Crystal and frost licked along brick walls, casting flickering reflections off a broken cobblestone path. In a way, it was beautiful, mingling perfectly over vines that twitched, encased in ice, and splotches of black in patchwork patterns. The buildings were normally such an eyesore, crooked and crumbling, held together with a mixture of magic and desperate but fanciful craftsmanship. It was only when the chill crept in and the seasons changed that the Empire transformed into something it wasn't.

A snow dusted wonderland of slumbering hope.

Hope that was decidedly fickle and worthless. Hope that did nothing to keep back the smell of filth and discarded persons, unwashed and forgotten, left to rot in the darkness of a constantly shifting time and a wavering economy. But everyone wore their mask of stability, smiling with too many scars - hidden and visible - that just didn't heal quite right, exchanging ideas of change and happiness for paranoia and a grotesque sort of stagnation.

If it wasn't broke, why fix it?

But it was broken. Everything. Everyone. Missing something, that foundation that once made them proud, determined, thriving, and so pathetically hopeful.

All of it exchanged for callous false-efficiency and blood.

So much blood.

"Do you trust me?"

Silence met that voice at first, silence only interrupted by the sound of snow being crunch underfoot, pushed aside with each attempt to find stable footing-

"Don't ask me that again," Ronald grunted, breathy, hobbling-

"But, if there's any doubt, any doubt at all," Harry replied, almost wheezing.

"There isn't," Hermione said, tone carefully frank, as she tossed an introspective gaze along the coiled muscle, tense and trembling, within the confines of the tight black leather coat that made up Harry's back. "Be quiet."

Though her view was somewhat hindered - what with Harry's broad backside in the way - she could see Ron's face well enough at the front, his grip tight around the wriggling and long awkward lump they carried between them, wrapped in a black and writhing cloth. The way his lips pressed thin and his cheek muscles twitched she could tell he was trying to repress a smile - something unkind and no doubt a little vicious - for Harry's sake.

They were all a little… unkind. A little vicious.

She, however, had no issue allowing her lips to curl and she didn't bother hiding perfect saliva-slick teeth as she flashed them in Ron's direction.

The bundle between them bucked and Harry cursed as his grip slipped, something loud that echoed in their space.

The meaty smack of the burden hitting the cobblestone that followed seemed just as loud, and soon Ron's guffaws - grating and a bit off - joined the general ambiance of far too much noise.

Not that they needed much silence, not as The Boy Who'd Returned and his collective. But there was a certain way things had to be… done. Especially for something as delicate as this. As awful as this.

Harry said something, spat via pant from exertion, but it was absorbed by the quickly muttered ward of silence that slipped over them, a blanket of precaution well-practiced and learned. It was only once the familiar tingle of magic - her magic - solidified around them that she rolled the humming warmth and weight of her wand – taken and hoarded and conquered - about her palm in idle irritation.

"I said quiet," she drawled. "Do you want to go to Azkaban, again?"

How long had it been, three years or four, before they'd been released? Before their licentious Empire, with its gentry and false security, had freed them from the agony of madness into the torture of normalcy. The war had done little in terms of social transformation. Their victory had only given freedom to those who had hidden. They'd wrestled the reigns of control from the victors until the heavy snap of the whipped rippled throughout their governed. The monster, the beast, was the Ministry itself - fat and warm from chewing on accomplishments it had neither earned nor deserved. It was easy, then, for childish naivety to round them up and political greed to have them punished - Order or otherwise - for crimes committed but ultimately necessary. Only the length of sentence had been negotiable but sacrifice and suffering were the same flavor no matter the upfront packaging.

Deep within the fog of her mind, trapped and crazed as she clawed at her own skin, she had heard snippets and pieces of a resistance foiled. The Ministry was emboldened, suckling prestige and power in the vacuum Voldemort's destruction had crafted. Those who sought freedom for their precious Boy had been slandered and slaughtered in the square, the blood-soaked cobblestones still in place. A reminder, constant and heavy, of who held the leash and how tight were the collars.

One lord exchanged for another.

It was only galleons, worthwhile and heavy, that had freed them in the end.

And even more for the campaign of innocence - a foolish ideal that hovered over them, a supposed debt to be paid at a later date in exchange for the Ministry making their Golden Trio seem whole and tamed. Redeemed. Rehabilitated. Crafting their story into one of heroes who had done time for crimes that they refused to have pardoned.

Ronald laughed again, a hissed cackle from a straining throat.

"Sorry," Harry grunted, the sound trapped in the small bubble of magic Hermione had crafted around them, though he seemed anything but.

She watched him with an unwavering gaze as he crouched to pick up his end of the bundle with trembling gloved hands, but it wasn't fear that made his body twitch and his magic move.

She could practically taste it on the tip of her tongue, a building eagerness in the brush of his magic, in the tension that lined his chin. It broke through the suffocating grey that infused her, stirring an odd mixture of anxiety and…

And something she couldn't describe, something so sharp and akin to hunger that it was dizzying.

She swallowed harshly, and they continued moving, further down the alley, deeper into the darkness of Knockturn proper and the space they'd pilfered there. She left her memories behind, back at the crumbling fountain in the square they'd passed that stunk of meat and magic.

When they finally reached the steel door at the end of the juncture it was Ron who shoved it open, chest heaving as runes sparked to life along the brick and threshold.

It opened smoothly, betraying functional operation despite the debilitated abandoned outside appearance and trash bundled against the alley walls. A perfect space to live, for a group that didn't wish to be found, Hermione reckoned. Especially when one considered that the Ministry kept a careful eye on Grimmauld Place and any other suspicious properties. All while toting their desire to keep The Boy safe, since he was a Ministry proposed celebrity.

Though he'd nearly been a maddened corpse but a few years before.

"Do you trust me?" Harry wheezed as Ron maneuvered them toward the dip in the floor.

"Harry, I bloody swear," Ron snarled, a sound that made Hermione's skin crawl, but not unpleasantly. Not since everything had been shifted and rattled about in her itching brain.

"He's nervous," Hermione licked her lips, dry and cracked, as she pushed the massive door closed with but a few taps of her wand against the steel. "Shut him up."

"Put me to work, will you? That's all you two ever do, put me to work - "

"The irony," Hermione sneered. "When I'm so very sure it's me that gets put to work."

And she wasn't wrong. Merlin bless the reluctant Healer that had managed to patch her back together lest they lose her intellect. They could have been trapped there, screeching behind the walls of St. Mungo's, poster children for the Ministry's rant of 'do the right thing, suffer for the people', when they hadn't suffered at all. Or maybe taxes had suffered when they'd killed half the population on the whim of their anxieties.

"For the glory of Great Britain," Ron croaked as Harry helped him swing the black lump right into the center of the dipped floor with nary a care, "Praise be the Empire."

"Careful!" Hermione yelled, watching as the bundle bounced a bit before it settled, "I spent all night crafting that circle."

"It's fine," Harry chirped, his gaze unnervingly vibrant beyond the glare of his glasses, shadows that danced within a hypnotic green. "Fancy a drink?"

"Me," Ron said, though he seemed distracted, focused on the writhing of their plucked prize as his hands opened and closed. "Something light."

Since they had work to do.

When Harry turned to face her she only gave him an idle wave. Someone had to keep their wits about them, lest this turn out like the Higginson situation -

"I know you're thinking about the Higginson situation."

Hermione gave a soft sound, an idle hum, as she moved forward, past the simplistic couch and armchair situated closest to the dip in the flooring - elegant and ancient, with their dark reds that blended so well with the plush carpet between them - so she could get a better look at the hand-carved circle there, "And how could I not? This is how it started -"

Harry scoffed, "It did not-"

"And there was so much blood-"

"A very small amount of blood-"

"And then I had to clean it up properly-"

"I was tired after the binding!"

Only Ron's grunt as he collapsed heavily onto the couch made Hermione pause, that and his childish whine of 'Haaaarrry!' when he did so. But it was enough, and with a mumble beneath his breath The Boy went back to the corner of the space, where a glass cabinet bar was hosted, filled with an assortment of liquids held in potion decanters and large vials.

It was odd, how homey it all was compared to the state of their being, as if their one floor building could hold all the warmth they often struggled to feel. Quidditch posters of various teams littered the walls, the living space - their only open space - with its couch and chair and carpet. The bar. The bookshelf against the wall. Only the darkness that lead to the backroom - the bedroom Hermione hoarded as her own - hinted that this was anything other than a place to entertain. That and the… dip in the floor.

The dip in the floor of hard hand-packed earth and runes of salt and blood, crafted for a distinct purpose. Hermione found the mysticism of it fascinating. She enjoyed the throbbing pulse of magic that slithered through precise and perfectly drawn lines. The way it flickered when the lantern light was off. How it sang and hummed in her blood when she drew near. How it made her heart rattle and shake and her skin tingle just right as it whispered of power through ritualistic ceremony.

There came the clink of a glass behind her and a snide but playful - "Careful, this is how the Higginson situation happened."

And despite having told him no in terms of beverage, Hermione still took the offered glass, "It is."

It wouldn't do well to be lured by the promise of the wilde, by the release and freedom that came with surrender and the heady thump of otherness that swam thick in her blood and hovered within her mentality. The thought of it was enough to make her arm - the arm - burn with phantom memory.

She shivered and brought the far too fancy glass to her lips, finding sanity and safety in the warm burn of amber liquid as it traveled down her throat.

For a moment thereafter, they were all silent. Ron, unfocused as he stared at the ceiling, and Harry far too focused on her.

"We don't have to do this," he whispered.

She took another sip of her drink, "We've already started."

"But it isn't too late."

She drew her gaze away from the bucking bundle, the circle, and the whispers of magic that tickled her ears, "Isn't it?"

"We could go back," Harry glanced at the glass, into the depths of the liquid as if it held all the answers, "try again some other time-"

"And wait another ten years?" Hermione drawled.

"It's comfortable. What we currently have. The Ministry coddles us."

"So long as we remain in their metaphorical chains, yes."

"And don't you enjoy it? The interviews, the photo ops, the martyrdom?"

"We'd have to be dead to be martyrs."

Harry's lips parted but no sound came out. There wasn't a need. She knew what he'd say.

Weren't they already dead, in some way? There was no Hermione, no Harry, no Ron. Not anymore. Not with what they'd become. Were becoming.

And it was getting so hard to resist.

One too many curses endured. Too much dark magic exposure. And then, what little stability had been left had been taken, devoured by Dementors that hadn't been decommissioned from Azkaban until after their release… curious timing that.

She closed her eyes and willed herself not to shudder as he came closer, invading her personal space as he was so wont to do.

"Don't you enjoy it?" He whispered, something soft but wicked, "The pennies for obedience. The way the people fall over themselves to worship -"

"Ideals," She croaked, heart pounding, "They only worship the ideals. The Ministry, to be fair, who put them there. They're afraid -"

"- to die, to be called for the slaughter as the next Dark Lord, yes…" Harry drawled. "So, they bow…"

"But not to us. Just what we stand for."

"Suffering. Rehabilitation. Obedience. Eventual elevation."

"And sacrificial heroism, romanticized and twisted into peace," Hermione mused, opening her eyes and peering coyly at her companion over the edge of her glass.

"I could get used to it, being The Lesson," Harry mumbled, fingertips among the wild curls of her hair.

"But I did not get tortured to become The Lesson," Hermione grunted. "The Empire is weak Harry, crumbling behind their walls, heavy… drowsy from their gluttony while I starve."

"But it's easier to fly when you're lighter," Harry offered.

"You aren't as poetic as I am, are you?"

Harry's musical laughter was soothing, at least, even as apprehension clawed at her chest and magic tugged at her person.

"No. I'm not."

But that was fine.

"Step back. I'm sensitive in here," Hermione said, pushing lightly at Harry's chest and shivering when her fingertips pressed against the warmth and constant buzz of his essence - so possessive and coiling. "Should have never picked this place. It's right over a leyline."

"More potent that way, isn't it?" Ron spoke up from the couch, eyes fluttering, back from the venture into his own mind.

"Yes, but…" she shook her head then, "It doesn't matter. Come over here."

Harry kept a narrowed focused look upon Ron as he hobbled over, glass held as he plucked it off the side-table. He opened his mouth then, perhaps to ask about Ron's own feelings, but they had stalled enough.

She reached out to grasp Ron's shirt, her own glass empty and dropped on the carpet, unbroken, thoughtlessly, then bid Harry a little closer so that she could do the same to his own. In return, they each grabbed a side of hers.

"There is no room for doubt. There has never been room for doubt," she started.

"But there is doubt?"

"There will always be doubt, Harry." Hermione said, "Struggling for space among the constant gray."

Beside her Ron chuckled bitterly, just as poisoned.

"But we cannot stand idle, not anymore -"

"- Especially not after bloody Higginson -"

"- Enough about Higginson," she hissed, tugging Ron closer to her person with a rough yank that nearly took him off his feet. "The point is that the Empire is sick, to remain stagnant is a disservice to ourselves and the agonies that freed us."

Harry took a shuddering breath and she felt the lick of his magic against her own. Her side pulsed with familiarity as Ron's soon joined it.

She swallowed audibly, tongue thick within her mouth, but she spoke nonetheless, past the heady corruptive sense of drowning, "The plan, your plan Harry, is asinine and madness, but we are madness playing at mediocrity. And this… and this…"

Only this, this sudden indescribable sensation of joining, as if she were Ron, as if she were Harry, as if they were one and nothing else -

"This is the only way I… the only way any of us, will ever feel complete."

She felt Harry straighten at her side as she lifted his shirt, just slightly, to catch a peek of the magic brand that bound them, the twin lions and one lioness that wound, tangled like vines, about a simplistic circle - the runic symbol for power - with its many forked tongues that spilled from the shape. It was over Harry's ribs and mirrored on their bodies, close to their thudding hearts and saturated with the raw potential of something sacrilegious.

At least Higginson had been good for something. His blood to feed the Olde Ones' river of sacrifice. His life to bring their binding to fruition. It had been a blessing in the end, despite the mess and the hurried actions. At least this time it was planned, not an induction into the darkest of bondage through the drunken fancy of men that craved adrenaline and fear.

They wanted to recreate The Circle, to achieve a greater purpose.

She drew a fingertip across the edge of Harry's marking and felt Ron's entire being tremble in the beginnings of a haunted sound.

"I want to do it," he panted, "I would never say no. Never to you, Harry."

Harry's answering rumble was pleased, a growl that inspired a sharp breath from Hermione as she abruptly let them go. They didn't have time to lose themselves and Harry… everything that he did, everything that he was could be so consuming.

But he reached out for Ron anyway, glass dropped and forgotten on the ground beside her own, moving large hands to grasp his shoulders and tug him forward -

Right as Hermione squeaked and ducked under the elbow of an outstretched arm, placing herself between them before Harry could initiate something they didn't have time to finish. Goodness, they hadn't even started, and they were already overwhelmed by the call.

"Come on, Harry! Leave room for Merlin! Back!"

He bared his teeth at her, an action she returned as she pushed at his broad chest.

"Go. The bundle. We've wasted enough time."

She gave one of his outstretched arms a hard whack and he hissed and backed up, aghast and amused.

"You hit me!"

"Yes," she drawled, "Go. The dip."

Ron chuckled and downed his glass before he too dropped it thoughtlessly, and Hermione was all at once glad she had taken the precaution to charm the bulk of Harry's Most Noble and Ancient House of Black finery that he had brought into their shared space.

"When do you need to be back?" Hermione said, watching as Harry shrugged off his jacket and tossed it toward the couch.

"Dawn, most likely. Grimmauld and then the Ministry."

"Ronald?"

The man in question moved carefully into the dip, wand drawn, dressed in simple white shirt and formal slacks.

"Four, maybe five hours. We've got an interview tomorrow and Mum wants to see you for breakfast."

"Then I'll leave at dawn with Harry. I doubt the interview will happen. We'll move to the next task, are you sure she -"

"Whenever I want. That's what she said. Whenever I want," Harry mumbled, distracted as he drew his wand and began to move it in a slow complex pattern.

"No interview?" Ron whined, wand held forward before he snapped off a brisk, "Steady, mate! You'll rip off 'is flesh!"

And indeed, as Harry began to unravel the bundle Hermione could see strips of pink-flushed flesh coming with the writhing black, stuck in patches to the breathing wriggling fabric.

"So long as 'e's alive at the end," Harry muttered, brow creased.

"He won't be if you keep at it -"

"Ron, I've got it!"

"You've got it? You've got a lot of that bloke's skin on the strips is what you've got -"

"- piss off!"

She left the men to it and turned toward the winding book shelves against the wall, hands behind her back as she rocked on her heels. Searching… seeking…

When the first scream reached her ears, she'd found what she was looking for and carefully, with a flick of wand, began to pull the book from the shelf.

It was just one of many others that they had stowed away in their shared space. The shelves were filled with all manners of literature. Spellwork of olde, ancient, wilde… dark but so very potent, addicting. Even without touching the books directly just being near them made her brain itch. They, the books they'd taken from Harry's home, were wicked and vile and loved. To see the Ministry trample through Harry's home with the idea that they could pluck and pick whatever they pleased had been more than enough reason to hide them. It was a brilliant collection, if a bit dangerous to handle without… precautions. Which was why, of course, Hermione handled the book through a levitation spell instead of her bare hands.

The last time she'd done that she'd been lost to the words. Reading and reading and reading until Harry had blasted the book right there on her lap. But, the damage had been done. She couldn't unsee what she'd memorized and the urge to utilize what she'd been taught was so… overwhelming.

The risk of being a good student, she supposed.

But they still had many more items from Grimmauld to move and many more discoveries to make. Still, this one, this book before her, with spine crafted from bone and a cover that looked suspiciously like tawny flesh…

This book was more than just casual reading material.

"Alright, he's steady," Ron called from the dip, while his wand oozed a peculiar electric blue light, one that immobilized the wide-eyed male at the center. "Taking your sweet time over there, 'Moine?"

She snorted, "Is he still alive? I don't hear any screaming."

"I silenced 'em. Lose a little flesh and everyone starts screeching."

A little? As Hermione approached the dip she could see that the poor man had lost a lot. The folded twitching strips of black were patchworked in skin. Anywhere clothing hadn't touched him was now exposed, just twitching meat and…

Wait.

"What did you do with his clothes?"

Ron gave her a wide boyish smile, "They get in the way during clean-up, don't you think?"

She narrowed her gaze.

"And… well, we are the same size."

She sighed.

"Hermione," Harry whispered.

"If you ask me again-"

"-do you trust me?"

She swallowed harshly, devouring the biting remark balanced on the tip of her tongue. Instead she looked at him, really looked at him, and found all the emotions she often struggled to feel.

Eagerness. Apprehension. Sincerity. Fear.

That she'd run away. That this would go to hell. That they'd return to the silence, separation, and endless agonies of their cages… alone, forever alone.

But when she'd agreed to Harry's foolish plan she'd promised herself that she would march - with tactical precision and everything she had - all for a bit of adventure. All so that she could feel alive again.

And because something within Harry, perhaps that downtrodden lost little boy that he'd been, craved an aspect of his existence that he could control.

So, she would let him control this.

"I trust you. I trust you to be my anchor, my leash. Both of you."

"And you'll make a brilliant catalyst, Hermione."

She smiled then, something genuine. "Thank you, Ronald."

He gave her a thumbs-up before he turned to Harry and nodded once.

She shed her coat, her shoes, and her smart business jacket. She kicked off her socks, unbuttoned her blouse, and shimmed out of her skirt. She refused to get any of her things dirty, especially things purchased with Empire galleons. If she had to be a slave, she'd be a beautiful and smartly dressed one.

So, she stood, unabashedly, in her black bra and red knickers, with the deeply rich golden-brown of her skin only interrupted by a dusting of russet colored freckles and all the scars of the war. The raised skin that went across her chest from the center of her breast to her belly. The scars that peppered her back from laying on the hard-edged rocks of Azkaban. The bright, glaring word that pulsed, humming from the magic she called to her flesh, and the brand on the side of her body, identical to Harry's, identical to Ron's, unifying them as one before the eyes of the slumbering gods.

Ron released a nervous giggle, one echoed by Harry's deep chuckle as she stepped into the dip, wand tossed his way, book eagerly pulled into the orbit of magic she produced.

And then, once he secured her wand - and her unspoken surrender, in giving him such an intimate piece of her being - he handed her a dagger.

Her dagger. The woman who plagued her nightmares, who spilled secrets across her mentality, who haunted her in a manner so metaphysical Hermione had no proper way to describe it. That otherness, the madness that lurked in her blood… the curse that made everything seem dull and then suddenly too bright, too real-

That's where it had started, hadn't it? In the ache of her arm? The warmth that had whispered escape, that it could free her from the Dementor crafted agonies she'd been through. She was possessed in a way, half herself, half someone else. And at first, she had fought, pushing at the urges, embracing the numb and pain brought by the Dementors… but salvation, true peace, would only be given if she…

"Hermione," Harry said, voice soothing, "come back. Hermione, there's work to do."

She tilted her head, heard the words but could scarcely process them behind the thoughts that came, unbidden, whenever she felt this dagger. The blade felt right in her grip the handle heavy but alive, pulsing… It's magic caressed her skin and her own reacted, eager and willing as laughter rattled across her mentality and-

She took a sharp breath, a wheeze that made her chest feel tight, too full, "I'm here. I... I'm here."

She shook her head, pushing away the suffocating weight of a phantom body against her own and the thrill of pain that swam within her, tugging at an addiction she would not indulge.

Well, it was called a curse for a reason. Their dabbling in magics untamed didn't help, but she wouldn't fall off the cliff yet. Not today.

"Give it to me," she croaked, gaze upon the man as she walked forward and stood over him. "If I lose myself -"

"A high possibility," Ron interrupted, as he withdrew from his pocket one defunct Time-Turner and deposited it into her open palm.

"Then you need to wake me up, no matter how magic-drunk I am. We'll need to debrief."

She sat then, with very little grace, upon their victim's chest, forcing air out of his lungs and getting a bit of blood upon her thighs, "Filthy."

With the Turner now around her neck she leaned forward, breath steady and slow - keep your mind, ignore the haze - as she bundled the hair of one Pius Thicknesse around her unoccupied hand. While the other stroked the handle of the blade as it rested against her.

She craned his head back, gently at first, before she yanked his neck into an arch. She heard an intake of breath as she did so. Ron. Possibly Harry.

Her own breathing shook as excitement slithered through her, brought forth by the sense of power in her grip, by the wide bulging eyes of their prey, and the song of the leylines invading her mentality.

Yes, she thought, I want to sing too.

Anything.

Anything.

To feel alive. To ease the hunger. To settle the whispers, the cackling, the screaming, across her mind.

Anything to pay back the Empire for her pain and time.

For the betrayal that broke them.

She rolled her shoulders and shifted slightly, just so she could place the blade flat against the arch of his neck. She could see his pulse flutter, feel the way his body strained under the power of their bindings. Trapped, saturated in his fear, and she wanted him to drown in it.

Because, it was beautiful. This one little moment, Pius' strangulation by terror.

"Is this the one who gave the order?" Hermione whispered.

"One of them," Ron whispered back, wrapped up in the spell, in the trance that settled warmly over them as the circle sprang to life.

A sheen spilled around them, black and thick like ink, snapping in thin wisps as it spiraled up, trapping them in a tower of changing shadows and writhing ravenous patterns.

Hermione began to mumble the spelled words from the book that hovered closer. It gave her its secrets in Latin and she spoke them to the wilde.

Give me this power, this security.

"They'll replace him," Harry said, his voice warbled, warped by the pressure of magic that rose as the black tower struck the ceiling and caused the entire building to tremble. "Someone else. Kingsley is said to be running."

"And it'll be the same," Ron hissed, paying no mind to the walls that sparked with runes meant to keep the magic within - unnoticed and untraceable - and not spilling outside. "One master for another. It's the olde blood that really have the power, and not even the supposed right sort, not anymore."

Her ears began to ring, it was difficult to make Harry out-

"We will change the system then. We will seek to hold the chains. We will bring The Circle and dictate the lines. This is our best bet, our last shot. Without this, we have nothing."

Pius began to tremble beneath her, thrashing as magic slipped in from the leylines, as it stabbed into the open wounds crafted by Harry's haphazard actions and wriggled under his skin. She gasped as that magic sought to escape him, beating at the cage his body represented to a drum-song she could hear reverberate throughout her skull. She pressed the knife in, watched the blade part his flesh as blood bubbled to the surface…

But it wasn't enough, the magic whispered, not yet, even as Pius' blood now began to dance and wriggle, transformed into thin wisps and tendrils, to the beat of the magic that filled her.

"It's extreme," Ron said. "Worse than just running for Minister -"

"It has to be," Harry replied, "The Minister is always weak. Corruptible. Our reality needs more than that. We will dictate what is right, we will craft the culture. We will become the sun, the moon, and the stars if we must. Power built upon power and they will beg and scream for us to save them. They'll soon crawl in the streets asking for salvation, but not from a Ministry. Something else, and even then, we will gift them with something greater."

She hissed, felt the strain within her mind, as she read the final line of the spell that would seal their fates.

A scream then, Harry's call of, "It's working!"

But she couldn't tell. She couldn't feel her body. What she could feel was life, specifically Pius' as she pressed further, motions automatic to feed the blade, to feed the power within her and create the seal. His blood gurgled and spilled, twined upward, sentient and infused, before it struck the Turner around her neck. It tugged her down with an unprecedented force until she was close, so close to Pius face she could see with wide eyes the moment his own began to flicker and dim.

And then, suddenly, there was agony, a sensation akin to being torn asunder. Magic sought something within her, something precious and irreplaceable, and it sought to crush it. She bowed over, struck by the pain of it, by the pricking plucking sensation of needles clasping skin and pulling it away from bone and muscle. Heat collected in her chest, a pulsating inferno, that ravaged some untouchable portion of her being-

"You've got to pull!" A voice, but she couldn't identify the concept of it. What was a voice? What was a body, a being? There was only magic. Magic and suffering.

"She's gonna lose it, just like Higginson -"

"- not now, Ron!"

Ron.

Yes.

She could perceive that.

And she could also perceive that her soul was on fire.

One breath. Then another, and she managed to drop the blade. The blood - so much of it - soaked the front of her body as it clung like live tentacles to the Turner, but she didn't seek to break the contact. Her fingers. Her arms. She could move them, shift them toward her chest and… and with a harsh breath speak the word of separation -

And despite the fact that no air remained in her lungs, and that the word was barely audible, something began to form between her and the Turner.

Another bond.

She felt balance shift. Her vision tunneled, the pain eased as the thing the magic had grabbed onto began to move, pushed beyond her person into the Turner proper.

Then, sudden and absolute ecstasy.

She moaned as something snapped, a desperate needy sound filled with all the heat that began to ebb from her chest and out to the rest of her body. The pain, the soreness of separation, curled inward, a strike against her belly that had her short of breath and melting. Now the fury of magic wasn't searing, now it caressed her skin with longing, a familiar addictive lover of wild aggression.

Exhaustion came on the tail end of desire and she toppled, nerves alive and humming as the Turner about her neck throbbed like a second heartbeat. Sluggish. Rhythmic. And satisfied.

Harry caught her as he collapsed onto his knees, her upper half held in his arms as he hissed as if stung. Ron was quick to hover over her, face flushed and panting, stimulated by the expression of greater magic. He ran his hands along her body and she trembled, arched up like a cat, drunk on power and success.

"Bloody hell, she feels… she feels…!"

Ron couldn't find the words for it. Harry only made odd strained sounds in the back of his throat.

She felt it was an appropriate response, considering her own state of being. But it had worked.

The creation of her Horcrux. The burning boil of magic throughout her blood.

And the scalding erasure of the mundane from her very being.

Because they would give the Empire a gift. A proper being of power and order. They would bring Great Britain under absolute authority and the people would beg for it. Their gracious benevolence -

- from their immortalized Sovereign.