Jewel

I

It was the first time Hermione Granger Apparated with the light-blue sphere clamped inside her hand, and a wave of dizziness overcame her as soon as her feet struck earth. The only thing preventing her from falling flat on her face was her determination. She would not allow herself to slip any information, trivial or no, in front of the renegade, whoever he or she may be - and she would definitely not fall over as an introduction. It was simply unacceptable, and thus it would not happen.

When she had regained control over her footing, she carefully looked around. She appeared to be in a cellar of some kind - it was too dark to make out its use or its proportions. She tested for an echo with a soft "hello" - a calculated amount of insecurity added - but found that the room's acoustics were as dry as any normal room.

"Please, stand still." The pulsating circle of light disappeared from her feet; a single movable globe had left its place from the pentacle on the floor and flew straight to its owners hand; the man pocketed it, and everything went pitch-black. She heard the rustle of cloth, and froze for a second when she felt a breath on her cheek; the moment she realised he had moved behind her, she felt the fabric of a blindfold slide over her eyes.

As soon as the renegade had assured himself the cloth was secure, he took her by the elbow and led her on. "Your wand, please." She hesitated, then took it out of her jeans pocket and thrust it towards him. She felt him accepting it tentatively. "Do not attempt to remove the blindfold. I will inform you of any obstacles in due time."

She nodded, and concentrated on her other senses. The air was dry, not dank - it had a kind of dark sensation over it instead. She doubted the last time sunlight had shone down here was less than a hundred years ago. The dryness was a strange one, too - even though it was undoubtedly dry, it felt the opposite; rich, warm and moist. She'd remember that.

"Seven wooden steps coming up. Don't take them too fast, the ceiling is low." She nodded again and, finally noticing she still grasped the apparition sphere tightly, pocketed it with a grand gesture; she wouldn't want him to think she was trying anything.

She actually felt kind of elated. It had been a full four years since she had been able to access a halfway decent library; Hogwarts' library had been inaccessible without careful planning or bringing half the school in danger, and the Ministries libraries weren't worth a penny anyway.

There were still two Horcruxes left to find, and though Ron claimed that pure luck had gotten them this far, that it would no doubt hold out till the end, even Harry agreed with her that they needed confirmation of some sorts before they risked their necks again.

It had been then, a month ago, when they had asked the old Order of the Phoenix for help. Yesterday help had arrived in the form of a bright-blue sphere. The instructions were simple; next day at noon, one of them was to Apparate at will with the globe clasped tightly in a bare hand. The thing would do the rest.

Guided Apparition was a craft presumed long lost, and Hermione had already been baffled to even see a guiding globe, yesterday. Now, it not only turned out to be operative, it was also connected to an Apparition Pentacle - whoever the guy was, she had concluded, he was good.

Her guide led her up a narrow flight of stairs, through a maze of corners, more stairs, even more rickety staircases and finally up a different flight of stairs - broader, and made of smooth marble. The entire journey took about twenty-five minutes of brusque walking. Hermione was sure they'd taken the long way.

Finally, they came to a halt. She heard the smooth whoosh of massive doors with well-oiled hinges opening. She noticed her guide standing in front of her.

"Do you swear that you will use the information you will find in here to benefit your task and your task only?"

"I swear."

"Do you swear that, if you may discover the whereabouts of this place, you will not reveal them willingly to anybody?"

"I swear."

"Do you swear that you will treat the books with the utmost care and that you will not make any folds nor creases in the pages?"

Hermione clicked her tongue indignantly. "I swear. Naturally."

She smiled in response to the smile she felt from him when he circled around her to remove her blindfold, but gasped when it fell away. She barely noticed the tall, black-clad figure that was her guide telling her he'd come pick her up in five hour's time and slipping out quietly; she could only stare.

The only place she had seen a library like this one had been in the "Beauty and the Beast" motion picture her mother had bought her when she was six, and that was a cartoon one.

This was the real thing.

The ballroom-esque chamber she stood in was oval-shaped, and the only spots on the wall not lined with bookcases were the ten-feet-tall arched windows; she suspected they were coated with a charm of some kind, for even though sunlight filtered through, she could not see beyond the glass panes.

The reason she had gasped, though, lay beyond the arch further in front of her.

Rows upon rows of tall dark bookcases, all of them reaching the ceiling, all of them lined with matching gold-coated ladders and all of them stacked with books. The sun made a small, pitch-black shadow on her left while Hermione let her hands slide over the neatly arranged placards attached to the sides of the bookcases.

"Anciente ways of magickal usage." "The art of Modern Charming." "Magical ways of the Stars and Planets." "The ancient History of the Wessex Culture." "Ways and Practices of Neo Druidism..."

She passed through a double row of at least fifty bookcases when she reached the dome.

The mosaic on the floor was what caught her eye first. A pattern, about twenty feet ahead of her, captured her interest, and she quickened her pace. She didn't register the sudden echo her footsteps made until she had reached it and looked around - and rubbed her eyes - and looked around again.

With a diameter of forty feet, the mosaic on the floor was marvellous. The fifteen-feet-tall windows were beautiful, too. But the balcony above those windows was what took her breath away.

The bookcase that stood there coated the entire circle, and was filled with more ancient-looking volumes than she had ever seen. The dome above was painted in a way that resembled the dome of the Paris opera, but bigger - much bigger.

It was overwhelming. She stared, stared - sat down on the middle of the floor - and stared even more.

When she had finally registered everything that was around her, she stood up again and walked towards one of the various ladders reaching the balcony.

It didn't take her long to find a promising volume (Almanack of Necromancy in the Previous Ages). As soon as she had carefully pried it out she hesitated, though. How was she going to get it down that ladder? She had given up her wand!

At that moment she heard a loud crack. "Can Sally be of service, Miss?" Wearing a dress that seemed to have been made out of a navy-coloured sheet, the house-elf looked well-fed and healthy. Hermione looked at her thoughtfully, then clambered down the golden bookcase-ladder and gave her the book.

"Sally will bring it to the table in the reading room, Miss. She will put it with the other books, Miss."

Other books?

It took Hermione about ten minutes to return to the oval ballroom (a few necessary detours and mental map marks added to her journey). What she had expected turned out to be quite true; on top of the heavy-legged mahogany table, standing in the middle of the room, was a pile of books. The one she had given to Sally was placed triumphantly on top of them.

She would have sworn that table had been empty when she entered.

The books seemed harmless enough, but they - all of them - had a direct link to what she was looking for. Her informant seemed to be helping her.

Smiling, she pulled one of the leather-coated chairs back, selected one of the thick volumes, and started reading.

~*~

The five promised hours passed far too quickly to Hermione's liking, and she sighed heavily when she heard the whoosh of the doors again. Carefully, she closed the book she was currently reading, rolled up the sheaf of notes she had taken, and stood to face her companion.

He was wearing a Death Eater's mask.

Gasping for breath, she staggered backwards and fumbled for her wand. When she realised she had given it away - to a Death Eater! - she turned to run, but froze when he spoke.

"Do you understand why you were blindfolded?"

She nodded shakily.

"Do not question my motives. I shall return you to the portal. You can return tomorrow, if you wish to."

Taking her stunned silence as agreement, he moved towards her and blindfolded her again. The moment before the material shut out all light, she saw what the thing was made of, though. Silk. Black silk.

She felt the now familiar pressure on her elbow again, and they moved - down, down, down, through endless corridors, turns, and twists. After a vast amount of time - she had lost track of how much, it seemed ages - she felt the dry moistness of the cellar she had arrived in. In a matter of minutes she stood inside the restored pentacle again.

When the blindfold fell away, he was facing her and she shuddered from the proximity of his mask. Behind it, dark eyes glittered, then died down.

"Do not question my motives. I shall await you tomorrow at noon."

With that, he thrust her wand back in her hand. She wasted no time and Apparated away, the globe guiding her to the exact spot she had departed from; one of their most secure safe-houses, the attic of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.

She sank down on one of the beds. Harry and her boyfriend would come storming up in mere seconds, and she needed to catch her breath before she told them... what?

If she'd say that their informant was a Death Eater, or had enough connections in Voldemort's camp to possess a Death Eater's mask, they'd forbid her to go back, and they'd probably be right. But was that really the wisest thing to do? She needed that library; their lives might depend on whether or not they found out what would await them when they went back to Horcrux-hunting. Besides, even a Death Eater would not tamper with a library of that magnitude and grandeur just to spite her. She guessed he'd rather not have her there instead.

Had he been wearing his mask when she'd first arrived? She was pretty sure he hadn't. However dark a cellar was, a white spot amidst black surroundings always claimed some attention. In times like these, she was certain she'd spot a white blur in the facial environment. The only alternative, though, was that he'd put it on deliberately. But why?

She shook herself out of her train of thought and went back to the real problem at hand; what to tell Harry and Ron. There was only one option, really. She'd have to lie... or perhaps not entirely.

"Hermione? Is that you?"

She pulled herself together and got to her feet. "Yes, it's me - wait, I'm coming down."

When she descended the rickety attic stairs, she smiled at the anxious faces of her friends. "What was it like?"

"What did you find out?"

"I didn't find out anything significant yet - but he invited me to come back tomorrow. And it was very big. Large. Tons of books."

"Sounds like you've been in heaven for the last couple of hours." Ron grinned while pulling her into a tight welcome-back-embrace.

Then Harry asked the question she'd dreaded.

"Who was it?"

She took a deep breath and said, "I don't know. He was wearing a mask."

~*~

It wasn't until she'd finished her breakfast that she discovered her mistake.

The guiding globe.

It had surely been in the possession of at least one Death Eater, and moreover she didn't know the exact amount of information an Apparition Pentacle gave to the owner. In other words, it was very likely her white-masked friend knew exactly where she'd Apparated from.

She nearly choked on her third refill of coffee.

After assuring Ron that she was quite fine, she pondered this thought. Plans were always more effective when you assumed of the worst, and in this case the worst would be him knowing exactly where she was, and thus knowing with certainty the location of one of the nerve centres of the Resistance.

Another fact was that he hadn't revealed this information yet; otherwise she'd certainly be dead already. No amount of wards could keep Voldemort out if he presumed to know the whereabouts of the Boy-Who-Lived; they'd tested this hypothesis with a small shack hanging off a cliff near Dover. The headlines of the Muggle Times had proclaimed a mysterious gas explosion, the next morning.

There were two possible explanations for the informant's silence; either he didn't want to kill her, or he didn't want to kill her yet. Assuming the worst again, he might think she would drop some valuable information when she thought she could trust him.

But what to do about it? Surely he knew that she'd realized something at least; he must have taken his precautions, expecting her to take hers as well.

Hence, the thing to do would be not to take any more than necessary precautions, and see how long he managed to play his game.

She smiled grimly and fingered her enchanted necklace. This certainly moved finding out who she was dealing with up her to-do list.

~*~

This time she didn't stumble when her molecules reassembled. She had prepared herself for this test the entire morning, and she was confident she looked calm and at ease. She had once again put on easy Muggle jeans and a v-necked sweatshirt, but this time with more care; looking casual would be essential in her plan to make him believe she was up to something.

She spotted her guide immediately; her eversight contact lenses took care of that. She only wished she'd thought of putting them in yesterday; what use were the Weasley gadgets if she didn't actually use them?

He wore Armani, she was sure of it. Charcoal slacks and a black sweater. Now, that was interesting. Which Death Eater would possess a Muggle wardrobe..? Today's mask was full black satin. Twisted and rich.

When he asked for her wand again she gave it to him immediately. She felt puzzlement flashing over his face before a slight frown replaced it. She allowed the corner of her mouth to curl upwards. His frown became deeper when he noticed it, then he shrugged it off and produced the blindfold from his pocket. Left pocket, she noted; he had put her wand in his right one.

She felt the material slip over her eyes, blinked twice and made her vague smile disappear; she could see through the material enough to trace his outlines, but she wouldn't want him to suspect anything. Instead, she put up the stony mask of an incredibly bad poker player. She felt his amusement.

Thanking Ron inwardly for the necklace - not for the first time - she allowed him to steer her toward the blurry spot of light in front of her. This time, when she ascended the wooden stairs, she registered the soft but distinctive creak the third step made.

Once again, they went up - and once again, they took the long way. She began to wonder if it really was a detour - could a manor be this big?

When they'd climbed the marble stairs and she'd heard the soft whoosh again, he led her inside and removed her blindfold. "You know the procedure. Ask Sally if you need anything. I'll see you in five."

He inclined his head slightly, turned and left. Twisted, rich, and a gentleman, she mused. Strange combination - especially for a Death Eater. She wondered whether he granted his victims last requests.

Well, it didn't matter. What did matter, however, was the task at hand. She would have to do some discreet research if she were to find out who her host was - not to mention she ought to find enough about the Horcruxes to keep Ron and Harry happy. They weren't geniuses, but they certainly were intelligent.

The stack of books she had used yesterday was gone; instead, there was a list on the table. Closer inspection revealed that it stated where she could find them. The ink was black, the handwriting was firm, and she was sure she'd seen it before.

She smiled. He'd given her more information than he had bargained for.

She took her rolled-up notes from the leather tube she'd kept them in, and pulled out an empty sheet from the middle of them. It had a faint pink tinge, and it smelled of roses.

The Weasley brothers had used the Horcrux information she'd given them well. Moreover; they'd done some research on their own. What they found was that you didn't necessarily have to split your soul to animate an object. Some excessive charm, transfigurative and potionwork turned out to be enough.

One of the fruits of this research was the Copycat she'd just pulled from her notes. It replied to written messages, and when you laid it on a written platform, for instance an opened book or a note, it'd make a copy of it. An exact copy.

Hermione carefully unscrewed the lid a bottle of rose-coloured ink and picked up her hawkfeather quill.

"It's the handwriting I need. Make it as accurate as you can, please?"

"A good morning to you, too. Consider it done!"

When the Copycat had finished, she replaced it between her papers and went to find the books on the list. This was all the useful information she was likely to get; from what she'd see so far, she figured he wouldn't be stupid enough to leave any other personals around.

The look on his face when he came to pick her up and noticed his note, still lying on the table, was priceless.

~*~

"You still haven't found anything yet? I mean, it's not like I don't trust your methods of working, but it's been two weeks since you first went to that library, and we've still got nothing accurate."

Ron was leaning on her desk, looking at her with a hopeful expression. She sighed.

"No, Ron, I don't have an occupation for you. Why don't you go bother Harry?"

It was his turn to sigh. "Harry claims it's sensitive spellwork he's doing. I just don't want to mess it up. 'Mione, please, give me something to do? Please? I'll do anything!"

She tapped on the back of her hand with her quill. "Anything?"

It took him a moment to realize; then his expression turned from hopeful to utter horror. "I didn't mean-"

She grabbed the hem of his shirt to prevent him from backing away. "If that's so... you can go out and get us some Muggle pizza. I'll take a Hawaii."

He gave her a look that practically shouted he couldn't believe his luck. "That's it?"

"Oh, and you can get me some feminine products. The usual. If you insist."

Ushering a spluttering Ron out of the room, Hermione grimaced. Nothing accurate? She'd been buried in paperwork for two weeks and Ron claimed that she'd found nothing accurate? He hadn't even bothered to ask what she was looking for!

Not that he'd understand what she was talking about if he had, of course. He was hopeless at Arithmacy. Still, the nerve of the prat!

Groaning, she allowed her brow to collide with the tabletop. She was behaving in a way Draco Malfoy would probably approve of. Prickly, nasty and mean.

She knew they'd all matured in the last few months. The Horcrux-hunt had been a sort of game, at first - another adventure. But after the fall of the Ministry, two years ago, the gap between the Hogwarts students and the older wizards opposing Voldemort had widened.

Alastor Moody, the leading power of the Order of the Phoenix since Dumbledore was gone, had been trying to get them to tell what they were looking for. Harry had refused - the Horcrux knowledge he had was, as he accurately put it, "too dangerous for anyone to handle"; what if someone in the Order got big ideas about invincible freedom fighters?

The fight that broke out between them had resulted into the Golden Trio splitting away from the Order. Despite their best efforts, several former Hogwarts students, including the Weasley twins, Dean Thomas, Luna Lovegood and the late Neville Longbottom, had still managed to convince Harry to let them join, and the new group of renegades was now known under the unimaginative name of the Resistance, with the Golden Trio firmly in the lead.

Since then, they had been trying to prevent Death Eater raids, raiding the Death Eaters themselves, escorting Hogwarts students and, but this was unknown to the most of the Resistance, trying to locate the remaining two Horcruxes. The Order of the Phoenix, while still assisting with these matters, busied itself mostly with the affairs of the former Ministry, and with international contacts.

And even after all that, she hadn't realized what it meant to be in charge of a rebellion. That realization had come five months ago, when their raid on a Death Eater camp in Slovakia had had devastating results. At the same time that they were stealing some important documents and setting fire to Death Eater tents, the Death Eaters themselves had attacked London, leaving disaster in their wake.

When they returned to England, and saw the carnage - when she saw the ravaged corpses of her parents - that's when she knew what war meant. And that it had to end.

Ron didn't understand. After his own parent's deaths, he had stared straight ahead for two days. Then he had taken his wand and, if the rumours were to be believed, had single-handedly murdered seven alleged Death Eaters he had encountered near Surrey.

Since then, she hadn't been sure if she could really trust him anymore.

After closing her eyes for a minute, she started shuffling her Horcrux notes into a pile and pulled the ones on handwriting towards her. She was positive she could narrow down her options regarding the identity of the informant down a bit more before Ron came back.

Not that she had a lot left, though. Her certainty that she'd seen the handwriting before might not be worth a lot in a legal investigation, but she could definitely use it for her own purposes. Besides, it meant that the only options she had were her old schoolmates.

Using the statements in an old yearbook (fourth grade) as reference, she'd narrowed the possibilities down to seventeen males; eight Slytherin, three Hufflepuff, two Gryffindor and four Ravenclaw. Even though the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs weren't likely, she'd kept them on the options list; no time for prejudices.

At that point she'd contacted professor McGonagall. She'd spun a story of at least three sheets of parchment about the importance of knowing whether Tom's way of thinking was comparable to the way of thinking of say, her classmates, and whether McGonagall could provide some old seventh-year transfigurations tests.

McGonagall could.

Fifteen of the ones on her list were among the tests Hermione received for her "comparison"; another round of studying had narrowed her list down to six.

Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hufflepuff.

Cedric Moon, Ravenclaw.

Terry Boot, Ravenclaw.

Theodore Nott, Slytherin.

Blaise Zabini, Slytherin.

Morag MacDougal, Slytherin.

Tapping her quill on the back of her hand - old habits die hard - she grinned. Pure wit ought to solve this riddle.

Her librarian always put her wand in his right pocket. Apparently, he wasn't afraid of accidently setting his pants on fire. But it meant more. It was logical to keep a wand easily reachable yet out of sight in times of war, and it was obvious to do so when escorting a possibly hostile stranger.

His own wand must have been in a pocket as well.

It could only have been in his left pocket. The magical flows of wands disturb each other when put too closely together; one smart enough to put together an Apparition pentacle certainly had enough sense to know something like that.

A wand was always put in the pocket of the side of the wand-hand; it was faster and easier to draw it that way. Thus, his left hand was his wand-hand.

Because wizards generally write with the same hand they use for spellwork, she could conclude that her mystery man was a leftey.

For once, Hermione was glad she'd written down useless facts about her classmates in the yearbooks they'd received. After five minutes of searching she located the one from first grade; the originally blank pages at the end were scribbled full with neat rows of facts.

One of the rows was a list of the writing-hands of her fellow first years.

Cedric, Blaise and Morag had been left-handed in her first year; seeing that it generally took a lot of hard work to switch to another writing-hand she assumed they still were.

The moment she'd written that down Ron poked his head around the door.

"You know, your pizza is getting cold."

~*~

Four days later she found it. She'd wriggled the book out of its casing just for the heck of it - who wouldn't want to flip through a book called "Master Melchior's Grand Guide to Evilness"? It had been rather much of a disappointment at first, though - Melchior seemed to qualify practically everything as an act of goody-goodyness which should be avoided - until she got to the Listings chapter.

One of the lists was titled Famous Battlesites. In Melchior's opinion, it seemed, every battle won by evil had been a famous one. Hermione had scoffed at it, but then a particular name and date met her eye.

Ulcridwe Castle, Romania, November 1942

Famous Leader Grindelwald Overtook APWBD and his Team of Miscreants by Surprise, Slaughtering Greater Part of Miscreants and Sending APWBD, Gravely Injured, Running for Safety.

Capitals aside, Hermione only knew one person whose initials spelled APWBD. And he had been the only wizard Voldemort was afraid of. Considering the rather simple line of thinking Voldemort seemed to adopt in this matter - they had found the last Horcrux at the site where his mother had died, for crying out loud - it was rather obvious he would stack a piece of his soul at the spot where Albus Dumbledore had suffered a glorious defeat.

Suppressing a cry of joy, she rushed to the mahogany writing table where she started copying and scribbling notes furiously. She had minutes left before the informant came to pick her up, and he probably was a Death Eater - even though chances he was monitoring her were high, she wouldn't want to make things easy for him by leaving the book on the table.

She made it just in time. The moment she'd crammed the book back onto its shelf, she heard the whoosh of the doors. Gracefully, and with a slight smile on her face, she glided back to the table and swept her notes together into the leather tube. "Shall we, then?" The face he made behind his navy mask almost made her laugh out loud.

~*~

When she stepped back into the safehouse of today - the sub-basement of Florian Fortescue's, this time - the smile slid off her face like water. Harry was leaning against one of the kitchen walls, looking very ominous - and clutching something suspiciously familiar in his fist.

"You have some explaining to do, 'Mione, and the explanation had better be damned good, too, because if this list means what I think it means..."

She had left her list of suspicions around the informant on her desk, that morning.

That list mentioned Death Eaters.

"Harry.."

"If this list means what I think it means, it means that you've been visiting a library that belongs to a Death Eater - for eighteen days in a row - and that you knew you were - and that you haven't told me? Don't mention me, you haven't told Ron! You didn't tell Ron - your boyfriend, for Christ's sake - that you went ... traipsing off into a Death Eater's lair for five hours a day? What were you thinking! You could've gotten yourself killed!"

He seemed to have realized he was ranting, because he bit back his next sentence, and took a few deep breaths instead. When he resumed talking, his eyes were downcast and he sounded almost resigned.

"Look. I don't want you to think that I believe you incapable of taking care of yourself, because I don't. It's just that - I mean, I know you're really smart - a genius, if you like - but genius isn't going to help you in this case. Logic won't make the lunatics go away. You have to be mad to predict the moves of a madman. To predict the moves of a madman's lapdogs... I'm sorry, 'Mione, I really am. But tomorrow will be the last time you'll go there. I want you to give me that globe as soon as you get back."

He gave her one last look, placed the list on the kitchen table and stalked up the stairs and out of sight. She picked it up gingerly and made her way to her bedroom, with leaden feet and a growing feeling of dread in her stomach.

Surely enough, she found Ron sitting on their bed. She hadn't even closed the door before he started talking. "You know, I always thought you were so much more responsible than me. You were always so level-headed, so self-assured, so... Hermione? Hermione!"

The emotions spilling through her necklace had been the last straw - Hermione had burst out crying. Moments later, Ron was there, his arms wrapped around her and whispering words of comfort in her ear - but that, she thought wryly through her sobs, did not make the undercurrent of disappointment she still felt leaking in through that accursed jewel go away.