AN ~ Hello everyone. I can not apologise enough for the near-epoch that has past since my last update. I wish I could say I had an excuse, but the bottom line is that I was stuck. I knew what I wanted to happen, but it wouldn't go on the page. Anyway, I hope there are still a few of you out there to read this.


'Desire'

by Witherwings


Chapter Twelve


He didn't need to be told twice.

Abruptly releasing his grip on the young Death Eater's robes, Harry scrambled to his feet, his arms pinwheeling ahead of him as he tried to keep his balance, the soles of his shoes finding scant purchase on the timeworn stone. Only poise born out of countless hours spent astride a broom kept him somewhere near the vertical and he sped off in pursuit of Hermione's already rapidly retreating heels.

However, no sooner had he regained his footing, Harry found himself pitching forwards once more, the ground rushing up to meet his face. He had snagged his trailing foot on Carrow's outstretched arm and, completely powerless to arrest his momentum, he hit the deck with a sickening sound that could only be described as a wet crunch.

When time next reassembled itself – One? Five? Ten seconds later? – Harry found himself lying face down on a bed of unyielding stone, an ill defined sense of panic swirling about him like the last remnants of a nightmare he could not fully grasp.

"Hermione?"

As always, he thought of — feared for? — her first. But although he could feel the muscles of his jaw working to form the familiar syllables of her name, the only sound that came forth was a pitiful moan; a sound born of a painful throbbing, one that he had only just become aware of, radiating outwards from the bridge of his nose.

His tongue darted forwards to wet his lips, the taste of grit and the familiar tang of iron confirming the likely cause of the aforementioned pain: his nose was broken.

Blinking back the darkness that haloed his sight, Harry pushed himself roughly onto all fours. There he swayed unsteadily for a moment.

"Hermione!"

Though he was certain that he had succeeded in producing speech that was at least somewhat coherent this time, his tremulous voice was immediately overpowered by a powerful blast of sound: a single, terrifying note that sounded more like a wail of static from a poorly tuned muggle radio than anything else.

Ignoring the wave of vertigo he knew it would induce, Harry shoved himself fully upright and twisted towards the source of the unearthly noise. Instantly, his panic, like a ship emerging from the mist, coalesced into full and terrifying detail – The draugr!

Standing at least six foot tall, the creature, its head tossed back so that what little remained of its tangled hair spilled past the scabbard it wore on its back, ceased it's terrible cry, closed its gash of a mouth and began to advance on Harry's position.

"Run, Harry! For God's sake, RUN!"

Hermione's shouts — frantic, bordering on the hysterical — called out to him from somewhere over his left shoulder, the sound of her pounding footfalls colliding with her every word. But Harry, almost as if his body had forgotten how, could not move, his gaze utterly transfixed on the being before him.

Skeletally thin leg, the remnants of its skin stretched taut across its bones visible beneath its leather armour, Harry could understand why he had initially mistaken the creature for an inferus. But this, he could tell, although similar in outward appearance to the army of slaves Voldemort had chosen to entrust one of his Horcruxes to, was a far more dangerous foe.

For one thing, he had never witnessed even a flicker of emotion cross the features of any such beast before — they felt nothing — yet this one wore a dangerous smirk that he could only describe as malevolent, an expression that pulled taut the emaciated flesh of its ruined face. For another, he realised with a start, the creature was actually changing before his very eyes.

Like a grain of rice immersed in water, the draugr swiftly swelled to at least twice its former size. Wasted muscle and flesh, which had once clung to its cadaverous frame like moth bitten drapes adorning a draft riddled window, engorged with a sense of renewed power and vitality that instantly banished the memory of the creature's formerly diminished form.

Harry, however, noted these changes only dimly, much as one might register the weather upon first glancing out of a window, his attention instead held rapt by the one thing that had remained unaltered throughout: its eyes. Milky white, yet in possession of a dark, unknowable quality he could not readily articulate; Harry found himself unable to look away.

Instantly he was someplace—someone?—else.

He was his father, his desperate last stand against Voldemort dispatched in less than the blinking of an eye.

He was his mother, pleading for the life of her son – for him. Her existence literally torn away in a blinding flash of light.

He was Quirrell, his every cell ablaze, his skin turning to ash even as his master drove him forwards once more.

'Don't look at it!" As if someone had clasped their hands over his ears, Hermione's voice reached him only distantly, his mind repulsed, yet simultaneously consumed by—addicted to?—the harrowing visions that invaded his thoughts. Visions, reasoned the tiny fragment of his right thinking mind that remained, that were somehow being projected directly into his consciousness by the draugr.

He was Ginny Weasley.

Terrified.

Cold.

Alone.

One last rattling breath slipping past her cracked and partially opened lips as the shadow that had once been Tom Riddle became terrifyingly real once more.

He was Remus, a noose hanging limply around his neck. His constant torment driven to new depths by the memories of his murderous revenge against the traitorous rat Pettigrew during his last transformation.

Powerless to prevent history repeating itself, Harry watched helplessly as he—as Remus—kicked away the stool upon which he was perched, the rope snapping tight around his neck as he fell …

Crack!

Time splintered around him. For the briefest of moments he was everywhere and yet nowhere at once before, just suddenly, he was back in the cave, the detail of the visions dissipating as quickly as the clap of sound that had brought him back to his senses.

"You can't look at it!"

He was on his knees (although he had no memory of how that had come to be), Hermione crouched directly in front of him, so close that he could feel her hot breath against his faintly damp cheek. Tears, supplied his sluggish mind. Have I been crying?

"They can get inside your mind," she explained, her wide, uncertain eyes roving all over his face. "Literally drive a person insane …"

For a split second, Harry felt certain she was going to add more. Instead, no sooner had she finished saying this, she grabbed him by the hand and spurred him into motion, forcibly pushing him to one side to avoid tripping over the form of Mimas Carrow again. (Unbeknown to him, Mimas, still bound by Hermione's curse, had been rendered insensate when, unable to support his own weight, the back of his head had struck stone when Harry had rather unceremoniously released his grip on him.)

No more than half a quidditch pitch in length, it was not long before they had reached the the spot where the curving arch of the cave's stone ceiling met the ground. With no where else to run, Hermione dragged Harry down behind the meagre cover afforded them by a small Rocky outcrop. He did not resist as she guided him into a seated position with his back pressed against their makeshift parapet.

Harry screwed his eyes shut. His mind was racing as fast as his heartbeat, a thousand questions clamouring for his full attention at once: What the bloody hell is that thing? What did it do to me? He touched the fingertips of his conjoined index and middle fingers to his cheek. He winced. And why does it feel as if I have taken a bludger to the jaw?

"Harry!" Rendering him too stunned to voice any of those thoughts aloud, Harry's eyes sprang open as Hermione deposited herself onto his lap. Her knees were straddled either side of him, her bottom coming to rest somewhere near his hips. He felt his other cheek warm.

"Are you all right?" she panted, bracketing his face in her hands and duly eliciting another wince of pain.

"Yeah," he hissed.

A wave of relief, commingled with a flicker of another emotion he never dared hoped to see there flooded her features. The later vanishing so quickly Harry had to wonder whether it had ever been there at all.

"Everything aside from my cheek," he added.

As if hit by a powerful repulsor charm, Hermione's hands flew away from his face. "Sorry." Then she added: "But I couldn't think of another way to get through to you. Y - you were in some sort of trance. It was like you couldn't hear me ... couldn't see me …"

It was then that the last piece of the jigsaw that made up the events of the last few moments slipped into place. The echoing clap of sound, the sharp pain across his cheek, his momentary disorientation. She slapped me, he realised and he lifted his hand to brush the raised welt on the side of his face again.

Perhaps that realisation showed on his face, for now Hermione also leant forward. The fingers of her left hand gently cupped the undamaged side of his face, whilst those of her right entwined around the fingers of his own hand that were tentatively exploring the already swollen lump. Tenderly she guided them away.

"Sorry," she repeated, her voice carried forth on a softly exhaled breath.

Harry's own breath hitched in his throat. She was looking at him in that same way again – a smile that was evident only in her eyes, her expressive brows ever so slightly pressed together – it was the same expression he had often seen adorning her feature's—those of the other Hermione's—on those occasions when she would watch Ron when she thought no one was else was looking. His heart swelled painfully in his chest. Is it possible? Can she feel the same the same?

As ecstatic as that possibility made him, the rational side of him realised that now was neither the time nor the place to talk about it. Focus, he chided himself. One thing at a time.

Aloud he said: "There's nothing to be sorry about. You saved me." He gave her hand a small squeeze of gratitude. "Twice."

Hermione directed a coy smile towards the ground before appearing to remember where they were. "Not that it will do us much good if we can't find a way out of here," she added.

Harry couldn't help but agree. He tried to sit up a little straighter but but found himself pinned in place by Hermione's weight.

"Er, Hermione?" He glanced down, pulling her gaze down with him.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her cheeks reddening as she recognised both his predicament and the compromising nature of their positions. "Sorry," she said again.

Freed from the prison of her legs, Harry flashed her a quick smile before pushing himself onto his knees to chanced a glance over the low wall of stone.

"What is that thing?" he asked as he watched the now colossal draugr unhurriedly approaching the still insensate form of its master.

"Draugar are undead warriors," came the immediate reply. "They can be differentiated from Inferi and other revenants by their impressive magical abilities," she continued, slipping into what Harry had long ago termed her lecture mode. He had no doubt she was quoting from some obscure tome titled something misleadingly cheerful like Walking with the Walking Dead. "They can pass through solid rock, alter their form at will and possess the power to ensnare their victim's consciousness in an unending waking nightmare …"

Harry had heard enough – We've got to find a way out of here – but, before he could so much as voice that thought aloud or chance another glance in the hopes of identifying some alternate means of escape that had, until now, alluded him, Hermione's grip on his fingers suddenly tightened.

"Mimas!" she exclaimed, her gaze directed back from whence they had fled. "We just left him there!"

Harry's brow crumpled in confusion, his first reaction—so?—warring with the evidence of his own senses as he followed the line of his best friend's eye.

Each of its tree trunk sized legs now straddling the still supine Death Eater, Harry watched as the draugr, a wicked smile pulling at the its newly restored features, slowly and deliberately lifted one enormous foot and positioned it above the rousing Carrow. Evidently it was intent on crushing him only once he had fully regained consciousness.

"I don't understand." Harry twisted towards Hermione. "Carrow summoned the bloody thing. He controls it, doesn't he?" But even before Hermione shook her head in response – a tiny, almost imperceptible movement – Harry knew that his assumptions had been way off.

"No one can control a draugr, Harry," she explained. "Inferi might be little more than mindless slaves, but draugar are cruel, vindictive creatures, motivated only but their love of gold and their delight in causing great suffering amongst the living."

Harry could well believe it, the draugr's malicious grin strikingly similar to the one worn by his cousin Dudley when he would set fire to ants with a magnifying glass in the back garden of his aunt's house.

Now Hermione did face him. "It's going to kill him unless we do something."

Let him die. The response was immediate, visceral, but immediately quashed by another voice – her voice – that bubbled up from deep within. No one deserves to die like that. Save him.

A small smile ghosted across his features. She had always been the best of him; made him a better man. It would have never occurred to him to grant clemency to a man who had only recently tried to kill him. He wondered if that were also true of his counterpart in the universe from which she had travelled. Or had his own experiences left him hardened, somehow less compassionate? Less humane?

Putting that question aside, Harry nodded his agreement. "I'll get Carrow," he declared aloud, a seed of a plan already taking root within his mind: distract the draugr, get to Carrow and force him show them the way out. "Cover me."

His trust in her implicit, Harry broke cover before Hermione could so much as acknowledge his request. Nevertheless, he was unsurprised to see a jet of red energy arc over his head before slamming into the giant's shoulder sending it stumbling backwards, clutching at its injured arm and howling in pain.

His mouth set into a grimly determined line, Harry pounded across the cavern as fast as his leaden legs would carry him. Seconds later, he fell to his knees alongside his quarry.

"Motus!" He yelled the counter curse over the sound of yet more of Hermione's hexes striking their targets. Carrow let out a low moan, but still he did not stir.

I haven't got time for this, thought Harry impatiently. If this draugr was even half as deadly as Hermione suggested – and she had never given him any reason to doubt her word before – she wouldn't be able to hold her own for long.

"Aguamenti!" A jet of water, more powerful perhaps than was strictly necessary, immediately shot forth from the tip of his wand. He knew he could have used Ennervate but, although he had chosen to spare his life, a simple reviving spell seemed too good for someone like Mimas Carrow; somehow he felt Hermione would approve.

Coughing and spluttering against the resultant deluge, Harry was still taking no chances: "Incarcerous," he intoned and bound the Death Eaters arms to his side with a length of strong yet thin cord.

"Release me!" screamed his prisoner.

Harry actually smiled at that. "And if I don't?"

In lieu of a response, Carrow fought a futile battle against his bonds, his cheeks reddening with effort before he gave up and fixed Harry with a hateful glare.

"I though as much." Harry couldn't keep the slightly smug note from his voice. "Now," he added, balling Carrow's robes into his fist and pulling him to his feet, "you're going to play nice and show us a way out of here that doesn't involve nearly drowning and in return I'm going to let you live so that you can stand trial for your crimes – "

"HARRY!"

Hermione's shouted interruption drew his attention away from the silent conflict playing across the Death Eater's face – assist them and face certain incarceration; decline and die – and back towards the battle he had thus far been forced to tune out.

Although Hermione continued to lay down a barrage of wand fire, the draugr, its six foot long broadsword drawn and already hand, was now steadily advancing on her position, each hex seemingly less effective than the last.

It was then that he understood, the words that Hermione had spoken mere minutes ago – "They can alter their form at will" – reverberating loudly in his mind. Through means he did not comprehend, the draugr had somehow made itself impervious to spell fire.

"Hermione!" he yelled. "I'm coming." Then, speaking directly into Carrow's ear, he added a single word: "Move!"

His demand issued as little more than a feral growl and, still not taking any chances, he thrust the tip of his wand into the soft flesh beneath Carrow's chin, frog-marching him forwards by virtue of his other hand which was clamped firmly (and no doubt painfully) around the other man's bicep.

Hermione's eyes met his: I'm not sure how much longer I can hold this thing off on my own, the unspoken fear evident there.

He would need his own wand free to come to her aid. "Don't try anything smart," he whispered menacingly, the implied consequences eliciting an almost infinitesimally small nod of agreement for his prisoner.

"DEFODO!"

"INCIDERE!"

"ABRUMPIO!"

Although certain that his own efforts to blast, burn or cut into the creature's flesh would prove as ineffective as Hermione's own, Harry permitted himself some small measure of satisfaction when his hailstorm of curses did at least prove sufficiently distracting that the draugr halted its advance to locate its source. It was all the hesitation that Harry needed and, pushing Mimas along ahead of him, he circled around the stationary giant to Hermione's position.

It was also at that precise moment that Harry made a crucial error:

Pressing his wand tip back into the soft flesh of his prisoner's jawline, Harry released his grip on on Carrow's shoulder so that he could take Hermione's extended hand in his.

However, no sooner had he done this, Mimas jerked his head violently backwards, the back of his skull smashing into Harry's already bloodied face. It was underhanded; it was dirty; it was Muggle. It was also incredibly effective.

Stars exploded in his vision and Harry crashed to the ground, the unmistakable sound of wood on stone audible over the grunt of pain that rushed past his lips as all of the breath was driven from his lungs, first from the impact with the unforgiving stone and then, a spit second later, as Hermione landed heavily on top of him, his grip on her hand having pulled her down on top of him.

"My wand!" he shouted thickly through a mouthful of blood, but it was already too late. Sprawled in a confusion of arms and legs, neither could right themselves quickly enough to prevent what happened next:

"Libero."

Carrow's voice, loud and clear in the echoing confines of the cave, spoke the incantation that would free him from his bindings – somehow he had managed to grab Harry's wand.

"You should have run while you had the chance, Potter," he crowed triumphantly, shaking off the severed ropes which fell to the ground like coiled snakes at his feet. "Now you and your precious mudblood will learn the true definition of power!"

Without permitting them any time to interject, Carrow turned and addressed the draugr directly. "Halt," he commanded, Harry's heart sinking like a stone when the creature actually obeyed. Instantly he sought Hermione's eye.

You said no one could control a draugr, he projected silently, knowing she would read the question writ large on his face.

They can't, came her answer in the form of a subtle shake of her head.

"It was I who summoned you," continued Mimas, his voice growing both in volume and confidence, "and you will do my bidding. Please me and I shall reward you with riches you can not begin to imagine ... "

"Big mistake," hissed Hermione and suddenly, chaos reigned.

Almost impossible to keep track of what was happening and to whom, the events of the following twenty-something seconds unfolding so quickly that, only with the benefit of hindsight, was Harry able to parse some order to the brief yet bloody battle.

This is what he recalled.

No sooner had she spoken, Hermione rolled to one side, the tip of the draugr's massive blade, preceded by a deafening rush of air, slicing horizontally through the spot she had just vacated.

For a moment – a splinter of time really – Mimas, who stood no more than a stride in front of them, remained completely still. Then, quite suddenly, his entire upper torso fell to the side and hit the ground with a hollow thud that was echoed a fraction of a second later by his legs.

His conscious mind recoiling in shock at the sight of a human body cleaved clean in two, instinct drove Harry forwards. He needed his wand.

A scream. A second rush of air.

Wrenching it free from Carrow's limp grip was the work of a moment, nevertheless It was a moment too long. Evading the glinting sword by throwing himself into a shoulder roll, Harry only managed to delay the inevitable. He rose to a crouch just as the draugr's other hand – now curled into a fist – smashed into him like a wall of rock sending him spiralling away. He came to rest in a heap at Hermione's feet.

"Harry!" She was instantly on her knees, one hand erecting a hastily constructed shield over them, the other skimming across his entire body as if she could determine the extent of his injuries by touch alone.

Through sheer force of will, Harry clung on to consciousness. "I'm fine." Although he had to grind the words out past clenched teeth – he could feel several of his ribs grinding against one another – Hermione made no move to prevent him from pushing himself roughly to all fours. "This ends now," he added, spitting out a mouthful of blood. "Is there a way to kill it?"

For a moment she was silent, a faraway, thoughtful look washing across her face as she pulled the required facts from her near encyclopaedic memory. "There is," she admitted after a beat. "But it's mad …"

Lifting his chin fractionally, Harry saw that the draugr had already halved the distance between them. He raised his eyebrows and fixed her with a look that demanded she tell him what she knew as clearly as if he had spoken aloud.

She set her jaw. "Fire," she said. "But not just any fire – Fiendfyre. Only something that evil is powerful enough to consume something equally so.

"You understand what that means?"

He did. They could kill the beast, but not without killing themselves in the process. There was no shield, no magic in existence that could protect them from the magical inferno that would result. Unless …

With no time to explain, Harry grabbed Hermione's hand. Their eyes met and she answered his silent question – do you trust me? – with a tiny inclination of her chin.

"Now!" Ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest as his fractured ribs collided with vital organs, Hermione dropped her shield and they both sprinted towards the draugr.

Stunned by their audacity, the draugr was a heartbeat slower than was its norm in reacting to them, it's heavy sword fracturing the stone at their heels as they sped forwards.

"Down!" Pulling them both down into a slide that would not have appeared out of place on a baseball field, Harry directed a silent blasting spell straight upwards as they slid between the twin trunks that were the draugr's legs.

Directed not at the giant, but at the rocky celling high overhead, Harry's aim was sure and true, the spell sizzling past the giant's chest as it soared straight past it before slamming into the cavern's roof.

Following its course with its clouded gaze, the draugr's head snapped up; just in time to see the countless tons of rock and debris dislodged by Harry's spell crashing down on top of it. Pummelled by rocks and great boulders alike, the creature let loose its most terrible cry to date, but Harry felt no satisfaction in the knowledge that he had wounded it – he had bought them a few seconds at most.

Swallowing hard, he focused all of his magical energies on the darkness that existed within even the most virtuous of beings – only there could he find the energy to summon a power so terrible as fiendfyre.

In his mind's eye he could see his wickedness – the very part of him that he had earlier forced aside – represented as a small dark flame. Too small, he realised with a start. Knowing instinctively what he must do, he drove his consciousness deeper, seeking the very emotions he had tried for so long to subdue: anger, hurt, resentment and many more he could not even assign a name.

Finally, with his every dark thought or deed laid bare, Harry spoke the incantation that would surely spell the end for any creature – living or dead – that inhabited the vast underground space.

Instantly, white hot flames, more powerful than anything he had experienced before, belched from the tip of his wand.

Like storm waters coursing through a long dry river bed, the roiling inferno, apparently needing neither fuel nor catalyst to endure, engulfed the cavern in flame quicker than the human eye could track. "Don't stop!" he yelled quite unnecessarily, his lungs burning as he forced his legs to keep pounding towards their one hope of salvation – the lake.

"We'll never make it!" screamed Hermione, his intended destination now self evident.

It appeared that she was to be correct:

No more than fifteen feet from the shoreline a wall of fire sprang into existence, encircling them – trapping them. But, having come too far to be denied now, Harry did not even break stride. In one fluid motion he directed his wand at their feet and yelled: "Desillo!"

Suddenly they were flying or, perhaps more accurately, leaping over the fire, the ground pushing them away as if sprung like a diving board. Fingers of flame licked at their clothing as they arced over the danger before plunging into the icy cold waters once more.


When they finally emerged from the water several minutes later, their teeth chattering from the cold, the only evidence that remained of the ferocious fire that had raged in the cavern were the two piles of ash – one small, one much larger – that lay near the rockfall Harry's blasting curse had dislodged.

Numb with shock, Hermione administered the requisite warming and drying charms without really registering she had done so. She still couldn't quite believe they had survived.

Harry was the first to speak: "We still need to find a way out of here."

"Well there's air," answered Hermione, grateful of something to put her mind to work on – a busy mind could not dwell on what might have been. Starved of oxygen, the fire had quickly burnt itself out yet, it was indisputable, that the air they were now breathing was hardly oxygen deficient. She said as much aloud before adding: "It must be coming from somewhere."

Harry made a face that Hermione recognised from school when he thought a piece of homework too arduous to contemplate. "You're saying we should just grope along the walls looking for where the fresh air is coming in?"

Parting her lips with the intention of challenging to come up with a better plan, one such plan appeared in her mind as if it had been plucked from the cosmos and placed there by some omnipotent super being.

"Or we could just use this," she said, rearranging her lips and producing Carrow's confiscated wand from the waistband of her trousers.

"Prior incantatem!" exclaimed Harry, catching on.

Less than two minutes later, Harry and Hermione found themselves walking down a musty, torch lit corridor, heretofore hidden by a charm similar to the one that prevented muggles from being able to see the Leaky Cauldron in London.

Too narrow too walk side by side, Hermione had fallen into step behind Harry, the rhythmic sound of their footfalls on the roughly new stone staircase almost in time to the metronomic drip drip drip of nearby water leeching through the rock. Not that Hermione was consciously aware of that sound. Instead, with the adrenaline of the battle now leaving her system, her mind clearer than at any point since she had regained consciousness in the cavern, she considered a question she had been unable to provide a logical answer for at the time.

"How did you know?" The words were past her lips before she could so much as register she had spoken them aloud.

"Huh?" threw back Harry over his shoulder.

"I was just wondering how you knew which way to go?"

"You mean back in the lake?" he asked, so familiar with the way Hermione's mind worked that he was able to understand her apparent non-sequitur immediately.

Hermione hummed in agreement.

"Oh that … I didn't."

Hermione stared incredulously at the back of his head. He guessed? Our lives were on the line and he guessed?

Furious though she was, that initial reaction quickly subsided as she recognised that his actions were both the only reason she drew breath and everything that she had come to expect from him. In fact, his ability to think fast and throw caution to the wind when necessary was one of the things she most loved about him.

And you do love him, don't you Hermione, demanded her inner voice, seizing upon the admission of the very thing she had tried to deny: She was in love with Harry Potter.

However, no sooner had she come to that startling revelation, Harry came to an abrupt stop in front of her, her breath driven out of her lungs on a soft exhalation of air – oooof! – any thoughts of a romantic nature driven from her mind just as thoroughly as she leant to one side to see what it was that had brought Harry to a halt.

The Mirror!

It stood on a small plinth of stone in a roughly ovoid space no larger than her dormitory back at Hogwarts had been, every detail, from the hue of its ancient timbers, to the dwarfish script that embellished it's plain frame, exactly as she remembered.

But that was not all she saw. Knelt on the floor in front of it, her nose almost pressed against its smooth glass, a figure from her past that Hermione had never, even in her wildest imaginings, expected to lay eyes on again.

"Bellatrix Lestrange?"


TBC...


AN ~ I already have a few hundred words for the next chapter, so hopefully there won't be such a long delay before my next update.


Recap

Chapter one - Hermione finds herself addicted to the mirror of erised which taunts her with images of the thing she most desires.

Chapter two - Harry and Ron race to find Hermione who is missing. They locate her moments too late and watch helplessly as Hermione is pulled into the mirror.

Chapter three - Hermione travels through the multiverse, landing in the world where her heart's desire has come to pass.

Chapter four - We learn that Hermione's desire is not, as we had been lead to believe, Harry, but instead her younger sister who died as an infant. In this world she is alive and well and engaged to Ron, a discovery that leads to Hermione running away.

Chapter five - Hermione confesses the truth of her origins to Harry who promises to help her return home. In return, Hermione swears to help Harry find his own version of Hermione whom we learn he is in love with.

Chapter six - We learn that Roslaine's survival in this universe has altered the timeline considerably. Perhaps most notably, Ginny Weasley was killed in the Chamber of Secrets in 1993 leading to Voldemort's resurrection far earlier than in canon. The chapter concludes with the arrival of a furious looking Rosaline Granger.

Chapter Seven - Rosaline's anger with Harry is quickly abated when Ron arrives and interrupts their prank. Harry reveals a little of the plan that will occupy his and Hermione's time with Rosaline reminding him of the surprise party she had organised for Hermione for the next day.

Chapter Eight - Hermione and Harry attends a lavish Birthday party in her honour at the burrow where celebration turns into disaster. Caught up in the moment, Hermione wonders what it would be like to kiss her best friend, she and Harry sharing their first kiss on the crowded dance floor. Feeling as though she has just made a terrible mistake, Hermione flees the party leaving a guilt ridden Harry to face the music alone.

Chapter Nine - Harry finds Hermione in the derelict Umbrella Cottage, the marital home she shared with Ron. Intending to apologise for kissing her, Hermione surprises him by making that apology herself. Their friendship repaired, Hermione returns to Hogwarts to take her alter ego's place as transfiguration teacher. The chapter ends with Harry leaving for Germany to investigate a possible lead on the Mirror of Erised.

Chapter Ten - Hemione accompanies Harry to a cave system in Germany where Harry believes Death Eaters may have hidden the mirror. Each grapple with their feelings for one another, with Harry being the first to recognise those feeling as love. Following a night in a local hotel, the duo return to the cave the next day where they discover an underwater staircase they realise they must follow.

Chapter Eleven – Shortly after boarding a magical staircase that would carry them to the depths of the underground lake, Harry and Hermione pass through an unidentified haze. Evidently a security feature of some sort, the haze strips them of their magical protections. A frantic race to the surface followed in which Hermione nearly drowned. The chapter concludes as Hermione regains consciousness just in time to save Harry from an attack by an unknown figure but not before he can summon a draugr – an undead warrior – to kill them both.