Hero With A Thousand Faces

Chapter 12: Big If

"There is no theory, there is only what we do." --Mark Costello, "Big If"

---

Harry was awake, but he was keeping his eyes closed. Hopefully, if he just pretended he was still asleep, his insane wife would stop whatever it was that she was doing and come back to bed. If he gave any sign that he'd noticed she was up and about, she might feel the need to explain herself, which would lead to her getting herself all wound up and demanding to know why he didn't care one little bit about what had her out of bed at three a.m., which would only lead to neither of them getting any sleep for at least a few hours.

Actually, by the sounds she was making, he was pretty sure he knew what she was doing. She was looking for the damned rose pin.

Some years ago, Hermione had lost a pin that her mother had given her, a small painted rose. It hadn't been particularly valuable, nor was it a sentimental heirloom, but Hermione hated to lose track of anything. Harry suspected that it had been lost in the move to Bailicroft, but Hermione insisted that it had vanished from her jewelry box long before that. She had been through every single thing either of them owned at least a dozen times, but she still felt compelled to have another look for it every few months. It had become something of a joke between them. Harry suspected that whenever she felt stonewalled by a problem or frustrated by inaction, she'd have another hunt for the pin, which, he had to admit, did seem to have evaporated into atoms.

Resigned to at least temporary sleeplessness, Harry rolled onto his back. "Hermione, the bloody pin is gone."

"It's not gone. That violates the laws of physics."

"We're wizards, Hermione. We violate the laws of physics every damned day."

"It is somewhere," she insisted. She was going through her hatboxes now.

"And you think you might have just dropped it in a hatbox? That hat is brand new; you haven't even worn it! How could it possibly be in there?"

"I didn't lose it!" she insisted, opening another hatbox. "It...it...argh!" she exclaimed. "It just didn't get up and walk away!"

"Will you please come back to bed? It's three o'clock in the morning. I'm tired and I'm grumpy and I'm not likely to be more agreeable if you insist on hunting for that pin at this ungodly hour."

She sniffed. "Well, I can see how much you care."

"You're right. I don't care. I don't care if that pin never gets found, except that if it does turn up, it means you'll never have to hunt for it again!" He grabbed a pillow and put it over his face. He heard her footsteps and then felt the bed creak as she got in. He lowered the pillow. She was lying on her back, arms crossed over her chest. "Are you finished?"

"No," she snapped. "But you won't let me look."

"Not at this hour. You need to get some rest, too. We've got a tough few days ahead of us and I won't have you sleepwalking through it."

"I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking."

"Pretend you're back in History of Magic."

"I liked History of Magic."

"Then pretend you're back in...oh sod it, you liked all the classes." He turned on his side, away from her. "Just go to sleep, will you?" He pulled up the covers and tried to take his own advice. There were a few blessed moments of silence.

But only a few. "Shall we have sex, then?" she asked, sounding rather half-hearted about the idea. He'd heard her work up more enthusiasm about weeding the garden.

Harry blinked. "What?" He turned over. "You want to have sex now?"

"It helps me relax."

He sighed. "As flattering as it is to know that my penis is such a useful stress-relief tool for you, I'm bloody exhausted. I almost transcended my corporeal form today, whatever the hell that means, and I feel like stale porridge. If I tried to have sex with you, that's about the consistency you'd get, too. Go to sleep, I'm begging you." He turned back to his side, ignoring the waves of pouting emanating from her.

"I bet Napoleon would sleep with me if I asked," she said.

"Napoleon would sleep with a wood-elf if it asked."

She heaved a long-suffering sigh. "You don't love me anymore."

"Oh, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, rolling onto his back again. "Who are you? Gimme back my wife!"

She hesitated, and then abruptly rolled towards him and snuggled against his side, nestling her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Harry held her, regretting his flippancy as he realized that she wasn't distracted but upset. "I don't know what to do," she whispered. "And I can't stand it. I always have the answer, don't I? But I don't know how to help you with the Master. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't think of a single spell or potion or talisman."

"It's not all up to you, you know."

"But I want it to be. I'm...jealous." She lifted her head and looked at him. "I guess I want to be the one to save you."

He kissed her forehead, and then made a decision to take one for the team. "Do you still want to have sex?"

She sighed. "Nah. I'm tired, too."

"Thank God." She kissed his cheek and rolled away. Harry turned onto his stomach and burrowed into the comforting warmth of the blankets, relishing the peace.

---

He heard his bedroom door open and close again, but he barely had time to sit up before he was pounced on and shoved onto his back.

Allegra whipped the covers off of him and sat on his legs, pinning him in place. "This is your wake-up call, Mr. Jones."

Napoleon shoved her backwards and drew his legs up. "Get off me," he snarled.

Undeterred, she cozied up to his side again. "You weren't so standoffish earlier today."

"No, I wasn't. I'm still wondering if you didn't hex me or something."

"Regrets?"

"About shagging you?"

"Four times."

"Why would I have regrets? That is, aside from the fact that you're horrible and evil and all this is probably part of your big gnarly plan for world domination."

"Don't flatter yourself. You're not significant enough to play a role in my big gnarly plan for world domination."

"Then why are you all over me?" he demanded, getting up to pace the room.

She shrugged, striking a flattering pose on the bed. "Maybe I like you."

"Yes, and maybe Voldemort will stop by wanting to place a nice game of canasta."

"Stranger things have happened."

"No, they really haven't." He grabbed a shirt and yanked it on. He just wanted her out before he did something else he'd regret -- her, for instance.

"Come on, you don't fool me. You're not a nice boy at heart."

"Am too."

"Are not. You're a naughty one, but you gave it up to join Team Goody-Goody. What's it got you? Nothing, except the right to say you're Potter's right-hand lackey. Big deal."

"Actually, that is a big deal, but I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand that."

"Someone like me?"

"Someone without a shred of moral character. Someone who schemes and betrays and kills without remorse."

"Someone you gleefully screwed, and quite memorably. What does that make you?"

"A bloody idiot, that's what. It makes me a sad, randy little tosser who listened to his willy instead of his brain."

"You say that like it's a bad thing. You'd hardly be the first man to listen to the wrong head, you know."

He looked at her. "No one around here, that's for sure. Everyone in this house is so fucking noble it's enough to make you sick."

"You think so?" She rose off the bed and slunk towards him, oozing a contrived sensuality that was no less effective for the calculation behind it. "You should have seen him when I first knew him. The first time I laid eyes on him I knew what I had to do, but he didn't make it hard. I could see the lust in his eyes. It wasn't hard to use it, even though he knew it was against the rules for us to be together. He could have been thrown out of training, his career could have been ruined, and mine too. But it didn't matter. For weeks we walked circles around each other. Every time we were closer than five feet apart, it was like the air was crackling with it. We never talked about it. We never acknowledged it. I could see how he wanted to play it, and I went along. Then one day, he came into my office and locked the door. We didn't discuss it. He never even said a word, not until after. We just grabbed each other. We did it on my desk. He was such a randy beast, rutting and grunting like an animal. He took me like he'd die if he didn't. He didn't even get me off the first time, but I didn't care. I laid him low, I saw the savage inside him, and that was so much better." She smiled, stroking one hand up and down his side. "He can pretend he's above it all, but he isn't. I know where he lives. He's no better, he's no different. He can parade around all he likes with his perfect little wifey and his perfect little life with that superior look on his face but it doesn't change the fact that he spent over a year shagging me senseless when he knew it was against the rules."

Napoleon looked down at her face. It was a beautiful face. It seemed so unfair that it ought to be saddled with the brain behind it. "He didn't know what you were."

"And you do. Does that make you a mindless, randy git who shagged his worst enemy? Or does it make you a heroic gladiator, trying to make a connection to a woman stuck between sides? Perhaps you're just trying to reach me somehow, coax me back to the side of all that's good and righteous, sacrificing whatever's left of your virtue for the benefit of all mankind."

He snorted. "What a line of bullshit." But that's really good spin, he thought.

She grinned, snaking one hand behind his neck. "Whatever lets you sleep at night."

He narrowed his eyes. "You have no interest in letting me sleep at night." He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her, bending her backwards until she had to hang on to him to avoid toppling over backwards. She jumped and wrapped her legs around his waist, seizing him by the hair and yanking his head back, reclaiming control.

Napoleon strode to the bed and tossed her down on it, breathing hard. She stared up at him, the challenge in her eyes, and then slowly licked her lips. Fuck it all, he thought, and went to her.

---

The next morning, Harry was too slow getting out of bed and got stuck with the second shower; by the time he reached the kitchen, Hermione was putting her dishes in the sink. Laura was seated at the table with the Prophet and a bowl of oatmeal. "Where's Ron?" Harry asked, fetching his favorite morning tea from the cupboard.

"He's getting dressed," Laura answered without looking up.

"I'm going to the office to pick up some books," Hermione said. "I've pretty well exhausted my resources here, but the Librarian has some volumes for me to examine." Harry was impressed. "And she's actually letting you take them out of Research? How'd you manage that?"

She shrugged. "It's me," she said, as if this explained everything, which he supposed it did. "I'll be back soon. I'd like Ron to help me go through the new books."

Harry plucked a banana out of the bowl on the sideboard and sat down. "Is he the best person for that? He's not really an expert in magic anymore. If he ever was," he added under his breath.

"No, but he's a fast learner and I think he'd enjoy the experience and you are not having nothing but a banana for breakfast, Harry James."

"Uh, I'm not that hungry, Mum."

"Don't get shirty with me; I'll not have you going off to the Society without a decent breakfast."

"God, you're sexy when you boss me around."

Laura shot him a look. "Would you two like to be alone?"

"No!" Harry exclaimed. "I might need to use you as a human shield if she tries to force-feed me kippers."

Hermione pointed at him. "Don't come crying to me later if you pass out from low blood sugar."

"If all it takes is lack of kippers to lay me low, then I don't think the Master has much to worry about. I'll be fine. What are you on about this morning?"

Hermione turned from the sink with a sigh. "I just feel helpless. When I feel helpless, I overcompensate. When I overcompensate, I get bossy and try to micro-manage you."

Harry stood up to throw his banana peel into the dustbin. He went to her side and kissed her cheek. "I have complete confidence in your ability to save my arse."

"Well, it's an arse worth saving." She smiled at him fondly, and then ran one hand quickly down his cheek. "I'm off, then. Good luck at the Society. Remember what you promised me."

He nodded. "I won't forget." She left the kitchen as Harry resumed his seat at the table.

"What'd you promise her?" Laura asked.

"Not to do...well, something that's decidedly not in my best interests."

"And are you going to do it anyway?"

He looked at her. "No. I promised her."

"And you actually intend to honor it?"

He frowned. "What sort of chap do you take me for?"

Laura shrugged, going back to the Prophet. "The sort that might judge a promise less important than saving the world."

Harry sighed. "I guess that's fair enough."

---

Ron and Hermione sat on opposite sides of the study table, saying nothing. They'd been saying nothing for quite some time. All morning, in fact. They were both paging through spellbooks, but clouds of futility were circling their heads and casting gloominess over their faces.

"Muffling charm?" Ron asked, finally. He couldn't stand it anymore; he had to throw out some ideas. Any ideas.

"Not strong enough."

"I'm out of my depth here. Everything I know about spells and charms I've had to rel-learn in the last two weeks." He looked up. "Harry told me that you two used a spell the first time Allegra had you. It made the Circle wizards unable to use their magic."

She nodded. "Yes, but that won't work here. It takes too long to execute, it takes two people, and the Master would be expecting it." She looked off into space. "I wonder if a damping talisman would work."

"Damping talismans have to be placed directly on the skin. How's Harry going to do that? Besides, it probably wouldn't be effective on a Mage."

"I keep coming up against that. And against the fact that the Master will be prepared for almost any spell Harry can throw at him."

"Then we need something he won't be prepared for."

"Like what? We'd need to invent a whole new..." She stopped short, her eyes going wide. "We need to invent something new."

Ron blinked. "Just like that, huh? Magical inventions take years to perfect."

"Maybe it wouldn't have to be completely new, just...modified."

"Once again, I raise the years-to-perfect issue."

Hermione pulled out her address book. "I need a Resonator."

Ron waited to see if his brain would pull a definition for that term out of the depths. None seemed forthcoming. "A who in the what now?" he said.

"A Resonator," Hermione said, tossing him a quick, annoyed glance that he recognized so well from their Hogwarts years; it was that glance that so clearly said 'I can't believe you don't know what I'm talking about.'

"Is that some kind of sex toy? Because I want one, too."

She rolled her eyes. "Ronald, weren't you paying attention in..." She suddenly stopped. "Oh. That was covered in seventh-year Charms."

"Uh-huh. Missed that one."

"I'm sorry, Ron. It's just so easy to forget that you...you're..."

"Magically challenged?"

Her cheeks colored. "Do you know how spells and charms are invented?"

"Just that it's hard."

"It's not haphazard. People just don't go about saying random words until they hit a combination that makes something happen. Magic is like an energy field, it's all around us."

"Like the Force?"

Hermione grinned. "Kind of, actually." Ron grinned back; he hadn't been sure she'd get the reference. "A Resonator is a wizard or a witch who can interact with that field directly. They're like conduits, they can see how the words we speak and the tools we use affect the magic. They're the ones who design spells and think up new ones."

"That's brilliant!" Ron said, fascinated. "How does one learn to do this?"

"Well, that's the thing. You have to be born with the ability. And even then, it takes years and years of training. But once a Resonator is qualified, they can write their own ticket. There aren't many of them, and even fewer laboratories for them to do their work, so they're in high demand. When I was at Stonehenge, we shared the services of one Resonator with two other institutes. The lab was actually in Germany; the senior researchers were always fighting over lab and Resonator time and booking slots weeks in advance. They'd Apparate over and have their research checked and try out their ideas." She flipped the pages of her address book. "But I don't know how to...heavens, someone around here must have access to one." She got up. "Remus will know. Come on, let's go ask him." Ron followed her out of the library to the study, where Remus and Diz were working on the plan for that evening's reconnaissance of Circle headquarters.

He looked up at their approach. "How goes the research?" he asked.

"Remus, do you know a good Resonator?" Hermione asked, not bothering to answer his question. "I have an idea for a spell, but I'll need some help."

Remus looked at her like he wasn't sure if she was joking. "Well...yes, of course I do. Just go down to Research and request an appointment."

Hermione glanced at Ron. "What?"

He chuckled. "Hermione, did you not know that the I.D. employs its own Resonator?" Hermione said nothing, her mouth open. "There's even a Resonance lab on-site," Remus said.

"Um, no, I did not know that! Well, that makes it much easier, then! Thanks ever so!" She turned and strode out, back to the library.

Ron smiled, hurrying to keep up with her. "Ask and ye shall receive." She looked disgruntled that she hadn't been aware of help so close at hand. "C'mon, Hermione. You can't know everything."

"And why not?" She took her seat again, huffing in exasperation. "I don't see why I shouldn't."

"Aren't you going to..."

She picked up the book she'd been looking at. "No, no yet. I want to make sure I'm really stuck before I ask for help."

Ron watched her read for a moment, weighing the appropriateness of the topic he'd been wanting to broach with her. "Hermione, can I..." He cleared his throat.

"What, Ron?" she said, not looking up.

"Can I talk to you about something?"

His tone must have caught her attention; she looked up. "Of course."

He stared at his hands. "I, uh - I haven't been sleeping too well."

She shut her book and put it down, smiling gently. "I know."

"You know?"

"You share a bed with my best girlfriend, Ron. Did you really think she wouldn't notice that you've been getting up every night and wandering around the house?"

He sighed. "I hoped she didn't." He glanced at her. "I didn't want to upset her."

"She isn't upset, just worried. And, I think I can guess, a little hurt that you didn't feel you could talk to her about this."

"You know why I can't."

"Of course. You want her to think you've got everything together. You don't want her to think she's signed on for a man with issues."

"Issues, yeah."

"Can you tell me what's keeping you awake?"

He tilted his head back until he was staring at the ceiling of the library. "I wish I knew. Sometimes I feel like the room's closing in on me, and I can't breathe. Then I have to get up and find some space. Other times, I feel like the room's so huge that I can't find myself, and I have to get up and find some corner to hole up in." He met her eyes again. "Sometimes the world's so loud that I can't close my ears to it, and at other times it's so quiet that I have to strain to hear it."

Hermione sighed. "Ron, you've made a remarkable adjustment to your new life. It would really be too much to ask that you come away from your experience without any ill effects." She straightened. "I think you should talk to someone."

He smiled. "I thought that's what I was doing."

"I mean someone qualified to talk about these things."

"There's no one more qualified on the subject of me than you."

She gave him the eyebrow. "Ronald, stop being contrary. You know what I mean."

He shook his head. "I'm not comfortable talking to someone who doesn't know me." He folded his arms on the library table and rested his chin on them. Hermione mirrored his gesture, so they were still eye to eye. "Well, now you know something private about me."

"I know a lot of private things about you," she said with a smirk.

He sighed. "You have no idea how many times I replayed our time together in that garden room while I was inside."

She sobered. "I'm glad you had that memory."

"Were you glad to have it?"

"Sometimes I was. Other times..." She sighed. "I had moments when I thought that being with you once and then losing you was far worse than if I'd never been with you at all."

"It wasn't so very bad, was it? The sex, I mean."

"It was the first time for both of us. But it wasn't bad, no."

He frowned. "Hey, does Harry know that we..."

"Oh, yes."

They sat there in silence for a few moments. "She was his first, wasn't she?" Ron finally murmured.

Hermione nodded. "She doesn't deserve to have that."

"You wish it had been you?"

"Not really. I don't need to have been the first, as long as I get to be the last."

He studied her face. "Tell me something."

"What?"

"Anything. Something you've never told anyone."

Her eyebrows drew together in a puzzled knot. "Why?"

He tried to think of a nonchalant reason but couldn't come up with one, so he decided on the truth. "Because I want to feel special again."

Hermione blinked, and then smiled. "Okay. Let me think." She looked at the tabletop. "Something no one else knows? Including Harry?"

"Especially Harry."

She thought for a few more moments, and then he saw her decide on something. Her expression turned serious. "I once saw him kill a man," she murmured.

Ron shivered. "Kill a man?"

"In the line of duty."

"He doesn't know this?"

"He knows he did it, I'm sure, but he doesn't know I saw. He'd be upset if he knew I saw it. He doesn't know I was there."

"Tell me about it."

She bit her lip and hesitated, then began to speak. "I was still in training. When you're in training you spend a little time with each division; this was my time in his. I went along with a team that he led to Canada. A group of wizards working for the D'Agostino crime family had perfected a way to induce vampiricism without a vampire's bite. They were turning people by the dozen."

"Oh, is it cheaper that way?" Ron asked, unable to stop himself.

She frowned. "Huh?"

"Never mind," he said quickly, wishing he'd kept quiet. "Go on."

"Anyway, I was there to observe and learn from the CCO agents. I could tell that Harry wasn't thrilled to have me along on this mission, which was pretty dangerous, but he kept it to himself. We took most of the group into custody in a single raid, but their leader got away. Harry went after him. I stayed behind to start interrogating the ones we'd captured. Then there was a bit of a commotion. I heard someone say that Harry was in pursuit, and he was about to capture the target. He was calling for backup. A bunch of agents went off to help and I followed them."

"Wasn't that..."

"A bad move? Yes. But I was so eager to see things, and learn things, that I just had to get in the middle of everything."

"What did you see?"

"Harry was chasing the target back towards our safehouse. I couldn't see or hear anything, and the other agents had scattered because we didn't know exactly where Harry was. I was running around between all these trees when a broom went past me. The leader was on it, but it wasn't doing too well. The broom was weaving and sputtering; it looked like Harry'd hit it with a curse of some kind. I watched it go by, and then I heard something else. Hoofbeats."

"Yeah?"

"I stayed where I was, out of sight. A second later Harry came into view, riding a horse at full gallop. He had the reins in one hand and his sword in the other. He was bent low over the horse's neck and his cloak was flying out behind him. I just stared as he rode past, because I have to tell you, it was the sexiest thing I've ever seen."

"Wow."

"I heard a crash from up ahead and I ran to see. The target's broom had flown out from underneath him and he was on the ground. I stayed hidden. I wasn't supposed to even get near any dangerous situation until I'd completed my training, but it was Harry, you know?" Ron nodded. "It happened so fast. Harry was off the horse before it even stopped running and he tackled the leader. He was big, a lot bigger than Harry, and he shoved him off and raised his wand. Harry disarmed him, and then the leader threw a knife at him. Harry caught it by the blade, but it was just a distraction, because while he caught the knife, the leader got his wand back and Summoned Harry's sword, and then went to run him through. So Harry threw the knife and got him right in the heart." Hermione sighed. "He fell over dead. Harry just stood there."

Ron was having another of those moments in which he was suddenly, keenly aware of what Harry's life was like at times. "What was it like to have to stand by and watch this?"

"I didn't want Harry to see me. I just knew that it'd upset him if he knew I'd seen. So I hung back, but all I wanted was to just go hug him. I was so glad he wasn't hurt, and I worried that it would eat away at him." She pressed her lips together. "But now...I think it's more troubling to me that it didn't eat away at him."

---

"Harry, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to the Society again today," Napoleon said, standing in the door of Harry's office.

He glanced up. "I am, a little later. I wanted to go over the plans for tonight with Remus."

"You're not even coming with us."

"Well...we'll see about that."

"You're avoiding Hermione, aren't you?"

Harry looked up, the flash of guilt that passed over his face before he remembered himself was all the evidence that was required. He sank into his chair a little, looking sheepish. "No, of course not. She's busy; I don't want to...uh, distract her. When I'm around she feels this overwhelming urge to badger me about my work at the Society. She needs to be free to concentrate on other things."

Napoleon nodded, coming in and shutting the door behind him. "Sure, whatever."

"What do you need?"

"I have some information for you." He sat down in one of the chairs before Harry's desk.

"Information?"

"Well, you asked me to investigate the bombing." Harry looked blank. "You do remember the bombing, don't you?"

He gave a little start. "Of course! Yes, naturally, it's just..." He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I haven't thought about it in a few days."

Napoleon nodded. "You've had a lot on your mind."

"That's for sure."

"The forensic team has finished their analysis." He handed Harry a folder of reports. "The explosive was a standard rojo de inflamarius suspension in dragon's milk, with some wormwood dust thrown in for a bit of extra mojo."

"Why didn't the house's wards detect it?"

"Well...it wasn't in the house, exactly. Whoever planted it used a rather innovative magical loophole to get around the wards."

"Wasn't it in the snow globe?"

"Actually, it wasn't." At that, Harry looked up from the reports, frowning. "It looks like the snow globe was only a trigger. The explosive itself was found inside the walls of the foyer and front hallway."

Harry sighed. "The ward spells are worded to alert us to threats from inside or outside the house."

"Which means anything in the rooms or outside. Inside the walls would seem to be a kind of neutral zone where the wards can't see. The snow globe itself was no threat, which is why it was allowed inside." Napoleon shifted in his chair. "Harry, I don't think you or Hermione were the target of this bombing."

Harry just looked at him. "You don't?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it makes no sense. If you wanted to take out one or two high-profile targets, would you do it at their home, where they're the most protected?"

Harry pursed his lips. "No. I'd wait until they were out somewhere in the open where they were vulnerable."

"And where the scene would be so hopelessly compromised by traffic and environmental contamination that a solid forensic analysis would be inconclusive at best."

"So who was the target?"

"Not who. What."

Harry sighed. "Will you just tell me what you think?"

"I think the house was the target. I think the point of the bombing was to open up the house and make sure that it sat exposed and uninhabited long enough for someone to get in and out unobserved, without having to worry about wards."

If possibly, Harry looked even more confused. "Why on earth would someone want to do that?"

Napoleon was stunned. "Harry...haven't you thought that someone would be after...well, what's in that house?"

"What? My shoe collection? Hermione's hats? Justin's Frank-N-Furter costume?"

Napoleon sighed. "Harry, it's okay. I know."

"Know what?"

"Seriously. You don't have to keep up the front."

Harry's expression was rapidly transitioning from "confused" to "hacked off." "Napoleon, listen to me very carefully. What the hell are you talking about? "

"They probably wanted the...you know. The plans."

Harry's blank expression was unsettling. "The plans?"

"Yeah!"

"What plans?"

"Are you kidding me? I already told you that I know about them! Don't you trust me to know about them?"

"Jones, I don't know about them. What bloody plans?"

Napoleon was getting a cold, tumbly feeling in his gut. "The plans for this building. They're...there's only one copy, right? They're enchanted for security? But...they decided they wanted to keep them offsite, so...they..." He trailed off. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

Harry stood up, slowly, and leaned over his desk. "Who, exactly, told you that there were plans to this building hidden in my house?"

"There aren't any plans hidden in the house, are there?"

"No."

"Oh Christ," Napoleon said, rubbing one hand over his face. "This is bad."

" Who told you?"

He sighed. "Sabian."

Harry nodded. "That's what I thought."

---

There he sat, on the other side of the desk. Inscrutable, as always. Back straight, head up, hands primly laced together in his lap. He waited patiently to be addressed, feeling no need to break the silence in the office.

Harry sat back, studying this man with whom he'd worked for many years but who he wouldn't know if he bumped into him on the street. "Who did you tell about these mythical plans hidden in my house?" he finally said, with no preamble.

Sabian didn't seem surprised to be questioned about this. "A select few. I presume you know why."

"If someone attempted to recover these plans, you would know who'd leaked the information and you'd have found our mole. That's a pretty standard leak-hunting strategy."

"Exactly."

Harry leaned forward and clenched his hands around each other on the desktop. "Sabian...that act very nearly cost Hermione her life."

"No, it didn't."

Harry hadn't expected to be contradicted. "It didn't?"

"No."

"How do you figure?"

"Because whoever set that bomb wasn't looking for those plans. They weren't acting based on my misinformation."

"How do you know?"

"Very simply. The information I put out stated that the plans were secreted behind a certain painting in the second-floor living gallery. I rigged that painting with detection charms, and it has not been disturbed, nor has the wall behind it been breached. Whoever entered the house while it stood deserted, they weren't looking for hidden plans that didn't exist."

"Did someone enter the house while it was deserted?"

"Yes, although I can't explain how they eluded my surveillance."

"Why?"

Sabian reached into his robes and pulled out a small copper-colored sphere. "Probably to leave this behind." He handed it to Harry. "I was on my way here to report that I'd found it when you summoned me. It was in the library. There was another one in the study and another one in the room where Allegra's been staying."

Harry stared at the bug, turning it over in his hands until it grew warm with his body heat. "They've heard everything, haven't they? All our plans, all our deductions..." He shook his head, the magnitude of this security breach overwhelming him.

"Presumably."

"I knew that he let Allegra come to us for a reason." He held up the sphere. "We do daily sweeps for listening devices," he said. "How were these missed?"

"Don't beat yourself up. It was phased. You couldn't have detected it."

"Phased? Then how did you find it?"

Sabian stood up, slowly. As Harry's eyes widened, he reached up with his gloved hands and pushed the hood back from his face...to reveal nothing at all underneath. If his body was there, it was invisible. "Because I'm phased, too. It's how I maintain my invisibility for such long periods of time."

"You mean you're in the same room with me, but..."

"My body is one tenth of a second removed from you in time. That's why you can't see me."

"How can I hear you?"

"Sound moves slowly enough to sustain itself for the small amount of phasing I maintain, but light is too fast for you to perceive it from your time displacement."

Harry shook his head. "Sabian, last time I checked, time-phasing of living creatures was dark magic."

"Only if you do it to others."

"It'll eventually distort your biological systems to the point that you become sick."

Sabian drew his hood back up. "I de-phase for three hours a day, or whenever I assume a disguise. It's enough to keep me healthy."

"You don't know that for sure. It's a terrible risk. Why would you take such measures when there are plenty of less drastic concealment measures available?"

"I have my reasons." He sat back down.

Harry tossed the bug back to him. "Do you know who planted that?"

"I've traced the device's origin to an underground arms dealer who confirmed, after some persuasion, that he'd procured half-dozen of them for a wizard I know to work for the Circle."

"And now they know we're coming tonight to reconnoiter them." Harry sighed. "Now, he knows everything." Sabian stayed quiet. Harry watched him, his mind turning over everything he'd just learned. "You took a terrible risk with my home and the people who live in it," he said.

"Yes, I did. I hope you know that I did everything possible to minimize it."

"Not enough, if someone was able to get close enough to plant explosives."

"I can't explain how that was done."

"Now all I'm asking myself is why you took that risk, when you could have made up anything you liked to draw out the mole."

Sabian picked at his cloak. "Why do I think you already know the answer to that?"

"You suspect someone in the house, don't you?" Sabian's silence was answer enough. Harry wished he could see the man's eyes. "She isn't the mole, Sabian."

"How do you know that?"

"I know my wife."

"How did you know it was her that I suspected?"

"Because you didn't tell me about your theory."

"With good reason, don't you think?" He shifted in his chair. "All I can say is that I haven't been able to rule her out, Harry. Surely you know that some of her actions from time to time are...suspicious."

Harry laced his fingers together on the desktop. "Suspicious. No more than mine, or Napoleon's, or anyone else in this business."

"Perhaps." He shifted again. Harry had never seen Sabian so fidgety. "You're not going to try and talk me out of it? Forbid me from investigating her?"

"Why would I do that? You're only doing your job, a job that I ordered you to do...under protest, as I recall."

---

"We should abort the mission. Or postpone," Napoleon said.

Harry thought for a moment. "No. He'll know by now that we found the bugs. He'll expect us to scrap all of our plans. Our reconnaissance mission goes ahead as planned." Silence greeted this statement. It felt like the expectation of failure. "You hear me?" he said, turning to the team.

Diz nodded. "Yes, sir."

"We'll have to step up our level of stealth, but we have got to get inside that complex. We have to find out where he's keeping those hostages."

"I guess this means you're coming with us, then," Remus said.

"Damn straight."

"Weren't you going to the Society today?" Diz asked.

Harry sighed. "I was, but this is more important. Besides...I don't think they can help me anymore. No matter how much more of a Mage I can become, it won't be enough." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm depending on Hermione now, and she's never let me down before."

---

Hermione let herself into the Specialized Spells & Charms office, where, she'd been advised, she'd find the I.D.'s resident Resonator.

No one seemed to be around. There were several doors facing her, each with a name neatly lettered on it, none of which she recognized. She picked one at random and knocked.

"Yeah! Come in!"

She pushed the door open and stepped, mouth open, into the messiest office she'd ever seen in her life. The floor and every available surface was stacked high with parchments, books, files and reports. Random articles of clothing were tossed about as if the occupant had just come from a fire sale at a secondhand store. She didn't see anyone. "Hello?"

"Hermione! Glad you could make it." A woman came out from behind a tall stack of books, shoving them out of the way with one hip. She had her hand extended. Hermione shook it, trying not to stare. She had a huge cloud of frizzy black hair and a hooked nose in the middle of a pale, narrow face. Her clothing looked like it had come out of a dustbin and been hastily assembled into an ensemble without the benefit of light or forethought. She had a smudge of soot on her cheek and a mouthful of jarringly perfect, white teeth. "I'm Kate Salvatore. Nice to meet you."

"How'd you know who I am?"

"They told me you were coming down to see me."

"You're the Resonator?"

"Isn't that why you knocked on my door?"

"I didn't know which one to knock on."

"It's right there, sweetie," she said, waving a hand. Underneath her name on the door was stenciled "CMR."

"CMR?"

"Certified Magical Resonator. Atcher service." She sat down on top of a pile of old cloaks and kicked her booted feet on the corner of the desk. "What do you need?"

Hermione gathered her composure. "This is very, very confidential."

"I can keep a secret."

"Do you know my husband, Harry?"

"Hmm...let me think. I think I've seen you around with that chap with the green eyes and the weird scar." Hermione blinked, unsure how to respond. Kate chuckled. "Of course I know him. And aren't you supposed to be really intelligent?"

Hermione felt her face flush with embarrassment. "Well, um...sorry. I just don't like to presume."

"In his case, the presumption is warranted. What about him?"

"Very soon, he's going to have to fight the Master."

"Who's a Mage. And his son."

Hermione's mouth dropped open. "You know that?"

"You wouldn't believe the kind of information that a bottle of firewhisky and a blowjob will get you around here," Kate said, winking. Hermione didn't know if she was kidding and she didn't want to know.

"Well, anyway..." She cleared her throat. "Harry will never be able to be Mage enough to beat him magically. I'm trying to find a spell that'll separate both of them from their magical powers during the confrontation that they'll eventually have to have."

"There are any number of spells that..."

"Spells that the Master won't be prepared for, something new and different."

"Ah," Kate said, tilting her head back. "You want me to cook up something new for you."

"It doesn't have to be totally new. Something modified, perhaps? From an existing spell?"

"Believe me, totally new is easier. So basically, you want a limited-range magical counteragent that will be effective upon two people, yet implemented by a single caster without the consent of the other party, and, I presume, selectively reversed upon command."

"Selectively reversed?"

"Well, assuming that Harry is victorious, he'll want his own powers back, but he won't want the Master to get his back at the same time."

Hermione nodded. This was more complicated than she'd thought. "Of course." She looked up at Kate. "Can you do it?"

"Well, that's a pretty tall order. Cutting a wizard off from his magical powers is a risky and delicate business, and the fact that both the subjects here are Mages doesn't help. If the spell isn't modulated correctly, he'll lose his powers permanently."

"But can you do it?" Hermione pressed.

Kate smiled. "Follow me." She stood up and led Hermione through the door at the back of her office. It opened onto a long hallway with a downward slant. They walked for what felt like a long time; finally, the hallway merely dead-ended into a blank wall.

"What's this?" Hermione asked.

"It's my lab. Argo was kind enough to have one installed when she hired me. It's no small task to fully configure and outfit a Resonance lab. To my knowledge, I'm the only Resonator in the world who has one all to herself." She grinned. "Sometimes I love my life." She reached out and pressed her hand to the stone and it...melted. Hermione followed Kate into a small antechamber and watched while she pulled a long, heavy-looking robe off a peg and put it on, then handed another one to Hermione.

"What's this?"

"It's kudzu cloth. It'll shield you from the resonance. Excessive exposure can have - let's say, negative effects."

The robe was, if anything, even heavier than it looked. Hermione slung it over her shoulders, feeling her bones groaning in protest, but Kate wore it like a second skin. She picked up an oddly-shaped leather helmet. "What's that, now?" She knew she was asking a lot of questions, but this was beyond interesting.

"It's my interface helmet."

"Oh," Hermione said, surprised. "I've seen one...but it didn't look like that. It was much fancier."

"You went to Stonehenge, right? Who was the Resonator you used back then?"

"Nick Fotheringay. I was told he's the best."

Kate looked at her, and her expression was serious for the first time. "He's not. I am. That's why I work here in anonymity, while he buys expensive interface helmets and gives interviews to the Daily Prophet about the glamorous life of a Resonator." She fingered the leather of her helmet. "I made my own helmet. It's the only way. Resonance is the most personal of magical arts, and it takes concentration. I didn't ask to be born with resonance, but I was. Magic speaks a language that most wizards can't understand, not even Harry. I was born speaking that language, so they need me to translate." She grinned and put the helmet on. The leather covered her head and forehead down to her upper lip; there were holes cut out for her eyes and a bulge tooled in to accommodate her nose. "Come on. I'll show you how it's done."

She put her hand on Hermione's arm and led her to a heavy door at the rear of the antechamber; it looked like it had been carved from a solid hunk of granite. Hermione could see quartz glittering in its surface as Kate's long, smudged fingers danced over it in patterns that seemed random.

The door swung open to reveal only blackness beyond. Kate was holding Hermione's hand. "You won't be able to see the room itself," she explained. "Only the magic. A Resonance lab doesn't exist in the world you can see. Under our feet is a stone walkway, it's about five feet wide. You stick right by me, you got it? Because it's a very long drop on either side."

Hermione gripped Kate's arm and they moved slowly forward. She heard the stone door shut behind them and the blackness was total, like the inside of a geode. The space felt cavernous. After a few minutes of slow progress, Kate stopped them. "Okay, you can relax. The interface platform is twenty meters wide. We're in the center now."

Hermione heard Kate murmur a lengthy spell, then felt her thrust her wand upwards. She felt a deep thrumming begin, a subaural thump, and then a blinding burst of red light sprayed from Kate's wand and cascaded around them in a dome. Her mouth fell open as the light swirled upwards and filled the space around them until she couldn't see it anymore. It was like being inside a nebula; there was no ceiling, no floor, and no support visible beneath her feet. Only color and light surrounded her. "It's so beautiful," she breathed.

"You're looking at raw magic, Hermione. Untamed by human words and toys. This is the power that we harness every day. This is what it looks like free." She sighed. "Every time I come in here I hate myself a little more. I see the magic in its own world, and I hate that we strap it into a yoke and make it do our bidding. It's bigger than us, you know. It's greater and older and wiser. Who are we to make it fetch our coffee and clean up our dirty dishes? We should be worshiping it, we ought to be thanking it for allowing us to even touch it." She shook herself a little. "Sorry. Got philosophical for a sec. Okay, your spell, then." Kate pulled on a pair of black gloves that she pulled from a pocket inside her kudzu-cloth cloak. She turned her back to Hermione, raised her hands, and began the work.

Hermione could only stare. It was the most amazing thing she'd ever see. The magic came to Kate, like birds flocking to a spill of seed. She whispered words, an untidy mix of languages, and as the sounds left her lips Hermione could see the magic pulsing and changing. Kate's hands moved almost faster than Hermione's eyes could track. Beckoning, teasing, massaging. She was molding the magic in her fingers like clay on a potter's wheel. She moved among it, around it, and through it. The magic caressed her like a lover; it swirled around her like a child clinging to its mother's apron strings.

"The question isn't what can I make it do," Kate murmured. "The question is, what will it let me do?" She was facing Hermione now, though she was seeing nothing but the magic. Hermione saw that her eyes were closed. "Yes...that's promising, it is...no, that's no good. It's..." Her arms swept in wide arcs, gathering and bunching. "Oh, my," she sighed. It sounded suspiciously like the sigh Hermione often heard coming from her own chest after having particularly good sex. Kate's eyes opened and met hers. "It's a living thing, you know. And it knows Harry. It loves him as we would our true soulmate...because he is part of it in a way that the rest of us aren't. It will let me help him do what he needs to do, but how much are you willing to sacrifice?"

"Sacrifice? What do you mean?"

Kate turned and raised her hands. Her fingers turned and twisted, leaving a glowing, coruscating tangle of light in their wake. "Here is your spell, Hermione."

"But...I can't read it."

"Of course not. These aren't the words; this is what the words will make happen. I still have to translate it. But I can't make it reversible." She did something else with her hands to the spell. "See, when I try..." A brief jolt of contrasting blue shot through the spell. "It falls apart. Reversibility is, in this case, incompatible."

"So if Harry uses this spell, he'll lose his magical powers...forever?"

"Yes." But Kate's voice was distracted. "Unless..." Her fingers twined in the spell, teasing and tweaking it. Hermione saw an offshoot opening up. "Well, this is something, but I don't think it'll help us. It looks like I could send Harry's powers away from him instead of cutting him off, but it'd require the use of a vessel, and I don't know how we can scare one up in time."

"A vessel?"

"Someone born with magical powers who never learned to use them. A blank magical slate, so to speak. In order to save Harry's powers, I'd need someone who could hold them for him until he was done with the Master, and from whom we could retrieve them. Vessels have occasional uses in magic, but they're hard to come by. Usually we hunt them up by tracing magical children who, for whatever reason, never entered the magical world. But I don't..." Kate trailed off. She'd turned towards Hermione and seen her smiling. "What?"

"Write the spell, Kate. I think I have a vessel for you."

---

Hermione ran into the house just as Harry was running out. He caught her by the arm, spinning her around, and dragged her outside again. "Harry..." she began.

"Shush," he cut her off. "I don't have time. We're going out to Circle headquarters right now."

"I didn't think you were going!"

"Change of plans." He'd led her to the rose garden at the east side of the house. He stopped and turned her to face him. "There've been some developments."

"What?"

"Turns out that the explosion was engineered to open up the house so that the Master could plant phased listening devices everywhere."

Hermione's heart sank. "Oh God."

"Yeah."

"Then he allowed Allegra to be brought here, knowing he'd be able to hear everything that went on." She looked up at him. "And you're still going to surveil their headquarters? Harry, he knows you're coming!"

"By now he'll know that we've discovered his eavesdropping. He'll assume we'll call off our plans. I'm hoping to catch him off guard."

"How many agents are you taking?"

"Just me, Remus and Diz. And Allegra. Brute force isn't the best way to go about this. Better be sneaky. She knows how to get around his security, and..." He sighed. "Sabian's given us his phasing spell. We'll all be phased. Undetectable."

"Sabian uses a phasing spell? That's dangerous!"

"It'll be fine for the short time we're using it." She had a thousand more questions, but Harry was moving on to other topics. "Any luck with the arse-saving?"

"I think so. Kate Salvatore has written a new..."

He held up a hand. "You know what? Tell me later. I can't fit anything else in my head right now."

"Okay. It's not quite ready, anyway. I'll fill you in when you come back." She smiled and stepped closer. "So make sure you do."

Harry's eyes cleared of distraction for a moment, and she could tell that he was really seeing her for the first time in this conversation. "I have good reasons to be careful," he said. He leaned in and kissed her. He was trying to be brief about it, but Hermione had other plans. She wound her arms around his neck and coaxed his lips open until he was kissing her to her satisfaction. "Saucy wench," he murmured when she finally let him pull away.

"Randy sod," she teased him back.

"God, I love you."

Her teasing smile faltered at his sudden sincerity. She tried to get it back but it kept wavering. She just nodded, brushing invisible lint from his cloak. "Go save the world, then," she whispered.

He nodded, and then dashed off. "Bye!" he said. She watched him run towards the front of the house. He turned backwards for a few steps to look at her, beaming a wide grin, then he was gone around the corner of the house.

Hermione sagged onto one of the benches placed strategically amidst the rose bushes. "I love you, too," she murmured.

---

Ron sat calmly, his hands folded on the tabletop. "You want me to do what now?"

"Be a Vessel."

"Is that some kind of New Age thing?"

"It's part of the spell Harry needs. I had Kate write one for him to use against the Master. It'll take both of their magic away from them, but in order for him to get his magic back, someone has to hold it for him. It has to be someone who was born magical but has no powers of their own. Usually it's someone who was never educated magically, and never used their powers."

"But...I did use my powers. I was educated."

"I know, but it's been so long. Kate even thinks that could work in our favor. See, Harry's powers are stronger and more powerful; they might overwhelm a traditional Vessel. But you've used your magic, you could handle it. Probably."

"Probably?"

"I won't lie, there's some risk involved."

"I don't care about the risk; I just want to know if this is actually going to work."

"You'll do it, then?"

"Will I? Of course! If Harry needs it, of course I'll do it. What do I need to do?"

"I have to take you to see Kate, the Resonator who wrote the spell. She'll need to see you before she can finalize it for Harry to use."

"Let's go, then."

---

"Okay, Sabian says that being phased can be a little disorienting for the first few seconds, kind of like coming off a boat onto land after a long trip." Harry pulled his field cloak on over his fatigues. "So everyone be careful."

"Are we going in phased?" Remus asked.

"No, we won't phase until we're ready to enter the compound." Remus nodded, strapping into his field gear.

"Hey! Don't I get a combat wand?" Allegra said, thrusting out her lower lip, hands on her shapely hips.

"Absolutely not. You are along for intelligence only. You won't be armed."

"What if I'm attacked?"

"Play dead." Harry sighed. "You'll stick with me. I'll see to your safety...provided that you don't piss me off."

"Very funny," she said, making a face at Harry. She glanced around. "Isn't, uh...isn't Napoleon coming with us?"

"No, he's working on the house; it needs to be completely swept for more listening devices. It's just us." Harry arched an eyebrow. "Why? You want Napoleon to come along?"

"I like him. He's spunky."

Harry moved a step closer. "You stay away from him, you got it?" he said, his voice tight. "He needs your claws in him like he needs another hole in his head." He looked up at his small team. "Okay, let's go."

Harry had a moment of uncertainty as they Apparated as a group, all of them holding on to Allegra in some way. They were trusting her to get them to the right spot, where they wouldn't be detected, and he was about to find out if that trust was warranted or not.

They materialized in a concealed grove of trees. He held his breath and crouched down while Diz held up her wand, muttering a few stealth charms. She made a hand gesture signaling all clear, and they turned to Allegra. She pointed, and they moved as a group towards a nearby ridge.

They crawled the last few meters on their stomachs, peering over the ridgeline. Harry didn't know what he'd been expecting, but what was nestled in the hollow below was a nondescript, boxy building lined with shaded windows. It had an industrial, bureaucratic air to it. Not a soul was visible.

"That's the headquarters of the insidious Circle?" Remus whispered. "Looks like somewhere you'd go to get your Apparating license renewed."

"Believe it or not," Allegra murmured, "it's an old secondary school. It was slated for demolition when we took it over. It ain't pretty to look at, but it serves our purposes very nicely."

There was silence for a few moments as Harry scanned the perimeter through Omnioculars. He lowered them, his lips twisting. "Um...is it my imagination, or is there no one here?"

"There ought to be at least six sentries visible," Allegra muttered. "Along with another half-dozen who aren't."

"Looks deserted," Diz said. "What are the chances he's just pulled up stakes and moved?"

"I wouldn't have thought they were very good," Allegra said. "Everything is here."

"But if he knows that you've told us where this place is..."

"He's not scared of us," Harry said. "If he's left, it's for his own reasons."

He motioned to Remus, who was tracing out a square for biosand on the ground at his side. "Anyone alive in there?"

Remus tossed the biosand into the air, murmuring the activation spell. The grains glowed red, but all of them fell uselessly to the ground. "No. No one's around except us."

Harry stood up. "Okay." He looked over at Allegra, who was staring down at the compound through slitted eyes. "Do you, uh...sense anything?"

She turned her best withering stare on him. "Do I sense anything? Do I look Betazoid to you?"

"I can sometimes sense magic, and magical people."

"I'm only half, you know."

"I know, but you're...well, you've always been..."

"An overachiever? Maybe, but I don't sense jack shit right now. All I know is that place looks deserted to me."

Harry was silent for a moment. "It could be a trap," Remus said. "We walk in and are immediately vaporized with the Divescio charm he left on the doorknob, or something."

"No," Harry said. "He'd never kill me...or Allegra, for that matter...with some stupid booby trap. If he wants me dead he'll do it himself, up close and personal. He's too arrogant to fear that we'd find something here that could hurt him, and he's too smart to have left anything useful."

"Then why should we go in at all?" Diz said.

"Because there's always the chance he missed something. I can't justify not scouting the place on the assumption that it won't be helpful."

"He wants us to go in," Allegra said. "Which is why we shouldn't."

"It's why we should," Harry said. "We should keep being predictable. Let him think he can steer us and guide us and anticipate our every move. Let him keep his arrogance and his superiority complex. It's what'll undo him in the end." He stood up. "Come on. Let's get this over with. Don't bother phasing, there's no one here to hide from."

The foursome crept carefully down the hill, pausing outside the door to check for traps and spell triggers. Finding none, they proceeded into the building. Harry sensed Allegra's unease at being here. She didn't appear, at first glance, to be anxious, but he knew her too well. "Let's split up," Harry said. "Diz, check the residence rooms. Remus, check the portal chamber. We'll go to the war room. Stay in Bubble contact. Allegra, you'll come with me."

"I could say something, but I won't."

Harry ignored her. "Check all your doorways and corners. Be careful."

The party split and went in three different directions. Harry and Allegra headed for the war room, where the Master had conducted most of his business.

Upon arrival, they just stood in the doorway and stared for a moment. "Well. I guess he was eager to get his security deposit back," Allegra said.

The room was totally empty. It looked like it had been Scourgified to within an inch of its life. There was no furniture, no dust, nothing...not even a footprint. Harry's Bubble spoke to him in Remus' voice. "Harry, all these rooms are empty. Profoundly."

"So we're observing."

"Is the portal still open?" Allegra asked.

"I'm seeing a faint glow of light around the edge, but the center looks like stone."

"It's open, then. Just inactive." She glanced at Harry. "I'm a little surprised he'd leave it like that."

"Can anyone else use it?"

"Theoretically, you could. But he's implied that it takes quite a bit of energy and power to pass through to the Stronghold." Her eyes narrowed. "You're not thinking of..."

"The Master's not the one manipulating this situation, Ali. He might think he is, but he's Seth's puppet."

"And that's the way it'll have to stay. Seth is untouchable."

"Yeah, well. We'll see."

Before Allegra could respond, there was a startled shout from the direction of the residences. Harry was already hurrying towards it when Diz's voice said: "You'd all better come see this."

They found Diz standing in the doorway of one of the rooms. "This is my room," Allegra said, her voice full of dread.

Harry looked over Diz's shoulder and his stomach lurched. He felt Allegra tense up beside him, but she didn't make a sound.

There was a dead man on the wall.

He was skewered right through the midsection with a thick, short sword that stapled him to the wall. His limbs had been spread out and secured with smaller knives. Blood had dripped from the wounds and made a wallpaper of red stripes below his body. His head hung down, his shoulders pulling forward.

Harry felt sick. Allegra pushed past Diz and walked into her room, looking up at the man on her wall. "It's Lynch," she said, her tone deadened. Harry said nothing, loathe to cross the threshold. This room, this air, this building felt like a slaughterhouse now. An empty shell with only the residue of evil to fill the space. He could almost feel it on his skin, like dried sweat or the griminess of a long day's travel.

Allegra was just looking up at Lynch's body. "This man tried to help me," she said. "He was the only one who stuck by me." She turned to face them; Remus had joined the small group huddling in the doorway. "It got him killed."

Harry steeled himself, and then stepped into the room. He stood by her side and looked up at their son's handiwork. "My God," he said.

"This is a message to me," she said.

You think? Harry felt like saying, but he held his tongue. He looked at her, facing grimly forward, her jaw set. He grasped her elbow; she turned to meet his eyes. "Let's get him down," he said.

---

"Cause of death was exsanguination," Sukesh said in a tight voice. "Multiple wounds, none of them fatal. He was...affixed to the wall postmortem."

Allegra was nodding. "Naturally. He'd want it to be slow. But this had nothing to do with Lynch. He did it because he could."

Silence. Harry sat behind his desk, trying to remember if his office had ever felt this claustrophobic before.

The Circle headquarters was as empty as if it had been built the day before. Not only was there no information to be gathered and no clues to be winnowed, there wasn't a single speck of dust in the place. The only thing the Master had left behind was Lynch's body.

"What now?" Allegra asked, eyeing him from where she stood leaning against the wall. Harry couldn't look at her. She was leaning in the exact same spot up against which he had, not so long ago, shagged Hermione.

"I don't know," he said. "He could be anywhere."

"He's preparing his endgame, Harry," she said.

"I know. He's going to come after the Chancellor, and soon."

"Best of luck to him, then," said a new voice. Sirius had quietly joined them. Harry didn't waste energy wondering how he'd known he might be needed. "The Chancellor is more than adequately protected, I assure you."

"Famous last words."

"Do you have any idea how many wizards have tried to kidnap, murder or otherwise harm the Federation Chancellor in the last several thousand years? Hundreds. More. You know how many have succeeded? Zero."

"In that case, we need to find a way to turn any attempt he makes to our advantage."

"It's his move, then."

"I'm afraid so. But there's one thing we can do in the meantime," Harry said, standing up. "There's no longer any point in keeping this situation a secret. It's time to brief the division. When he makes his move, we need to be ready. We need to develop multiple response plans for any demand he can make, or any incursion he can try."

"That could be dangerous if we've still got a rat in the house," Diz said.

"I don't see how. What will he find out? That we're plotting responses to his next move? Only he knows what that move will be. Surely he can guess on his own that we'll try to anticipate him. An inside source can only confirm for him what he already knows." He turned to Remus. "Notify the other division heads. All staff briefing in the hall in one hour." Everyone left the office except for Allegra.

"Am I invited to the big party?" she asked.

Harry hesitated. "I think we ought to keep the fact of your involvement in all this known to a smaller group of people."

She nodded. "Story of my life. I'm like that crazy cousin that gets kept locked in the attic, eating bugs and covering herself in lemon curd."

"I'll take you back to the house. I'm nervous having you here already, someone might see you. You'll be tolerably safe at the house."

"Don't tell me I'll be safe there like some kind of government witness," she snapped. "I can take care of myself."

"I just meant...after what happened to Lynch..."

"Yeah. It sucks. But he's not going to waste energy coming after me on the eve of his great triumph. I'm no more than an annoyance to him now. Best deal with me later."

"Oh, I'm sure you're much more than an annoyance. You were never anything less than a giant pain in the arse to me."

That drew a tiny smile. "Well. That's nice to know."

---

Napoleon knocked quietly on the door to the downstairs guest room. "Yeah, come in," he heard her bark. He pushed the door open. Allegra was sitting on the bed, her knees drawn up, a brooding expression on her face. He sat on the edge of the bed. "What do you want?" she said, sounding exasperated. "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood to shag you right now."

"I heard about your friend," he said, ignoring her vitriol.

Her head came up sharply, her eyes stabbing him. "What's this, now? Is this your 'supportive lover' routine? Am I supposed to cry on your shoulder? Don't hold your breath."

Napoleon sighed. "I just wanted to tell you I was sorry."

"Yeah? You shouldn't be. Lynch was a Circle member. He was one of my most trusted lieutenants. He helped me do many, many things that, if I told you about them, would make you want to go desecrate his body. So don't weep for poor Lynch, who knew exactly what he was doing when he cast his lot with me instead of the Master."

He wanted to feel sympathy for her, but couldn't quite manage it. She had none for herself, or Lynch. "I have to go to the I.D. Big meeting."

"Yeah, I know," she said. She wasn't looking at him, but he saw her eyes flick in his direction from beneath her half-closed lids.

Don't do it. Don't do it. He reached out and slid a hand over her leg. "I've got about twenty minutes."

Her lips curled into a slight smirk. "Get your dick over here," she muttered.

God, I'm a prat, he thought as she pulled him onto her, and then he didn't think about anything else.

---

Sirius lurked at the rear of the large lecture hall at the I.D. The room wasn't used very often; all-staff briefings were a rare thing.

He was worried about Harry. He seemed a little disjointed and unsure of himself. He supposed it could be easily understood, given the nature of this enemy. A Mage, many orders of magnitude more powerful than Harry himself, and his son to boot. He looked around for Hermione; her expression would tell him a lot about how Harry really was. He finally saw her sitting with the other agents in her division on the far side of the hall, near the back. Ron was sitting next to her. Although his presence at the I.D. had been authorized, Sirius wondered about his presence at this briefing...although nothing would be said that he didn't already know. Hermione looked worried, and that didn't help to ease Sirius' mind.

Harry stepped up to the podium and the room went quiet. "I'll get right to the point," he said. "For the past several weeks a small team consisting of myself and agents Jones, Lupin and Taylor have been working on a very important case, which had to be kept confidential for reasons that will become clear in a moment, but which no longer matter." He hesitated. "You are all familiar with the way in which my friend Ron Weasley was captured and held. His death was faked, and a very skillfully produced replica was substituted for his body. After we rescued him, I became suspicious that the Circle may have done the same to others, so we began quietly and systematically testing the graves of our dead." He raised his eyes and looked out at the audience of agents, who were absolutely still. "I'm sorry to have to tell you that my suspicions were correct. We have located 283 graves which contain replicated corpses much like Ron's."

The ripple that passed over the agents at this announcement forced Harry to pause and wait for it to pass. Sirius saw looks of horror and dismay on every face.

"These people are hostages of the Circle. More significantly, they are being held by a wizard we had previously only known as the Master."

"What about Allegra?" someone asked.

"Allegra, for some time, has been taking her orders directly from the Master, although he did not join her until recently, choosing to keep his identity a secret. Based on the demographics of the hostages and some inside information we've been able to obtain from a defector, we know the outlines of the Master's plan. Each hostage was carefully chosen and kidnapped over the course of the last twelve years for one reason: each of them possessed a unique kind of knowledge of the wizarding world. The sum of their knowledge is staggering. The Master intends to use a version of the Phenomorbius charm to draw this knowledge into himself. If he succeeds, he will know all of our secrets and exactly how to defeat us. But his ultimate objective, we are informed, is to acquire our Chancellor. What he hopes to gain from that, we can't be certain. Yes, Sasha?"

"Why was this kept from us until now?"

Sirius winced. That would be tricky to answer. Harry could not reveal that there was strong suspicion of a mole in the I.D. and run the risk of showing their hand to the mole him (or her) self. On the other hand, there was no other real reason to have kept the operation secret thus far unless he feared word of it leaking back to the Master.

"We could not take the slightest chance of word getting back to the Master that we'd discovered his plans, or that one of his own wizards had defected to our side. We decided to err on the side of caution."

Sirius sighed. That was accurate, but vague. Sasha seemed to accept this explanation.

Harry went on. "We have recently learned that the Master is aware that we know of his plans. There is no point to further secrecy. He has amassed all his hostages. Now, it is likely that he will make some kind of move to gain access to the Chancellor."

"How can he, if no one knows the Chancellor's identity?"

"We have reason to believe that he may be able to learn it...but no reason, so far, to think that he already has. Rest assured, the Chancellor is well protected. That isn't our job. Our job is to get those hostages back before the Master can perform his Phenomorbius."

"How do we know he hasn't already?"

"The spell is dangerous enough that even he cannot withstand it more than once, and he will undoubtedly want to include the Chancellor in it, so he won't do it until he has him. We need to find out where he's holding these hostages, as soon as possible. If he makes any demands or attempts, we need to turn that to our advantage. In a few moments I'll be dismissing you to your departments where you will receive briefing folders with all the details of this case so far, and by 0800 tomorrow I want tactical plans and contingencies from each department. Your department heads have further instructions. Yes, you in the middle," he said, addressing a raised hand.

"Chief, how can you expect to defeat the Master himself? Isn't he dangerous in his own right?" Harry said nothing, but his jaw was clenching. A few tense beats of silence passed. Sirius frowned...why wasn't Harry answering? "Isn't he a Mage, much like yourself? But a far more powerful one?" The unnamed agent stood. "And how is it that you think you know so much about his plans, when the truth is that you only know what he's allowed you to know?"

Harry's hands were gripping the podium. "Why don't you come up here and tell us about your plans, then?" he said. Agents were turning and standing and craning. Harry held up his hands. "Everyone, calm down. Sit. He isn't really here. Are you, Julian?"

The stranger began to walk forward, passing through the seats and agents ahead of him like a ghost, even though he appeared quite solid. He mounted the dais at the front of the room and stood at Harry's side, smiling benignly. Sirius hoped that everyone would be too distracted by shock to notice the marked resemblance between them. "No, of course not. I'm comfortably...well, somewhere else, as I think you know since you were at my headquarters mere hours ago. Doesn't my cleaning crew do an impressive job?"

"They missed a spot," Harry said through clenched teeth.

"Oh, I thought it was customary to leave a tip behind for the chambermaid." He turned towards the audience. "I'm not here to trade witty banter, much as I enjoy it. Now that everyone's up to speed, it's time for the next step. I am speaking now to your Chancellor."

"The Chancellor's not here," Harry said.

"His representative is," Julian said, and his eyes slid to meet Sirius's. Sirius stiffened and walked forward, not dropping his gaze.

"The Chancellor is not interested in your demands and your threats," he said.

"I think he is. Surely he can't just write off the lives of 283 witches and wizards. Or at least he can't admit to writing them off. Make no mistake, I will acquire your Chancellor, Mr. Black. I have the means to learn his identity. I could be standing over his bedside before dawn, watching him while he sleeps. The question is, will I have him with or without those hostages? I don't care one way or another. They've served their purpose for me. I can release them, or I can kill them. It's up to him." Julian's eyes, which had been full of false amicability up until then, suddenly slid over into intense as they bored into Sirius's. "Your Chancellor will turn himself over to me, or I will kill them all. If he refuses, then when I find out who he is...and I will find out...then before I come for him, I will round up everyone he ever loved and make him watch me kill every last one of them before I take him. If he turns himself over quietly, he'll be the only one harmed. I think he'll find this proposal satisfactory. Your defector can assure you that I have the means to do as I say. Whatever protection has worked for you in the past will not serve you here. I can take him anytime I like."

"Then why don't you?" Sirius hissed. "Why ask at all?"

"Because it's so much less bother if he comes willingly," the Master said, that amicability back in his eyes. "Tell him he has twenty-four hours. Your defector will know how to contact me." He straightened and looked at Harry again. "A pleasure as always, Harry." He dropped a wink, then vanished.

It took Harry a few moments to get everyone quieted down. "Okay, okay," he said, hands raised. "All this does is give us a deadline. We have twenty-four hours to locate those hostages and take his leverage away from him."

"Can he really get to the Chancellor?" someone yelled.

Sirius saw Harry's jaw clenching again. He'd get a headache if he kept doing that. "I don't know. But his security is not our job, and if the Chancellor were here, I'm sure he'd want us to focus on those hostages." He glanced at Sirius, who just nodded, his brain still whirling. "Dismissed. To your departments, now."

Mild pandemonium erupted as everyone jumped to their feet. Harry was surrounded at once by agents with questions, including Argo and the other department heads. Sirius slipped back towards the rear of the hall. The Chancellor's security force would already know what had transpired here; he'd have to leave things to them as he always had.

Hermione appeared before him, her expression distracted. "I need to talk to you," she said. "It's about Harry."

Sirius sighed. "We don't have time to talk about him right now. Shouldn't you be going back to your department?"

"This is important," she said. Sirius watched her eyes for a moment, then acquiesced. He knew she'd been working on finding a way for Harry to defeat the Master himself, perhaps she'd found it...although why she'd tell him was a mystery.

"All right. But let's make it brief, I'm sure you're needed in your department."

"None of this might be needed."

"Did you find a spell for Harry? Will it work against the Master?"

She motioned to him with her head. "Not here. Come on, let's go to my office."

He followed her there, her Bubble bobbing ahead of her. "Shut the door," she said as they entered. He did, waiting for her to speak. "I have to do something," she murmured.

"But...you have been," he said. "And it's not all on your shoulders, you know. There are plenty of capable people out there doing everything they can to..."

"No," she said, cutting him off. She turned around and Sirius felt his back straighten as he realized to whom he was speaking. " I have to do something," she repeated.

"Oh," Sirius sighed. He clasped his hands behind his back. "There's nothing to be done," he said, hoping he sounded firm.

"How can I not act, when he just made his demands so abundantly clear?"

"It's not up to you."

"Who, then? This attack is aimed directly at me." She pressed her fingertips to the desktop. "How can I let those hostages die when I have it in my power to save them?"

"You cannot be considering handing yourself over to him," Sirius said, fear growing in his heart that she was considering doing exactly that.

"And what if I am? I don't believe it's your place to stop me."

"No. But you have allowed me to guide you in so many things. Let me guide you here."

"In this case, you don't have all the facts, Sirius."

"I know that much as it pains me to say it, the lives of those hostages are nothing compared to the security of whatever it is that you guard."

She smiled, and it was a bitter smile. "That's what I mean. That security does not depend on my safety. Believe me when I tell you that if he has me, he'll find that he has nothing useful. The most we stand to lose is my life."

"That's a lot to lose."

"That's the oath I took. You know it as well as I."

Sirius sighed. "The Chancellor cares only for the souls in her house," he recited, the ancient words as familiar to him as the faces of his children.

She nodded. "But the Chancellor's house is all the world." She met his eyes for the first time, and he saw in them an implacability that had led her predecessor to choose her for this thankless duty. "Those people are members of my house."

"I will go in your place."

She smiled. "You can't."

"It's my job. To pretend to be you if necessary. I'm prepared to do it. I've always been prepared."

"It won't fool him. Others, perhaps. But not him." She sat down, suddenly appearing weary. "Besides, you have a family."

He took a step closer. "You have a family, too. Remember?"

Her eyes fell shut, a shine of moisture appearing at her lashline. "I can't think about him right now. I can't be his wife right now. The Chancellor has no family, no name, no identity save that which she guards."

"If you can't think of him, then I must. We need him, Hermione. All of us do. Do you know what it'll do to him if you suddenly vanish? And what if we then find your body on some godforsaken moor somewhere?"

"He'd do it. He'd sacrifice himself to save others, you know he would. How can he expect less from me?"

"Then let him try and save you, too. Let him try and get those hostages back, and none of this will be necessary."

"The Master will not allow that to happen. He's way ahead of us, Sirius. And..." She swallowed hard. "Harry could die in the attempt."

Sirius sat down. "That's why, isn't it? To keep him safe you'll hand yourself over to the Master."

"To save him, those hostages, and anyone else who could die trying to beat him back by force. I would be right there fighting alongside them...except this time, I have a much greater card to play that could make all of it unnecessary."

"He won't be able to get past it, you know. If you just disappear, he'll never stop looking."

She nodded. "I know." She took a deep breath and met his eyes again. "That's why...I'm going to tell him."

Sirius' heart leapt. It was a real effort to conceal the joy and relief from his face and act horrified. "Tell him who you are?" he said, feigning shock.

"I am about to turn myself over to the enemy!" she exclaimed. "I can't do it without talking to my husband, Sirius!"

He nodded. "On this matter, Chancellor, I cannot advise you."

She sagged. "I know."

"I can only remind you that you know the law, and your oath - and you know that there are consequences for breaking either."

She smiled wanly. "I don't suppose you'd care to share what those consequences are, would you?"

"I can't. The fact that they exist ought to suffice."

"This is an extraordinary situation," she said, then stood up. "Sirius, would you be good enough to find my husband?" Her lips quivered a little. "I have to think of a way to tell him that I've been lying to him for over a year."

---

Hermione sat at her desk and waited, head in her hands, for Sirius to return. When he did, she would have to look into the eyes of the man who had forced her into an unwitting and uncomfortable understanding of just how deeply love could run, and then destroy the image he had of her. Her world was collapsing around her, and the noise was deafening. She felt hysteria wanting to bubble up from that cage she kept it chained in, but she fought it back. She had to be strong, and brave, and everything that she'd claimed she wasn't when she was first offered this damned job.

Since taking her oath, Hermione had become very, very good at compartmentalizing. This was partly out of necessity, and partly due to the advice of her predecessor, Elspeth Rousseau, who had told her to pretend she was someone else when she was carrying out her duties as Chancellor. Those duties only took a few hours a week, but the energy it took not to think about it during the rest of the hours was considerable.

She'd gotten pretty good at it, actually. Unless she was at the Chancery, she really didn't think about it at all. A few times she'd caught herself, when someone had mentioned the Chancellor, wondering once again who it was...before remembering that it was herself.

Elspeth had told her that it wasn't like lying. After all, had anyone ever asked her if she were Chancellor? No. And she had never said she wasn't. But it was a semantic distinction that didn't fool either of them. The fact that the omission was both necessary and mandated by Federation law was the only thing that allowed her to justify it. Her oath expressly forbade her from revealing her identity to anyone, and she took it seriously.

She had worried that it would poison her relationship. Not because Harry might find out and feel betrayed, but because the guilt over her own secrecy made her see deceit everywhere, especially in Harry.. The knowledge that she kept such a large secret from him only made her wonder what he could still be keeping from her.

She remembered the day she took her oath. After all the soul-searching and arguing with herself she had done leading up to it, the ceremony had been very anticlimactic. No one knew who she was except Sirius and Elspeth, so it had been just the three of them in the room. She had placed her hand over her heart and recited the words Sirius gave her. Then she and Elspeth had joined hands, and she had felt it. Something had passed from Elspeth to herself, and then she was Chancellor. Sirius had excused himself...and then, Elspeth told her everything she needed to know, things that were for her ears alone.

That night she had lain awake for hours, watching Harry's sleeping face. It couldn't be real, not if she couldn't tell him about it. It didn't matter, not if she couldn't share it with him. It wasn't her, not if he didn't know. She had wept, despite her fervent efforts to stop herself, and he had woken up. She'd made up something about a bad dream, and he had held her until she calmed. Then he had made love to her, and she didn't know it was possible to hold so much happiness and so much misery at the same time inside her own tiny soul.

Two months later he'd disappeared, and even though she was now about to tell him who she was, what she would never tell him was that his absence had at times felt like a relief, because she didn't have to look at his face and wonder what his expression would look like if he ever found out.

Well, she would have to wonder no longer. She was about to see for herself what his face would look like when he found out.

The door opened and Harry came in, trailed by Sirius. He looked extremely irritated. Sirius crossed the room and stood at Hermione's side, behind her desk. If that seemed odd to Harry, he didn't mention it. "Okay, what's so important? Hermione, I have a room full of agents and we've got a few things to..."

She held up her hand. "I think I know how to make all this go away."

He blinked. "You do?"

She took a deep breath. "If the Master wants the Chancellor, then we ought to give him what he wants."

Harry stared for a moment, then rolled his eyes. "Oh, of course! Well, why the hell didn't I think of that? Yes! Absolutely! We should just hand over the Chancellor and let Julian get his grimy hands on whatever secret he's guarding! Brilliant!"

"It's the appropriate course of action."

Harry didn't seem to have heard her. "And even if that were a good idea, we have no idea how to contact the Chancellor, or if he'd even deign to become involved! We don't know who he is! " He broke off, raking a hand through his hair.

Hermione stood up slowly, resting her hands on the desktop. She looked into her husband's eyes....but she didn't know how to say it. Harry, it's me. I'm the Chancellor. The Chancellor is me. I...I...

Her mouth wouldn't open. She just stared at him, mute.

Harry stared back. "What?" he said, frowning. Hermione glanced at Sirius, then back at Harry. "What's the..." He stopped short.

Hermione watched, frozen to the spot, as all the color drained from his face. His skin went pasty white and his eyes seemed to grow in their sockets until they were all she could see. He looked from her to Sirius, standing at her side and just behind like the deputy that he was, then back to her. He lowered his head and began shaking it back and forth; it looked less like he was denying anything than like he'd just lost control of his neck muscles.

"No," he finally muttered.

Hermione's throat unlocked. "Harry..."

"Tell me it's not you."

"It's not that..."

"No. Tell me it's not you," he repeated. "Please, Hermione. Say it. Say it isn't you." She saw his eyes glistening; he shook his head, never taking his eyes off her face. He backed up, his head still shaking and shaking, until he hit the door and could back up no further. "I'm begging you. Tell me it isn't you."

She stood behind her desk, an eerie calm descending upon her, and said the only thing she could: "It's me."

He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor. He stared into space, his cheeks past white and into ashy-gray.

A few beats of silence passed in which no one seemed to breathe. Hermione pushed past Sirius and went around the desk. She knelt by Harry's side, unsure how to go from here. She waited for him to give her something to respond to.

"How long?" he finally whispered, his voice dreamlike and disconnected.

"About a year and a half," she said. "I took the oath a month after our engagement."

He looked at her again, and she saw in his eyes that old expression, that lost look he'd had once upon a time when he had been a boy with an ill-fitting legend who hadn't even known which Chocolate Frog cards were the rare ones. "Why you?"

She sighed. "You remember Dr. Rousseau? My professor at Stonehenge?" He nodded. "She was...before me. All Chancellors choose their own successors, when they are ready to step down. She chose me." She smiled a little. "And don't ask me why, because I don't know. To this day, I don't know. She'd only say that I was the best person for it."

"Why did you say yes?"

She looked at her hands. "I've had many moments when I wished I hadn't. All I can say is that I was called to a duty. My service was required, and I gave it."

He shook his head. "That's not all." His tone was still muffled, as if his tongue wasn't working properly.

"No," she choked, the tears very near now. "It felt really good, you know? To be chosen, and to be needed. It felt good to be chosen for...well, for something..."

He sighed. "Something that had nothing to do with me."

She nodded. "Yes." She put her hands over her face. She felt his fingers on hers; he pulled her hands away.

"If I wasn't...who I bloody am...would you have taken the job?"

A sudden rush of anger swept through her. "No, you don't," she said, withdrawing her hand. "You are not going to find a way to twist this around and make it your fault. Not this time. This was something that I could do, not just for the Federation but for all the wizards and witches in the world. This was a way that I could contribute, me, myself! This was not about you!"

He stared at her, that pale corpse-like pallor beginning to alarm her. A smile fluttered at the edge of his mouth. "Now, then," he said. " That sounds like the Hermione I know."

As quickly as it had come, the anger left her. Hermione sagged and buried herself in his arms, the fortitude she had mustered for this revelation all but spent. He clutched her tightly, and yet she wanted him to hold her tighter still. "You don't know how hard it's been," she sobbed, her voice muffled against his jacket. "Not being able to tell you."

"I know," he whispered. She felt his lips against her temple.

Thank God, he understands, she thought. At least, he seemed to. She'd been so afraid that he would be furious, or crushed, or hurt, or a thousand other things that she didn't want to deal with. "I didn't know how you'd react," she murmured.

"I'm...I don't know what I am," he said. "I'm still just shocked," he said, his arms tightening around her. "I know you weren't allowed to tell me. So why are you telling me now? What's..." He suddenly went rigid. Hermione's breath caught in her throat. Harry pushed her away and held her at arm's length, fixing her with an intense stare. "You said a minute ago that we should give the Master what he wants."

She nodded. "It's the only way."

Harry scrambled to his feet. Hermione followed suit, watching him resume his pacing in the limited confines of her office. "You are not handing yourself over to him," he said, his hand sweeping a determined negation through the air between them. "It's out of the question."

"He only wants what I guard."

"Whatever it is, if it's so important to merit all these precautions, then there's no way we can let him get it!"

"He won't, no matter what. Even if he has me, he can't get that." He frowned, meeting her eyes. "Just trust me. The security of that secret is more complex than anyone knows, even him. If he has me, all he'll have is...well, me."

"I won't allow it!" he exclaimed.

"My life for three hundred hostages, Harry? Isn't that a fair trade?"

"No!" he shouted. "I won't make that trade! Sirius, talk some sense into her!" he said, looking at his godfather for the first time.

Sirius stepped forward. "I don't believe I have to," he said. He stood before Hermione, his hands clasped before him. He looked so official and solemn that both of them stopped and stared at him. He took a deep breath. "Chancellor, at this time it is my duty to inform you that you are in violation of your oath of office and Directive One of the Acts of Chancery."

Hermione had no patience for this. "Yes, yes, fine. Whatever. Slap me on the wrist later, won't you?"

"I'm afraid it's more complicated than that."

Something in his tone caught her attention. "What do you mean?"

He cleared his throat and continued. "Having thus breached the security of your identity, you are subject to immediate punishment as mandated by the bonds of your office."

Harry stepped in front of her. In his posture, Hermione could see latent fury. "What is this punishment, exactly, if you don't mind my asking?"

Sirius kept looking right at Hermione. "The penalty for breaking the oath of secrecy is immediate and indefinite confinement. In Azkaban."

Hermione felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. "Wh...Azkaban?"

"I'm afraid so."

Harry glanced over his shoulder at her. "Don't be ridiculous, you're not going to Azkaban." He looked at Sirius, his face severe. " Is she, Sirius?"

"I'm afraid it's out of my hands, Harry."

"What do you mean?" Hermione said. She was still wearing the cloak of calm detachment that she'd cultivated during her duties. In fact, she was clutching it around her like a protective shield.

Sirius looked profoundly tired. "It's...it's automatic. When you took your oath, there were magics that were transferred to you, and this is one of them. The moment you speak the words, it starts. You get a short grace period to have your affairs attended to, and then...you're transported to Azkaban. It's part of the spells that control the office, Hermione. I have nothing to do with it."

"You can stop it, though," Harry said. He was edging closer and closer to Sirius, and his voice was taking on a decidedly threatening tone.

Sirius, rather than appearing anxious over Harry's reaction, only looked resigned, as if he'd been expecting this for a long time. "I can't, Harry. I'm sorry."

Hermione was still going over what he'd said. "You said something about a grace period?"

"Yes. From the time the words leave your mouth to tell someone who you are, you get..." He paused, and then sighed, the corners of his mouth tightening. "One hour."

Hermione was sure she could not have heard him correctly. Harry's face had gone beet red. " What? " he roared. Hermione had rarely heard Harry really shout, but when he did, it never failed to elicit the desired effect.

Sirius, however, didn't seem intimidated. "Sixty minutes. At the end of that time...she will simply disappear and reappear in Azkaban."

Hermione was still processing this information. She had known there would be consequences for revealing her identity, but this...she'd had no idea. Before she could begin to think of what to say, Harry had stepped forward and grabbed Sirius by the front of his cloak. "Harry!" she exclaimed, startled to see him manhandle his godfather in this manner.

"You can stop it," he said, again. "Stop this, Sirius. She is not going to Azkaban."

"I'm afraid it's beyond my control. I'm sorry," Sirius said...but he didn't look sorry.

"You have to do something," Harry growled. "I don't care if it's legal or not, do something."

"I told you, there's nothing I can do!" Sirius said. "This is part of her security, these magics are older than me, or even the Federation itself!"

"I should have been told what the penalty was," Hermione said, stepping closer.

"The Chancellor isn't supposed to know the penalty. If she does, it may affect her decision-making."

"That makes absolutely no sense," Harry said. He sounded pretty close to the edge by now.

"It does, if you think like the Progenitors," Sirius said. "Harry, you're wasting valuable time. By my watch Hermione has fifty minutes left. Don't throw that time away being angry with me!"

"Angry?" Harry said, letting go of him and stepping back. "You think I'm merely angry? Aren't you supposed to protect her? Help her, and support her?"

"I am. I know you can't see that right now."

"I'll tell you what I know," Harry said. He'd gone past yelling-angry and was now into quiet-and-intense-angry. "If you allow this to happen, then you and I are through. Do you understand me? I will never forgive you for this."

Sirius's shoulders sagged. "I was afraid you'd feel that way. I don't know what to say, Harry. This...this isn't about you. It's about the Chancellor, and what's best for her and her security."

"How is it best that she go to Azkaban?" Harry barked, his eyes flashing. For most people, that would be an expression, she thought.

Hermione grasped his arms. "Harry, let it go. If this is to be, then...Sirius is right, we have some things to talk about. Stop fighting it, just look at me."

He did, and when his eyes left Sirius the anger left them as well, to be replaced with an uncertain fear that looked out of place in his adult face. Two tears ran down his cheeks and his chin began to tremble. "But...you can't ...I won't let you be taken away, Hermione." He reached out and pulled her to his chest, as if he could keep her there if he just held her tight enough. "I can't let you go to that place," he said, his voice shaky.

Sirius had retreated to a corner. She held on to Harry, more for stability than for anything else right now. Her head was spinning, she felt dizzy. I'm going to Azkaban in less than an hour, she told herself. It didn't seem real, it couldn't be. It was some kind of waking nightmare...except she knew that it wasn't.

She pulled back and wiped the tears from Harry's face. "I'm...I have to go away," she whispered. The words sounded simplistic, but what else was there? How complicated was it, really?

He shook his head, quickly, as a child would when he didn't want to hear something unpleasant. He was looking down at their feet. "No," he said. "I won't let you."

"I don't think there's anything either of us can do to stop it."

He met her eyes. "I can't think...it's too much, all at once..."

Hermione looked at him, then made a quick decision. "Sirius?"

He took one step out of the corner. "Yes?"

"Will you please bring Ron here? As quick as you can?"

He hesitated. "But..."

She tossed him a severe glance. "Now, Sirius. It can't get any worse, can it? I've told one person, what's one more? What are they going to do, send me to Azkaban twice?"

He nodded and left the room. Ron was presumably still in the meeting room with the rest of the staff, it would only take a few minutes. Hermione looked up into Harry's frightened eyes...just seeing him this frightened made her even more so. She put her arms around his neck and buried herself in his embrace, trying to memorize what it felt like, as she might not experience it again for a long time.

"I don't know how long I'll be gone," she whispered.

"Not long. I promise."

"I've broken my oath, Harry. I've let my identity be known. It's serious."

"I'll get you out, I swear."

She pulled back and grasped his hands. "Listen to me. The Progenitors knew what they were doing. They foresaw so much of what those in this office have faced, including me. If it's their plan that I should be punished in this way..."

His jaw was clenched. "I refuse to believe that it's somehow for the good of all mankind that you go to prison. I won't accept that."

She put her hand on his face. "For now...we don't have a choice."

He sighed. "Why'd you ask for Ron?"

"Because you have to keep going." She laughed bitterly. "This pretty well ruins my grand plan to hand myself over to the Master. You're going to have to find a way to defeat him, and I won't be able to help you. You won't be able to tell anyone else where I am, or what happened to me. You're going to need Ron...no, don't look at me like that, you know I'm right." He nodded, reluctantly.

At that moment, Sirius came back in with Ron. He looked from her face, pale and drawn, to Harry's, red and tear-streaked. "What's going on?" he said, wary.

Hermione took a deep breath. "Well, Ron, it's like this. I'm the Chancellor, and I wanted to hand myself over to the Master in exchange for the hostages, so I got Harry in here to tell him who I really was before I did this. Except it turns out that I broke my oath of office by telling him, which I knew, and as punishment I have to go to Azkaban, which I didn't know. I've got about forty-five minutes before I'm automatically whisked away for I don't know how long, and I wanted you to know because you're you and I need you to take care of things while I'm gone." She hoped that Ron understood that by "things" she meant Harry.

Ron blinked. "I see," was all he said.

"I know it's confusing, but..."

He shook his head once, briskly. "No, I think I got it. Okay, so forty-five minutes. What do you need me to do?"

Hermione felt like kissing him, she was so grateful for his calmness. "I need you to fill Harry in on the spell we designed, especially your part in it, because it'll affect the plans in terms of where you'll need to be while he's fighting the Master. I also need you to come up with some kind of cover story to explain where I am and make sure that everyone believes it."

He nodded. "I can do that."

Hermione looked at Sirius again. "How long?"

He looked at his pocket watch. "Forty minutes."

My God, it's going by so fast, she thought. She looked up at Harry, whose face was screwed into an untidy mix of frustration, anger, fear and uncertainty. She refused to let herself think about the very real possibility that she'd never see him again. That couldn't happen, surely. But even if it didn't...it could be a long time. How long before she slept beside him again? How long before she heard his voice again?

Harry swallowed hard and looked over at Ron. "Ron, could you please go to my office and fetch my briefcase? There's something in it that I need."

Ron nodded. "Uh...sure." He looked uncertain.

Sirius opened the door. "I'll go with you. I have a Bubble, you don't."

"Thanks," Ron said, absently. He glanced back at them as he left. "We'll take our time."

The door closed behind them, but Hermione barely noticed, nor did Harry. She put her arms around his waist and leaned into him, smelling laundry soap and his shaving cream and a dozen other things that added up to make the smell that she missed whenever they were apart. He held her with one arm around her back, his other hand cupping her head, his fingers laced through her hair. She felt his cheek against her hair.

"I'm afraid that I...that I can't do this without you," he whispered.

"You can. You can do anything." She wondered if she was trying to convince him, or herself.

"I don't understand any of this," he said, drawing back so he could look at her. "Why would the Progenitors arrange the magics so that you're incarcerated if you tell anyone? I understand that breaking an oath carries consequences, but this is so severe."

"It's a proportional response, given what's at stake."

"What exactly is at stake?" Harry said. "What is this giant secret the Chancellor guards? How did it come to you?"

She looked down. "I don't know if I should..."

"If I'm going to have to stand here and watch you disappear before my eyes and you don't want me to do anything to stop it, then I damn well want to know why it's necessary."

She sighed, and sank into one of her office chairs. "Sit down, Harry." He did. "The Chancellor, as Ron told us, is not really a state official. She is..."

"She?"

She nodded. "It's always a woman."

"Why?"

"Well, the Progenitors were rigidly patriarchal, but they had a strong tradition of sacred feminine figures. High priestesses, you might say. They were the center of their mystical and spiritual beliefs. When they needed someone to guard their secret, they chose this woman. It has been handed down in a single, unbroken line for fifteen thousand years."

She took a deep breath. "And now, to me. The mystical significance is long gone, now it's pretty much a caretaker's job."

"What is it that you're taking care of?"

She hesitated. Technically, she had never sworn not to reveal this secret. It was her identity that was the subject of such rigid protection. Once she knew what it was she guarded, however, she had never even been tempted to tell anyone about it. It was just too frightening to risk. But she trusted Harry, and if he knew who she was, she wanted him to know it all. "It's an artifact that we have always referred to as the Trivalion."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know. If I ever needed to use it, it would come to me."

He swallowed. "What does it do?" he said, his tone hushed.

She met his eyes. "It shuts off all the magic in the world."

---

Sirius tried to talk to him a few times en route to Harry's office, but Ron cut him off with a curt hand gesture. He was having trouble maintaining focus. His brain had just gotten about twenty new paths of thought to wander down, and it wasn't so easy to keep it on just one.

When they reached Harry's office, he motioned Sirius inside and shut the door behind him. "You knew about this punishment all along?" he said.

Sirius nodded. "The Deputy has many duties, but the most important is as the primary guardian of the Chancellor's identity."

"You couldn't have, oh I don't know, told her about it? She might not have said anything if she knew what would happen to her."

"You just answered your own question."

"What do you..." Ron nodded, understanding. "Oh, I get it. Her decision whether or not to reveal herself is supposed to be untainted by fear of recrimination."

"That's the way the Progenitors set it up."

"It's stupid."

Sirius shrugged. "It's the way it is."

Ron's eyes narrowed. "I must say, you don't seem that upset about her being carted off to prison."

"I'm not upset. I'm relieved."

That response was not what Ron had expected. "You're relieved? "

"Yes. If she's in custody, she can't do something insane...."

Ron's head fell back and he slapped a hand to his forehead, sudden comprehension filling his head. "Such as hand herself over to the Master," he finished. "That's the whole point of this sentence, isn't it? It's not a punishment, it's a protection!"

"Azkaban is not the prison it once was. Dementors no longer guard its gates. It is still a prison, make no mistake, but Hermione won't be detained in a cell surrounded by hardened criminals. She'll be...looked after, let's say."

"They foresaw all of this, didn't they?" Ron said. "The Progenitors. They figured that if a Chancellor were ever to reveal her identity, it would be in some situation like this, when she was under a threat. So they designed a system of security so that if she ever told, she'd be immediately removed to a secure location where she couldn't be threatened." Ron shook his head. "All of this means that no one really cares about what a Chancellor might have been threatened with. In this case, the lives of those hostages. If she were being detained somewhere secure, she couldn't possibly do anything to save them."

"There is no concern greater than that of her security."

"What is this dirty great secret all of you are circling around? What could be so important?"

"I'm afraid I can't answer that question. That information is not for me to know."

---

Her words hung in the air between them for a moment. Harry looked...she believed that gobsmacked was the appropriate term. "My God," he breathed. "It shuts it all off? Permanently?"

She nodded. "So you see why this was so frightening to the Progenitors, and why they felt that this level of security was necessary. It's a measure of last resort in the event of total and irreversible takeover by dark magics."

Harry was nodding. "This is what the Master wants. But why?"

"He must think he can devise some way to make himself and his followers immune to its effects. Disable the rest of us and clear his own way. He's fooling himself if he thinks so, but he'd be far from the first."

"But if he were to use it, thinking himself immune..." He stared at her. "You were willing to give yourself up to him, knowing this? He could have gotten it from you! He's certainly powerful enough to..."

She just smiled. "He would have been welcome to try. But he can't use it. No one can. No one except me."

"What do you mean?"

"The talisman is bound to me by the magics of the office. I am the only person who can use it. What's more, I can only use it of my own free will. I cannot be forced, threatened, magically compelled or blackmailed into using it."

A grim little smile found its way to the corners of Harry's mouth. "That's why you were willing to go to him. You knew that even if he had you, he couldn't use the talisman."

"He doesn't know that. They always think they can find some way around the protections, but they can't. Others in the past have thought they knew what the Chancellor guarded, and thought that they could get it, but none have ever succeeded. Neither will he. It's only a matter of..." She trailed off. Harry was looking at her, but his eyes were far away. "Harry? Have you heard a word I've said?"

He blinked, and refocused on her face. "Who are you?" he whispered. Hermione felt a shudder run up her back. "Who is it that I married?"

She stared at her hands, resting on her crossed legs. "You know who I am."

"Do I? I thought I did."

"You've always known who I am. This is just...something I do."

He stood up and turned away. His movements were quick and uncoordinated, as if he couldn't quite manage his thoughts and his limbs at the same time. He walked back and forth before her desk in quick, jagged paces that didn't cover the ground so much as bite off pieces of it and chew them up. Hermione sat back, her eyes following him. She knew the signs of his temper.

"Harry..."

She got no further. With a growl of frustration, he stopped pacing and raised a fist, bringing it down in a stabbing arc. There was a quick flash of light, almost too fast for her eyes to track, and then her other office chair was lying in smoking shards on the floor. She just looked at him. He stood with his hands on his hips, looking a little sheepish. He glanced at her. "Sorry," he muttered. He waved his hand over the debris and it reassembled itself into a chair again.

"If you feel the need to take our your anger on something, better it's me. I'm the one you're angry at."

He shook his head. "I'm not angry at you. Well...maybe a little. I'm just angry. All I can think about is that for so long I've lived with you, and loved you, and slept beside you, and told you things that...well, painful things, things I didn't want to tell you but I did because that's what you do when you're asking someone to share your life, and all that time when you looked at me, I couldn't see that behind your eyes there was something else, some other truth that lived there, that you kept inside." He looked at her then, and he didn't look angry. He looked heartbroken. "I never felt like I deserved you, Hermione. I told myself that it was okay that you'd chosen me, because there was no one else who knew you and understood you the way that I did. That was my trump card. I just hate it that all this time, there was something about you that I didn't know."

Hermione nodded. She knew he was expecting a heartfelt, emotional response from her, but at the moment, she didn't feel like giving him one. She'd been keeping this secret, at great emotional expense, for reasons that had nothing to do with him, and all he could think about was how his ignorance somehow diminished him and his emotional claim on her. She met his eyes. "Well, I suppose that now you know what it was like for me," she said, quietly.

He stared at her, expressionless, for a few long beats. Then, he nodded, his lips pressed together into a thin white line. "I see. So this is what, a revenge secret? This is your way of getting back at me for keeping my job from you all that time?"

She'd never actually thought about it like that. "Maybe it is," she said.

"Well, then. I'll consider myself thoroughly punished," he said, his voice tight.

Hermione stood up. She'd had it. "Harry, you are an intelligent man. You are a fully licensed wizard and you successfully manage a large division of spies. But when are you going to get it through your thick skull that not everything is about you!" she cried.

He smiled, a hard little smile. "You love saying that, don't you? It's certainly not the first time you have. I suppose it makes you feel strong and independent, doesn't it?" He ran a hand through his hair. "I only wish I could be as strong and independent as Hermione Granger, but sadly, I'm not. You see, it's not so easy for me to separate you from me. From where I sit, if it's about you, then it's about me. Anything that affects you, affects me." He held up his left hand. "Remember this?" he said, using his thumb to wiggle his wedding ring. "I can't look at your life and say that one thing is about me while another is not, because my life is your life." He stepped closer until they were only a few feet apart. Hermione couldn't look away from him, he had her pinned in place with his gaze. He reached out and picked up her left hand, lifting it and touching his index finger to her ring. "Or don't you wear this when you're being her?" he whispered, his eyes welling up. "Doesn't the Chancellor have a husband?"

Hermione turned her hand and laced her fingers through his, staring down at their two rings side by side. A sob rose up and coughed its way from her throat, and her carefully cultivated shield of Chancellor detachment shattered around her, leaving just Hermione, exposed and terrified. She felt herself falling into a morass of secrets and broken oaths and a terribly uncertain future, but as always, Harry was there to catch her as she crumpled into tears. He wrapped her up in his strong arms and she clutched at the front of his shirt, her arms raised and trapped between their bodies. Everything was spinning; she had to hang on to him or risk falling to the ground. She couldn't hear anything over the sound of her own ragged sobs. She could feel Harry's tears on her forehead and her cheek.

He grasped her face and kissed her, over and over again. He was missing her mouth but didn't seem to care; it felt as if he didn't want to kiss her so much as he wanted to brand her with his touch so she could never be lost. "I can't," he said, his words clogged and muffled against her skin. "I won't let go of you."

"Harry..."

"No!" he said, his voice a low growl. He drew back, trapping her head between his hands. "I can't stand by and let it happen. I won't watch and do nothing while you're taken away from me."

"But there's nothing..."

"I'll take you away," he said, his eyes taking on a manic wildness at this prospect of action. "We'll get out of here, right now. They'll never find you."

"Harry, it doesn't matter where I am, I'll still..."

"I can stop it, somehow. I'll go to the Society, maybe they can help. God, this Mage thing has to be good for something...maybe I can block whatever spell is supposed to take you there..." He was looking towards the door now. "We shouldn't waste any more time. Come on, get your cloak, let's get out of here."

She grabbed his arm. "Harry, stop!" He did, turning back to look at her, wide-eyed. "You can't go anywhere, you're needed here! The Master...the hostages..."

He shook his head. "I don't care. I don't care about any of it, I only care about you."

"You don't mean that."

"Don't I?"

"I hope not. What have we spent our lives doing since we were eleven, Harry? What have we sacrificed for, and dedicated ourselves to? To stopping people like the Master, and Allegra, and making sure that the world is a safe place for innocent people to go about their lives and have families and smile and laugh without wondering if they're safe or if some Dark Lord is going to come along and murder them!" Harry was staring at the floor, still hanging on to her hand. "You have a responsibility to them. You can't leave them alone and unprotected. You know who you are," she whispered.

His head snapped up. "I don't want to be that man anymore," he hissed. "Being him has cost me too much already. Haven't I done enough?" He looked at her. "Much has been made of my so-called destiny," he said, his voice low but full of rage. "People talk about it like it's some kind of gift. That destiny, if it exists...it's a monster and it's eating me, piece by piece. It ate my parents, and it ate Dumbledore, and Hagrid...it ate twelve years of Ron's life." He stepped closer and grabbed her by the upper arms. "I will not let it get you, too," he said. "I've had enough. When is it my turn to leave the world-saving to other people and just take care of my own life?"

She shook her head, her heart aching for the burdens that he had to carry, and no less for the burdens that she'd shouldered herself. "Even if it was your turn, you wouldn't take it. That's just who you are. And I don't mean the Boy Who Lived. I mean you. Harry." She leaned forward until her forehead rested against his. She could feel his breath warm on her cheek. "The man I fell in love with," she murmured. She felt him draw a breath and sigh, shaky and resigned. She drew back and looked up into his face. "That's why you're going to let me go. You have work to do here. It's more important than me." She waited for another protest, but none came. He was just looking into her eyes, the sadness behind them aging his face well past his twenty-nine years. They stayed there like that for a few long moments, and Hermione realized that it was real, after all. "I...I wished I could tell you so many times," she whispered, her chin trembling. She felt two tears slide down her cheeks.

He nodded. "I know," he said. "I know the feeling."

"Harry," she breathed, hoping she'd have the strength to say what she had to say. "I don't know..." She stopped and cleared her throat. "I don't know when we'll see each other again."

He brought both her hands up and clasped them in both of his. "Soon," he said, sounding firm and confident.

She nodded. "I hope you're right." She glanced towards the door. "Sirius will be back any minute..."

Harry smiled a little. "He and Ron are outside the door."

---

Ron and Sirius stood in the hall, waiting to be summoned. Sirius kept checking his watch. Ron fidgeted, wondering what on earth they could be saying to each other inside. What words were adequate at such a moment?

He looked at Sirius. "You know," he began. "When I first got back, I wasn't too comfortable with...well, with them."

Sirius nodded. "So I've heard."

"It took me a little time to get used to it. But now that some time has passed, I think I get it. It's not just something the Prophet made up, is it? It's not something that they settled for because there wasn't room for anyone else in their lives."

"No, it's not," Sirius said, smiling.

Ron looked at the door again. "They really love each other," he said, his wistfulness showing through in spite of himself.

"Yes."

Ron cocked his head, thinking. "Can I ask you something? It's personal."

"Go ahead."

"You and your wife. You seem to have a happy marriage."

"Yes. I'm very lucky."

"Do you have what they have?"

Sirius smiled. "Every relationship is different, Ron. Our isn't like theirs, which isn't like your parents', which isn't..."

"I know, I know all that, but...do you?"

Sirius sighed. "If you're asking if I love my wife, then I'll tell you that I love her today just as much as I did the day I proposed to her. I think I can speak for her when I tell you that it's the same for her."

Ron stared off into space, struggling to voice his real question. After a few breaths and false starts, he succeeded. "Do you think that everyone gets to have that?" he said, quietly.

After a few seconds' pause he ventured a glance up at Sirius to find the older man looking at him with an expression of complete understanding. "Son, you speak of it as if it's something that's given to you, a pretty present that comes to your door wrapped in hearts and flowers, and you open it up and get to live happily ever after." He smiled and shook his head. "What you want, what they have, isn't something you find. It's something you build." He paused and looked off into the middle distance. "Love is a large house with many rooms. We come into the world wanting nothing but to live in it, but with only half of what we need to build it for ourselves. So we tuck our supplies away inside our hearts and go out into the world to find that person who has what we lack. If we're lucky, we will find the one person in all the world who has the right nails for our lumber, and stones for our mortar, and shingles for our roofbeams...and only then can we begin to build. The house grows large, and if we have built with care, it becomes our home." He sighed. Ron listened with rapt attention, fascinated and touched. Sirius seemed to have lost himself in his thoughts. "We pour our whole selves into its construction, and it rises to become a glorious edifice. It is built of days and moments, of thoughts and words and feelings. It is painted with laughter and weathered with tears. Some rooms grow dark and are shut away while others are opened. We must tend it carefully and repair its weaknesses if we want it to keep us safe." He met Ron's eyes. "But do you know the real secret?"

Ron swallowed. "What?" he whispered.

"The house is never finished, Ron. We labor on it all our lives, and can only hope that it remains strong and whole enough to shelter us."

---

Harry raised his head. "You can come back in now," he called. The door opened and Sirius and Ron entered. Ron was carrying Harry's briefcase.

"Sirius, how long?" Hermione asked. Her voice sounded raspy to her own ears, but she was relieved to hear that tone of Chancellor-calm back underneath it.

"Five minutes," Sirius said, looking regretful.

She saw Harry's jaw tighten as he took the briefcase from Ron. He opened it and rummaged about inside. "What's this, then?" she asked him.

"I want you to have it before you go," he said, his voice cracking over the last words. He came up with a small ring box. Hermione shifted, glancing at Ron and Sirius. Sirius was looking away, but Ron was watching with a small smile on his face.

Harry stepped close and handed her the box. "What was this going to be for?" she asked. It was a bit early to shop for her birthday.

He shrugged, the gesture stripping him of his adulthood and making of him an uncertain teenager shuffling his feet as he tried to talk to a girl he liked. "Open it."

She did, finding inside a beautiful silver band engraved with a delicate, lacy design...which, she realized upon closer inspection, was actually Cyrillic lettering. She lifted it free, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She glanced up at her husband, who was just watching her with that nervous anticipation that seemed to be the universal male expression when bestowing gifts upon the women in their lives. "It's beautiful," she said.

He took it from her and slid it over the ring finger on her right hand. "Then it belongs on your finger," he said, his words slow and careful, betraying only a slight quaver.

"Is that Russian?"

"Yes. It says 'Ot dushi.'"

She held up her hand and watched the ring shine, the facets of the inscribed lettering making it sparkle. "What does it mean?"

He reached out and brought her hand to his chest, placing it over his heart. He covered it with both of his own. He just held it there for a few beats, his head lowered. Finally, he raised his head and met her eyes. "It means 'From my soul,'" he said, hoarse.

Hermione had no response to that. She stepped closer and nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder and let him hold her.

She wanted to let him hold her forever.

---

Ron had to turn away from the sight of his two best friends trying to hold on to their last few moments together for what could be a long time. He looked at Sirius, resentment rising in his chest. "Couldn't you have stopped this?" he said, low through clenched teeth.

Sirius didn't look at him. "Even if I could have, I wouldn't." He checked his watch again. "Two minutes, Chancellor."

Hermione drew back and looked over at Ron. She forced a smile and stepped away from Harry to embrace him. "You know what to do," she whispered into his ear.

He held her tightly, trying his best to be what she needed him to be right now. "I'll take care of everything," he murmured, low enough so that only she could hear.

She drew back and nodded, then turned to Sirius. "You'll be in touch?" she said. Ron marveled at how different her voice sounded when she was being official.

"I will."

"You have your orders."

"Leave everything to me."

She sighed. "I always do." To Ron's surprise, she hugged Sirius, too. Over her shoulder, he saw Sirius' careful Deputy expression slip a bit. He let her go and checked his watch again. "Sixty seconds," he said.

Hermione went back to Harry. Ron felt like he ought to turn away again, but he couldn't. He thought they'd embrace again, but they didn't. They just clasped hands between them, both of hers in both of his. They were looking into each other's eyes and nodding, as if they were speaking. Perhaps they were.

"Thirty seconds," Sirius said, quietly.

He saw Hermione reach up and touch his face. Harry turned his head and kissed her palm, then held her hand to his cheek for a moment. Finally, Hermione stepped away with a determined stride and stood near the wall. Harry seemed to sink into himself; he moved to stand at Ron's side.

"Ten seconds."

Hermione was taking deep, slow breaths as if she were preparing to free-dive. Ron watched Harry, who was looking at the floor. It was good that he was paying attention, because he felt him tense up and knew what he was going to do in time to stop him. "No," Harry suddenly choked and tried to lunge forward, but Ron was already grabbing both his arms from behind, holding him back. "Let me go," he growled. Ron hung on for dear life. Hermione didn't really react, she just watched Harry struggle.

A wind blew through the room and whipped around her. A cloud of white mist swirled up from the floor. "Hermione!" Harry called, reaching out towards her. She smiled a little, then turned her face away as the mist enveloped her and swirled away, leaving nothing behind but a lingering breeze which soon dissipated.

The tense energy left Harry's body and he sagged in Ron's grasp. Ron slowly released him, keeping his hand tight on his shoulder.

Nothing happened for a few long moments. Harry just stood there bent over, his hands braced on his knees, his head hanging down like he was catching his breath. Ron said nothing, not wanting to intrude on his solitude.

Harry shook his head and exhaled. "I never told her that I love her," he murmured.

"She knows," Ron said.

Abruptly, Harry straightened up and yanked open the door to Hermione's office. He strode off down the corridor, Ron and Sirius following in his wake. "Okay," he said, following his Bubble to his own office. "I'm going to need schematics for Azkaban. Ron, I want you to examine the regulations for this oath she took. Maybe there's some kind of loophole we can exploit."

"What are you doing, Harry?" Sirius asked.

Harry's head whipped around. "Sirius, you shouldn't talk to me for awhile, got it?"

Ron sighed. "Then I'll ask. What are you doing?" They'd reached his office. He slammed the door behind them.

"What does it look like? I'm going to get her out."

Ron weighed his words carefully. "I don't mean to be insensitive, but don't we have bigger fish to fry right now?" Harry glared at him. "I just mean that the Master..."

"I need her help if I'm going to fight him."

"She's already done all she can for you," Ron said, gently.

"I can't fight him if I'm thinking about this, too."

Ron came around behind Harry's desk. He was standing there yanking manuals and scrolls out of his drawers and cabinets and slamming them about, apparently at random. Ron put a hand on his arm, but Harry shook it off. "I know you're upset, but..."

"Upset?" Slam. "Upset?" Crash. "Why on earth should I be upset? My wife's only been sent to some hellhole for God knows how long for having the gall to tell me a secret. I know what you're doing, Ron, but do not get in my way!" he said, turning to shout the last few words into Ron's face.

"It's just that we need you to..."

"Someone else can do that."

"Now isn't the time to..."

"I don't care if it isn't the time. Go tell Napoleon to take charge, he knows what to do well enough, someone else can bloody save the world this time around, and I'll be damned if I..."

Ron grabbed Harry and spun him around to face him. "Harry, will you shut up a minute?" he shouted. To his surprise, Harry did, looking shocked to hear Ron raise his voice. "Listen to me!" he said, giving Harry a brisk shake. "There are three hundred hostages waiting to be rescued and they might not have much time left! Hermione may be in Azkaban but she is in no danger, and the same can't be said for those people! You know what the Master's capable of, and soon it might be too late to do anything about it! Do you want to find out what'll happen if he gains access to all their knowledge, all their secrets?" He let go of Harry's arms and watched his friend turn back to his desk and slowly place his hands on its surface, leaning over with his head hanging between his shoulder blades. Ron leaned in. "Someone has to stop the Master, Harry. You are the only one who can do that. Someone also has to help Hermione. But you are not the only one who can do that."

Harry turned to look at him, and Ron knew that Harry would do the right thing. "Ron, I..." he began.

Ron nodded. "Let me take care of her," he murmured, putting one hand on Harry's shoulder.

A few beats of tense silence passed. Harry straightened up and came around from behind his desk. He picked up his cloak from where he'd discarded it upon entering. Ron saw him square his shoulders. "I understand that Kate Salvatore designed the spell I'm to use," he said. His voice was very even and measured.

"That's right."

Harry nodded. "Will you tell Napoleon that I went to see her? I need to be briefed."

"Of course."

Harry turned and faced him. Ron could see the muscles in his jaw working. "Ron, you're my oldest, closest friend."

"I know."

"And I hope you understand just what it is that I'm entrusting you with."

Ron nodded. "I understand, Harry."

Harry took a deep breath and held it, then shut his eyes and let it go. He stepped closer and looked Ron straight in the face. "Then will you take care of my wife?" he asked.

"I will," Ron said.

Harry nodded. "Thank you." He held Ron's gaze for another beat, then turned and left the office without a look backward.

Sirius made to follow him. "Oh no, you don't," Ron said, holding up a finger. "You're not going anywhere, Mr. Deputy."

"I'm not?"

"No, indeed. You heard the man. I'm going to find a way to help Hermione...and you're going to help me do it."

---

Hermione kept her eyes closed until she felt herself solidly on the ground. Then, she just kept them closed because she didn't want to see where she was. That would make it real.

She sensed others nearby. It felt cold, and a bit damp. Cautiously, she opened one eye, and then the other. She was in...surprise, surprise...a stone chamber. It was totally empty save two severe-looking guards in floor-length black cloaks with hoods that covered them completely. She was reminded of Sabian, but these wizards (or witches) had actual veils before their faces, whereas Sabian just seemed to have no face at all.

Both of them were holding torches. Hermione took a step towards them, wondering what she was supposed to do. Weren't they going to clap her in irons, or something? They weren't moving.

She saw that their cloaks bore some kind of insignia on the breast. It was hard to make out in the torchlight. It was a letter "V" superimposed over two vertical slashes, like the number 11.

V for...Voldemort! her tired mind yammered. Voldemort again! Voldemort...the second! Yes, Voldemort II! This time, it's personal!

That's stupid, she told herself. If there were some such Spawn of Voldemort dark lord around here, his minions would hardly be guarding Azkaban. As far as she knew, Azkaban was guarded by Enforcers these days.

"Umm...excuse me?" she finally said. The guards didn't move. "Is something supposed to happen?"

One of their heads turned toward her just slightly. "We wait for Number Eight."

She looked from one to the other, but no other information seemed forthcoming. "Number Eight, then. I see." She cleared her throat. "Numbers One through Seven are busy, I take it?" No response.

A door banged open somewhere and another wizard, identically robed to the two already with her, entered with swift, sure footsteps. The two guards faced each other and snapped to attention. The newcomer's robe bore the same insignia.

Hermione swore she could sense the new arrival looking her up and down. "I've come to take you into custody," she said, for it was a woman's voice...and it was a familiar voice.

"Custody?"

"That's correct, Chancellor."

Hermione strained her ears, trying to place the voice. "You know who I am."

The woman sighed. "I know everything about you, ma'am. That's my job."

"Your job? I don't understand."

"No, I imagine not."

"I know you," Hermione said, stepping forward. "Who are you? Let me see your face."

The woman hesitated, then ducked her head and pushed her hood and veil back from her face. Hermione's mouth fell open at the sight of Diz's freckled, impassive face.

"Very good, Hermione," she said.

Hermione heard Harry's voice in her head. She isn't the mole, she's a member of Division 7, which is a top-secret I.D. division that no one knows about or knows what they do... She looked back at the insignia on Diz's cloak. A V over two vertical slashes. That isn't a V, you moron, she thought, with an internal forehead-slap. It's VII, it's the number seven.

"Diz...what's going on?" she said, her voice shaking.

Diz smiled, just a little. "Apparently, what's going on is that you've broken your oath. And I believe that Number Nine now owes me five Galleons." She seemed to remember herself then, and stood at attention, her hands clasped behind her back. "Madam Chancellor, welcome to Azkaban Prison. It is my duty to inform you that you are now under the protection of Division Seven."

---