AN: Only another two chapters after this one. I hope everyone's enjoying it so far. What's been your favourite part?
The school didn't feel right when they were finally permitted to return. Harry and Ron were there. Neville, Ginny and Luna too along, with many others who contributed to the idea of it being Home.
But at the same time, far too many of them were gone and would never return.
The blood had been cleaned away, the walls and ceilings rebuilt. The smoke had cleared and the screams that had echoed off the stone walls were no more than a memory.
Every now and then, Peeves still screeched through the halls, rhapsodising Harry's defeat over Voldemort but there were subtle differences about even him that could only be attributed to his relationship with the late, great Fred Weasley.
And it wasn't just the dead who hadn't returned. A number of students who had survived the final battle, and who had even been present in the days afterwards to lend a hand, failed to appear at Kings Cross on September first.
Among those missing was Dennis Creevey – presumably unable to return to the place where his brother died. Niall Callaghan, a sixth year Hufflepuff who had witnessed the murder of not only his girlfriend Neryssa Pratt, but also his favourite professor, was also absent. It was said he had cut ties with everyone in order to travel the world, ridding it of any evils he could defeat, in an effort to ease his grief.
Then there was Draco Malfoy.
Rumours ran rife the first few weeks of term and many reasons were supplied to explain away his absence. The favourite being that he'd been chucked into the darkest, dankest cell at Azkaban within days of the wars end.
Someone even claimed they saw his body among the dead the night of Voldemort's end.
There was never any confirmation or denial when it came any rumour that concerned him though. Even his closest friends, Blaise Zabini and Pansy Parkinson couldn't shed any light on the matter. Not that too many people tried to pry information out of them.
When the school reopened and students returned to the Great Hall, Slytherin was severely outnumbered by the other three houses. The once boisterous group had become the quietest. The older students most likely thinking the less noise they made and attention they drew to themselves, the more likely they could avoid any punishment or ridicule from other students.
Despite all he had said or done during the six years of their acquaintance Hermione found herself hoping the number one rumour was false. She knew he wasn't dead, at least he hadn't died that night, but who knew when or if she would ever learn where he'd ended up?
For all the evil he had done and possessed, he had at the heart of it, been little more than a scared young boy, trying to keep his family together and safe.
He joined our side in the final battle, she thought to herself. Fighting with us against the monster who had taken up residence in his family home; that had to count for something.
As she floated through the months of lessons, somehow absorbing the information necessary to pass her exams without paying the slightest bit of attention, Hermione's mind wandered increasingly towards the absent Slytherin boy who, on at least two occasions, had saved her life, even if he continued to hate her mere existence.
When graduation rolled around and it was finally time to say goodbye to the school that had shaped the woman she had become, Hermione found she wasn't as sad to leave as she had anticipated she would be in earlier years.
It would be a relief she realised, not to have to pass the places where so many horrible events had taken place. Even so, she had been apprehensive to step out in to the world.
With Voldemort dead, the one thing she had committed her life to since the age of eleven was over. Fighting beside her best friends for the freedom of the wizarding world was no longer necessary.
What was she to do but throw herself, wholeheartedly into her quest of finding a bona fide Seer to tell her which path to take next?
Returning to Hogwarts to do over her final year made sense. Returning her parent's memories and consenting to their living a dual citizenship in both homes they loved made sense.
Taking a card from a strange woman in a pub that proclaimed the most accurate Seer in the United Kingdom wasn't too bizarre. Especially considering she had spent the better part of the year since completing her studies searching for a true clairvoyant to tell her which direction she was supposed to take next.
She had openly opposed the idea of Divination and all its associated practices while in school. But since fighting in a war in which she saw too many friends die, and discovering that she had no idea what she was supposed to do with herself from that point on, she had taken to visiting all the best reputed mediums in the greater London area.
What didn't make sense was that she had studied the card for hours. She had stood on the corner of Cicada and Trinity two nights in a row. Observing the black and white tents, the strange clock at the entrance and the people, many of whom wore a red scarf with their monochromatic outfits, she had fully contemplated throwing everything away and following this eclectic group wherever they were headed before even speaking with one of them.
Just as she had expected, though desperately hoped would not be the case, the fortune teller - who sat in a small room that smelled just like the store room of Flourish and Blotts where she had helped out a little in the previous months to fill her time - was little more help than the twenty-seven who had come before her.
Instead, she had offered just as vague answers to Hermione's questions and continuously referenced a 'him'.
Having no interest in finding a man, but rather a new path for her dishevelled life, Hermione tossed a handful of money at the woman and stalked back to the opening of the tent in frustration puzzled further by the woman's parting words of,
"The birds will intrigue them. He'll like that,"
She had paused, hoping the woman would share some useful final words, but of course, that was too much to ask. When she turned around, she found she was alone in the tent, and couldn't help wondering if she really had heard a 'pop' or if it was just her imagination.
Almost blind to the things around her, Hermione walked until she reached the base of a tall oak. With barely a thought in her mind, she dropped into a seated position in front of the tree and leaned back into the trunk that seemed to curve around her.
Staring up into the branches, she watched the leaves sway in the moonlight for a moment before and idea struck her.
With a whisper aimed at the heavens, every leaf fell from the branches above her head and began a slow decent to the ground. Before even one of them could land, however, she offered another undertone and the air suddenly filled with the songs of hundreds of black birds.
Feeling someone watching her, Hermione looked away from her creation and sought out the eyes she knew were on her. A few yards away stood a man who seemed to have little interest in the birds.
He was the only person in the gardens not focused on the feathered creatures, seeming to glance at them for only a moment. He began to make his way towards her, weaving around tents and gaping spectators too stunned to move. Despite the obstacles between them, it seemed as if his eyes remained on her the entire time.
Uttering a third incantation brought all of the birds back to the branches before they fell silent and returned to their original form of leaves.
Waiting patiently she watched him as he came towards her, neither of them breaking eye contact. When he reached her side, he studied her quite seriously for a moment before speaking. "I wonder if we might have a word."
"Of course," She replied standing and following him to a nearby structure, which presumably housed his office.
She was sure that he was the one. She felt certain he was the person the clairvoyant had been urging her towards, after seeing him more interested in her than the birds.
Officially, she was known as the Illusionist. Unofficially she went by the name Perdita.
Officially, she kept to herself, showing no desire to make friends, other than occasionally trying to engage the fortune teller in conversation, hoping for a little more insight into her future. Unofficially she poured over notebooks filled with as many Transfiguration spells and Charms incantations as she could remember, adding to them all the time when something else returned to her.
Officially, her relationship with the proprietor, her new employer, was one of aloof professionalism. Unofficially she felt him watching her often. Everywhere she went there he was, his eyes burning in to her skin.
It didn't make a lot of sense. Aside from their first conversation in which he offered her a job, disclosing to her that his fortune teller had told him their paths would cross at a specific time, they'd had almost no contact.
For the first few nights, he oversaw her performances, but after that, she rarely saw him at all. There were occasions that she found him watching as she walked about the grounds of whatever Common they happened to be In, or moving from one carriage of their train to another.
But after her first month with the company he seemed to make it a point to not be anywhere near her if at all possible.
After that first month, she found herself unable to think on it too often though, as she noticed another man always in attendance at her shows, always taking the same seat, always watching with the same intensity.
She first noticed him in Paris, where he observed her for a week as she turned scarves into snakes, goblets into birds, made hats simply Vanish and lights appear where there were no lights before.
When in Malta she found him again, and once more in Mongolia, she thought nothing of it. But, when he was still showing up after two months and over a dozen countries, she began to become concerned.
Resolving to speak with him in Vaasa she made her way towards his seat where he remained sitting even as the tent emptied after her third and final show of the night - all of which he had watched from the same seat he always did - but just before she reached him, he disappeared.
Rationalising to herself that she must have just blinked as someone passed between them, giving him a moment to leave, she shook him and his constant presence from her mind.
But when it happened again the next night she knew she needed to let someone else know.
"I wondered if you could oversee my next performance," she proposed to Mr Burrows, over a pot of China Jasmine.
They would be in the US by morning, a fact that made it even more puzzling that this man had managed to keep up over the previous weeks. There was no set schedule and travel time didn't seem to factor in at all; the circus could be in Algeria one night and the Australian outback the next, yet he almost always was still able to find them.
"I've been thinking of making a few alterations and I'd like your take on them."
"Of course, I'll be right up the front," he agreed.
"Perfect," she replied, thinking that if anyone could help her get to the bottom of this issue with the vanishing man it would be the manager.
As promised, Mister Burrows sat in the front row when she stepped to the middle of the stage. Disillusioned, she took in each of the faces that surrounded her and it quickly became obvious that the man who had been to see her almost every night since her first was not in attendance.
With conflicting emotions and questions running through her mind, she went about the new routine she had come up with. All the while wondering why he wasn't there.
Was he hurt? Had he finally tired of looking at her? Would he return tomorrow night? He had missed a few shows before, but somehow it felt more important that he was missing this one. What did it mean?
Then she stopped wondering, because she felt it. The gaze.
It came from somewhere new, so it hadn't occurred to her at first that it was in fact the same but as she looked up to gauge the reaction of her employer she knew. The disappearing man who had followed from Paris and all over the world was sitting in front of her at that moment.
His eyes burned with the same intensity she had felt for months from the stranger who now appeared to be gone, replaced by this man she had grown to trust at least on a basic level.
Faltering slightly, her concentration slipped and the small bluebell fire surrounding her feet flared, appearing to engulf her legs. Many people throughout the tent screamed and shifted backwards away from her and the danger they believed to be surrounding her.
Unable to finish out the performance she whispered the counter-charm to extinguish the flames and envisioned her train car. She was there in a moment, leaving her audience stunned.
