The Last Time

Chapter 33

Blissful blankness. Hermione's mind was wiped clean of every single thought and filled with the most marvellous empty sensation. Like floating on a cloud, or being in that halfway point between wakefulness and sleep. It was wonderful, and Hermione stood rooted to the spot, fascinated by the music and the blankness.

Then the music stopped.

She shook her head and frowned. What? Where did the music go? She turned to Ron, who was talking to her,but something was very wrong. She could see his mouth moving, but no sound came out.

Ron grabbed her hand and looked straight into her eyes.It's the music, he mouthed carefully, so that she could read his lips. The music is cursed somehow. Everyone's under a spell...but me. I'm tone-deaf. I'll explain that later, but - I put a Deafness Hex on you. Look out the window again.

Hermione stepped to the window and looked out. Everyone was in place just as they had been before, and the musicians were apparently still playing. Everyone had a glassy-eyed, dreamy expression on their face, except for two people: Dumbledore and Harry. She could see both of them at the far end of the crowd looking confused, as if they were having some kind of internal struggle.

She'd only seen that look on Harry's face one other time - in Defence Against the Dark Arts three years ago, when who they thought was Professor Moody was putting the Imperius on them, and Harry learned to throw it off.

"Ron," she said, and she could barely hear her own voice, "it's some kind of Imperius Curse in the music! Look at Harry and Dumbledore - they're fighting it!" Ron nodded and said something, but she didn't catch it because she turned back to the window to watch.

Come on Harry...fight it...I know you can, she thought desperately.

Ron tugged at her hand again, and she looked at him. "What?"

We've got to stop the music, he mouthed. Those musicians...they must be working for Voldemort somehow.... Ron's eyes went wide with shock, and Hermione gasped - she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"Dumbledore...most of the Hogwarts teachers...Moody...Ministry officials...Fudge...." They were all sitting ducks here - and Hogwarts was vastly under protected.

You've got to stop them, said Ron. Sneak around the side and Stun them - I think if you take out even one, it'll break it - enough for Harry and Dumbledore to throw it off, at least. I'd be too obvious - I can't help you. I'll call the Ministry, the Aurors....

"Okay," she said, feeling an odd numbness come over her as she realized what was going on.

Go, said Ron again. Hurry - and be careful - if they see you...

Hermione nodded, squeezed his hand, and impulsively kissed his cheek. Ron was just as scared as she was, she could see it all over his face, but there was also a quiet confidence there that she found very reassuring.

She went out the side door and flattened herself against the wall, peeking around the corner. Immediately she could see why Ron didn't come with her. There was no cover, no way to hide between her and the musicians other than ducking behind the tables on the edge of the crowd. Otherwise, she'd be seen - one person moving in a crowd of totally motionless people would stick out like a sore thumb. Her heart pounded madly and her legs felt like jelly.

Wand in one hand, Hermione hiked up her robes with the other and dropped to her knees, crawling over the grass and praying she could get close enough to stun them without being noticed, and without knocking anyone or anything over and drawing attention to herself. The unnatural silence from the Deafness Hex and the eerie stillness of the crowd was totally unnerving.

Halfway there, a stabbing pain shot through her knee. "Ow!" she hissed, clamping her hand over her knee - she'd crawled over a piece of glass from a shattered champagne flute. There was no help for it, she had to keep going, and she bit her lip to keep from yelping when she put her weight on her knee again. It hurt.

When she was as close as she dared to get, she raised her wand and aimed it at the closest violinist. She'd only have one shot before they realised that someone was out from under the spell....

"Stupefy!"

The musician froze, then dropped his violin and toppled sideways onto the player beside him. It was like Muggle dominoes - a chain reaction of toppling chairs and flying instruments - and it was enough to break the hypnotic effect on the crowd. Not enough to catch the musicians totally off-guard, though; Hermione dove under a table to dodge a jet of crackling purple light shot straight at her - then something very hard hit the back of her head and everything went black.

*****

Someone was shaking her, trying to rouse her, and she opened her eyes and blinked. It was Ron, leaning down and peering under the table. He pointed his wand at her and her hearing came back with a rush; she heard yelling and footsteps and mass confusion all around her. "Are you okay?"

"I think so," she said, rubbing the back of her throbbing head and glaring at the metal table leg she'd apparently knocked her head against.. "Did it work?"

"Yeah," he said, taking her hand and helping her up. "The Aurors Apparated in right after you broke the spell; they've taken them off to the Ministry. But, Hermione - "

"Where's Harry?"

Ron kept a tight hold of her hand. "He's gone."

"Gone? What do you mean gone? He was right here for heaven's sake!" she said impatiently.

"Dumbledore Disapparated as soon as you broke the spell, along with the teachers, and Harry...he disappeared too," said Ron quietly.

"He had our Portkey back to school. He had it in his cloak pocket...Ron...." Hermione tried to loosen Ron's grip on her hand but he wouldn't let go. "Ron, we have to go, we have to go back to Hogwarts, right now!"

Ron shook his head. "No, Hermione, we can't go. I promised...I promised Harry I'd keep you here and not let you follow him. If Voldemort is there - "

"I don't care what you promised him! I'm going. Now let go of me!" Her chest filled with a sick, panicky terror. "Ron Weasley, if you don't let go of me, I swear...."

"Do I have to put a Body-Bind on you to make you stay?" Ron said, with the kind of irritation that only comes from fear. "Merlin's teeth, Hermione, what good d'you think we'll do chasing after Harry? If he's got to fight - " He swallowed hard and looked faintly sick. "If he's got to fight Voldemort, how d'you think he's going to do if he's worried about our safety?"

The panic was growing rapidly, threatening to smother her. "I can't just stand here and wait, Ron, and I don't see how you can either...Harry needs us. He doesn't know it, but he does - and Ron, we have to go, we have to help him, don't you see?"

She could see the conflict in Ron's face...he knew she was right, but he'd promised Harry he'd keep her here, out of the way....

"Ron, come on, before it's too late...please...." She could see the older Weasley boys coming toward them, and they'd never let them out of there. They had to go now, if they were going to go...

Hermione felt his fingers loosen ever so slightly, and she wrenched free and ran towards the house. Without even turning to look over her shoulder she knew Ron was right behind her.

*****

It seemed like the longest Floo trip she'd ever taken; whether it was because the Floo network was overloaded or because she was scared out of her mind she didn't know, but her feet had barely hit the floor of the Three Broomsticks before she'd run out the door and up the road out of Hogsmeade. Ron was wheeling along right beside her, keeping up with her easily, but they didn't say a word as they hurried back to the school.

This would have been so much faster if we could Apparate already....

She almost stopped dead in her tracks.

The Dark Mark.

It hung in the air over the castle, green and malevolent and mocking.

Over Hogwarts...the safest place in wizarding Britain...the one place Voldemort wasn't supposed to be able to penetrate....

"Come on, Hermione," Ron said thickly, not looking up at the malignant glow. "Keep moving."

Oh, God, there are students all in the castle...they didn't know...they weren't prepared.... "Ron...the other students...."

"I know."

Hermione felt the most peculiar sensation; a deep, bone-vibrating hum, too low to hear, combined with a thick crackle of magic so unfamiliar it could only be Dark. It felt Dark, cold and sickening. The closer they got, the more intense it became, until Hermione thought she might be sick and Ron was pale and sweating. Without warning, it quickly swelled into a huge explosion, blasting the doors off their hinges and shattering every window in the castle.

Ron yanked Hermione down into his lap and spun them around, backs to the castle, to shield them from the flying glass and debris and the blast of blistering cold wind that rushed past them like a hurricane. And the scream - a hair-raising, inhuman wail that made Hermione's ears burn and her stomach feel like ice.

The eerie silence that followed was almost worse than the explosion.

Hermione cautiously sat up and slid off Ron's lap. "Harry..." she said.

"He'll be okay, Hermione." Ron tried to sound hopeful, but she could tell he was just as worried as she was.

For a minute there was no sound except for the crunch of glass and wood and metal under her shoes and Ron's wheels, and then the faint whisper of the Levitation Charm on his chair, as they made their way up the steps and through the doorway into the main entrance hall.

The first thing she noticed was that the slight, pleasant tingle of protective magic that she'd become used to feeling on entering the school was completely gone. Not a trace remained; it felt like any other ordinary building; no more magical than her Muggle primary school had been.

The second thing she noticed nearly knocked her over, and from Ron's sharp intake of breath, she knew he'd seen it too.

She was dimly aware of people beginning to flood the entrance hall, screams and sobs echoing off the stones, but all she could focus on was the sight of Harry at the far end of the hall, on his knees, holding a limp body in his arms.

Professor Dumbledore.

The Heads of Houses were trying to urge their students back to their common rooms, students were crying and talking in hushed tones, trying to figure out what had happened; Aurors were streaming in what was left of the doors; but as Hermione and Ron approached cautiously, she could hear the Headmaster's voice over the chaos.

"I am sorry, Harry," he rasped, shaking with the effort of talking. "I have failed you yet again...many things I have to tell you still."

Harry shook his head. "Don't talk, sir...please...Madam Pomfrey will be here soon, and...and we'll get you all fixed up - " He looked up to see Hermione and Ron, and added, "Look, sir, Hermione's here, and she can - "

Dumbledore shook his head faintly. "No, my boy, it's too late for that. I'm afraid...it's time for me to go on to the next great adventure." He gave Harry a small smile, and there was a very slight twinkle in his tired blue eyes.

"No..." whispered Harry, still shaking his head.

"I have only bought you time. I was not prepared for this...and I am...very sorry, Harry. Very sorry. For many things."

Harry said nothing, but continued to shake his head.

Hermione felt something soft whoosh by her. It was Fawkes. The beautiful scarlet bird flew past them and settled on Dumbledore's chest, crying softly.

"Ah, Fawkes," said the Headmaster, his voice very faint now. "Thank you, old friend."

Fawkes rested his head against the old man's cheek, as if he were whispering in his ear, and let out a single, quivering note that hung in the air like liquid gold. That one single note of phoenix song silenced everyone in the hall.

Hermione hardly dared to breathe.

When Fawkes raised his head again, the Headmaster's eyes were closed and his face was peaceful.

Harry didn't change expression in the slightest; he continued to shake his head and whisper "no" under his breath, as if by denying it, he could keep it from happening. Fawkes fluttered off of the Headmaster, perching on the ground near Harry, looking at him curiously.

"Potter." Professor Snape appeared beside Harry, his voice lacking its usual contempt and malice. Professor McGonagall was right behind him, red-eyed, with her hand over her heart.

"Potter," Snape said again. "Let him go." There was no trace of his habitual mocking sneer.

Harry clutched Dumbledore to him even more tightly. "No."

Hermione knelt on the other side of Harry, touching his shoulder gently. "Harry...you have to let go now. Please." When he didn't respond, she carefully pried his fingers from Dumbledore's robes. He sat there, staring blankly, as Snape bent down, lifted the old man's body with surprising ease, and carried him away, Professor McGonagall trailing behind him. Fawkes took one last curious look at Harry and then flew after them.

The blank expression on Harry's face terrified Hermione. Some kind of reaction, crying, screaming, swearing - anything - would have been better than the horrible emptiness she saw there. She was so focused on Harry, she hardly noticed the remaining teachers shooing the other students away, or the Aurors hovering anxiously about, desperate to know what happened.

She looked up to see Ron, just in front of them. Ron looked like he wanted to say something, anything, but didn't have the slightest idea what to do, which was exactly how Hermione felt at the moment.

Harry looked up briefly, with that horrible blank expression - and then rested his head on Ron's knee and went completely and thoroughly to pieces.

*****

Many anxious parents came to retrieve their children from Hogwarts over the next few days; but a large number of the upper form students from all four houses stayed behind to help with the cleanup. It was a daunting task. Every single window had been shattered, every door blown off its hinges, and the enchanted ceiling in the Great Hall had collapsed. No one knew exactly what had caused this, not even Harry.

He'd told the Aurors and Ministry investigators - and Ron and Hermione - everything he knew, but it wasn't much. Dumbledore had Disapparated from the wedding reception as soon as Hermione had broken the musical curse (a curse which no one in the Ministry had heard of before, much to everyone's dismay) and Harry had followed a minute or so later by Portkey. By the time he'd reached Hogwarts, Dumbledore and Voldemort were already duelling. The explosion that rocked the school was apparently a clash of powerful spells cast by the two wizards, wiping out not only every bit of protective magic surrounding the school, but mortally wounding Dumbledore as well.

Hermione suspected, but didn't say, that Dumbledore's spell had been intentionally self-sacrificing.

As for the effect on Voldemort, there was no trace of him anywhere. No one could be sure whether he was alive or dead, so the Ministry was taking no chances. Fudge could not explain away Harry's story this time as easily as he did after the events of the Triwizard Cup; there were too many witnesses and too much damage for that. Between the wedding guests and the Hogwarts staff and students, there was no mistaking who was behind it all, and the wizarding world was outraged.

Harry, Ron and Hermione got up early each morning and worked late into the night with the other students in cleaning up the masses of debris around the school. All the physical damage had to be repaired before anyone could make a start on replacing the protective wards and charms on the castle, and despite the number of students who remained, it was slow going. The debris could be cleaned up by magic, but the actual repairs had to be made by hand, which slowed the process down even more. Hermione and the others found themselves doing things they never would have imagined, like glazing windows, hammering nails, and sawing wood. It was exhausting work, but no one complained, because they wanted to have everything cleaned up before Dumbledore's memorial service.

Hermione could tell that Harry was not looking forward to the service. Other than telling her and Ron what he'd told the Ministry investigators, he hadn't said much about what happened that day, or anything else for that matter. He was up before anyone else, working on the castle until long after sunset, and would only go to bed when Hermione and Ron threatened to hex him.

On Wednesday morning, the three of them were working in the library, which was a disaster area, as the force of the tall library windows exploding had sent most of the books flying from the shelves and scattered them all over the room. Many of the covers had ripped and torn, and so Harry, Ron, and Hermione, along with several other Gryffindors, sat at a table near Madam Pince's desk armed with Spellotape and Binding Charms, repairing them and putting them back in their places.

Hermione put an armful of repaired books back on their proper shelves, picked up another armful from the pile of books to be repaired, and went back to the table. She picked up the top book from the stack. It looked odd, not like any other book she had seen in the library (and that was saying a lot for a place that had books bound in snakeskin). It looked like an old Muggle notebook, actually.... Hermione opened it and was startled to see not print, or the scratchings of a quill, but fine, neat script in Muggle ballpoint pen. The pages were slightly yellow, as if it had been around for twenty or thirty years.

Something about this book was not right. She dared not open and read it here in front of everyone, but something about this book...she had to read it.

Her mouth went dry.

"Hermione? You okay?" asked Ron, smoothing a strip of Spellotape on the spine of a copy of A Compendium of Countercurses.

"Um, yes, Ron, I'm fine," she said, trying to sound casual. She tried to keep her hands from shaking with excitement as she repaired the cover, then set the book aside, trying to think of an excuse to get away from everyone and look through the book.

Hermione swept the book into the folds of her robe and jumped up, unable to stand it any longer. "I...er...I forgot to feed Crookshanks. I'll be right back," she said lamely, and ran out of the library and up to her room. She threw herself on the bed and whipped open the book.

It was divided into sections; the first one, titled Observations, was full of carefully numbered tables and painstakingly detailed drawings. One of the tables was labelled "The position of the sun and the moon on the Feast of Beltane", with a long line of figures underneath, and there were similar tables for Hogmanay, Midsummer's Day, and Samhain - the ancient Sun Feasts and Fire Feasts. Other sections labelled Speculations, Case Studies, and Conclusions followed the first, and her heart pounded with what she read there - most of it about gemstones and sacrifices and missing people and many other things she wasn't too sure about, but....

Her mind was too numb with disbelief and excitement to take everything in, but this notebook seemed to be describing a means of travelling back in time, not hours or days but hundreds of years. By using stone circles, those huge slabs of peculiar stone that dotted the British landscape, those curiosities that no one knew the true purpose for...they were portals. Portals that were only open on certain days of the year; the four Feast Days. If this was true...then she could use this to find Master Raymond...and maybe she could learn enough to help Ron walk again. Maybe....

Hermione read on:

Something lies here, older than man, and the stones keep its power. The old spells speak of "the lines of the earth", and the power that flows through them. The purpose of the stones is to do with those lines, I am sure. But do the stones warp the lines of power, or are they only markers?

"Hermione?"

She dropped the notebook in surprise at the sound of Harry's voice. She hadn't expected him to follow her.

Harry picked it up and thumbed through it, frowning. "What is this?"

"Um, just something I found while we were working," she said lamely, wishing he hadn't seen it.

"Something you just had to read right away?" He sat down beside her and skimmed over the notes, a look of comprehension slowly dawning on his face. "Hermione," he whispered disbelievingly. "Is this...what I think it is?"

She swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the dry nervousness in her mouth. "I'm not sure, Harry, but I think it might be...it might be a way for me go...I don't know, it looks dangerous, and I don't think this person knows everything about it... I'm not sure...." She was babbling now, she knew, but she couldn't help it.

Harry ran his fingers over a page. "It's a Muggle notebook, in Muggle ballpoint pen." He looked uneasy, and she knew he was thinking about what happened the last time they'd come across a mysterious Muggle book lying around Hogwarts. "Give me some ink and a quill."

Hermione scrambled around to find ink and quill and handed them to Harry. He loaded the quill with ink and let it hang over a blank page until a blob of ink fell off and splashed onto the paper, making a large black spot. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Seems to be okay," he said, capping the inkbottle and handing it back to her. "Tom Riddle's diary - when you'd do that, it would soak up the ink and write back to you." He shuddered a bit, then closed the book and set it on the bed. "You might just have something there, Hermione."

"I know," she said. "I'm not sure, I need to read through it more carefully later, but...I don't want to get too excited just yet. Not until...."

"Right," said Harry.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.

"The cleanup is almost done," he said quietly. "The service...it's tomorrow." He looked down and picked at a thread on the bedspread. "Professor McGonagall wants me to say something at the service, and, well...I don't want to."

Hermione covered his hand with hers. "She can't make you, Harry, and she wouldn't even if she could, you know."

"Yeah," he said. "I feel like I should, you know, because everyone will expect it, but...I know this sounds stupid and really horrible, but...he kept so much stuff from me, you know? Like he never told me why Voldemort was after me and my parents, never told me why he made me stay with the Dursleys, never told you about Raymond...he just kept all this stuff from us, like we couldn't handle it, and now he's dead. I can't be mad at him for dying, but I am, and I shouldn't be - if he hadn't done what he did, we'd all be dead and Voldemort would be in control right now, so I should be grateful...but now I've still got to deal with Voldemort, without his help. Now no one has the answers, and they're all looking to me, and I just don't know, because he died without telling me!"

He took a deep breath; Hermione could tell he was trying not to get angry. "So yeah," he continued, "I miss him, I'm sad he's gone, and I'm angry with him at the same time. Doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"I don't think anyone's feelings make any sense when someone dies, Harry," she said, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close.

He rested his head on her shoulder. "I guess not. I just don't want to get up and talk tomorrow."

"Then don't. Everyone who really knows you will understand, and everyone else - "

"To hell with everyone else." He sat up and touched her cheek, a small smile on his face. "Thank you, Hermione."

"For what?"

"For just listening. Listening and being here and all that stuff." He sighed, then stood up, pulling her up with him. "And as much as I'd love to stay up here with you all day...."

"We've got work to do. I know." She kissed him quickly, just a light brushing of lips, and then they went back downstairs to the library.

But the whole time she worked, she couldn't get that strange notebook out of her mind, and she couldn't wait until she could sit down and read it properly.

Maybe, just maybe, it would work.