Summary: Hermione is having a baby, Ron is a POW and Harry is...missing. An account of the 2nd great wizarding war, of battles still to be won, and the love that endures.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters, their world or their toys.

Author's Note: Well, I finally got back to this story and while I don't imagine that it'll be an update a week, I really do hope I can finish Sacred Bonds this summer. No promises, but hopefully it won't be quite so long this time! Just as a reminder, this story was started PRIOR to the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Consequently, some of the key characters, storylines, accounts of deaths, events etc. will be quite different. Rather than go back and re-work the entire thing so that it will fit with the current HP cannon, I have decided to complete this story as it was originally conceived.

Realignment

Dean had come to Lavender that night. The night before the Day of Shadows. He looked…different somehow. Yes, as she thought about it now, he had looked very different. But at the time, she'd been too preoccupied to notice.

Now, looking back, she smiled, her long brown hair waving behind her as the waves at Azkaban crashed into the shore. He had looked…taller. Yes, that's it. Taller. More…important? Proud of himself and yet…somehow sad. If she had known it would be the last time she saw him…if she had known then that Dean had been picked for possibly the craziest, most long-term mission…if she had known that night that Dean would disappear, she would have told him. She would never have let it him go without telling him…

"Lavender?" She started and glanced over her shoulder. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. She imagined that there had been some conversation between Dean and Seamus Finnigan before he left – leaving me in his care, she thought. For three years, Seamus had been there for her. Maybe not always in person, but without fail whenever something had happened. Early on, when her mother got sick, it was Seamus who stayed with her, leaving his post behind. And when Lavender saw her very first thestral, Seamus was there to make sure she wasn't afraid. Through Seamus she still had a part of Dean to hold onto. And now, amidst feelings of victory and nostalgia as members of the Order prepared to leave Azkaban and return to their various posts, Seamus was still there.

"Come here often?" he said with faux panache. It earned him a grin as he sat down beside her on one of Azkaban's many crags.

"Too American."

"Fancy a night-cap then?"

"Too English."

Pause… "wanna snog?"

At that Lavender snorted out a laugh and punched his arm. "Too Weasley."

Seamus laughed too until their chuckles faded into silence. "Did you hear about Padma?" he asked quietly.

A knot tightened in Lavender's throat as she nodded slowly, the sound of those gentle waves suddenly violent as if echoing her despair. Padma had been one of her closest friends. The twins' contributions to the Order had been pivotal in the war and hearing about her death now…tonight…through the grapevine, as if no more than an obituary in the Daily Prophet…she felt hollow. Empty. But mostly…she just missed Dean.

"You know," she looked down at her hands, sore from a day's worth of grinding powders into remedies to mix with Fawkes's tears, "I never told him, Seamus."

He glanced at her, arching an eyebrow. "Who?"

"Dean."

Seamus frowned. "Told him what?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"We were seventeen. Way too young to be thinking…to be saying—"

Seamus covered her hand with his own, trembling on her knee. "He knows."

She kept her head down, "Do you think he's still—"

"Absolutely," he kept his hand over hers and squeezed. "You would know if something had happened."

Lavender's eyes watered. The battle at Azkaban, the arrival of Fawkes – it all meant something. No one in the Order dared to speak it out loud but there was a decided sense of excitement and anxiety among the ranks. They were close. To what, no one was sure, but they were close to something…fierce. Something definitive. They were close to the end.

...

Ron hadn't said anything for several minutes. There was…much to process. And Harry, though impatient, understood. His tale about his three-year quest had not been a pleasant one – its conclusion far from encouraging, at least from Ron's point of view. And it had been substantially incomplete. There were some things Harry would just not reveal about…where he'd really been. And Ron no longer seemed so eager to know the whole truth. "We should keep moving," Harry said after a while. Ron agreed.

They trudged further east toward what Ron now assumed to be Godric's Hollow, the place where Harry Potter first encountered Voldemort. The place where Harry's parents were murdered. "What exactly are we looking for?" he asked quietly. Harry didn't answer. Ron didn't ask again. He wasn't particularly interested anyway. The purpose for their detour from Azkaban would be resolved soon enough. More questions about Harry's destiny would be answered soon enough. Besides, some other things were bothering Ron. Things that felt…a little closer to home.

It had been bothering him now for a while, ever since Harry healed him. Wizards historically had difficulty describing the Cruciatus curse, partly because it was too painful to relive, but mostly (and unfortunately) because it was something one had to endure to truly comprehend. And no one had ever endured it as long as Ron had and lived to tell about it. So he knew exactly what it felt like at each and every stage of its severity – which is why he knew that whatever still plagued him…was decidedly not Cruciatus curse.

Cruciatus curse wasn't just a bloomin' awful headache. It was a curse that struck to the very core of every fiber in one's being. Neville Longbottom had revealed during his apprenticeship that it twisted every single nerve in the human body, causing its victim to keel over in pain as it traveled up the spine and into the brain, slowly stripping away a person's sanity by feeding off his mind. For this reason, it was of course quite fortunate that Harry, however he did it, hacked it entirely away and restored Ron's mind. But even in the immediate aftermath, amidst bounding relief, Ron felt as if something still remained inside—something similar to the Cruciatus in that it was stuck in his head, but this wasn't painful. He didn't feel like it was feeding off of him. If anything, he felt like it was getting fainter. He'd never read about or heard of anything quite like it…of course Hermione probably had…Hermione...maybe that was what was bothering him. Harry had said precious little about anyone they knew since his rescue. Nearest he could figure, he had been gone almost nine months. There were certainly casualties he did not know about. But it was starting to worry Ron that Harry had not even mentioned Hermione. Had Harry really been away so long he no longer thought of the old trio as the team they had been since the very first train ride to Hogwarts? Or worse…had something happened to her that Harry didn't want to tell him?

In thinking about it, another realization occurred. He hustled forward, catching up with the Boy Who Lived so they were hiking side-by-side. "You know, Hermione and I, we…we got married." He watched Harry out of the corner of his eye, looking for some sort of reaction.

Harry nodded, "I know."

"Have you…er…heard anything?"

Harry looked at him carefully, "about your wedding?"

"About Hermione." Harry looked back toward the horizon and sighed. Ron shot out his arm and stopped them both. "Harry if something's happened to her, you have to tell me."

Slowly, Harry removed Ron's grasp on his wrist. "I'm not sure I should be the one to tell you."

Ron's blood started to boil, "tell me what?"

"Hermione's pregnant."

...

Harry clearly wasn't back yet when Ron woke up the morning after their Sentinel breakthrough. He had fled quickly and seemingly without incident as all students and teachers were well and accounted for…though Ginny seemed a bit shaken that night when he returned to the dormitories. In all likelihood, Harry had spent the night in the Forbidden Forest again, purposely leading himself in circles to confuse Voldemort. Bastard just wouldn't leave Harry alone and Ron tensed with silent rage at the very idea of someone invading his thoughts and emotions at every moment of vulnerability. Still, brooding about it helped no one and he knew that Harry would return when he was ready and probably, judging by the severity of last night's attack, more willing than ever to finish the Sentinel spell and end his torment for good.

Ron scanned his room. Seamus was still snoozing but Neville's bed was empty, probably because Neville was already at Mungo's working with his patients. He'd returned just a few weeks ago fairly excited about some breakthrough he'd made with the Cruciatus curse. He'd spent nearly every day since at Mungo's working. And with beds there filling up fast, he hoped it was something useful.

Lastly, Ron's gaze hovered at Dean's bed and he sighed as he watched his friend sleep soundly. Rest well, mate, he thought, knowing that Dean would accept, without reservation, his new calling as one of Harry Potter's sentinels.

Ron took a quick shower, dressed and headed down to the common room. Breakfast was set up as usual, but a quick scan of the room revealed nothing Ron was looking for. Without even bothering to check with the girls descending from their dormitories, Ron wrapped a few pastries in a maroon napkin and headed for the Great Hall.

Hermione rarely rested in the dorms. He'd tried for weeks to get her to at least come back to the Common Room with him at night, but had learned quickly not to bother. He checked his watch and quickened his pace. In a few minutes the Great Tower would chime again and he wanted to reach her beforehand. Someday perhaps, he would tell her. Someday, when this was all over, he would tell her how watching her wake up was his favorite part of the day.

Streams of morning light seeped in through the enchanted ceiling when Ron arrived. Immediately, he extinguished the floating candles as was often part of his morning routine since Hermione never remembered to extinguish them herself the night before. Ron peered over the long tables and something wonderful tugged sharply at his chest. There she was. Her head resting on folded arms, curled up on a small sofa at the head of the room. Unbeknownst to Hermione, Ron had arranged with the house elves to have her bench transfigured into the plush sofa every night after she fell asleep. He'd do it for her himself except he usually retired before she did…and the house elves were better at transfiguring anyway. To his knowledge, she never woke up during its transformation.

The bells would toll soon and she would stir awake, so he rushed to the head of the hall, murmured a few incantations so the couch would revert and waited. Watching her catch her last little bit of sleep, Ron thought, as he did so often, of their life together. Theirs hadn't been an instant friendship of course. He distinctly remembered a time when he loathed this little bookworm. "It's levi-o-sa…not levio-sa!" he thought, smiling at the absurd image of a very young Ron Weasley being up-staged by a bushy-haired girl. Absently, he reached for the pastries he'd saved for her and set them on the table as she started to groan, her sleepy face emerging from that same head of bushy hair now.

"Morning," he said softly. She murmured something incoherent. Just then, the bells began to toll and she groaned fully awake.

"Morning," she said through a yawn. Ron sat beside her on the bench, helped prop her up, and kissed her on the forehead. "Is he back yet?"

"Nope."

Hermione sighed. "Just as well," she stretched as Ron gave her a quizzical look.

"Why's that?" he frowned. That peaceful look on her face only minutes before was already gone, replaced with the familiar stress-lines, sallow cheeks and worried eyes. It was as if she had fallen asleep concerned about something and picked up right where she left off worrying hours later.

"Because we're not finished."

"What?" Ron said, a little too loudly. He looked at the piles and piles of parchment and texts still sitting on the table from last night's planning. Hermione, under way too much stress for a mere 7th-year, nearly snapped back at him but they were interrupted.

"Morning Mr. Weasley," Professor Lupin's gentle voice carried through the hall. He was caring a rather bulky sack over his shoulder along with a caddy of potion bottles and vials of bubbling goo. "I found everything on your list, Miss Granger except the phoenix feather and frog's breath."

Ron cast her a sideways glance, "frog's breath?"

"Keeps the potion from going stale before Harry drinks it," she explained as Lupin reached them and handed over the potion caddy.

Ron was still confused, "Frog's breath is a preservative? That's new."

Hermione snatched one of Ron's pastries and started munching as she unrolled a packet of parchment she'd obviously been working on the night before. If she didn't finish this soon, there would be no point in restarting. And last night, she had hit yet another snag.

It had taken many moons of preparation to ensure that stars were aligned properly and the side of good would cooperate with the poles. Ancient magic was colossally more powerful than present-day magic and it would take an extraordinary powerful wizard like Dumbledore to tap into it on a normal day…and Dumbledore was dead.

"Do you have the right equations here?" Professor Lupin asked, peering over her shoulder at one of her inky charts.

"Yes, why?"

"The numbers don't favor Mr. Thomas as the third anchor."

At this, Ron straightened up, assuming this the explanation for Hermione's comment earlier. If Dean didn't fit the formula, they would need to find another muggle-born to take his place and that could throw off their other selections too.

But that wasn't, apparently, what she was worried about. "It's a tricky ancestry. His family tree is almost all muggle but he's got a cousin a few generations back who was at Durmstrangs. I had to rework the incantation but he'll do."

Lupin nodded with a sage smile, realizing suddenly that he had nothing left to teach Hermione Granger.

"Besides," she continued, troubled, "that's not what I'm worried about."

Ron shook his head, trying to keep up. "What's wrong with it? I thought you said that they all matched."

Hermione tiredly propped her head against her palm and sighed, "they do all match. Mind, heart and blood. Each an appropriate guardian for each dimension of Harry's soul." She paused and clenched a quill in her fist, "but it's not enough."

Ron gasped, staring at the miles of work she had already put into this spell, "What do you mean it's not enough?"

"It's not enough, Ron. According to the calculations, the Sentinels will adequately mask Harry's mind, but Voldemort will still be able to penetrate with Ancient magic."

"What calculations? How does that even make sense?"

"The numbers don't add up. According to this," she pulled out a chart that Ron certainly couldn't make heads or tails of, but somehow, he guessed, clearly proved her point, "these dimensions are fused together by magic. Dividing them up between three Secret Keepers doesn't prevent Voldemort from using that same magic to fuse them back together. It'll just take longer," she paused again, practically on the verge of tears. "He'll use them as conduits and travel through them to get to Harry."

Ron glanced at the parchment and looked to Lupin for help but he appeared to be just as stumped. This was bad. It was hard enough to get Harry on board with this plan to begin with but now it seemed all it would do was slow down the attacks. And especially since now it would require Voldemort to invade not only one, but four minds to do it…well, not even Ron could support that plan. Slowly, he took a breath and surveyed the table once more. There had to be something they were missing. "What if we added another sentinel?"

Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was, after all, only trying to help. "There are only three dimensions of a wizard's soul. There's nothing left to guard. And it wouldn't matter even if that were possible. Voldemort could still use ancient magic to search him out."

Ron frowned, still staring at the table. Lupin flipped over more layers of Hermione's work and fanned through the pages. "Are you sure he'll still be able to penetrate the complexity of this spell? After all, you'll be using ancient magic yourself to bind Harry to these sentinels. Not to mention the potion," Lupin gestured to the caddy. "How do you know his magic won't be blocked by yours?"

Hermione tugged at the roots of her disheveled hair and groaned. "The potion is only to help us tap into ancient magic. Voldemort has been using it for years—"

"Wait-w-wait," Ron cried, starling her as he sprang up from the bench. His brain had begun to tingle. Something Lupin said made a lot of sense. He could taste it. There was an idea there, just barely beyond his grasp. Something familiar. He could almost feel the gears turning in his mind as he felt sure he'd stumbled on... Blimey…is this what it felt like to be Hermione? "That's it!" he said.

"What's it?" she looked up, arms folded across her chest, Lupin standing curious behind her.

"Blocked magic," he said, turning to both of them now, finally understanding the word 'epiphany'. He beheld their confused faces with mild frustration (as if his two word explanation should have sufficed). "Blocked magic," he repeated, tucking one leg underneath him as he settled back down to the bench. "Just like Lupin said. Use ancient magic to block his magic."

"I don't understand."

"When I was little, I found my dad tinkering with yet another muggle…thing. I dunno…something called a shower squeegee?" Hermione choked back a laugh as he continued, "Anyway, I asked him why it was he was so interested in muggles when they were so different than us. And he told me we aren't all that different from them. We just happen to know magic." He held his hands out in triumph as if he'd just pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat but Hermione was still confused. Lupin too seemed a bit puzzled…but he was smiling. "Don't you get it?" Ron took his girlfriend's hand, "Mind, heart and blood, Hermione. You had it right. Three dimensions of the soul. Everyone's soul. But magic—"

Hermione grasped his arm, finally understanding, "Magic is its own dimension."

"So it seems you do need another Sentinel," Lupin concluded, straightening up with his hands behind his back. "One whose only job is to guard the dimension of magic…well done, Mr. Weasley."

Ron blushed that old crimson Weasley red as Hermione kissed him proudly on the cheek before turning back to her quills and ink. "Blocked magic, blocked magic," she murmured to herself. "We have to work fast. The stars are nearly in alignment. Who could we get as the fourth Sentinel?"

Lupin stepped forward, watching her begin to scribble. "He or she will have to be chosen the same way. Someone who best represents that particular aspect of Harry."

She nodded and turned to Ron who held his hands up in feigned surrender, "Don't look at me, luv. Fresh out of genius here."

Hermione rolled her eyes but was hardly deterred. Her hands were already navigating her cluttered but acutely organized series of star maps and arithmancy charts to find Harry's original set of calculations. "Heart of a lion, blood of a muggle, mind of a phoenix," she said, almost chanting it as she re-configured Firenze's divination wheel to chart four dimensions instead of three. "Magic…" she murmured, "Magic…" she scribbled on as Ron pulled back, watching in awe as she worked. Sure it was his idea…and he had not one clue how to pull it off or even where to begin. But Hermione…he stole a glance at Lupin who was also watching his former pupil with pride and reverence. Their eyes locked for a moment as they agreed wordlessly that there never was, nor would there ever be another like her.

Oblivious to these musings, Hermione continued working, rapidly plugging now memorized figures into the newest calculation. When she finished, her expression was a curious mix of relief and concern. Ron and Lupin waited in silence, as she checked and re-checked her figures. Finally, when she was absolutely convinced there was no mistake, she sat back from her now very smudged chart and sighed. "Well, there's no mistaking it. Ron's idea will work."

Ron's knee was bouncing up and down uncontrollably as he waited for the other shoe to drop. "That's…good right?"

Hermione crossed her arms, "Oh it's good…but I'm afraid there aren't a whole lot of people left around here that qualify."

Lupin leaned forward now too. "Why?"

Hermione placed her hands, folded, atop her newest discovery and took a deep breath. "Harry has the heart of a lion, blood of a muggle, mind of the phoenix and magic…of the serpent."

Fresh exploding fire wheels from Weasley's Wizzard-Bees could have whizzed through the Great Hall and Ron would still have been too stunned to notice. "The…serpent?" he gulped. Hermione nodded. "Serpent as in snake." Another nod. "As in Slytherin…oh, bloody hell."

"There are several Slytherins who have stayed behind, Ron." Lupin offered.

Ron pushed himself away from table and started to pace. "And would you trust any of them with this?"

"The fact that they're still here is a good sign."

He ran his hands through his hair and massaged his suddenly aching neck, "Yeah, or a sign that the wankers are double-agents, watching our every move."

"Everyone at Hogwarts has been administered and questioned under the influence of veritaserum, Ron," Lupin reminded him as he prayed for his students not to give up hope.

"Even so, professor. What Slytherin in this school would you trust with Harry Potter's life?"

"Snape"

Ron, Hermione and Lupin reeled around and gaped at the sight of Harry Potter at the end of the hall. He was still dressed as he was last night. His hair windswept and messy. In his hand, a Cleansweep worn down to its very last bit of bristle. He looked awful…but his eyes… mind of a phoenix indeed. His eyes were focused, determined…and ready.

Harry strode toward them, tossing his broom on a nearby table and shot a half-frown-half-smirk at Ron. "Either we need locks on these doors or you three need to speak a LOT quieter." Ron stammered incoherently, not quite knowing if he should laugh or scream at the absurdity of Harry's choice for the final Sentinel. Harry looked to Lupin. "Professor would you mind re-visiting the potions lab?"

Lupin nodded with a grin and left at once as Harry finally turned to Hermione.

"Harry, are you sure? I mean…Severus Sn—"

"Snape," Harry repeated again. "He's the only one strong enough."

"Yeah but Harry," Ron grasped onto his shoulder, "It's SNAPE! Do you really trust him?"

"Dumbledore trusted him," Harry said…and then added, knowing that was no longer enough, "and so do I."