Hermione Granger's face was plastered in a not-so-flattering fashion to the inside of her book, having drooled slightly since falling asleep inside its pages. Outside her, a maelstrom was brewing, but she was ignorant of this. Sleep, what was the one solace for so many other war veterans, had fallen over Hermione like a suffocating shroud, and her troubled face reflected the troubled thoughts brewing like the advancing storm within her ever-astute mind.
Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, not altogether an odd occurrence in the middle of a storm, but it was the loudest clap of thunder yet, and the two ingredients of the perfect storm had lashed out in unison, meaning the storm was full upon them. Rain slashed against her roof and window almost as if it held some personal vendetta against them.
Hermione sat up stock-still, looking left to right like a frightened rabbit. The sound of thunder so close had caused her to wake up, but it was a mercy, instead of a nuisance. Something deep inside, something left of the coldly logical Hermione said that nighttime was meant for sleep, but Hermione ignored this.
In silence, she swept to her feet, and over to the window, peering up at the pitch-black sky. No stars hung out over the world this night. She shut her eyes, allowing the coolness of the windowpane to radiate onto her burning cheeks, allowing the sound of rain and thunder and flash of occasional lightning on the inside of her eyelids to draw her into the storm, farther into the night. She stayed like this several long moments, before opening her eyes with a sigh, stepping backward, and jamming the curtains shut over the window.
Tonight. Tonight was the perfect night.
She stepped over a few crumpled and besmirched pieces of parchment on her way back to her desk, remembering in some forgotten corner of her subconscious that time when she used to be prim and always neat and organized. It was no use now. She kicked irritably at a particular ball of parchment halfway to her destination across the floor. It rolled away uselessly, losing momentum and barely tapping an opposite wall.
Hermione slammed the book shut with a certain kind of snappish manner, meaning she was extremely determined at the moment. The title flashed in the bit of light coming from the tired candle on the desk: Secrets From Beyond the Veil. She threw the book onto a heap near an empty bookshelf she had never gotten around to filling.
She grabbed a cloak and flung it around her shoulders, swiftly tying a knot with trembling hands. It would not hold long, she knew, but she did not need long.
She stepped outside, letting the slick feeling of rain slip down under her clothes and tease at her warm skin. It was a wonderful feeling, and had it been any other night, she would have willed it take away the pain, the memories boiling inside her; but this was not any other night, and tonight, she would need that very pain and those very memories.
She did not know why she raced so far along the lane in the pouring rain, almost ankle-deep in water; she hardly was aware she was even doing such a thing. She was two blocks away from her flat before finally stopping, checking to make sure nobody was watching, and Apparating away.
Her mind was so preoccupied, it was a wonder she made it to the right place. She reeled slightly. She was unused to seeing the Ministry of Magic so deserted. She was certain, however, that there were people lurking about.
Thankfully, she thought with an inside smile, she had a remedy for all the questions that may have been asked. She dipped her hand into the interior of her robe, groping around for the right pocket, and finally pulling out the badge which, with a wave of her wand, secured itself to a spot over her heart. It read plainly 'Department of Mysteries: Level II'. Full access, if not entirely full knowledge.
Well, Hermione had always been terrible adept at attaining knowledge for herself.
She walked slowly and dutifully to the lift, waiting only a short moment before the doors slid open for her. She leaned back against the back wall, relishing the emptiness, the openness, how hollow and inhuman the woman's voice sounded as it called out at every level, and then, finally, named Hermione's destination. Hermione found it in herself to chuckle at the morbid humor, that something so full and wonderful in the daytime could ring so cold and lonely at night. Although nothing could ever touch the pools or intensity of Hermione's loneliness, she found she could relate to something created merely for magical purposes not for the first time.
The second, of course, that Hermione shut the door to the Department of Mysteries, the walls spun around and around, but they no longer fooled Hermione. Once they had done, she whipped out her wand, carefully aimed it at the leftmost door, and muttered to spell that would allow her to see through the door.
It was the wrong room, she knew right off. She moved her sight to the door on its right. This, too, was the wrong door.
The next door over, Hermione could not see through, which meant one thing—it was the ever-locked door to the room most Unspeakables would have given their lives to be able to enter. Many of Hermione's co-workers had poured their entire lives into the study of the contents of this room. Hermione alone showed little to no interest in it.
This room was fabled to be filled with love, the invisible substance which granted witches and wizards happiness, and their one true savior a set of weapons that led to the fall of his adversary. This room had killed the Dark Lord Voldemort, had granted peace to the Wizarding world as a whole.
But Hermione blamed this room for her sorrow, her loneliness. It was no coincidence, she had decided, that the men she had loved had died. To her, to love someone was to poison him, to ensure his death.
The next door over was it, and the walked through almost numbly. Her feet led her the seldom-traveled way to the amphitheater where so much of her life had fallen apart, so much of her merriment molded to silence and torment.
Almost before she was aware of it, she was in front of the arch, the fragile-looking stone with the tattered rag of a veil fluttering as if on a light breeze inside it. She could have sworn she heard whispers, but she paid them no heed.
Hermione fell back into a sitting position, folding her legs together in a way that seemed most comfortable. Was it just her imagination, or did she feel that roll of thunder, so many floors above her?
Pushing this and every other unnecessary thought out of her mind, she focused on the task at hand. She stared the arch and veil down, like an old enemy, because that was exactly what it was; it was definitely the worst enemy Hermione had ever had. It had stolen two people away from her, two of the people that had meant the most to her in her life. For that, it would never be forgiven. For that, tonight, is would pay back half the price.
Hermione found she was sweating, and made short work of wiping the beads from her forehead and cheeks. She knew her neck was a lost cause, so she left it safely in her cloak, allowing sweat to almost soak all the way through the thick fabric.
She drew her wand dramatically, and it shone for an instant like a sword in the sun.
"Markem." She whispered, and then put the point of her wand to the ground, drawing what she hoped was as close to a perfect circle as possible on the ground, all the way around her. It showed like plain white chalk on the musty mahogany floorboards around her.
This was the moment, she thought with bated breath. It was the moment she had toiled and studied and waited for. She had done five years' worth of waiting, and the stress built up all fell onto her shoulders like an anvil now, so hard and sudden that she would be surprised if it did not bruise in the morning. But it was too late, far too late to leave.
She knew the arch. She had studied it since she was seventeen years old. She knew what it wanted. This night, she would give it what it wanted.
Hermione was aware that the arch and veil represented mistakes. Death. Lives spirited away before their time. It had taken her entire adult life thus far as well as the channeling of all of her pain and suffering into one cause most would have brushed off as futile, but she had learned how to remedy these mistakes. Tonight would be the test.
With a flick of her wand, Hermione conjured up a diamond dagger, with a jewel-encrusted hilt. She opened her hand and caught it, allowing her wand to clatter uselessly to the floor.
The echo filled the room.
Slowly, Hermione lifted her sweating left palm from the floorboards. Teeth gritted, as though moving against some invisible force, the held out her left forearm, baring it to the ceiling.
Yes, she could almost hear the arch whisper. She was giving it its pay, what she knew it desired most of all.
She was giving it her blood.
With a flash of the dagger from an unknown light, a rip appeared in the once flawlessly smooth skin of Hermione's wrist and arm. How such once-pristine skin could now appear so tainted, she never knew. How much blood one person had… she could hardly imagine. The sight of her own blood, still warm, gushing from her arm made her quite queasy. Biting her tongue was all she could do to stop herself vomiting. The sight of the crimson sliding and dripping in angry tears off the point of the crystal dagger alone caused Hermione weakness and a sudden tenderness in her other wrist, her calves, and neck, as if they were frightened of the blade.
With a flick of the blade, a single drop of blood was sent flying through the arch, past the fluttering veil….
Light erupted in and around Hermione, a pain so renting that she could hardly bear it. Had she not created the circle of protection, she knew she would be long past dead by now. Steeling herself against the mind-splitting pain, she yelled defensively, against the howling wind that had come from nowhere. The conviction in her own voice surprised her as she chanted the necessary words.
"Open, taunting, and let that whom thy claimed from me, who the loss of created in me a shallow reflecting pool of all my gathered sorrows, let he who left out of focus and out of time ret…" Hermione found her voice fading, her conviction slipping. She could barely speak above a hoarse whisper now, the wind ravaging her throat. She opened her eyes, and something heartened her—there was a shadowy figure, lurking somewhere just beyond the veil. She found the strength she needed.
"Return." Sweat beaded on her forehead and all down her back, but such not-so-pleasantries were hardly noticeable. She gritted her teeth.
"To." The figure appeared even on the inside of her eyelids. It alone lent her strength for the last word, binding the spell.
"Me."
The wind died, the light flickered out, and the cosmos stopped swirling around her. Hermione's eyes opened, and, just as she felt the last of her energy drained from her, she saw a tall, wiry figure step out from the archway, pushing the veil aside like a mere annoyance.
Hermione only registered that something was very, very wrong before falling back in a dead faint.
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There was an uncanny silence. Where had everyone gone? Moments before, this room had been filled with yelling and cursing and hexes flying left and right. Now, it was empty.
Sirius pressed a hand to his chest, grimacing slightly. Where had his cousin learned that curse? He thought that only Snivelly and the Marauders had known it. Perhaps Snivelly taught it to her in one of their old Death Eater meetings, Sirius thought acidly. Wherever she had learned it, it smarted like hell.
Suddenly, Sirius's heart twisted in his chest, almost constricting his air supply. Harry. He had to find Harry, to make sure none of the Death Eaters had gotten to him.
He took off running, but made it a grand total of three steps before tripping over something remarkably solid. His face crunched unpleasantly against the floor, and the wind was knocked out of him completely. It took him several moments and several deep, deep breaths before he was able to turn around and see what his legs were tangled up over.
It was a girl.
Sirius quickly untangled his legs and crawled over to her curiously to investigate her. She was an awful mess, covered in sweat and frizzy hair, and, from a long cut from wrist to inner elbow, blood. He made a quick decision to help the girl before searching for his godson… she might know where Harry had gone, anyway.
Sirius looked around frantically for his wand, and instead found what must have been the girl's, dropped a mere foot or so away from her. He waved it at the cut, which immediately stopped bleeding, but did not sew together as neatly as he would have liked, an unfortunate side effect of using a wand not his own. She would have a scar.
He allowed it to cross his mind what she could have been doing there, in the middle of the battle. He had certainly overlooked her, although there was something about her young-yet-aged face, a hidden quality, perhaps, that was uncannily familiar to him.
Sirius pointed her wand at her, and muttered, "Ennervate."
She stirred slightly, but only to lick her lips and turn her head the other way. He rolled his eyes and got to his feet. He would have to find Harry his own way.
He slowly morphed into a large, grizzly black dog, and, nose in the air for any possible scent, rushed off in search of his godson, or anyone who might be able to find him.