you bring this?"

"Earmuffs," he said simply.

Fred clearly didn't know what they were, but I did. Now that I knew what they were, a long-forgotten memory surfaced of my father placing a similar pair on me before a cold winter broomstick ride, instead of putting a warming charm on my ears. And all I had done was complain about missing the sound of the wind rushing by my ears. In the midst of all this chaos, I thought briefly back to what Neville Longbottom had said not many days before, and resolved that when we got out of this safely, I was going to make sure I could feel that perfect windrush again.

Then those of us who had children kissed them... As Malinda hugged her father tears stood out like diamonds in her bright hazel eyes, then I hugged her for a very long time, and placed the earmuffs on her beautiful hair. "Keep them on until I get back," I admonished her. Finally, we exchanged pleasantries with Percy and Penelope, who promised to keep the children safe.

"The spoor is faint in this direction," assured Madeleine. "Chances are we'll run into the lamia long before she would even think about returning here."

Without another word, our haphazard group started up around the side of the mountain. Soon, we were in rows of three, then two, as the ledge narrowed. Each held on to their significant other, with only Harry at the front and Ron bringing up the rear.

Other than the normal precariousness of mountain trekking (keeping one’s balance, watching for falling rocks overhead and unexpected crevices underfoot), the initial leg of the journey was dead boring. The climb was initially a quiet affair. No one had much to say...

...until the twins began yodeling.

"Gesu, what did I do to deserve this?" muttered Dante, holding on to Sonia directly behind Fred and me.

"You’ve said it," muttered Ginny, glaring at her brothers. "My feet hurt... I’m sure I have two blisters and a rock bruise already... Draco, love..."

"If you’re going to ask me to carry you, vixen, you can forget it. You have on trainers, while I have to suffer in these Bruno Maglis. If there’s anyone who ought to be carried, it’s me."

The twins were still yodeling, now switching to two-part harmony...

"SHUT UP!" yelled Harry and Ron at the same time. As if in response, the five-foot shelf we were traversing shook a bit. My stomach felt as if it had dropped to my feet.

"Everything echoes in these mountains," said Christina testily. "Trust me, you do not want to make anything vibrate or shake unnecessarily."

"Not to mention the fact that we’re tracking a lamia," said Harry, using his wand to prod the rocks directly in front of him. Since the ledge ended there, and according to Madeleine the spoor continued upwards, we’d have to vertically climb. "Stealth is key at a time like this."

Draco stifled a mocking laugh as one by one, we climbed the twenty feet of vertical rock. First Harry, then Bill and Madeleine, Charlie and Liz, Ginny and Draco, the twins along with Anya and I, Dante and Sonia, Christina and Nick, and finally Ron. "Because we’re tactful people, Potter, we’ll reserve comment on your lack of stealth when it came to Grange..."

Draco never finished his statement. Harry had no chance to deliver any type of retort. For at that moment we were set upon by a swarm of angry, biting Doxies. Ron, who was on his last foothold before he could scamper up the top, issued a mighty groan...and would have fallen off the edge, had not Harry rushed through the black swarm to the side of the cliff and caught his best friend by his hands.

"They look like spiders," explained Harry, as a white-faced Ron scrambled over the top and immediately got as far away from Harry as possible. "Someone get rid of them..."

Fred and George obliged per Charlie’s and Liz’s instructions. At once, they spun their wands in a circle and cried, "Ricola!" over and over again in a yodel. "Rrri-co-laaaaaa..."

Much to our amazement, the swarm subsided. Ginny and Christina went about, touching with their wandtips the stings that all of us had been afflicted with.

"Didn’t you know that yodeling angers doxies?" said Charlie to his younger brothers, thwapping them both across the back of the neck.

"No, neither of us run a zoo," George pointed out.

"Should’ve told us to stop," added Fred.

Anya seemed furious. "Honestly!" she said, marching away in a rage. As George walked after her, I smiled, reminded of Hermione... and then I sighed. I really hoped both women were safe.

We continued our trek without further incident. It was only a short journey across the flat, dry yet cold plateau we’d found ourselves on... and then we found ourselves facing a threefold path: a precarious rope bridge that went on as far as the eye could see, a even-more precarious ledge, and a tunnel through an adjacent mountain.

"The spoor is stronger now," said Madeleine. "I can detect it in each of the three directions."

"Which way shall we take, then?" asked Harry. We all looked at him as if he were insane. After all, we were greenhorns when it came to this questing business.

But now there was a new light shining in Ron’s blue eyes.

"It’s obvious, isn’t it?" he said in a tone that indicated just how very stupid he found Harry’s indecision. "All we need to do is..."

He never got the chance to finish his sentence. For at that moment, a great Sphinx immediately leapt in front of us, blocking all three paths. She seemed double the usual size, shoulders as tall as Bill.

"All right, who got bitten by the Malaclaw?" asked Nick testily.

"Shh!" Bill said to all of us. "Let me deal with this." For the Sphinx was now speaking, its feminine head tilted to one side. Her face and shoulders were that of a woman, but the rest of her was decidedly lion, save the broad, red-feathered wings that flared up behind her like Hell's own flames.

Her voice was haunting, strangely low-pitched yet enchanting.

"We are all passing," Bill said in a strong, firm voice. Madeleine watched him carefully, but not without a bit of an admiring gaze.

With those final words, another Sphinx, identical to the first but even larger, leapt from behind a rock and joined the first. Fred and George pulled out their wands and spoke in tones so low that even though I stood right next to Fred, I couldn't make out a word. Planning some sort of surprise attack, no doubt.

Bill, however, sensed their movement and turned to his younger brothers.

"No, let them ask the riddle. I'd rather not get into a scuffle -- unless we have to," he said lowly. He turned back to the Sphinxes. "We accept your challenge and request our chance to pass."

"So… we ask them one question, they each give us an answer, and that's how we figure out which way is safe?" Fred asked skeptically. "This should be interesting."

"We can't ask them which way is safe," Anya said slowly. "We don't know which one lies and which one tells the truth…" She brought one hand to the side of her head and George stepped up beside her, looking worried. "The one on the far right is safest. It's not without some hardship… but it's safest." She shook her head and looked angry with herself. Her voice came out very small. "How do I know this?"

The same question seemed to be on everyone else's minds. Dante and Nick both looked skeptical, shifting from foot to foot and rolling their eyes. Sonia and Christina looked uneasy and nervous and -- it would have made me laugh under other circumstances -- a little scared of Anya.

"Asking them which way is unsafe would present the same problem," Harry said, breaking through my thoughts and ignoring Anya. The Sphinxes, if possible, seemed rather amused at the sound of his voice. They hopped anxiously between each of their four feet.

"There's not a… a time limit or anything, is there, Bill?" I asked nervously. Before he could answer, his younger brother piped up.

"No, but they're not patient creatures," Charlie said. I gulped as I watched them unfurl their wings and shift impatiently.

"If only we could ask them what the other was and count on a true answer..." Liz began. Bill's eyes flashed.

"That's it!" He turned back to the Sphinxes. "We have an answer." We all looked at each other. Bill had better know what the hell he was doing because I didn't fancy making Malinda an orphan just then.

Bill walked up to the first Sphinx, nothing but confidence in his steps. He bowed before her. "I have an answer." I hoped to Merlin it was the right one.

If the Sphinx was surprised, she didn't look it. Instead, she raised an eyebrow and stretched out a paw.

Bill cleared his throat and, for the first time, showed a little indecision. I opened my mouth to tell him that we should try another route that didn't involve clever lion-birds, but Fred shook his head.

"Which roads would the other tell me is safe?" Bill said. My mind spun as I tried to figure out the logic behind his answer. If he asked the truthtelling Sphinx, it would reply with the unsafe road because the other Sphinx would indicate the safe road as the unsafe road… Oh, my head hurt already. I could tell others were on the same page as me.

The Sphinxes then spoke in unison.

The two Sphinxes bowed deeply, heads almost touching the ground. As a group, we started to move forward, but their heads snapped up and I stepped back into Fred with a gasp.

"I'm afraid we cannot let you pass," the second sphinx said in an un-Sphinxlike tone, placing herself in front of me. I trembled. I felt Fred's hands on my shoulders and he moved me behind him. He drew himself up to his full height of six feet and looked the Sphinx straight in the eye.

"And why is that?" he said in a low tone.

"Because you must die," she hissed. Without a moment to think or react, she lifted a paw and swiped her sharp nails across my husband's face.

"Fred!" I screamed. Before I could do anything to help him, I felt a strong arm around my waist and I was being pulled away. I was tossed behind a rock and saw myself looking up at Charlie.

"Stay here," he said firmly.

"No!" I moaned. "That’s my husband out there, he’s..."

"You're gambling three lives," he said, then left briskly. I had no idea any of Fred’s brothers knew I was pregnant! I looked to my right and saw that Anya had been thrown there. We rose to our knees to peer over the top of the rock.

George and Draco were fighting the first Sphinx. For once, emotion flooded into Draco's cold features as he shouted spells in a hardly recognizable voice. A green light shot out of his wand and caught the Sphinx right in her eyes. She raised up on her hind legs and issued a blood-curdling roar, swiping with long extended claws. George turned suddenly, clutching his arm, and I could see blood flow out from beneath his fingers. He fell to the ground, the arm across his chest.

Anya gasped and tried to stand, but I held her down firmly. Strong as she was getting, she still wasn’t her old self yet. She was far too out of practice to subdue two mature Sphinxes.

Dante stepped around George’s limp figure and made short work of the first Sphinx with Christina and Draco's help. Sonia's wandblasts had destroyed the second Sphinx's wings, and Ron and Harry were busy levitating it, screeching and kicking, over the edge of the mountain. Then, with no emotion on either man's face, they simultaneously said, "Finite Incantatem!" The Sphinx's shrieks grew softer as it freefell down the side of the mountain.

"Imperius. They were under the damned Imperius… should have known it," Bill gasped, as he helped Madeleine to her feet. The two seemed relatively unharmed. I stood and frantically searched for my husband.

Fred was still on the ground, not moving. His face was turned away from me and my heart leapt into my throat. Dear God… As the others brushed themselves off and dazedly tried to regain their bearings, I rushed to his side and fell to my knees.

"Fred? Fred, say something! Please!" I turned him over and saw that his eyes were just fluttering open.

"Angel?" he muttered. I touched the scratches on his face - not nearly as deep as my terrified imagination had thought -- and he winced. "You're all right, love?" I nodded and he relaxed visibly. I pulled out my wand and, trembling badly, used a basic first aid spell to heal the scratches on the side of his face. He was still a little groggy, so I lifted his head and placed it in my lap, stroking his hair softly. "Talk about a headache," he muttered. I felt around in his fiery locks and touched the knot behind his ear where he'd fallen. A lump formed in my throat. Out of all of us, Ginny was the best as giving magical first aid, but at that moment I really wished that Hermione was there.

Charlie and Liz were relatively unscathed, save a few scratches here and there. Dante, Sonia and Nick were asking others if there were all right, healing where they could help. Draco was leaning heavily on his cousin Christina, favoring his right leg considerably. Ginny appeared out from behind a large rock where she’d been attending George, uttered a little cry of alarm when she saw her fiancé limping, and rushed to his side. Bill's robes were torn open at the shoulder, as were Madeleine's, but neither seemed to notice.

Harry and Ron sat at the openings of the right and left paths, respectively, staring into space and very much lost in their own thoughts. Nick was bent over, hands on knees, at the center path.

George was sitting up against the rock where Ginny had left him. She’d managed to stanch some of the bleeding, but his face was pale. He was leaning his head back, eyes closed. Suddenly, his eyes opened and he looked around frantically. He calmed down a little when he saw Anya, but didn't rest until his eyes met mine. They drifted lower and he saw Fred. If possible, he went several shades paler. Eyes wide, he looked back at me, braced himself, and tried to stand.

"He's all right, George," I managed to say in a voice that was certainly not mine. He relaxed slightly and turned his attention back to his bleeding arm, which Anya was slowly healing as best she could, shaking like a windblown leaf. Ginny knelt next to her and finished his arm quickly, to the delight of a weary Anya.

Fred wiggled in my lap and tried to sit up, but swayed dangerously. I put my arms around him until he got his bearings, and then helped him stand.

"Are you sure you're all right, love?" I asked, taking his face in my hands. His eyes gave me the once-over, making sure I was all right.

"Yes… yes, I'm okay. Is everyone else…?" We looked around and did a head count. Everyone was present, accounted for, and alive. Slowly, we regrouped, casting wary glances about. We were all still very shaken and trying to remember exactly why we were on this haphazard quest.

"So much for the warm-up exercises," Ron said in a shaky, yet unmistakably sarcastic voice. "Shall we proceed?"

"Is everyone all right?" Harry said loudly, as though Ron hadn't spoken. George was rubbing his healed arm tenderly, but everyone else seemed pretty well patched up. We all nodded reluctantly.

"Which path do we take?" Sonia asked, before doubling over with coughing. Dante rubbed her back until she stood again, breathing regularly.

"It's the one in the center," Anya said, one hand still over the spot where George had been injured. "Even the Sphinx riddle confirms it. If we'd asked the lying Sphinx which paths the truthful Sphinx would say are safe, it would say the right and left paths because they're unsafe -- oh, it's so hard to explain, but it's the center path, I know it!"

Bill shook his head and said, "We can't take their word. Those Sphinxes were under the Imperius Curse -- you could see it in their eyes. I'm an expert on curses and I certainly know what I'm talking about."

"I'm inclined to go with Bill on this one, Anya," Charlie said, tone apologetic. "It's against a Sphinx's nature to attack when the challenger solves the riddle. It all adds up." Anya was shaking her head slowly.

"None of you believe me," she said quietly. Not pathetically or sadly, but quietly, with acceptance in her voice. And it was true. I thought she'd been in the hospital far too long. Her mental state was certainly disturbed, no matter howl lucid she'd seemed earlier. Post-traumatic stress disorder. But what she'd said about captors… it made so much sense…

"Look, there's no way to know for sure which direction we're supposed to be heading," Ron said, interrupting the silence. "Let's split up into three teams." Without any further words, we drifted into random groups. I joined my husband, Anya and George before the center path. Dante, Ginny, Draco, Harry, and Sonia stood before the road at the far right and the remaining folks (Charlie, Liz, Bill, Madeleine, Nick, Christina and Ron) decided on the left side.

After a few stilted good-byes, the groups parted in silence.

The mountains loomed up on either side of us, but didn't shield the impossibly blue sky. The four of us walked side-by-side, the generous ledge offering a wide berth. Birds flew overhead, each singing their own beautiful song. Fred and George threatened to yodel again, but the glares I gave the two of them cut that thought off.

The walk was peaceful and the warm feeling of Fred's hand in mine comforted me. I looked up at him, and frowned when I saw there were very faint red lines where he'd been scratched. He must've sensed my gaze, because he squeezed my hand and gave me a reassuring smile. He was all right now and it was time for me to stop worrying.

A light giggle from behind us brought me out of my worrisome thoughts. We turned to see a soft white light circling Anya… and she was giggling. I stepped forward and saw that it had a definite form, but reminded me of Muggles' version of shapeless phantoms. She laughed and spun around, the white light circling her.

Oh, yes. She'd lost her Gobstones.

"Wake Angels," Fred whispered beside me. "These are babies."

"Huh?" He looked up and I followed his gaze. Thousands of those white things -- Wake Angels -- flew above us. They made a soft, low noise that was strangely soothing. George was standing a few feet away from Anya, looking like he was not entirely sure what to do. A Wake Angel sneaked up from behind him and almost knocked him over. He laughed as it brought him closer to Anya.

I found myself being circled by yet another one of the strange beings and realized why Anya was giggling so... it tickled. Fred was laughing beside me, a newfound friend circling him. I didn't notice it at first, but they were slowly leading us down the path.

"There's an energy trail this way," Anya laughed. "Wake Angels can find high energy sources and they usually-" I would never know what they usually did, for Anya went into another fit of giggles.

Soon, a few of the adults swooped down to see what all the commotion was about. About the length of two broomsticks, the adult Wake Angels looked a little like rays, a little like bats... but the skin of them was strangely cool, soft and smooth. Utterly soothing.

Anya had jumped on the back of one of the adults, saying "Come on!" and George joined her. Fred had leapt on the back of another and held out his arms for me. As soon as I had mounted, the beings soared up towards the sky.

"You’ll need an Adhesive Charm!" called Anya to us, giggling as George put his arms around her. "Now!"

Not a moment too soon, Fred pulled out his wand and cast. Just as he did it, the Wake Angel we were sitting on did a loop-de-loop... and then began to spin and twirl in midair.

I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything... I would have been very sick indeed. As it was, I was having the time of my life.

We then found ourselves swooping down into a valley that was well above sea level, straight into a snowy Snidget sanctuary... of course, because the endangered birds are cared for by enchantment, there were no witches or wizards in sight.

"What a way to travel," said Fred, laughing as our Wake Angel pulled up swiftly to avoid a crag.

"I’ll say," I replied, leaning back against my husband happily. After the encounter with the Sphinxes, it was good to feel exhilarated and alive again.

Finally, the Wake Angels swooped back down to the path, allowed us to dismount, then rejoined the main herd to continue their journey. As did we... I noticed Anya and George were walking a little closer together and I smiled at this. Fred pulled me into his arms and walked behind me, lips very close to my ear.

"This mountain air is filling my head with such thoughts…" he whispered, nuzzling my neck. I smiled as we walked, but the smile slowly dissipated. What business did we have laughing and giggling and exchanging naughty remarks, while Mo and Hermione were in such grave danger? It was a horrible business, this adventuring was.

I wondered briefly how Ron, Hermione and Harry had dealt with it all those years ago. As hard as it was for me, I was a first timer. They were far more experienced in such matters and no matter what Ron said, I knew he thrived on it as much as those other two did.

But Hermione had been right. There was nothing glamorous or sexy about fighting evil. It was exhausting work that demanded every ounce of your physical, mental, emotional, and magical capabilities. Right then I was hungry and thirsty. Cold, despite the charmed-up warmth of the old buffalo cloak of Arthur’s I was wearing. My feet ached although I was wearing comfortable shoes... and there was no longer much feeling in my fingers and toes. On top of all that, the dust from the rock climbing was making me feel rather grimy...

"The paths come back together again up ahead," Anya said. This time, she didn’t seem as confused as she had earlier. Either she’d figured out what was going on in her head or she’d given up and just accepted it.

As skeptical as I’d been earlier, I was hardly surprised when looked to each side and saw the three paths joined.

"Should we wait for the others?" George asked.

"They might be ahead of us already," Fred put in thoughtfully, but Anya shook her head.

"They’re not ahead of us. The other paths are longer, and they didn’t have the Wake Angels to ride on, but they’ll be here soon," she said, peering down one path. Now I was officially freaked out. I was definitely going to ask Ernie MacMillan, resident psychiawizard at the Granger-Longbottom Clinic, to sit down and talk with Anya. We waited patiently, sitting on rocks, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong and we were just with a large tourist group going on a scenic walk in the mountains.

The first to emerge from the far right path were Charlie, Liz, Bill, Mad and Ron.

"Where are Christina and Nick?" Fred asked.

"We stumbled upon a dragon nest. Norwegian Ridgeback. Luckily, the mum wasn’t there, but we ran into a few rather furious teenagers. Nick got burned pretty badly, so we had Christina take him back to the Burrow... if it’s still there," Charlie explained breathlessly.

"Norwegian Ridgeback?" Anya murmured. "We’re in the Alps. The farthest south the Ridgeback has ever been spotted is Northern Denmark!"

"Well, yes, and this place is completely normal so far, isn’t it?" Ron added sarcastically, because he just wouldn’t’ve been Ron if he hadn’t. "Where’s Har... where’s the other group?"

"Not here yet," I said, but of course, as those words left my mouth, the final group entered the clearing from between a grove of trees. Of this group, Dante and Sonia were missing. The others looked haggard, as if they could all use a good butterbeer.

"We ran into a mountain troll," Harry explained before anyone could ask. "Before we subdued him, he hit Sonia pretty hard. She came around, but Dante didn’t want to have to worry about her passing out again. So they went back."

"So that’s four down, and a dozen of us left," George sighed. "A dozen of us to take out a lamia..."

"What happened to you?" Bill asked curiously, looking rather surprised we were still all together and unharmed.

"Nothing, actually," Fred said, sounding smug. "A few Wake Angels joined us for a bit of the walk though. Quite pleasant actually. Bet you wish you’d’ve been in our group." Whereas I would have been at least a little pleased with myself, Anya didn’t look happy at all that she’d been perfectly right. Instead, she looked as though she had a bit of a stomachache.

"Are you all right, love?" I overheard George asking Anya. She looked up and him and forced a smile, nodding. He put an arm around her, but she still seemed troubled.

"It’s getting closer," she murmured after a moment, looking at the ground. No one said a word as we continued on. A rustling behind a large boulder to the side of the path broke the silence and we all waited with bated breath. Not another Sphinx.

Well, it wasn’t a Sphinx, but it certainly wasn’t anything a whole lot better.

It was a Graphorn. At a height of ten feet, it towered over all of us "travelers". Even Bill and Ron were dwarfed. The beast was purplish gray and hunched over like the famous bell ringer. Two long, sharp horns protruded from its head as it swayed side to side on its four-toed feet.

Immediately at least six of us whose best Hogwarts subject hadn’t been Care of Magical Creatures tried to blast the thing... shouted"Stupefy!"... and were extremely shocked when our spells ricocheted off the creature and we had to dodge. Even so, Bill and Ginny were hit and had to be revived.

The Graphorn grunted, then issued a loud rolling call that echoed from the mountain.

Ron and Harry moved at the same time, not speaking a word to each other. Harry distracted it by telling it awful jokes, which it guffawed at. Like, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk? Because the notes for which it is noted are not noted for being musical notes." This provided enough of a distraction so that Ron could scramble behind the creature and climb onto a high rock.

"NOW!" Harry shouted suddenly, and Ron leapt onto the creature’s back, grabbing its horns and pulling upward. It roared with fury and jumped up and down, trying to get rid of Ron. Its awkward arms swung around and Harry gave it a blast in the stomach.

"Ha! Weren’t expecting that, were you?"

In reply, the creature screamed with fury and did two things at once. It shook uncontrollably, trying to throw Ron off. It also charged straight for Harry.

"Hold it still, will you?" Harry shouted impatiently, dancing out of the way. If he’d not been fighting for his life, I’m sure Ron would’ve rolled his eyes.

"As fun as this may look from down there, it’s not terribly easy, you know!" Ron was somehow able to pull his wand from his robes and give the Graphorn a sharp prod in the ear. "I’m doing my best."

Now the Graphorn was enraged.

With a shriek like I’d never heard before, the Graphorn threw Ron across the clearing. He landed flat on his back with the wind clearly knocked out of him. Harry continued shooting various spells, eyes getting wider and wider as they were shaken off.

"A Graphorn’s skin repels of most spells," Charlie called loudly. Before he could warn Harry, Ron sidled up next to his best friend, clutching his side.

"Now what?" Harry said in a desperate voice.

"We’ve got no other choice… we’ve got to AK this thing," Ron said firmly. Harry’s expression froze.

"No," he finally said, "there’s got to be another... no, I won’t. I can’t."

"What do you mean, you can’t? You’ve done it before!"

"I did it twice before when there was no other alternative, and you know that! The Killing Curse is Dark Magic... it’s a last resort spell only to be used when no other..."

"Harry, damn you, shut up and listen to me! We don’t have time for you to give a lecture on Ethics! This is not your school, this is—" But the Graphorn had gotten its bearings and lunged at the pair. There was not time for further discussion.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" they shouted together, wands outstretched. We all turned our faces away as a brilliant green light filled the air. When it had faded, the Graphorn was lying motionless in the middle of the clearing. Harry and Ron looked dazed for a moment, both having fallen down. They made eye contact and quickly scowled.

"Great, I can do a couple of makeshift mantles right now," Ginny said, breaking the ensuing eerie silence. "Maybe even three. And I’m going to get those two horns, too," she added with a smile. "Too bad Sonia’s not here." She and Lizeth started for the animal.

Bill’s eyes rolled up to the top of her head. "Trust Ginny to think of fashion at a time like this."

Ron stood up, panting. So did Harry, turning to face Anya.

"Which way?"

"We’re almost there... all we have to do is follow this path, and we’ll come to another climb. When we get to the top, we’ll see a echoing mountain made entirely of crystal..." She trailed off, looking strangely at Draco.

For Draco had found something, carved into the rock of the side of the mountain we were traversing just then. Even Ginny looked over her shoulder as she used a Tanning Charm to cure the Graphorn hide that she and Liz had stripped from the massive beast.

It was a large slab of stone, carved entirely in a Gothic script. The rock was weatherworn and mossy, but the words had not been obliterated. Draco read the legend.

"Who is Hecate?" was the obvious question. Liz asked it.

"It seems rather unlikely that anyone would bury their wife in such a remote location," remarked Ron. "Most likely it’s a clue of some sort."

"A beautiful epitaph, is it not?" sighed Madeleine wistfully. "‘She walked nobly and spoke kindly’--any woman would want such words spoken over her grave."

"I wouldn’t," said Ginny, now using a Shearing Spell on the tanned Graphorn hide.

"Well, I don’t think you have anything to fear, vixen. ‘Chaste and discreet’? You?" teased Draco.

She threw him an angry look and went back to the hide, cutting with a vengeance until Draco walked over to kiss the back of her neck.

"I wouldn’t have you any other way," he told her, and she smiled again before they began to kiss in earnest.

"There’s something underneath it all," murmured Anya next to my ear. Then she said, louder, "Try to lift the slab up... I sense that there’s something that’ll help us in that grave."

This proved to be a troublesome venture. The slab seemed not to want to budge... the twins were making ominous jokes about disturbing the rest of the dead... Harry broke several rocks in an attempt to pry the thing open without disturbing the rock.

"Get out of the way, Potter," said Draco, and then began to blast the sides of the stone slab unceremoniously. "You act as if we’re out on a Sunday stroll through the park... we are under time constraints, let’s not forget."

In response, Harry threw the rock he was holding at Draco’s feet.

"Believe me, Malfoy, I know."

Watching the excavation, I looked back at my husband and rested my head against his chest. I was so very tired, supplying energy for three people.

"I’m so cold and frightened," I murmured against the cloth of his robes. He stroked my hair softly. "I want to go home."

"I do, too," he whispered. I pulled away from him reluctantly, but I caught something going on out of the corner of my eye.

Anya was walking slowly away from the group towards a stranger. I squinted my eyes in the bright sunlight, but could hardly make out a profile. The other person was bent over, and had a long white beard. I thought about all the stories of the Old Man of the Mountain, and wondered if this was him.

"Sir?" she called out softly. I took a few paces forward to get a good look at things. "Sir, can you hear me?" The old man looked up at her, leaning heavily on his cane. He beckoned for her to come forward and the bottom of my stomach dropped out. Something wasn’t right.

The mysterious old man took a few paces toward Anya.

"I need help, young lady. Can you help me?" he asked, voice coming out as no more than a rasp. By now, Fred had turned to watch with me warily. I looked over my shoulder at George, who was talking to Charlie.

"I can try," Anya said in her ever-soft voice.

The old man’s voice turned cold and hard. "Of course you can." Before anyone could react, the old man was no longer leaning on his cane. He stood up straight and grabbed Anya roughly by the front of the robes. Caught by surprise, she was thrown to the ground. She turned over just in time to see the elder man change into a younger version.

The man was now maybe in his thirties, with dark brown eyes and hair that matched Anya’s. They even looked alike. Great heavens, it was Michael Parker.

Michael had been a seventh year the year I came to Hogwarts. Anya had talked very little during first year, but when she’d spoken, it was usually of her brother. He’d been as much of a Quidditch legend there in the House of Gryffindor as Charlie had been, and they were the best of friends. When Michael disappeared during our fifth year, she’d seemed extremely distraught.

"Michael," Anya said in a disbelieving tone. Tears threatened to spill over her eyes. "Michael, no…" But apparently, her brother wasn’t listening, for he bent over and lifted Anya by the neck of her robes. Before she could scramble away or fight back, he clamped his opposite hand across her neck, slowly squeezing.

"Put her down!" George shouted, rushing over and brandishing his wand. This got the attention of the others... but Michael immediately cast a Dark spell ("Arx!") that formed an invisible barrier between us and the others. Immediately Harry began blasting this barrier, shouting for the others to help him.

Undaunted, Fred stepped up beside his brother. In that moment the twins looked so threatening that I swore to myself that I would never get on either of their bad sides ever again.

"You heard what my brother said," said Fred.

"Michael, I know you can hear me in there. Please… please, you can’t do this. I know you’re in there somewhere," Anya pleaded. Now tears did spill over, but she didn’t notice.

"Parker, I will kill you," George said. Judging by the tone of his voice, he meant it.

"My dear Weasley, you fail to understand how things are," Michael said, rounding on George. He still had Anya by the neck and I could tell it was getting harder and harder for her to breathe. She was clawing desperately at his hands, but to no avail. "I cannot allow your group to go any further. Now, you will all turn back." He walked very slowly and decidedly towards the ledge of the mountain and held Anya at the very edge. "You will turn back, or you will lose this pitiful mouse of a sister forever."

"Michael, listen to me. Listen to my voice. I know you’re inside there somewhere," Anya said, choking. "Please. You’re my big brother. Listen to your little sister for once."

Michael’s eyes changed then, and he let go of her neck. Not used to standing of her own volition, she teetered dangerously.

And fell.

People say that when bad things happen, they happen in slow motion. They say everything moves in painfully clear detail. That’s not always the case. Everything went quickly just then, as though my Omnioculars were stuck on fast forward.

I remember George screaming something and dashing for the edge of the cliff. I remember Fred using a spell to levitate Michael a few feet of the ground – and then viciously slam him against a rock. I remember seeing the blood pooling around his head.

I saw George bend over the side of the cliff. For one crazy moment, I thought he was going to jump. He reached far down and pulled… pulled something up. It wasn’t until I saw a dark green bundle of robes that I realized he had Anya.

"There was a ledge..." she breathed as he drew her into his arms. He closed his eyes and held her tightly to him, face etched with relief. For the second time in his life, he’d almost lost her. She pulled back and looked at him, whispering something I couldn’t make out. All I knew is that her words made him lock her in a crushing embrace again.

With Michael unconscious, the barrier was easily dissolved. Liz and Madeleine rushed over to Anya and George, obviously concerned. Once they saw the situation was under control, Draco and Harry returned to Hecate’s tomb while the Weasley brothers surrounded Fred.

She lifted her head and spotted Michael.

"No," she murmured. She crawled away from George and to her brother’s side. I had to blink a few times. I could not believe it. With a shaking hand, she stroked a lock of wayward hair from his face. She noticed the blood pool around his head. It was then that she began to cry.

"Michael…"

"He’s gone," Fred said, coming over to kneel beside her. "He’ll never hurt you again." Anya ignored him and pressed to fingers to the inside of his wrist.

"No, he’s alive. Someone please help him. He needs help. He’s hurt badly…" She touched a spot on the back of his head and her fingertips came away bloody. She looked up at the rest of us, desperation in her eyes. "He’s my only family. Someone, please." It was an awful sight, seeing her kneeling over her brother’s body with tear streaks and bloody hands. George put a hand on each of her shoulders and tried to steer her away, but she shook him off. "Someone… keep him alive... please," she whimpered. She pressed two fingers to the inside of his wrist again.

"This had better be good," Ginny sighed as she joined Anya at Michael’s side. Anya watched her with wide eyes as the youngest Weasley performed what must have been a dozen first aid spells on Michael Parker. "Why do you want him patched up?"

"He wanted to kill you, Anya," George said, slowly. "Why are you saving his life?"

Anya shook her head at him, "It wasn’t him, George. That wasn’t Michael. He was under the Imperius; I know it. Michael wouldn’t do that – he couldn’t!"

At these words, Michael Parker’s eyes fluttered open.

"Anya?" he said in a rough voice. Before he could make out another word, Fred put a full Body Bind on him from the neck down. "You believed in me," he whispered in awe.

"You’re going to be okay, Michael," she said, wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her robes. "All right? You’re going to be better."

"I… I can think on my own again. I can talk... I can say what I want to say." Michael seemed utterly amazed at these simply actions I took for granted each day. "But… but I can’t move."

"You’ve got a Body Bind on you, you stupid git," Fred spat, unable to keep the anger from his voice.

"I’m more useful to you alive than dead," Michael said faintly.

"Really? Excuse me while I laugh my bloody head off," said George. "Believe me, if you had succeeded in throwing my wife off a cliff, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all." I suppose in George’s mind, they were already married.

"Can’t you see he was under Imperius?" said Anya. "It’s wearing off... Michael, talk to me, please?"

"It’s a trap," Michael said. "They’re not here. Turn back before it’s too late."

"What’s a trap?" I asked.

"The mountain..." His voice was growing fainter. "The mountain of crystal. Light... need light..."

"Michael," Anya sobbed. "No..."

"We need light?" I continued to prompt. The blood was gushing out of his head now... his voice was very low.

"In the beginning, there was light... and that light was life, and the darkness did not understand it. That light... that glorious light..."

And with those words, Michael Parker's eyes closed.

None of us dared to move. Anya's soft cries were the only sounds in the forest. Even the birds had ceased to sing.

"Michael?" she said softly. I turned my eyes away, unable to look. "Michael! Michael, talk to me..."

"Ahhhh!" screamed Harry. I sighed, wondering what had happened that time.

He was nursing his right hand. It was burnt rather badly. Ginny had returned to the opened tomb and was treating a similar injury on Draco's arm. Shaking his head at them, Ron attempted to lift whatever was in the stone grave out of it, but suffered the worst burns of all for his trouble.

I looked into the tomb, expecting to see something that produced unnatural fire. All I saw was a rather dirty and unremarkable iron sword.

There was no body in sight.

Anya left her brother's side for a moment and came to the grave. Unceremoniously, she lifted the sword out of the tomb and laid it on the ground. Seeming none the worse for the wear.

"We'll need this," she said. "I don't know when or why, but we're going to need it."

Madeleine, whose family owned a great deal of armor and traditional weapons, gasped. "Dieu! Is that what I think it is?"

"We don't know what you think it is, dear," pointed out Liz helpfully.

"Am I the only one who recognizes such a famed weapon, and the only non-English here?" said Madeleine incredulously, covering her hand with the skirt of her robes and wiping the hilt clean until it gleamed in the early evening sun. "This is none other than the Sword of Rhydderch, one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain! Forged in the same mystical Atlantis smithy as Excalibur, long ago in the Golden Age. My father searched for this sword for years--the last recorded owner was a Mr. Albert Quirke of Montrose."

Bill nodded, peering to look at the sword but not touching it. "Pours forth invincible flame in the hands of a brave man, but unlike Excalibur, none but the righteous can ever brandish the Sword of Rhydderch... also known as the Sword of Glory. Handling it will instantly kill the wicked... and will even injure the bravest knight or sorcerer if there is a stain on his honor." He looked at Harry significantly. "According to treasure legend, Lancelot du Lac found this sword on the Grail Quest more than a thousand years ago... and almost lost the use of his hands when he tried to wield it. His only son, Galahad, ended up taking it from him, for he was the only Knight of the Round Table worthy enough to wield it."

Anya picked the sword up again.

"This will prove it. It'll prove my brother was under Imperius," she told all of us. And without another word, she crossed the clearing and knelt at her brother's side. George hadn't moved a centimeter, just watched her with wide eyes.

She grasped the sword firmly at the hilt and picked up his hand. Carefully, she let the tips of his limp fingers touch the flat, broad blade. After a moment, she set the sword on the ground and rested her head on Michael's chest, closing her eyes and listening for a heartbeat.

"He's alive. Barely, but it didn't kill him. He's not wicked," she looked up at Ginny with pleading eyes. "Help him, please."

In silence, Ginny performed over a dozen medimagical spells, all while Anya held her brother's hand with tear-filled eyes. The blood had stopped flowing out from around his head, but I wasn't entirely sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"He'll be all right," Ginny said after a few minutes. Anya's grin was the broadest I'd ever seen in my entire life. "We'll leave him here. Shield him from both sight and harm, of course. We'll figure out what to do with him later."

Silently yet swiftly, we worked. Anya wrapped the sword in the Graphorn scraps, and I helped her, careful not to touch the sword... I wasn't brazen enough to judge my own righteousness or lack thereof. We then gave the wrapped-up sword to Harry. Everyone else helped Ginny dispose of the skinned Graphorn, which had yielded three magicproof mantles and two horns.

Fred shook his head at his younger sister. "The rest of us are dealing with long-lost brothers and Treasures of Britain... and you're preparing for the Gladrags autumn showing in Milan?"

Ginny tutted at him. "Oh, put an owl in it, Fred. I am sure my foresight will come in handy sooner or later."

"What do we do with Mikey here?" Draco drawled, arching a platinum eyebrow. Anya scowled at him, but I doubted Draco would care, even if he did notice.

"We'll put him in the tomb," Harry said. "We'll give him light and cast a Shielding charm."

"What if he wakes up? He won't know what happened…" Anya began.

Draco rolled his eyes and sighed impatiently. "We'll leave a blasted note, then! Can we move on so we can get this happy little adventure out of our systems? I have got to get out of these shoes."

Anya looked furious, but thought better of speaking.

"We'll come back for him," Liz assured her. Anya looked between her brother and the tomb, and then nodded solemnly. Wordlessly, we transferred Michael Parker into the otherwise empty tomb. Ron lit a fire in his hands and placed it in the corner, far away from Michael's head.

"It's safe," Ron said. He, Harry and Bill used both wands and brute strength to close the tomb. After it was sealed shut again, Draco performed an Oxygen Charm so Michael could breath (Oxyhydro!). Harry followed with a Shielding Charm (Protectus Totalus!), and Ron finished with a charm to make the tomb invisible (Invisium!).

Once our business was taken care of, we proceeded away from that solemn cliff. As I passed the resealed tomb, my eyes fell upon the epitaph one last time...

"What is Orla’s mum’s first name, Ron?" I asked suddenly. We’d rounded the corner and were now facing the imposing shelf we would have to climb... just as Anya said we would.

Ron shrugged. "Dunno. Seems like at one time I knew it, but now I don’t."

"Do you think it was Hecate?" I prompted.

"Like I said, Angelina, I can’t remember," Ron said, a bit testily. I suppose now that we were close, he was thinking about Mo, Hermione, or both. I was silent.

The climb wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Of course, it was grueling... this time instead of twenty feet we had almost one hundred and fifty feet of near-vertical rock to contend with. But Ginny had also put the Graphorn entrails to good use. She’d Transfigured them into a fabulous, enchanted silver rope.

"Because after all, khaki is so last year," she teased as we all tied the rope in the manner that Charlie and Liz suggested. Harry came around and cast an Unbreakable Charm on all of the knots.

We then struggled up the mountain. I never afterwards understood how I made it all the way to the top. Sure, Fred was there, a few feet behind me... and right in front there was Charlie’s broad back, testing all the footholds and handholds I’d have to shortly contend with. Far above us, there was Harry, a strap of the Graphorn fiber which held his glasses in place looping behind his head, the wrapped-up sword of Rhydderch tied to his section of the rope. And at the very end, there was Ron, swearing every time one of us loosened a bunch of rocks in our climb, sending them tumbling onto his face.

But my hands were completely numb, cracked and bleeding. I was sure that my toes were frostbitten despite the protection of my good shoes and thick woolen socks. It was quite difficult to catch my breath in the thin, oxygen-poor mountain air. Every muscle in my body ached... and every time a jagged boulder bumped my all-but-flat belly, I uttered a silent plea for my unborn children.

Finally, dizzy and nearly out of my senses, I felt Charlie’s thickly muscled arms wrap around my waist and pull me up onto a flat cliff. Harry, Bill, Madeleine, and Liz had already made it to the top and were trying to catch their breath. My hands went to the knot at my waist.

"No," said Harry hoarsely. It was then that I noticed that everyone was still tied up. "Leave it until everyone’s up and safe."

No one had any trouble with the climb save Ginny, who had secured the mantles about her waist with a clever series of Draco-tied knots but who nearly lost the precious horns... and her own life when she tried to undo the ropes and leap after them. Both times she did this Ron had caught the horns, and now her fiancé was telling her exactly how stupid her rash behavior was.

Fifteen minutes later, Ron made it to the top. We were going to rest for a moment, but he shook his head, standing up shakily.

"It’s nearly dark. Every minute we waste is one in which they could be hurt or worse... which reminds me. What does Hermione’s watch say now, Charlie?"

"I have it," said Harry shortly, not bothering to look at Ron. "Still reads the same."

Ron glared at him. When he didn’t get so much as an acknowledging glance from Harry, he walked up ahead.

"I think it’s time for me to take the lead," he said. We all followed him in the only direction that we could, through a narrow opening in yet another crevice directly in front of us... and stepped into Paradise.

We were standing in the midst of what appeared to be very like an echoing bowl that was made of all Alps, the bowl holding some water at the very bottom. But that water was a lake, and it had to be a tremendously deep one, as it was situated on the top of a low mountain. The blue...oh, the sparkling blue of it!... made it seem, from where I first saw it, like a precious blue gem nestled upon the mountains’ fold of pristine white blanketing and green fleece.

Indeed, one knew immediately that the place was utterly enchanted... the rock around the lake was covered with green moss instead of snow, and the limbs of the proud trees--spruce, pine, and other evergreens--were not bowed with icicles. It was also at least twenty degrees warmer than the frigid shelf we’d just come from.

Another clue that the place was enchanted was because in that blue lake, there was a crystal mountain reflected... on the far side of the plateau.

"See? What did I tell you? I’ve been here before." There was no joy in Anya’s tone, however.

"It’s a beautiful place," remarked Liz.

"Dangerous beauty," said Harry grimly. "Reminds me of a certain land in Tartarus... beguiling it might be, and yet you cannot forget that it was most likely created by Dark Magic. Don’t let your guard down."

Despite Harry’s warnings, nothing at all happened in that Place of Echoes, as we later called it. It was an ideal setting for enjoying a mountain sunset. By the time we had traversed the perimeter of the lake, the evening star was high in the almost dark sky, and the first stars had appeared.

Directly behind us I heard Bill say softly, "Madeleine?"

"I... I do not detect the spoor any longer!"

"But that’s impossible," said Anya. "We’re close, I know we are. We have to be! This place seems so familiar to me that my mind is screaming with it..."

The crystal mountain loomed right in front of us, glittering like a many-faceted diamond. There was a deep gorge between the idyllic plateau on which we stood and the imposing crystal mountain, shining like a gargantuan diamond in the sun. It had been spanned by a sturdy-looking rope bridge.

"Looks like they’ve just rolled out the red carpet for us, doesn’t it?" muttered Ron.

Draco, for once, actually agreed with him. "I can’t imagine the Cabalistica maintaining an outpost that is so very poorly guarded. The Dark covens have certainly come down in the world since I..."

And with those words, a large female panther leapt onto him, knocking all the wind out of him. Settling her claws into his chest, she reared her black head proudly and flashed pale-blue eyes... familiar-looking pale blue eyes?

Before any of us could fully react, the fierce jungle cat was thrown off Draco by a fierce white Siberian tiger that was more than a match for that panther. I was even more afraid than I had been...

...until I realized that Madeleine was no longer standing with us.

Sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed when Bill shouted, "Hold your fire! No wands... you might hurt her!"

Ron was furious. "Madeleine, you idiot, how do you know that’s not the lamia?"

Those eyes... those cat eyes! Cat eyes... cat... kitty...

"Flying toads, that’s Kitty!" I shouted, startling Anya and Fred, who I was standing with. "That’s not any lamia... it’s a human woman! An animagus!"

"How do you know?" asked Liz.

"Because that’s the witch who tried to poison Hermione... and Mo... and me!"

Sure enough, the beast must have heard my words, for Kitty-the-panther broke away from Madeleine’s claws and came rushing towards me. A running leap from Madeleine-the-tiger was the only thing that saved me from being torn to pieces.

The catfight that ensued was brutal beyond words. When men brawl, even the most insidious of them usually observe certain unwritten rules. This is not the case for women. It is well known that the females of any given species are indeed the most vicious fighters, especially when defending their young or their territory. This is why there is no such thing as a witches’ duel... even when two women face off in such a manner, the masculine designation is given.

Kitty and Madeleine were obviously fighting to the death. Neither of the cat-women let each other go long enough for any of us to get a clear shot at Kitty, and as none of the rest of us were Animagi, there was little else that we could do besides watch.

Again, when bad things happen, they happen so quickly that they leave one utterly dizzy. At first it seemed as if Madeleine was winning the fight, for she knocked Kitty to the ground several times, sank her teeth deep into the panther’s back, and nearly gouged out one eye. The mistake Madeleine made was one that we were always warned about at Hogwarts... that of overconfidence. In the magical world, you can never take anything for granted.

Before long, Kitty lay on her side, limp and apparently unconscious. Panting and licking an injured paw, Madeleine approached the other great cat.

Then with a wide swipe of her claw, Kitty drew her sharp claws across Madeleine’s throat.

Madeleine issued a loud roar and fell backwards. Kitty decided to press her advantage despite her weakened state, and leapt towards Draco again, who Stunned her so quickly that I doubt she even knew what hit her.

"Mangy cur," he said, as he and Ginny levitated the beast, then tossed her down into the steep gorge. "I hate cats."

The rest of us were seeing to the other cat. She was back in her human form, and Bill was kneeling over her. Her head was leaning against his thigh... a puncture wound in her throat was bleeding profusely. One of her legs was also bent at an awkward angle.

Ginny ran over from the edge of the gorge and quickly touched her wand to the bleeding gash. The flow of the blood stopped somewhat, and Madeleine murmured a string of unintelligible and broken French, but Bill stopped her.

"Save your strength, ma cherie," he whispered. "You’ll be all right... I’m so very proud of you."

"Perhaps you ought to stay here with her, Bill," Harry advised. "She can’t walk in that condition, and I don’t think even Ginny can mend that leg quick enough for her to come along."

"That’ll bring our numbers down to ten, Harry," pointed out Charlie. "And we don’t know what’s waiting for us inside."

But in the end, Bill stayed behind with his injured new love, and the rest of us traversed the rope bridge without incident.

Ron, true to his word, got to the entrance of the crystal mountain first. He was about to enter it, too, but Harry’s yell stopped him.

"Where the hell is your light? Or have you forgotten Tartarus, and what Hermione always says about cavern entrances like this?"

Ron acted as if Harry hadn’t said a word. "Everybody, light your wands," he said in a tone that was certainly a lot more like Percy Weasley than he ever intended. "Even better, Transfigure it into a torch if you can. And whatever you do, stay in the light."

I had no idea what Ron and Harry were talking about until I entered the dark cave, wand-torch brandished high... and heard an insectile clacking and clattering all around us. It wasn’t until later that I understood what we’d passed through... and why the light was so desperately important.

Thousands of years ago, otherworldly semi-sentient creatures known as Hecatonchires were created via cross-breeding to watch over the entrances to Dark realms. Although no one has ever seen a Hecatonchire, infrared wizarding photographs taken by Gatekeepers reveal a man-sized beast that is shaped like a pterodactyl, but that is very insectile in behavior and movement.

The reason why no one has ever seen a Hecatonchire is because these creatures are thoroughly repelled by any sort of light. It is not known whether they are killed by light, or just simply disintegrate--none of them have ever been stupid enough to step out of the darkness.

What is known is that Hecatonchires relish the taste of human flesh and blood. It was a Hecatonchire that killed Sirius’ brother at the entrance to Tartarus on remote Ayr Island... an entrance that, according to what Harry was saying just then, was a total sense-vacuum.

"We couldn’t see or hear or smell or feel anything," he said thoughtfully, as we traversed the pitch black cavern in a tight single file line. "There was just a prickling on the back of our necks... a chill in our spines..."

And all around us, just beyond the light, there was the whirring of wings and the crackle of pincers.

I don't like bugs, said a little voice off to my right. It might've been Liz, but I wasn't entirely sure. I felt a prickling feeling on the back of my neck and swung around, lit wand in front of me. Nothing. But I knew that just outside my arc of light, they were swarming.

"Come on, love," Fred murmured, "The quicker we get out of here, the better." He put an arm around my waist and guided me through the cavern. The scuttling noise was something I knew would invade my nightmares for the rest of my life. It was the most grotesque noise... thousands of exoskeletal legs scampering across rock…. I shuddered.

"Oh!" a female voice cried out. That time, I could tell it was definitely Liz who had called out. Fred and I froze, but there was nothing we could do... outside our arcs of light, nothing could be seen.

"Liz?" Charlie called out desperately. "Liz, where are you?" I trembled as Fred pulled me closer to him. "Answer me, please." Never in my life had I heard Charlie Weasley sound less than one hundred percent confident and sure of himself. Not cocky, as Ron could be at times, or pompous, as Percy always seemed to be, but self-assured.

His voice now was the one exception.

"I... I'm right here, Charlie," Liz's terrified voice came from somewhere behind me. Her left hand trembled as it held her lighted wand.

She was clutching her entire forearm inside the shabby old grey cloak she was wearing, which had been one of Molly’s. I glanced back at her as Charlie ran around to where she was and pulled her hand out.

From tip to first joint, the end of Liz’s pinky finger had been snapped clean off. Even in the relative darkness, I could see tears of pain streaming down her face.

"I just let my hand swing for a moment... swing just beyond the light... and something tried to pull me out..."

The worst thing was, none of us could do anything about her injury... we were all using our wands for light, and no one dared extinguish them. And the only persons I ever knew of that could heal with a touch were Dot Lightfoot, who was most likely thousands of miles away... and Hermione, who was in trouble...

There was a crisp "snap" at my elbow... I’d let it dip out of the dim circle of light that my wand had cast. Acting before he thought, Fred pushed my torn and gnawed cloak sleeve back into the light... and received a deep gash in his right hand for his trouble.

The clacking and whirring seemed to increase tenfold. Perhaps the Hecatonchires had gotten excited from the smell and taste of blood. Terrified, I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead... for I was afraid to look to either side of me, afraid of catching even the slightest hint of a beady eye or a snapping pincer...

"Light... straight ahead!" called Ron. Sure enough, there was a spot of light in front of us that hadn’t been there before. At that moment, I was sure that I’d never been more relieved in my life.

Even once we were all out of the Hecatonchires’ lair and Ginny had stanched Fred and Liz’s bleeding (muttering something about Skele-Gro and Hermione), we kept our wands lighted for a few minutes, being as quiet as possible, trying to regain our bearings and our confidence. Draco was inspecting the damage a Hecatonchire had done to one of the Graphorn mantles.

Anya’s face was buried in George’s robes. She was too upset to speak... George waved off Ron, then Harry when they tried to question her about whether her intuition was giving her any more leads. It didn’t help that Madeleine was the only one who could track the lamia spoor... there was now a gorge and a vast pitch-black cavern full of man-eating insects between us and where we’d left her with Bill at the edge of the Place of Echoes.

I sat next to Fred in the narrow crystalline corridor we found ourselves in, leaning my head back, basking in a shaft of sunlight from far above.

Harry, still clutching the Graphorn-wrapped treasure sword, seemed to be trying to get Ron’s attention. Of course Ron was making it a point to ignore him.

Finally Harry spoke out.

"Well, Ron, which way should we go?" There was something underlying his tone of voice that wasn’t at all kind. "Up this way, or down that?"

Ron must have detected it, for he walked up to Harry (who he towered over by almost a full head) and make it a point to look down at him.

"You know I lost nearly all of my tracking ability that night in Tartarus when..."

"That’s a piss-poor excuse and you know it. Third eye or not, we’ve got to find Maureen and Hermione before the creatures that have them get bored and decide simply holding them isn’t enough entertainment."

"Why don’t you tell me, since you’re the one who knows everything?"

Harry folded his arms and shook his head. "Oh, no. You wanted to be the leader, so lead."

The two men stared each other down. Ron broke the stare first, turning his back on Harry and towards the rest of us.

"One way’s as good as another if you ask me," said Ron. "Now, I know our entrance scared everyone... wasn’t expecting anything like that myself. But we can’t stop to rest here. We can’t give up now."

"What’s the point?" said Liz, using the fingers of her good hand to caress the nub of the other. "There’s only so much we can do. There are so few of us..."

"So what? It’s like Har... it’s like I always say, quality is much more important that quantity. We all spent a great deal of our youth fighting one of the worst wizards to ever draw breath and all his nasty followers. And you know what? Pick up any history book today and it says this... that when the chips were down, it was kids... inexperienced, wet-behind-the-ears kids who turned the tide in that war.

"Once upon a time we were those kids... those teens and young adults who took a stand against evil. Now, a lot has happened since then, and some of us..." here he trailed off thoughtfully, "some of us may have lost our way. Happens when you travel down life’s path and the going is good... you can forget who you were in the beginning.

"That’s when things happen that make us remember. We may not look exactly like those kids whose pictures are in the textbooks anymore... but let’s not forget that we are still those kids. We gave the Dark Side a good kick in the shins once..."

"Oh, I’d say we KO’ed them for a good while," George said.

"So what makes you think we can’t do it again?" said Ron. Everyone seemed cheered by this.

I was still bothered.

"But we were innocent then," I said quietly. "And we certainly aren’t that anymore. Perhaps that was a factor that worked in our favor."

"Well, there’s another factor that’s going to work in our favor today," Fred said right next to me. "And that’s experience. Maybe we’ve become jaded and worldly, but we know a whole lot more than we did when we were all in our teens."

"We know how to argue and stab each other in the back." That was still me. The Hecatonchires’ Lair had done something to me. It seemed to be the perfect real-life metaphor for everything that had been happening to us over the past five months and more.

"Perhaps." That was Harry, standing in the back of the little group. "But we also know more about magic, how it works, how to best use it. We know more about life. Most importantly, we know more about ourselves. So why be afraid? There’s nothing to fear but fear itself."

"I could have sworn I heard that quote somewhere before," said Draco, using a Reel Charm to wind the Graphorn-derived silver rope into a neat coil. "Make sure you attribute the correct source, Potter, I wouldn’t want you hauled into a Ministry hearing over a trumped-up plagiarism charge."

"So," said Ron, glaring at Draco, "is everyone ready to move out?"

We all stood up and followed Ron down the corridor for a few minutes. Although my feet ached and my stomach was tied into tight knots, I was pleased that we were no longer stuck in limbo.

Suddenly, Ron stopped in his tracks, causing at least five people to run into him.

"Wait a minute... something’s coming back to me!" exclaimed Ron. "This is the right way!"

He then broke into a run down what seemed to be an endless corridor... I panted as I tried desperately not to be left behind. Wondering. Had something re-triggered Ron’s clairvoyance after all this time?

For he was still running. With his wand pointed ahead of him...

"Come on, hurry up! It’s just ahead, I know it.... only a little further... almost there..."

And then Ron plunged straight downward and out of sight. Liz, who’d been immediately behind him, almost fell into the newly created hole too... but Charlie was there to reach out and grab her by her robes.

"Ron!" Ginny screamed down to her brother. "Are you hurt? Is anything broken?"

"No need to get hysterical, Gin," between Ron’s voice from the depths. "I landed on something soft."

"Make sure it’s not Devil’s Snare," said Harry, trying to stifle a laugh but not quite succeeding.

"No, I don’t think it’s alive... it’s more like a pile of laundry. Nothing’s moved yet, and my wand wasn’t snapped in the fall, so no harm done."

"So much for Mister Prescient," said Draco, peering down into the void. "Did you foresee this, too?"

"Shut up and throw me that rope," growled Ron.

Draco leaned over the hole, rope in hand, twirling one end of it.

"Can you see me, Weasley?"

Ron growled again. "Unfortunately, yes."

"Then why should I throw down this rope? Give me one good reason."

"Because if you don’t, when I finally do get back up there, I’m going to rip that slimy tongue of yours out and use it as a necktie."

"Draco, throw him the rope," sighed Ginny. "He already feels stupid enough for being wrong about his hunch... you can rub it in after we get out of this alive."

But Ron was getting impatient.

"MALFOY! IF YOU DON’T THROW DOWN THAT ROPE, I’LL--"

"Ron? Ronald, are you out there? Can you hear me?"

All of us looked at each other. Extremely confused... for none of us had spoken. The voice seemed far away, and yet a little familiar...

Then before we had the chance to place the first speaker, another faraway voice cut in.

"Are you sure that he’s here, Maureen? You can hear him, then?"

It was Mo and Hermione!

Their voices seemed to echo out of the hole that Ron had fallen into. Quick as we could, the rest of us used the magic rope to shimmy down into it as well. Someone lighted a wand... we were situated in a circular room made not of crystal, but of brick.

"Mo, Hermione, are you all right?" called out Ron.

"Well, seeing as she’s canned right now and I’m stuck in an ice cube," began Hermione-from-a-distance, "as well as can be expected for a pair of instant dinners."

"We’re fine, Ron, no one’s hurt us yet or anything, we just can’t move," said Mo-from-a-distance. "You’re not alone, are you?"

"No, he’s not," said Harry, the last to swoosh down the rope. "I’m here too."

"Are you indeed?" asked Hermione-from-a-distance. "Anyone else with you?"

"YES!" we all shouted at once.

"All this for us? Oh, Hermione, doesn’t that make you feel loved?" said Mo-from-a-distance. Apparently even facing imminent death couldn’t cause Mo to lose her sense of humor. "Come on, hurry up and get us out!"

Hermione-from-a-distance replied, "Oh, for Merlin’s sake, be patient! Remember, I’m the one on ice, and I’ve been here for days, not mere hours."

"Who are we up against?" Harry asked her.

"Oh, just a lamia and a half, a half dozen enchanted traps, and your random Cabalistica agent here and there."

"Is that all?" asked Harry.

Both twins’ mouths dropped open.

"Actually, I said the same thing to myself when they first brought me in," continued Hermione-from-a-distance. "It doesn’t make sense for this place to be so lightly guarded."

"Hermione, we’ve gone through involuntary time-space-magic transport, a Biting Doxy swarm, two overgrown Sphinxes, dragons and trolls, Graphorns, assassins, a panther Animagus, and a roomful of flesh-eating, man-sized bugs to get to this point," Liz said testily. "If that’s what you consider a light guard..."

"It has been light," said Ron thoughtfully, and so it was now his turn to receive evil looks. "We haven’t seen an Enforcer yet, which knowing the Cabalistica is strange. Do you suspect a trap, Hermione?"

"Of course, these are lamias, aren’t they? Trapping is what they do best. Fortunately enough, neither of them are here right now. I don’t sense them anywhere in the vicinity, either, so we might just be in luck. If you can get to us..."

"How?" asked Harry, interrupting her.

"I was just getting to that part," she said. "The room that you’re in... what does it look like?" Ron provided her with a description. "Yes, they brought me through that one when I was first brought here... and yes, I was blindfolded, but I was able to see a few millimeters underneath it. There are Moke-skins and treasure bags all over the floor, right? Heaps and heaps of them?" We all confirmed it. "All right, you’re close. Someone must have left an odd Whispering Gallery Charm connecting the laundry to where we are now... let’s just hope that there are no eavesdroppers.

"You’re going to go out of the door, and proceed a good... oh, let’s say fifty yards down the corridor. You’ll come to a cavern filled with riches, the like of which I’ve never seen... pass through it, but don’t touch anything. Or so my abductor warned her henchmen. Directly thereafter you’ll find us. Any questions?"

"Yeah," said Charlie. "Which door? There are five. All identical."

I could just see Hermione biting her lower lip. "Oh, dear. I have no idea. And I’m sure all the others are horrible choices... let me see..."

"Try and remember what was under your feet that time," said Mo-from-a-distance.

"Shut up, Maureen, I’m trying to think and you’re giving me a headache... are the stones in front of each door about the same?" Ginny and Anya confirmed that they were. "That’s no good, then... let me see..."

"How many doors were on each side of you when you went through?" asked Harry.

"Harry, I was blindfolded," she replied impatiently.

"If that was a regular cloth blindfold, it doesn’t matter. Even if you weren’t paying much attention, which considering the circumstances is understandable, you know which door you went through. So tell us."

"Whatever do you mean? Excuse me, but the last time I checked we did not share a brain! How can you tell me what I know? How can I tell you what I don’t know myself? As I’ve said twice before, I was blindfolded, and I..." She trailed off abruptly and all was still for a moment.

"You what?" prompted Harry after a few seconds.

"It’s the second door from the right," Hermione-from-a-distance said slowly. "I don’t know how I know that, but somehow I do."

"Are you sure?"

"No, it’s a random guess... of course she’s sure, Harry, didn’t she just say she was?" said Ron.

"Harry’s right, I’m not sure. How can I be? But it’s the best I can do. Try it and see."

"Oh, right, and get our heads bitten off by a lamia," said Fred.

"Well, the way I see it you’ve got three choices," said Mo. "You can try one of those doors, go back the way you came, or stay there folding laundry forever. The last option is my idea of domestic hell and the middle one doesn’t help Hermione and me... so would you please try the door already? The longer we spend yakking, the quicker Orla and that other one will return... and I don’t much like the thought of them crashing our party, do you?" At the end, her voice although distant seemed querulous.

"I’ll be there soon, sweetheart... don’t be afraid," Ron said.

It wasn’t until Mo answered that I realized he was speaking to her. "I won’t, I promise. I love you."

"That goes for you too, Hermione," added Ron. "You’re the more experienced one in there. Don’t lose it, okay?"

"Oh, I’m not the one who wet my pants the first night we spent in Tartarus," she replied scathingly. "I think I’ll be all right. Just get here soon."

"We’ll be there before you know it," said Harry. "In the meantime..."

"Right, I know. The usual. But at the same time, it’d be extremely helpful if you lot didn’t take the scenic route. Go on and try that door."

The door was tried accordingly, and opened without use of key, password or spell. Opening it did indeed reveal a long corridor of crystal that went on as far as the eye could see.

"You were right, Hermione!" cried Ginny, one of the last to leave. "This looks just like what you described."

"Really?" asked Hermione incredulously. "I wonder how..."

"Good, great, wonderful... why are you still talking to us?" That was Mo. "See you soon."

The walk down the corridor was as brisk as we could make it without running. Perhaps the remainder of this ordeal would be easy after all. Perhaps there really was nothing to fear. Perhaps...

Just as I’d started to relax, a great crash sounded behind me. When I turned around, there was a huge pile of rock crystal lying on the ground, blocking our return path almost completely.

And there was someone who had been almost entirely trapped beneath the falling crystal.

Ginny screamed and tried to rush over to where he was, but Draco held her back, knowing that she could do nothing in her ultrahysterical state. Immediately the twins rushed up to the pile and began to pull crystal rock from the top. Ron ran over too, trying to help, face so pale that his freckles were as clearly defined as polka dots on tissue paper.

"Come on, Ron, let’s go!" shouted Charlie. "Let them take care of it... I know, I know! But we need to move on. We’ve got to..."

"He’s going to be all right, Ron!" said George. "I can hear him groaning underneath here... at least I think I can..."

"Go on, get Mo and Hermione out of there before those lamias come back!" said Fred, heaving a particularly large stone. "We’ll take care of this."

After she calmed down, it was agreed that Ginny would stay behind with the twins to patch Harry up as best as she could. Draco didn’t seem too happy about this, but he ended up coming along with the rest of us.

The rest of us. Only Charlie, Liz, Draco, Ron, Anya, and I were left. A party of sixteen now down to six.

As we rushed along and I worried, I thought about the Seventh Prophecy. Had the sliding crystal really hurt Harry badly? Had it... no, the thought was unbearable. Harry couldn’t be... could he?

One thing was for sure. I felt a lot less confident about our ability to sweep into Mo and Hermione’s prison, free them, and leave that mountain unscathed. Harry’s accident seemed like a very bad omen at a time when he was sorely needed.

It wasn’t until we’d exited the corridor and entered the Cavern of Jewels that we realized Ginny still had the Graphorn mantles and rope with her... and the Sword of Rhydderch was buried underneath all that crystal...along with Harry.

The Cavern of Jewels was much more fabulous than Hermione had described it. Just like all the others, this cavern was made entirely of crystal, but its walls seemed to shine with unnatural fire. There was gold, silver, and every precious gem one could imagine, in every shape, size, and guise that had ever been dreamed up.

"Imagine if you had all this in your Gringotts vault, Fred," said George.

"Yeah, well some of us don’t have to imagine," Fred replied, eyeing Malfoy who seemed extremely interested in the treasure.

"There aren’t enough Galleons on the planet to equal the worth of the treasure in this room," Draco remarked. "I’m rather disappointed to see that it’s so poorly guarded..."

He was interrupted by Anya, who’d just tripped over a gold-tipped spear that had been stretched across our path through the treasure.

"Sorry," she said, blushing.

So were the rest of us. For out of the very walls of the cavern sprang four oversize treasure guards, made entirely of crystal. They were at least ten feet all and hulking. Wielding sharp crystalline swords with jagged edges.

Anya screamed... and fainted. At first I was annoyed. Then I had to wonder exactly what had triggered her precognition when it came to this place. For right before she slipped into unconsciousness, I saw the briefest flicker of recognition as those crystal henchmen were reflected in her eyes.

"Get her out of here!" shouted Liz. Despite her injured hand, she wielded a fierce wand. She and Draco had blasted the first two crystal Treasure Guards, and their blasts had shattered them utterly... and then the shards rejoined and grew again to almost instantly form six new Treasure Guards in their place.

"Are you sure you two can handle this?" asked Charlie skeptically.

"What are you waiting for, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse?" hissed Draco, using a Freeze Charm to stop a Guard whose sword came only about a foot short of decapitating him. "Leave!"

So Charlie and I levitated Anya and followed Ron, who had rushed out of the cavern... and into another, much smaller one. The overhang of the entrance was so low that we all had to duck in order to get in.

The cave we found ourselves in was still crystal... and globular... and so filled with man-sized holes in every direction that it looked like Swiss cheese. After setting Anya down on terra firma near the entrance, we carefully walked on the crevices between the holes until I mistakenly put my foot down on one...

...and touched something solid.

"It’s all right," I told the others, voice coming out in a frog-like croak. "These are all glass," I said, tapping the glass bottoms of the sinkholes with my toe to prove it.

Charlie did the same, looking around. "It seems like we’ve come upon a dead end... where are they?"

"I knew when Harry got buried that this was the wrong way!" said Ron, obviously frustrated.

"What shall we do, Ron?" I asked desperately, going back over to where Anya was stretched out cold and putting her head in my lap, much as I used to do to Olivia when she was little.

"Do? There is nothing to do other than to turn back and retrace our steps..."

He never got to finish the rest of his statement. For he’d finally got around to stepping on one of the glass sinkholes... and sank right through it.

At once, Charlie went to jump after him and catch him... but was stopped by solid glass once again. So was I, when I left Anya and joined him. After a few minutes of us both trying various holes and then trying to break the glass with no success at all, Charlie suddenly stopped.

"Angelina, have you tried looking through one of these yet?"

I hadn’t... so I followed Charlie’s advice. What I saw was absolutely astounding.

The cavern that we were peering into was the largest we’d encountered yet. The ceiling of it was even higher than that of the Great Hall at Hogwarts... and a Hogsmere could have fit into the cavern floor once and half again. As were all the other caverns, it was made entirely of cold, glittering crystal... crystal that had been prismed so much that the result was quite opaque and not transparent or translucent as crystal usually is.

It seemed as if various ones of the "sinkholes" offered different angles of view into the cavern. So we were quite able to watch Ron fall through space, much more like a feather instead of a stone despite his weight. Although we did much shouting and tried every spell we could think of, there was no way that he could hear us... and no way for us to follow him.

He fell... and fell straight onto a place in the cavern floor that was about two hundred feet square made of mosaic tile. The patterns that it formed seemed extremely obscure and like nothing I’d ever seen in this world. He fell directly into the center of it, into what looked like a mosaic oval.

All of a sudden, out of thin air, a huge jar of pewabic pottery and a panel of what looked like ice appeared. Two very familiar witches were trapped in them...

"Ron!" cried out Mo. We could actually hear her from where we were standing! Only her head was visible above the heavy lid of the huge earthenware jar she was trapped in. "You came for me!"

"It’s about time," said Hermione, cool as the enchanted ice that she was trapped in from the shoulders down, yet looking as if she was not in the mood for sentimentality. "And where are all the others?"

"Held up," said Ron. "Come, let’s get you two out of here..."

"Wait a minute," hissed a new voice. "Not so fast..."

With a swirl of smoke-black and a flourish, Orla Quirke appeared in the cavern, directly between Ron and the girls. Looking much as she had untold hours before at the shower... half blonde bombshell, half-mass of writing snakes, and seeming quite pleased with herself.

Immediately Ron used his wand, muttered something incoherent... and tried to blast her. Although his wand didn’t turn to spaghetti, the spellcasting had no more effect on the half-lamia than a rainshower would have.

"That won’t work, Ron!" shouted Hermione. "You’re only making her stronger!"

"She’s still going to fry in the end," Mo said loudly. "Witches like her always do."

Still ignoring the attack on her, Orla walked over to Mo and slapped her in the face. Immediately Ron lunged at her... and was frozen in his tracks the minute Orla held up the hand that had done the slapping.

"When you realize that you are in my domain and must play by my rules, Ronald, we shall begin," sneered Orla.

She snapped her fingers and Ron unfroze. "What rules? Everything you stand for is unscrupulous... if you have a game in mind, I think I’ll pass."

"You don’t have a choice. Either you can be free within the next ten minutes, or you can be dead. It’s very much up to you."

"A battle of wits?"

"Yes."

"To the death?"

Orla nodded again.

"Very well, then... I accept."

Orla snapped her fingers twice. On the first snap, the jar which contained Mo disappeared, Mo along with it... Ron uttered a hoarse cry and tried to lunge at Orla again, but she froze him.

After the second snap, I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing in triplicate. For instead of one Hermione trapped in a single block of ice, there were now three blocks of ice and three Hermiones. All identical, bound and gagged so that they could not speak.

"The battle of wits has been begun," said Orla. "It ends when one of us is right... and one of us is dead. I could have easily used Maureen Ludlam for this purpose if Hermione was not still your wife... but even if you don’t respect your marriage bond, the Dark Forces which strengthen me and make me what I am believe in fidelity.

"All of the women you see here are genetically Dr. Hermione Granger. One is the Dr. Granger you know and once loved, the ‘original’ with all the memories and history your kind hold so dear. The other are exact carbon copies of her..." here Orla held up a dainty finger, which one of her leg-snakes met with a hiss and a snapping, "...with a slight variation on the theme."

"Which is?"

"The others are both venefica."

I was completely unfamiliar with the term. Charlie knew what was going on, however, and as we watched the ensuing standoff did his best to explain it to me.

Beginning in the Dark Ages, certain witches who were raised by Dark Magic were nursed with and then fed lethal poisons. A tiny, tiny bit at first, then with larger and larger amounts. They thus became accustomed to the poison and are completely unharmed by it. However, they are among the most lethal of assassins. So virulent is the poison that is accumulated in their systems that anyone who sleeps with a venefica... or tastes her skin... or even kisses her... dies in an instant. The fact that most veneficas are skilled Enthrallers and lovely in face and form doesn’t help matters at all.

"Remove the gag from the one that is your wife," said Orla tauntingly. "That ice is Enchanted... the only thing that will free her from its bonds is the kiss of the one who loves her more than his own person. If you choose correctly, she has something trapped along with her that will be the death of me. Choose incorrectly and you will not have to worry about what becomes of your wife and your paramour, for you will be dead."

What a test, I thought. I then used another of the sinkhole-windows (which acted a lot like the special mounted Omnioculars Charlie and Liz have at Dragonworld in a way, magnifying and zooming according to the motion of one’s eyes) to get a better view of Hermione and the imposters.

The eyes of the first were soft and gentle. Imploring. They were the eyes of a woman in love.

The eyes of the second spat molten fire. She struggled the most against her bonds, trying to get free.

The eyes of the third were serene, as if that witch had found her center and was completely at peace. Resigned to the inevitable.

"It’s the one in the middle, of course," said Charlie helplessly. "The minute she found out how she would be freed, I’m sure Hermione became madder than a Hungarian Horntail cow whose nest has been trampled to bits. Don’t be a dolt, Ron!"

Indeed, Ron seemed to be wavering between the second and the third Hermiones at first, but then walked between the first and the second, looking them up and down. He leaned over towards the first, seeming trapped in her eyes... he had to shake himself sharply before turning, and I had to wonder if she was an Enthraller.

Ron then moved towards the second one, who seemed to struggle away from him. He reached out... touched the gag in her mouth... reached around the back to untie it.

He couldn’t have seen the look of triumph on Orla’s face. Charlie and I did, however, and cried out with one voice, "No!"

I heard a moan behind us. Anya, clutching her head, was attempting to struggle to her feet. Not wanting to tear myself away from the unfolding scene, I knew that my soon-to-be sister-in-law needed help and went to help her get her bearings.

The minute I looped Anya’s arm around my neck, a low, guttural moan issued forth from Charlie.

"What’s going on?" asked Anya, completely disoriented.

"Please don’t tell me the worst, Charlie, let me see it for myself!" I said.

Pulling Anya to the portal I’d been peering into a moment before, I shut my eyes tight at first... and then looked.

Ron was now untying the gag of the third Hermione. Orla seemed furious, wanting to say something... but fearing to speak because then Ron would know for sure that this Hermione was the correct choice.

"I will not allow this to happen!" she said, issuing a loud scream and charging towards Ron, whose lips were lowering towards the woman he believed had been his Hermione as he kissed her one last time...

Then there was a blast of purple light, and a shout of "Bellum Infero!" and Orla fell down. Instantly, the other two Hermione-veneficas disappeared.

Mo, black tropical robes plastered to her due to some type of oil, was seated in the midst of a pool of the same viscous substance. Shards of broken pottery surrounded her. Trembling, she stood up, walked over to Orla’s dying body, and spat upon it.

"How were you able to deal her a death blow?" asked Hermione, incredulous. I don’t think Ron kissed her yet. "She’s half-lamia! The full-blooded ones absorb all magic... even the Killing Curse seems to have no effect on them... surely that third-rate attack spell couldn’t have killed her!"

"I pickpocketed the wand from one of the heavys that helped Orla bring me in," said Mo, still panting. "Knew the Romm in me would come in handy sometime.... and I think when Ron untied your blindfold, the enchantment that had me trapped and blind to what was going on was reversed.

"As for how I killed her, what do you think? She betrayed my trust, abducted my child, and tried to have me and others poisoned. Magic-absorbing my eye. I was able to kill her because it was not only my right, but my obligation to do so."

"Mo..." It was Orla, speaking in a low, rattling hiss. "Maureen... my old friend... my only friend..."

"Friends don’t do what you did to me, Orla. You were never my friend."

But now Orla was morphing again into the young nymph I’d first noticed at the New Year’s Eve Party at the Snitch!

"Mo, you may never believe this, but I am sorry... Ron, all I ever wanted was the chance to love you..."

Those words were her last. Orla Quirke took one final breath, then died. In the cavern below and the one I was standing in, there was momentary silence.

Hermione broke it. "You do realize that she was under Imperius the entire time?" There was a saying during the Voldemort Wars that Imperius always comes in threes. First the double Sphinx, then Michael Parker, and now Orla.

"Something else to realize once you two finish staring at each other... I’m still trapped in this ice."

"Oh, that’s right!" said Ron. "Haven’t kissed you yet."

"No, you haven’t. And hurry up about it, we haven’t got all day. We don’t want to be here when that other one comes back."

So Ron lowered his lips over those of his wife... she closed her eyes... and I think in that moment, both of them struggled... to pretend.

Nothing happened.

As my father always used to say, it’s hard to fool magic.

"Well, that does it," said Hermione after their third attempt. "I’m still trapped. You two had better get out of here, then... I’ll deal with this."

"Just give it a sec, all right, Hermione?" Mo replied. "Let him try again, and this time do your best to clear your head of everything, hard as it may be..."

That’s when I heard pounding footsteps. I turned around... there were Liz and the twins, racing into the small room. Anya tore away from me and ran into George’s arms, weeping as if she hadn’t seen him in years. My eyes rolled to the top of my head.

"What did we miss?" Fred asked me.

"Everything," I said. "Where’s Draco and Ginny... and..."

"Ginny’s still trying to revive Harry. Malfoy went back to be with her, help her out... what’s going on?"

"Come here and see for yourself." The pounding footsteps were still echoing through the small globular cave we were in. The three below must have heard it too, for they looked up and in all directions.

"Maureen, we don’t have time to stand here and rekindle old flames! You don't understand! The two of you have GOT to leave! Now!"

"Hermione," Ron said patiently. "There is no way in hell we’re going to leave you here at the mercies and the whims of..."

The pounding grew so loud that I had to use my hands to cover my ears.

"Ron, just take her and go!" screamed Hermione. "RIGHT NOW!"

"I’M NOT GOING TO LEAVE YOU, HERMIONE!"

All of a sudden, there was a tremendous explosion at the far end of the cave.

It was too late.

A tall woman... too tall, for she was well over eight feet and slender as a young birch tree... walked into the cavern. She was blonde, with shimmering hair that seemed to be like sunlight even in the darkness of the cave... but her hair was covered by a white half-ruff that matched her snowy robes. There was a green pallor to her skin, and her lips were cold, but something about her eyes was utterly beguiling.

Orla’s mother.

"Well, what have we here? A dead daughter... two delectable prisoners... and our hapless hero. What a fine entertainment for Remembrance Day." Her English was thickly accented but genteel.

Ron raised his wand, but Hermione whispered fiercely, "Don’t you dare."

"Our kind celebrates Remembrance Day too, you know," continued the lamia, crossing the cavern to the mosaic tile upon which they stood. "That May Day of 1998 was our finest hour thus far. It is a shame that my daughter could not have fulfilled her obligations in that regard."

She came to stand over her daughter, a long shadow that was cast by unseen light falling upon Ron, Hermione, and Mo.

"Orla. Yes... my little lamb. Quite regrettable that I was not able to remake her in my own image... it was the weakness of her father’s blood in the end that did it, and all things considered I am quite happy to see it spilled on the ground." A tongue long as a Brazilian anaconda darted forth, slashed open Orla’s cheek with its pointed tip, and licked. "A tasty one, that father of hers was... do you know, for the longest time I fancied myself in love with Albert? Love." That seemed to amuse her, as she clutched a long-fingered hand to her heart and began to cackle. "As if anything of the sort is in my nature...

"But there, where are my manners? Please, do forgive me for going on without acknowledging your presence. Allow me to begin the introductions... I am Hecate, daughter of Scylla and Charbydis... and the widow of the late Mr. Quirke."

She placed a hand on Hermione’s head above the ice, looking for a moment as if she was going to twist it. "Now, of course, I’ve made Dr. Granger’s acquaintance. And you," she ran a long fingernail along Ron’s cheek, "look very much like the young Weasel to whom my comrade dealt a harsh blow years ago in Tartarus. But who is this?"

She came to stand behind Mo, placing both of her hands on her shoulders.

"Could it be that you, my dear Gypsy witch, were just the tool that we needed to capture such rich prizes?"

Ron’s mouth dropped open. Mo cried out, "That’s not true! You are such a liar!"

"My dear Gypsy, it takes one to know one, does it not? It is well known that Gypsies are skilled in the art of pretense."

"There is nothing pretentious about my love for Ron! Shut up, you don’t know anything..."

Two overlong lamia-woman fingers splinched Mo’s lips shut.

"I know enough to warn you to watch that tone of voice with me, girl," Hecate replied. "Of course you played right into our hands. You are half Gypsy, and most Gypsy wizarding folk have been our allies in Darkness for centuries. Upon reflection, I am certain that this is why my daughter was so utterly drawn to you. Both of you are like eclipses... the sun and the moon wrapped together in the same womanflesh.

"It is in the nature of all Gypsy witches to Enthrall, and you have made this one your slave. You also murdered my tiresome offspring in a manner that would have made the best of our kind proud. Because you have been our faithful servant, girl, I grant you a generous boon. Not only your freedom, but that of the one who you trapped. The Weasel may go free as well, although my siblings will be furious."

"What about my wife?" Ron managed to grate out.

"What about her? She was here long before this Gypsy girl was, waiting for you or the Accursed One to come to her aid... and yet you never came. So much for the Covenant, the coming of which our kind dreaded. Had it not been broken, we would have never been able to capture her." With a sinewy, unhuman movement, Hecate’s head dipped down to peck Ron on the cheek. "Thank you."

"What do you want with her?" asked Mo.

"That is none of your concern," snapped Hecate. "Orla captured you. You hold no further interest. This one...." here she indicated Hermione and sighed, "...well, this one presents a problem. You see, my siblings and I have mayhem to unleash and the next rise of the Dark Arts to plan... and here this woman goes and orchestrates a cure for our Sponge victims. We were so proud of that little toy... my Society siblings are quite incensed because of the meddlesome tendencies of our dear Dr. Granger.

"The allies of Darkness have further reasons to contain her. Nothing that need concern you until it is far too late. Please, do go on before I change my mind... Dr. Granger has a conference on the other side of the world that she is late for."

"Couldn't you schedule an appointment with my secretary?" asked Hermione. "You see, I'm terribly busy... summer's such a busy time for mediwitches, what with all the magical maladies that..."

"SILENCE!" Her seductive voice was now a roar.

Mo’s arms were folded. "Neither Ron nor I are leaving without Dr. Granger, snake-lady. So you can take your ‘boon’ and shove it up your..."

Hecate looked extremely annoyed.

"I suppose you wish to die, then."

Her body began to ripple and change shape. Her head lengthened and her glorious blonde hair disappeared. Her hands and feet became claws, and the glorious raiment she was wearing became hard and scaly.

Ron and Mo took a step backwards from the newly formed dragon, the like of which none of us had ever seen. Hecate looked a lot more like a serpent than a dragon, but when she brandished her claws, reared her head, and shot a stream of blue-white flames from her mouth, her lethal intent was clear.

Hermione, desperately struggling with the ice, shouted, "But you can't kill us!"

Hecate lowered her now-ugly dragon head, scaly and bearded. A great gust of smoke blew from her nostrils and into Hermione’s face.

"Only one as young as yourself would spew such arrogant words."

Mo took a step forward and stood next to Hermione. "We know something you don't know."

Ron did too, standing on the other side of the pillar of ice. "Yeah... we've... we’ve got a Secret Weapon!"

Mo’s aside to Ron could be heard even from our vantage point. "This had better be good, hon. Hermione?"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" Hermione told her fiercely.

Hecate looked from Ron, to Mo, and finally at Hermione. She then laughed a great dragon laugh.

"Surely you jest. Even if you had a Secret Weapon, how would you get it in here? The entire cavern is enchanted... the place from where you came is virtually impenetrable."

She circled her long serpentine body around the three of them.

"You see, there are only two ways that one can enter into my lair," Hecate continued. "By... ah, shall we say, invitation?" She used a long claw to stroke Mo's cheek, who recoiled in revulsion. "Or one other way... if I am holding something that the intruder treasures above all else on earth."

"That is how you entered..." She indicates Ron. "The one is your estranged wife, the other, your guilty mistress." She laughed again. "I simply am here to avenge my daughter. Ironic, is it not, when the so-called wicked are more virtuous than the righteous?"

"Only slightly less ironic than this!" said a new voice.

I hadn’t noticed anyone else enter the globular cavern where we stood, let alone get into Hecate’s lair. Yet I turned around... and there stood Draco and Ginny, rushing towards one of the other sinkholes to witness what was happening.

When I turned back to my glass, I saw who had spoken.

It was Harry!

He was still injured, that much was obvious. There was a deep red gash that extended from his left ear all the way to the corner of his lip. It was no longer bleeding, but still it seemed inflamed and painful. On the other side of his face there was a purplish bruise... judging from the nature of that rock slide, he had to be covered from head to toe with them.

Before Hecate fully realized what was happening, Harry landed squarely on top of her dragon head. In his hand, he brandished the sword of Rhydderch... but now only the hilt of it was wrapped in Graphorn skin.

With a quick slash, Harry sliced opened a wide cut just above Hecate’s eyes... and clear blood instantly flooded her eyes. I was disappointed that no invincible flame shot forth.

"Here, Ron, catch!"

He pulled the three Graphorn mantles from under his cloak, and threw them down, almost falling off Hecate in the process. As Hecate was thrashing about and blowing flames in every direction, melting the very crystal of the walls, shaking the belly of the mountain in her wrath, one of the mantles was caught in the crossfire... yet floated to the ground unscathed.

Ron tossed a mantle to Mo, and threw another upon Hermione’s head.... she shook it off.

"Why’d you do that?" Ron yelled, eyeing Hecate as she swiftly regained her vision and her coordination. He was trying to tell Mo to step away from the mosaic and behind a crystal stalagmite-stalactite pillar, but she was refusing and was now trying to Transfigure her wand into a scimitar... one could tell that Transfiguration hadn’t been her best subject.

Hermione was still struggling to get free. "Ron, I want out of this block of ice, by any means necessary! You’re going to need my help if you want to get out of this alive..."

Harry was attempting to deal Hecate another blow, but she was thrashing about so wildly that he couldn’t get a clear swing. "If you need my wand, I can toss it down and..."

"I don’t need your bloody wand, Harry!" screamed Hermione. "I’m stuck from the shoulders up... even you can’t cast using your teeth!"

"Then tell me," he panted, managing to open a cut in Hecate’s head just underneath the eye as she exhaled another gust of fire that melted the pillar Ron had told Mo to stand behind a moment before, "how exactly to set you free."

"Come down here and kiss me," she replied, as matter-of-factly as she would give doctor’s orders.

It was now all Harry could do to hold on to Hecate. The sword clattered to the ground.

"As much as I’d love to do just that, Hermione, as you can see I’m a little preoccupied here..."

But there was then a great scream that shook the very bowels of the mountain. I was hoping against hope that there was nothing volcanic about this peak... hoping Hecate’s cry hadn’t stirred anything up. As it was, I was sure I’d lost a great deal of my hearing.

After a moment, we observers realized what had happened. Ron had taken the sword of Rhydderch from where it fell and thrust it at Hecate’s breast as if it was a javelin. It stuck in what was apparently her heart... after that great scream she fell to the ground with a resounding crash, denting the mosaic and sending tile in every direction.

Ron seemed frozen in his tracks for a moment. He then dropped to a kneel, clutching his sword arm as if he was in extreme pain. Mo cried out and went to him.

At first it wasn’t at all clear whether or not Harry had been crushed with the beast. It wasn’t until I saw him stand shakily next to Hecate’s side that my heart resumed beating. Standing with her fiancé at a sinkhole near mine, I heard Ginny exhale very loudly.

He took a couple of seconds to catch his breath, removing glasses that had been shattered for at least the third time that day and sticking them into the pocket of his robes. One would think that he’d render them Shatterproof... or perhaps there was something about glasses that was resistant to charming. If so, there was yet another untapped market for Draco to delve into.

Once he’d gotten his wind again, he scrambled up the side of the silver serpent and pulled out the sword. Then he raced over to the pillar of ice in which Hermione was trapped.

"How does this work again?"

"We don’t know that it will work at all. Orla said that if Ron kissed me, I’d be free. He did and I’m still here."

"Did she say Ron had to kiss you, or did she say something else? You know how anal those Dark enchantments can be...get one letter wrong, and suddenly your spleen is flopping about on the floor like a Shrake and your intestines are twisted about your head like a grisly crone-bonnet..."

Hermione didn’t seem to be in the mood for jokes just then.

"She said I had to be kissed by someone who loved me even more than their own person. I know now that there is no one in the world who fits that criteria, so I suppose I’ll be trapped here for all time. Obviously you don’t qualify, as recent revelations have proven, but what other choice have I got? We tried Ron several times over, I absolutely refuse to snog that Maureen woman, and no knight in shining armor seems to be forthcoming..."

Without further comment, his lips descended upon hers. He wrapped his arms around the part of her shoulders that was visible and leaned into the kiss.

"Whoa, Harry, old boy," muttered George after a moment or two. "Time to come up for air. Don’t want to suffocate, do you?"

"Oh, come now, surely a mere peck would have sufficed. That ice is all gone now," remarked Liz.

"Do you think he knows that it disappeared the second he kissed her?" asked Fred, nudging me.

I shrugged, then shook my head.

Hermione broke the kiss finally, turning away from him with a blush. As Ron and Mo walked over towards where they stood, Hermione bent down to pick the Graphorn mantle up from the ground and hand it over to Harry.

"You need to wear this more than I do," she said briskly, avoiding his eyes, sounding as businesslike as she could under the circumstances. "No need to take chances. You’re hurt more badly than you want to admit. I could tell how much pain you’re in when you... when you kissed me."

"And what an antidote," he replied huskily.

Ron looked from Harry to Hermione, then back again.

"I don’t believe this," he said, sounding a great deal annoyed. Then he picked up the sword of Rhydderch... and immediately dropped it again, rubbing his arm. "This is getting tiresome, you know."

But there was no time to regroup much after that. For with a great heave that once again shook the mountain like an earthquake, the lamia arose from where she had fallen. Hecate’s dragon form began to ripple like a pebble-disturbed stream.

"As amusing as all of this has been, I do have work to complete." Her morphing dragon lips curled into a sinister leer. "I always enjoy playing with my food before I devour it."

"Oh, no you will not!" said Hermione, snatching the stolen, oil-logged wand from Mo’s hand and using it to cast. "You are not transforming again if I can help it... Petrificus Totalus!"

Hecate roared and reared up on her hind legs. She shot a narrow stream of blue-white enchanted fire, which would have consumed Hermione if Harry hadn’t thrown the Graphorn mantle in front of her and pulled her back... for the mosaic that she’d been standing on was melted into the crystal.

"She’s not Petrified," said Harry, stating the obvious. "So why..."

"Oh, I know I made her stronger," I heard the unseen Hermione pant, "but she can’t change into another form that’s even worse. I locked her into her dragon form, so I imagine she’s rather hacked off right now."

"Thanks all the same," said Ron. "I didn’t fancy the thought of killing a nundu before bedtime..." He was interrupted by another blast of fire that the four of them barely missed... this time, they were obscured by one of the few remaining unmelted pillars and all of us observers were crammed into the only two sinkholes that gave a good view of where they were.

"What I wouldn’t give to be down there helping them," said Charlie helplessly. Liz patted his shoulder with her good hand.

Harry cast an Invisibility Shield around them and continued to speak as Hecate slithered about the cave, sniffing, trying to find them.

"All right, I’m going to have to get back on top of her, but I’m not sure how yet," said Harry, very quickly. "Hermione, give that wand back to Maureen. Maureen, keep on trying to transform it into... well, whatever you were trying to shape it into. Just do what comes easiest." Before Mo could protest that she was not utterly and absolutely useless, Harry must have cast a protective ward around her, for nothing further was heard from her for the next few moments.

"Hermione," Ron was saying, "I know we’re the last people you wanted to see today. Since you made your decision, we can’t communicate while we’re doing this or share power or do anything the way we used to... we honestly didn’t even know you’d been abducted, and I have a lot of regrets about that. Somehow we have to kill this thing if we’re to get out of here. Covenant or not, you’re still the strategist... what next?"

Hermione was already thinking ahead. "You can use that to get back up there, Harry. Can you do it?"

After a few seconds, he agreed. "Of course I’ll have a nasty case of hemorrhoids as a result, but... yeah, that mantle and a Cushioning Charm’ll do it."

"Ron," Hermione said to her husband, "you need a weapon, because this time you’re going to kill her. If Mo can get you that scimitar, fine. If not, levitate a boulder, saw off a stalagmite, anything... because when I give you the signal you’ll be able to hit her. Until then, be our distraction. Like it or not, you’re still Trickster."

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"You’ll see..."

"Just don’t get yourself killed, all right?"

At that moment, the Invisibility Charm dissolved... and we could see them all again except Mo. With an otherworldly grace the lamia lunged for them... but at once Harry was zooming upwards on the Graphorn-covered sword of Rhydderch, enchanted to fly... Ron was brandishing a crystal stalactite that was twice the size of his arm.

"Hey, love, why don’t you come and get me?" Thus ensued a game of cat-and-mouse, in which Ron Apparated and Disapparated about various spots in the cavern, infuriating Hecate more and more.

Harry, after zooming about for a moment looking for a clear landing, finally got himself back on the head of the dragon. As Hecate began to thrash and flail once more, instead of dealing her a blow with the enchanted sword he simply held on, every few seconds using the other hand to stick his wand into the dragon’s earholes.

As Ron and Harry distracted the lamia, Hermione was climbing one of the melted pillars as quickly as she could. Once she was on top, apparently wandless, she folded her arms and faced Hecate, whose attention was turned completely away from her.

Hermione then placed two fingers up to her lips and whistled sharply. The dragon reared back on her hind legs again, roared, and charged until Ron was completely forgotten and Harry was hanging off her beard.

Hecate opened her mouth... made eye contact with Hermione... and a great inferno shot from her mouth and continued to shoot until nothing was visible from the sinkholes save the blue-white flames.

Ron and Harry also disappeared in the glow. For at least three minutes, nothing but blazing fire was seen by those of us above. We assumed the worst. Ginny buried her face in Draco's chest, unable to look. The rest of us looked at each other, then stared at the sinkholes.

As the flames faded, there were great clouds of pearl-grey smoke. The first thing visible in the sinkholes was Hecate, a cocky dragonish grin on her face. Other than a few scorch marks and a few sooty lumps scattered about the mosaic and crystal cavern floor, she seemed to be none the worse for the wear.

But there was something dangling from the side of her head. Harry's face was emotionless as his fingers finally slipped from the dragon’s scales. He fell... sans sword and mantle... and landed atop a sooty, coughing lump that was revealed to be Ron.

Hecate instantly darted to loom over them like a great tower, very pleased with herself. "The Accursed One and the Golden Weasel. I cannot believe that it is I who will bring you, gagged and bound, before my siblings... I who will receive all glory for avenging the fall of my late great avenging the fall of my late great master, the Lord Voldemort.

"But where is the good doctor? Surely she will not want to miss this greatest of events in the history of the Dark Arts."

Hecate looked about, seeming confused... she threw her great head about wildly, looking around the pillar upon which Hermione was last seen.

"Um, lady? You missed a spot."

Hecate whirled around. There, in the center of the mosaic’s oval stood Hermione and Mo. Hermione with arms folded. Mo brandishing a scimitar with a golden blade.

"Perhaps the wicked seem to have more virtue than the righteous sometimes," continued Mo. "Nobody’s perfect. But you see, those who are truly righteous are also wise... they don’t count their chickens before they are hatched. They don’t take anything for granted."

Hecate reared again, and inhaled a deep breath, and that might have been the end of the women... but nothing but a puff of smoke came out of her mouth. She cried out in rage.

"No! It cannot be!"

"Oh, yes it can," said Hermione. "You should have known better than trying to fry a Projection."

"What do you mean?"

"That wasn’t me you blasted, it was a magic-absorbing field much like your own Sponge. The second your fire touched it, it worked in reverse to extract every particle of your magical ability out of you. It is because of your ‘siblings’ that I know exactly what’s behind the spell that’s used to cast them... and because of that millions will have their magical abilities restored very shortly. I overestimated you at first, Quirke... I thought you had more brains in that silver head of yours. Is this what the Dark Arts are coming to? Really, I’m disappointed."

Before Hecate could fully take in what was happening, Mo called out to Ron, who’d been scrambling up Hecate’s back as the women distracted her. "Snitch coming in at four o’ clock, Weasel... heads up!"

The golden scimitar whooshed out of her hand and cut through the air, whistling as it went. As it traveled towards its destination, Mo used her wand to cast a charm over it as it flew... the starry sparks from her borrowed wand hit the blade and made it glow.

Too late, Hecate realized her fate... far too late. For the instant Ron had the new scimitar in hand, he called out to Harry. It was then that I noticed that Harry was now standing directly in front of Hecate, holding the sword of Rhydderch in one very blistered hand.

"Ready? One... two..."

There was never a "three". There was no need for it. At the same instant that Ron beheaded the lamia with the gilt scimitar, Harry plunged the sword of Rhydderch into its heart.

The rest of what happened was quick and sudden... for those of us in the small globular cavern above had taken the fact that the sinkholes beneath our feet were solid ground for us. So it was quite surprising when we all found ourselves falling through those portals into the cavern... a few of us, including me, landing much to our disgust on the lamia’s headless body.

"There you all are," said Hermione. "Come, this is the way out."

"The way out" was a narrow passage tunneled through the crystal. I hadn’t seen it before, and wouldn’t have been surprised if its sudden appearance had something to do with Hecate’s demise. Fred and Charlie both got stuck at various intervals, but we managed to push everyone through...

...and into the Place of Echoes. It was sunrise, the dawning of a brand-new day. Behind us was the Crystal Mountain, with all of its dangers. I was extremely glad that we wouldn’t have to tangle with the Hecatonchires again.

And before us was an even more welcome sight.

Coming toward us like something in a children’s bedtime story was a beautiful sight. It was the Burrow, being held up by a thousand and one Wake Angels... and another thousand seemed to surround it, carrying those who’d fallen behind for one reason or another... and our children!

Percy and Penelope were flying at the head of this unusual flock.

"Well, I see that everything’s come out all right," said Percy. "We were fortunate enough to have landed within a short distance of these Wake Angels... Penelope Summoned them to us, and I have hired them to take us home after we’ve breakfasted. With a great deal of Invisibility Charming, I suppose it will do quite nicely."

"What shall we give them as wages?" asked Anya with a grin. "They feed off energy, you know."

"Look at all this lot," said George. "Don’t you think we have enough to spare?"

"But why bring them here? How can we be sure it’s safe?" I asked, glancing back at the passage.

"The Wake Angels wouldn’t’ve brought them if it wasn’t. They wouldn’t be so joyous if there was Dark magic nearby," Anya pointed out.

The Burrow was gently rested on the side of the lake so that the Wake Angels could rest before the long journey home. A few of the more energetic ones were dispatched to find Michael Parker, and they returned with him in short order; Anya summarily put him to bed in Fred and George’s old room. Then came Bill and Madeleine... a little more revived... Draco and Sonia, Christina and Nick, looking none the worse for the wear... and finally the children, who were having far too good of a time on those Wake Angels to relish the idea of coming down.

The most welcome sight of all for Fred and me was our Malinda, one of the last to descend to Earth after enjoying a final long twirl on the Wake Angel she’d shared with her favorite cousin, Percy and Penelope’s Mary.

"Mummy, Daddy!" Fred swept her up into a one-armed embrace and used the other to pull me close as well. I leaned over to kiss my daughter’s little cheek, a wave of love sweeping over me. This was what life was all about.

"I missed you, Mummy and Daddy, but guess what? I think I like this place after all!"

"Do you like it more than home?" I asked her, winking at Fred.

She seemed to consider this, then shook her head, sending her pigtails flying. "No, home is better than like. Loads better!"

After we basked in the bliss of our reunion for a few moments, and breakfast food had been doled out to everyone, Malinda begged her father and uncle for a toss. Tired as they were, both Fred and George were ready to comply. Anya seemed a bit startled and was going to say something until I put an arm around her.

"I don’t see how your heart goes on beating while they do that to your child," she said severely, looking up at me.

"Oh, the fun’s just getting started," I laughed. "You’re next."

Those of us with children were busy seeing to them, hurrying along their early morning meal so that we could depart, yet sneaking meaningful, promising looks at our mates. Whenever you’re faced with impending death, once you escape the natural instinct is to affirm life as soon as possible. Most of the childless couples were using the moment and the breathtaking mountain setting as an opportunity for lengthy snogs. Dante and Sonia, Christina and Nick, and Ginny and Draco all were seen at various intervals along the lake, strolling along, here and there stopping for a kiss. Bill sat on a blanket next to the lake with Madeleine’s head in his lap, feeding her berries.

Ron and Mo were sitting very close to where Anya and I stood, holding their son between them, holding each other and looking into each other’s eyes. I know that feeling very well... it’s almost as if you’re afraid to blink, for fear the one you love might disappear.

Someone else was watching them too.

Hermione, standing about thirty feet away, was looking at Ron and Mo with the most quizzical expression on her face. The bright smile that she had been wearing faded. Heroism and deeds of valor and great quests are all well and good, but in between them the cold harsh light of reality is flashed into our eyes.

She seemed as if she was going to approach her husband and his paramour. Then she must have decided otherwise, for she turned away abruptly... and almost walked straight into Harry. Before I could stop myself, I dragged Anya a bit closer but not in a too-obvious spot, using the excuse of wanting to keep a closer eye on the twins, who were now juggling Malinda and the other smaller children as if they were human ten-pins.

"...made you think of Absorption-Projection?" Harry was asking Hermione.

"It’s like I said. All that work we’ve been doing with the Danae Project is really helping me understand elemental theories of magic, the nuts and bolts of it... I’ve been talking with Simon, Neville, and some of my other colleagues, and I really do believe that we may be on to something." She could no longer avoid looking at him. When she finally did, she frowned in spite of herself. "You look famished. Have you eaten anything yet?"

"No, I’m not hungry." But his eyes told a different story. A story that as writer and wife I recognized. Perhaps it was not food that he was hungry for.

As she had the night of the Summit and only shortly before in Orla’s lair, Hermione seemed to bask in the heat of his gaze for a moment, then snapped out of the trance with the fright of a doe who’d barely escaped the hunter’s trap. She visibly seemed to remember that she had reason to be incensed towards this man... and her face changed from a friendly one to that of a complete stranger.

"Very well, then," she said, taking a couple of steps back for good measure. "I’m going to see if Percy is ready to forge ahead. Good-bye." She turned on her heel and started to walk away.

"Hermione, wait... I was wondering if we could talk..."

She threw her hands up in the air, then shook her head and kept walking.

Harry let out an incredulous laugh. "Aren’t you going to at least thank me for getting you out of that block of ice?"

That got her attention. She turned around, eyes flashing dangerously. She stormed back towards him and leaned in close.

"I think you’ve had reward enough for that already," Hermione snapped. Whirling on her heel, she did an about-face and walked away without even a glance back.

A moment later, Fred and George came over to where Anya and I stood with Malinda in tow.

"Percy just gave word that we’re about to set off towards home!" Fred said. "It’s about time, don’t you think?"

Indeed it was.