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Chapter 1

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Convincing Harry had been the easiest and hardest part of going through the veil. Hermione used both his love of Sirius and his guilt over the man's death to get his blessing for her trip. She'd needed his blessing, as they both knew that there was every possibility that it would be a one-way trip.

Just like Sirius.

Just like the other four Unspeakables who had dared try pass through the veil in the past twenty-eight years.

Hermione left Harry, Minister Shacklebolt and a very despondent looking Unspeakable at the door to the room where the veil was kept. A room she'd been in only once before but had been mysteriously drawn to ever since. She didn't dare look back at them, knowing that if she did she might not have the willpower to go through with it. To risk her life for the chance to save others.

On paper her mission was simple. Pass through the veil and attempt to return to the land of the living. It was the same mission as the last four Unspeakables who'd been assigned to the Veil. Everybody and their mother believed it was a fool's mission.

But in Hermione's heart there was a much more serious mission at hand. She intended to pass through Death's door and take back everyone who had been wrongly taken from them. No one knew. She'd hid her personal interests so well that even the Minister didn't know what she intended. For his part, Harry only suspected that she was going to try to reach Sirius. He hadn't spoken his desires aloud, but Hermione knew. Her best friend just wanted his godfather back.

And she was going to do it.

Facing the veil, Hermione ignored the whispers that seemed to be just on the other side of it. They were no more real in this world than her magic would be in the next. She peeled off her ministry robes, folding them and setting them to the left of the steps up to the veil. She relinquished her wand next, not daring to hesitate as the familiar wood left her fingers and called to her from its spot atop the robes. Wearing a bright yellow muggle sweatshirt and jeans, Hermione mounted the steps.

The veil seemed bigger than ever now that she actually intended to go through it. Thin, shredded fabric stirring in a non-existent breeze. As if calling to her, the voices from the other side hummed louder, gaining intensity. But she ignored it all.

She shoved her hands into her pockets, rolled the sharp-edged Resurrection stone between her fingers and took a deep breath. Five other witches and wizards had passed through the veil. Hermione Granger would be the sixth, but she did not intend to stay there as they had.

Taking one last breath while she was alive, Hermione Granger released it and stepped through the veil.

For all the arithmantic equations she'd compiled. For all the dark artifacts and tomes she'd studied. For all the hours she had spent preparing herself to enter the veil. Hermione had never once thought about what it would actually be like to pass from the land of the living to the land of the dead.

It was excruciatingly wonderful. Whispers of fabric around her body drew her into Death's warm embrace. A sweetness she had never known settled in her heart and the darkness of this new plane of existence soothed not only her body but her mind and soul as well. There was nothing there but peace and calm and perfection. Hermione forgot to breathe, forgot to think, and allowed herself to just feel. She melted into death as though it were an old friend, falling forward to let the darkness cushion and soothe and keep her forever.

Before she fully succumbed, the Resurrection Stone bit into the flesh of her hand. It was freezing cold, the rush Hermione needed to remember her mission, to remember her reason for coming into this wonderful, dangerous place. Moreover, as the cold burned her hand, Hermione recalled all her reasons for returning.

"No!"