Disclaimer: JK Rowling had a little story, whose profits were green as…hm, that only works for American money. Anyway, she owns it, not me.

Chapter 14

5 May 2003

"Alright, boys, what do you have to show me?" Hermione asked.

Colin and Dennis Creevey smiled as they brought out a large box and opened it to display their new invention. "We've been working with Omnioculars for years, but we still haven't been able to exceed the limitations of magical photographs," Colin explained. "The best we've been able to do is sync audio with a separate system."

"I know," Hermione said. "Ten-second clips only, or a little longer with special equipment."

"Yeah, but there's no reason we should be limited to that," Dennis said. "Wizards are theoretically capable of doing magical television like the Wizarding Wireless, but it's completely different magic—and embargoed by the Ministry."

"And for a good reason," Hermione replied.

"We know. The signals can leak onto muggle sets. But that's where this baby comes in." Colin motioned proudly to the device in the box. It looked like one of those telescopes bird-watchers used, done in the elaborate brass of the Omnioculars. "This is the first ever all-in-one magical video camera. We call it the Creevey Bros. Mementoscope."

Hermione's eyes grew wide. She knew the Creeveys were continuing to innovate, but this was beyond was she expected. "A whole video camera?" she said.

Dennis nodded: "Uh huh. This can play back whole recordings with sound without having to jury-rig something."

"The hard part was getting it to automatically record synced audio," said Colin. "The crystals are kind of literal about recording only video. You know why this thing's so big? That's a regular Omniocular barrel in there. The barrel around it records an audio track on the inside wall with a diamond-tipped stylus."

"So that's why you wanted all those tiny diamonds," Hermione exclaimed.

"Yep. Unfortunately we can only fit twenty minutes right now. Nowhere near muggle standards. But we have interchangeable cylinders, and it's a lot better than sixty seconds."

"That's amazing," she said. "I had no idea you were this far along."

"Thanks," said Dennis. "And unfortunately, we couldn't fit an internal projection system. You have to take the crystal and the cylinder out to do it properly, but you can play it back it in small scale…" He took the Mementoscope out of its case and set it on a small tripod, aiming it at the wall. "Electric light works best, but if you insert a lighted wand…"

Colin snapped his fingers dramatically, and the switch for the room lights flipped. Hermione's eyebrows rose. Wandless magic? Even if it was just a parlour trick, the Creevey Brothers had come a long way in showmanship.

Dennis inserted his wand it into a bracket on the back of the Mementoscope. He flipped a lever, and a small picture appeared on the wall—a circle about a foot across. It showed an image of Colin wearing a Victorian suit. The outer cylinder began to turn, and a tinny recording of his voice began reciting in serious tones: "Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go."

Hermione applauded. "Brilliant," she said. "And points for presentation. You've really outdone yourselves, you two."

"What can we say? We've had a lot of inspiration," Dennis replied.

"Not to mention financial backing," added Colin. "A third of this is still yours."

"Of course. I'm proud of you," she said. "And I think these will be very useful this year."

4 June 2003

"Rolling," Hermione said as she started the Mementoscope filming on its tripod. The picture in the viewfinder showed Neville standing on a rocky mountainside, the only greenery coming in the form of a scattering of creeping shrubs.

"Right," Neville said. "We're in the Canadian Rockies, British Columbia, and we've found a perfect bed of arctic willow." He bent down to show the small "tree" to the camera. It was only a few inches high and sprouted from branches that crept a couple feet along the ground. "This is the most cold-tolerant woody plant in the world, and it probably has the densest wood grain you'll find anywhere. An arctic willow this size in this climate could easily be over two hundred years old." George whistled off-screen, impressed. "Yeah," he said. "Let's see if Mitzi can find a tree she likes."

Neville pulled a creature from the warmth of his robes that from a distance looked like a stick insect and set it down among the leaves. The bowtruckle scrabbled over the small plant, looked confuse, then looked up at Neville and shook her head.

"Go on, Mitzi," he encouraged her. "We're looking for a small wand tree. Look at the others. This is the perfect kind."

Mitzi ran across the rocky ground, examining tree after tree, seeming to sniff them out. After a few minutes, not as long as it would have taken searching by chance, she found an arctic willow with appropriate magical properties and held onto it, stroking its branches.

"Excellent," Neville said. "Thank you, Mitzi." He picked up the now shivering bowtruckle and tucked her back into his robes. "Luna, fetch the spade," he called. "Now, this tree is small enough that we can just dig up the whole plant. We have a magical terrarium that will maintain the appropriate climate conditions."

They dug up the willow and placed it in a terrarium, then moved on. Hermione would study it later to see if she could remove a large enough piece to make a test wand without killing it. Her renewed studies into wandcraft hadn't turned up much yet. She'd made a passable magic staff, but she quickly learnt there is was more complex than it looked. It was less vital to select the best quality wood for a staff, but making the core was much harder. The magical conductivity of the larger core was much greater, not to mention that it took multiple fibres to make, so it was difficult to do any magic with it that wasn't just a flash in the pan. It was like playing a flute made from a two-inch pipe; you couldn't force enough air through it to make it sound properly.

Wands, on the other hand, had a lot of variation due to the wood, and the more she thought about it, the more questions she had. What happened if she cut across the grain instead of along it? What if the wand wasn't straight or very short or shaped like a fork? What if you used a natural twig? What if it was circular? What if you pressed together two halves made from different types of wood? What if you added a handle that was itself a magical material like dragonskin? What if you twined together multiple cores?

Some of the results were fairly obvious, and the Ollivanders were able to advise her on others. Wands made from multiple woods were exponentially harder to make and tended to act up with changes in humidity. Multiple cores had many of the same problems as staves and would react against each other if they were different materials. A crooked or branched wand just wouldn't aim properly. Too short a wand was hard to use both because its magical conductivity was lower and because it had no "character," as Old Mr. Ollivander put it. Hermione tried it anyway, but found it was lacking in something she couldn't quite define.

She still thought she might be able to do something useful with a circular wand made into a bracelet. It would be less powerful, for sure, but it would be nearly impossible to disarm someone of it. Lately, however, she'd become interested in exotic woods, and she'd picked up a number of interesting samples on their North American tour. Part of a Huckleberry bush collected from the hollow of a redwood tree three hundred feet above ground level. A twig from a bristlecone pine that was dead three thousand years and sprouted probably four thousand years before that. Even petrified wood from Arizona, though she doubted she'd get much out of it.

For now, though, they had other work to do.

"So how are those uranium levels here, Hermione?" George asked her.

She waved her wand over the rocky soil. "Higher," she said. "I could use this soil if I needed to, which is a bit worrying in itself, but there'll be more closer to Lake Athabasca."

She was pleasantly surprised when the ICW took her concern about magical nukes seriously. They had met with her, assembled a small team, sworn them to secrecy, and asked them to investigate what it would take to build a nuke with magic. The hard part would be acquiring enough uranium. Enriching it, normally the hard part for muggles, would be easy with her isotopic separation spells. But because magic was so sensitive to radioactivity, the team concluded that it they could probably blanket areas that were rich in uranium with detection spells through the rune stone network to find out if any wizards were trying to mine it. She was honestly worried that a sufficiently determined wizard could extract it undetected from normal soils, but it would at least slow them down by a lot.

Luna spoke up. "Hermione, if we're going that way, I think we should try to find some Re'em. They're a rare, endangered species, and there should be some around there. If you want to preserve magical beasts, too—"

"Yes, I do," Hermione said. "Any kind of endangered species, really. We should be collecting samples, if we can. I just didn't think endangered animals would be easy to find on our schedule."

Hermione and Georgina had taken a day in the Pacific Northwest to collect DNA samples from Sasquatch. She was pleasantly surprised how dedicated Georgina had become to this project.

They documented that trip with the Mementoscope to show others on their return—something they should have done with the giants if they could have. Someone needed to tell these stories. America's nearly two centuries of strict separation from muggles had forced non-humans to the margins of the magical world. Sasquatch, though not city-dwellers by nature, were all but forbidden from cities, unable to partake in magical society, and were hunted nearly to extinction after the Great Sasquatch Rebellion of 1892. Though they'd recovered some since then, they struggled with the effects of inbreeding even more than the giants.

"Re'em are supposed to be hard to find. And kinda dangerous," George pointed out. "Do you think you can find some in the time we have?"

Luna smiled broadly and cracked her knuckles. This was her speciality. "Watch me," she said.

14 June 2003

Neville and the others laughed as Mitzi waved around a stick that was three times her size, thoroughly perplexed at its lightness.

"Balsa wood," Hermione said. "Lightest wood in the world, which you can get in any hobby shop, of course, but it's better to take it directly from the tree."

Mitzi regained her balance, then squeaked and brandished the stick like a wand.

Neville chuckled as he collected the bowtruckle. "Okay, Mitzi, we know it's a good tree," he said.

They walked back toward the town. Hermione hadn't anticipated much activity from this stop in Mexico, but they were having fun here. She'd grabbed some pieces of palm stalks while she was there, too. When they returned, though, it was to quite the scene when a Mexican witch in Healer's robes ran up to them, shouting, "¡Aritmante Aritmante!" and babbling rapidly in Spanish.

"Señora, señora, slow down," Hermione tried to answer her. "Please, my Spanish is rusty."

Just then a swarthy-looking wizard ran up, panting as if he were trying to catch up, and spoke over the frantic Healer, talking to her in rapid-fire Spanish that Hermione couldn't make out. And then both of them stopped when Luna cheerfully piped up, "Oh, hello, Rolf."

Rolf Scamander stood there with the Healer and faced the group. "Hello, Luna. Hello, Neville," he said. Luna and Neville had met the younger Scamander a few times in their travels, and Luna liked him so much that Hermione was a little worried Neville might get jealous, but they have evidently become fast friends. "Professor Granger, I hope I'm not imposing," he continued. "The Healers approached me for help, but I heard you were in the country, and I thought you could do more for them."

"With arithmancy?" she said. "¿Aritmancia?" Perhaps some ancient Mayan puzzle would call for her expertise, but it didn't make sense for a Healer to come for her.

"No, not arithamancy, Señora Professor Granger," the Healer said, more slowly now. "They say you kill dementors. You understand the magic of the soul. Please, there is a boy at the hospital who needs help."

Suddenly, she understood. "What happened?" she demanded.

The Healer composed herself and explained: "Two boys were playing among the ruins. We tell people not to go there, but you know how children are. They found something—an Aztec mask."

"Probably over six hundred years old," Rolf Scamander offered.

"Yes. We don't know exactly what happened, but only one of the boys came back. He was wearing the mask, and it won't come off. He went home and tried to kill his family. We later found out he killed his friend in the ruins and cut out his heart. He is clearly possessed, but we don't know how to help him."

"I tried to help. Gramps taught me some about possession and dark spirits, but this is beyond my expertise."

"Please, can you do anything?" the Healer asked.

"One moment, Señora," Hermione said. She motioned Georgina over to her. "My God—how much of that did you get, Georgina?"

"Enough," she said grimly. "Luna translated what I didn't catch."

"And what do you think?"

"A horcrux. Maybe."

"Aztec," she reminded. "Wrong continent."

"The Aztecs had contact with the European magical powers before Columbus," Georgina said, "but you're right; horcruxes weren't exactly well-known…But on the other hand, they practised human sacrifice enough that they could've developed it independently."

"Or something similar," Hermione said. "I doubt it would've been exactly the same—which could be a valuable piece of data." She turned back to the newcomers. "Mr. Scamander, thank you for bringing this to my attention," she said. "Señora, my apprentice and I will take a look and do what we can."

The Healer thanked her profusely and led the group to the hospital. However, George tapped her on the shoulder as they went. "Psst. You sure you wanna get involved in this Hermione?" he whispered. "You don't know if you can help, and if you can, you don't know how long it will take."

"I know, but this is the kind of thing I'm gonna need to study if we're ever gonna solve the Barty Crouch problem, George. Besides, there's a possessed boy who needs help, and I invented soul magic as a discipline. This sort of is my job."

The boy was only about nine or ten years old. His face was covered by a vaguely skull-like mask elegantly carved from turquoise, and he was chained to his hospital bed with heavy shackles, padded to keep him from cutting up his wrists and ankles. The whole bed shook as he struggled to get away.

"Superhuman strength," Hermione said. "Classic symptom of possession."

The boy hissed and spat and growled something at her in a language she didn't recognise. His eyes glowed red through the holes in the mask. She looked around at her friends. "Did anyone understand that?"

"It was Nahuatl," Luna said. "The language of the Aztecs. I don't know what it means, but I don't think it was very nice."

"Of course. Well, first: diagnosis…Atma Prakata."

The boy shrieked and writhed on the bed as the spell hit. Whether it hurt him somehow or the mask simply recognised her as a threat she didn't know. The mask turned black, but not the same shifting black cloud that surrounded a horcrux. This was an oily, black film that clung to the mask and sent out tendrils that wrapped around the boy's head and down his neck like a fungus. It had an aura around it, but it was like the glare around a lightbulb rather than a cloud—except black.

"That doesn't look like how you described a horcrux looking," Georgina said.

"Because it's not," Hermione replied grimly. "Something different. It has more will than a normal horcrux, I think. You heard how quickly it possessed him. Specifically designed for it, maybe?"

The boy shouted something at her whose meaning was very clear from the tone.

"And different behaviour," Georgina pointed out.

"Well, yes, it's the soul of a different person."

She lowered her voice: "I know, but it's more than that. If it possessed the boy that easily, why isn't it draining his soul like Voldemort tried on Ginny? And look what he did to the other boy. Cutting out the heart is an Aztec sacrificial practise, I'm pretty sure. I doubt he did that just for fun."

Hermione's eyes widened: "A different method to come back. Georgina, you're brilliant. Voldemort needed powerful symbolic items: bone of the father, blood of the enemy, Ginny pouring out her soul into the diary. But the Aztecs performed human sacrifices by the thousands."

"Quantity over quality?" Georgina said.

"And a clue to how it was made. Healer! I need everything you can get me on Aztec sacrificial practises," she ordered. "We may save him yet."

15 September 2003

"Occamys are very rare, and tricky to deal with," said Rolf Scamander. "Their eggs are made of silver, so they're very vulnerable to theft. As a defence mechanism, they'll find a burrow or an enclosed space and distort space to fill the entire chamber. Not that they're small animals. In open air, an occamy can grow up to fifteen feet long. Also because their eggs are silver, they make excellent treasure guardians. After all, the best place to hide a tree is in a forest."

"Unfortunately, zis treasure is also protected by mathematical puzzles zee likes of which I 'ave never seen," said Fleur.

Being a single mother, Fleur couldn't be too choosy about jobs, especially when Gringotts had its own ideas as her employer. This was officially a Gringotts operation because they insisted on being in charge, but they had sent Fleur as an overseer mainly because they wanted Hermione and Scamander as a consultant. (Luna and Neville sent their regrets.) They were all getting a pretty nice finder's fee, though, and India was a good place to collect more wood and magical creature samples.

She'd collected a few other oddities in their travels. Baobabs from Madagascar. Wild banana trees from Indonesia. Tree ferns, which weren't even seed plants, let alone true wood, but were evolutionarily the furthest removed plants that might work. And of course strangler figs and mangroves from here in India.

"I think we might want to deal with the angry magical creature first," George pointed out.

"Good idea," Fleur said.

The occamy screeched, its long, blue coils shifting in the outer chamber of the treasure store. Its head flashed past the door with an eye the size of a dinner plate and a beak that could probably swallow a man whole. The team flinched back, except Scamander.

"Don't worry, it won't come out unless its provoked," he said calmly.

"And what do you think we're doing now?" George asked.

Scamander just smiled. "You see, Gramps discovered that occamys can be captured rather easily with food if you approach them carefully," he explained. "It's easier with juveniles, but you just need the right equipment."

The "right equipment" turned out to be a small bird and a rubbish bin. Juvenile occamys ate insects, but being winged serpents, adults preferred the taste of songbirds. With the promise of a meal and some careful manoeuvring, the guardian of the treasure was lured into the bin and trapped. With his and George's help, Hermione took a blood sample from it before entering the chamber.

The outer chamber of the treasure store was lined with many runes and elaborate dials (and occamy feathers) that bore only a vague resemblance to an actual clock. It wasn't clear how they were protected from the occamy, but they seemed to be in good shape. There was a sound of clanking gears from within the walls, presumably connected to a waterwheel in the adjacent river.

George was not very enthused by the appearance of the room. "This place gives me an uncomfortableness," he said.

Hermione giggled. "Come on, it's not that bad," she said.

"I dunno. I think I've had enough of creepy cursed lairs for one lifetime. Especially with the clanking."

"George, when have any of the other places we've been had creepy clanking?" she asked. "Luckily, mathematical puzzles are my speciality. Fleur, let's see what we've got."

Hermione, Georgina, Fleur, and the other Cursebreakers scanned the barrier into the treasure chamber and conferred with each other, translating the runes and mapping out the device. Slowly, a picture began to emerge. The chamber was locked by an elaborate tumbler system controlled by gear trains that each had different, slightly offset gear ratios that were all coprime to each other. Hermione recognised the astronomical ratios at once, but as for the others, teasing out what the gears were even supposed to do was a puzzle in itself.

"It looks like all this whole assembly does is make it super sensitive to the gear position," Georgina said. "I wouldn't think they'd be able to calibrate it that well."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what you can do with medieval tools," Hermione said, "but I think you're right."

"It's designed to take an enchanted key," Fleur offered. "I would guess it was spelled to set zee lock more perfectly zan a person could."

Hermione nodded. "Magic key, of course. If you want something to actually be secure and not an obstacle course for robbers. Oh, this is a beautiful piece of work, especially for it's time. It's a puzzle and a time lock and an astronomical calendar, all in one. The pieces are constantly shifting, driven by the Sun hitting the marker stones and the river. Magically self-repairing and self-calibrating to keep it going for centuries, even in droughts and storms, and only the key can open it."

"Hm," one of the Indian Cursebreakers, Ramanujan, spoke up. "What about this, Professor Granger? This looks like an automatic unlocking system."

"I saw that, too," Georgina said. "It's hard to tell, but I think it was designed to open automatically once every lunar cycle in case the key was lost. But I imagine you don't fancy waiting up to nineteen years for it to open for you."

"Ah. Certainly not."

"But zat means there is a way to unlock it without zee key, no?" asked Fleur.

Hermione studied the partial schematic they had assembled. Truthfully, that wasn't a sure thing. There were sure to be all sorts of curses to protect the mechanism from tampering, some of which might destroy the treasure. Gringotts was willing to take the chance of unravelling them if it were the only option, but it did seem like there should be another way. The problem was that the numbers on the dials were all wrong for it to be an actual clock. Hell, what looked like the input dial for the unlocking mechanism was twenty-seven digits long, which made no sense for a time lock. Then there was an orrery and a five-digit counter of some kind, neither of which matched the gearbox for the locking mechanism, and then a massive flywheel about three feet across and eight inches thick, turning around at a surprising speed for something its size and age. This treasure chamber was clearly designed to last.

"I don't know," Hermione said. "None of this makes sense for a clock…How did the hindus keep time…wait, that might be it. I read about this ages ago when I was learning about numbering systems. In Hindu cosmology, the universe is old. Really old. And they way they measure time is different…yes, that's twenty-seven digits! I think I've got it. In order to obfuscate the mechanism and keep someone from just reseting the lock to the next lunar cycle, it marks the time date in absolute reckoning."

"'Ow is zat?" said Fleur.

"In Hindu cosmology, time is cyclical, turning in grand cycles and megacycles adding up to one great cycle, the life of Brahma, that lasts for three hundred eleven trillion and forty billion years. Is that right?" Ramanujan nodded to her. "This thing records the date as the time since the purported creation of the universe, a hundred and fifty-five trillion years ago, measured in the smallest unit of time in the Vedic system."

"Seconds?"

"No, truti," Ramanujan said.

"What's a truti?" asked Fleur.

"That is the trouble, isn't it?" he answered. "It depends on the specific system…but it's usually measured in microseconds."

"Microseconds!"

"It's doable, though," Hermione assured her. "Georgina, scan the mechanism; see if you can work out the gear ratios to determine the units it uses in fractions of a day. Mr. Ramanujan, can you help me work out the exact date on the calendar?"

The date was relatively easy. It was just a matter of adding up various ages. On the large end, they were fairly well defined, although there was the hiccough that they used sidereal days. The current age began in 3102 BC, and there were a bunch of partial cycles to add up before that, but they were mostly agreed upon. On Georgina's end, however, it was move complicated.

"I'm only getting twenty-one thousand, six hundred rotations to the day," she said, "but if I'm making sense of the gears feeding from the input to the date calculation, it's two billion, nine hundred sixteen million truti."

"That's thirty-three thousand, seven hundred and fifty per second," Hermione computed.

"How can they measure something that fast?"

"The way this is set up, something about the flywheel, I think," she said. "Let me check with the camera." Hermoine took the instant camera from their gear and set it to the fastest shutter speed to take a photograph of the flywheel. It still wasn't very clear, but after studying it closely and compensating for the rolling shutter, she exclaimed, "A transversal scale! I've never heard of one being used before Renaissance Europe."

"Transversal scale?" Georgina said.

"Yes. Look here. The flywheel is marked with thirteen hundred and fifty divisions. Each division has a very slight diagonal line running from corner to corner across the width of the wheel, where those lines line up with the hundred divisions on the calibration scale marks the exact time, allowing the division of a four-second rotation period to less than a thirty-thousandth of a second. Brilliant. They probably only needed the marks for installation, but it's just what we need to compute the unlocking position.

"But if it has to be accurate to a thirty thousandth of a second, how can we set it?"

"We can't—not directly. We'll have to rig up a gear train of our own that will set the tumblers at the exact right moment to line up with the flywheel. But it's doable."

"That's good enough for me," Ramanujan said. "Let's get to work."

22 January 2004

"It is not often that wandmakers ask for wood from a bonsai tree, Granger-sensei."

"Well, I'm more of a dabbler in experimental wandcraft, Hamano-san," Hermione told the artist.

"They are not meant for crafting," Hamano told her. "They are pieces of art and take many years to make."

"I am aware of that," she said. "I'm not expecting to use bonsai trees for primary stock, but I did want at least one for comparison. You see, I have a theory that the very dense wood grain of such a slow-growing tree will make more powerful wands."

"Ah, very interesting. Well, I suppose I can spare a couple of pieces for such a project."

"Thank you, Hamano-san."

Hermione acquired two bonsai pine trees that looked promising and were cultivated with straight trunks. They were both over a hundred years old, though the arctic willow was older than that. She had a pretty good sample of what was possible for very dense-grained woods by now. Her other test was to try the very highest quality wood she could find, to compare the results. She'd bought several pieces of luthier's wood from one of the best suppliers in Europe—hand-selected and seasoned for fifty years. Either way, it would be a very expensive wand, but the results would be very informative.

She went back to the hotel to meet with Georgina for some advanced arithmancy study. Hermione and George had taken a break from travel over the holidays, and George didn't want to be gone too long now, either, because Fred's and Angelina's first child was due soon. (They were naming him Lee, of course.) But they were able to fit in a quick trip now.

As it happened, Percy's and Audrey's first, Molly, had already come in November. This meant Christmas had been slightly more awkward than usual this year with the elder Molly casually asking if Hermione and George were planning on having children anytime soon and if Ron had found anyone yet. (She'd long since given up on Charlie.) The answer was no on both counts. Honestly, Hermione was only twenty-four, and witches had a good decade longer than muggle women. She was in no hurry.

In the meantime, Georgina was really coming into her own as an arithmancer. She had taken to multivariate calculus, differential equations, and linear and abstract algebra very well, and Hermione was increasingly trusting her with solo projects, consulting, and even confiding a few more details of soul magic and her other high-level projects.

"I think I know which project I want to use for my Mastery," Georgina told her that night.

"Oh, really?" Hermione said. "It's about time. I was getting worried. I'm not sure when it's really supposed to be, but—"

"I know, I know, I've been dragging my feet deciding," Georgina said. "I've got a bunch of stuff I could use, but I wasn't sure which one I wanted to do—kind of like you."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Right, right. I've been a bad influence on you, Georgina. So what's your project?"

"Apparition. You took some notes on it years ago, but you never did anything with it. It could be good to do an arithmantic analysis."

"Ambitious. But yes, I think you could do it. There are certainly some interesting questions to be answered…You know, I've always found it interesting that the limiting factor is relative velocity rather than distance. That results in some interesting effects. Like the limiting distance is always the same east-west, but the closer you are to the equator, the easier it is to go north-south."

"Really? …I guess I can see that. Huh," Georgina said. "So what about you, Hermione? Do you have a big dream project anymore?"

"Oh, nothing on the scale of what I've already done, thank God," she said. "I've had thoughts about studying Ravenclaw's Diadem, trying to figure out how it works. Arithmancy as a field hadn't been invented when Rowena Ravenclaw made it, and no one's had the chance to study it in centuries. I think it's doable. It's just that there always seems to be so much else to do."

"That sounds interesting."

"It definitely is, but…it might be a bit more interesting if I weren't the only who could use it. I suppose being able to copy it and return the original to Hogwarts permanently would be good, but there are a lot of interesting artifacts out there. Take Harry's invisibility cloak. A normal invisibility cloak wears out in ten or twenty years, but Harry says that cloak's been in his family for generations, and no one knows why. There's little mysteries like that everywhere in the magical world. Most of them aren't that important, but there's simply too much to study in a lifetime."

Georgina pondered that for a while and they started working on her Apparition project, but they were soon interrupted by a petrel arriving at their window carrying a letter. Someone wanted Hermione's help. Immediately.

"That's a dragon."

"Indeed."

"I think you have the wrong person."

"You were recommended as a dragon fighter, Granger-sensei."

Hermione spun around to face the Auror. "I was? Since when?"

"November of 1994, in a duel between Harry Potter and a Hungarian Horntail, Potter credited his success to Hermione Granger."

Hermione closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I invented the spell he used against it," she said. "Looking back, I think he got a lucky hit in. I've never faced a dragon myself…well, adult, anyway. We need Charlie for this."

"Bit short on time for that, don't you think?" George said.

She shot him a look that said, Not helping. "Can't the Aurors handle this?"

"We can, of course, but we would have appreciated your help, Granger-sensei. If you could perhaps teach us the spell you used?"

She considered her options and decided it wouldn't be too big an issue for her to show it to them. "Alright. It's a bit tricky, but I can try. First off, you'll want to make sure you're casting it far enough away that the dust won't get on you…"

"Is that a Chinese Fireball," Georgina spoke up as they worked.

George squinted at the dragon that was cutting a fiery path through the countryside, coming worryingly close to a muggle town. "Yeah, looks like it," he said. He quickly got out the Mementoscope and used the viewfinder for a closer look. "Yep, Chinese Fireball."

"In Japan?"

"Oh, they're found all over the Far East. Should maybe call 'em Oriental Fireballs. I picked up a lot from Charlie."

Hermione finished explaining her spell to the Auror and demonstrated it: "Dialego Kathar Magnesia." A cloud of magnesium powder rose into the air twenty feet in front of her. "Now, this is the part you'll want sunglasses for." She slipped a pair on and cast a small fireball at the cloud.

BANG!

A blinding flash illuminated the whole area. George and Georgina barely had time to turn away, but the Japanese Auror clapped once and said, "Excellent! This will be very helpful."

ROAAAR!

The dragon's call echoed across the valley, and it turned aside from its path.

"Oh, bugger, we just attracted it toward us didn't we," Hermione said.

"Not so excellent," the Auror agreed.

George laughed nervously. "Should probably tell Charlie about that reaction. I don't think it's been tested before."

"Uh, guys?" Georgina said practically as the dragon flew toward them. "Shouldn't we be getting out of here?"

The Auror shouted something in Japanese, and half a dozen other Aurors ran out or Apparated in to meet them.

"I hate to bring it up, but they might appreciate our help stopping the rampaging dragon that we attracted to them," Hermione pointed out.

Georgina grumbled and muttered, "Bloody Gryffindors."

"Okay! Everyone who knows how, get ready with the spell!" Hermione ordered, and they lined up with her. "Careful, we might only get one shot at this. Wait for it…"

The dragon was well above their level now, and it began diving toward them. It blew out a fireball that illuminated its lion-like face, but it fell short of the group.

"Wait for it…" The dragon picked up speed and extended its wings for what might have been a strafing run. "NOW!"

"Dialego Kathar Magnesia!"

A cloud of grey dust flew into the air in front of the group, far larger than she'd ever seen before. At the same moment, Stunning Hexes flew through it from the Aurors.

"DUCK!"

BOOM!

The blast knocked Hermione off her feet, or maybe it was the rush of wind from the dragon's wings. The dragon screeched with a cry that was almost louder than the flashbang cloud. The ground shook as it landed behind them. Hermione moved on instinct and ran to the side before she could see clearly. She felt a burst of flame just behind her.

When she looked up, she saw the dragon. It towered over her, the size of a small elephant. It snarled and thrashed wildly, blind and disoriented if not deaf. Flurries of sparks flew from its mouth, coming close to scorching her. Red light still flew around the area, but Stunners were only slowing it down. It was then that Hermione realised she'd been separated from the rest of the group. Just her and one Auror with the rest of them scattered in a wide semi-circle around the beast. She could just hear George shout over the fray, "I need a broom!"

"It's disabled! Knock it out!" Hermione said. She raised her wands, shielding with one. She just needed a good shot.

Before she got one, a fireball exploded at her feet, and she and the Auror were blown back again, rolling against a rock wall. She pushed herself to her knees. The dragon was close. Too close. She raised her wand again and threw as much power as she could into the spell.

"Dornröschen!"

The spell was too slow. She'd had to trade power for speed when she designed it, and the dragon twitched its head out of the way before it could connect.

"Run!" the Auror yelled, and he pulled her out of the way of another fireball that knocked them to the ground.

"Thanks," she said. She felt dizzy.

The dragon growled as it loomed over her, swiping at the ground blindly. She struggled to reorient herself and aim her wand again, but just then, something whooshed past her, and a line of fire fell from above, cutting a path directly between her and the dragon. Hermione was confused for a moment. Whatever that was, it seemed worse than useless, but then the fumes hit, and she coughed and choked, and the dragon turned away.

George descended beside her on a broomstick. "And you said Hell in a Handbasket was a bad idea!" he yelled. "Need a lift?"

Hermione was speechless. However, the Auror was quicker and said, "Can it carry three?"

"Long enough," he said.

They both climbed onto the broom and lifted above the fight. The dragon was completely encircled by a low wall of flame that it nonetheless seemed unwilling to cross, instead trying to blow it away with its wings. The buffeting shook the broom, but George held it steady. He quickly set the Auror down on a roof, and Hermione decided she was ready. "Can you get me closer to its head?"

"Probably gonna regret this, but okay?" George said. He flew in low up the dragon's back, and Hermione leaned down to get her wand as close as she could. "Dornröschen!" she hissed. Her hand ached from the force of the spell, but it struck home, and the dragon fell asleep—only a natural sleep at its size, but it was enough.

They landed on the roof overlooking the dragon to make sure it didn't escape. Georgina immediately Apparated up to join them, followed by the rest of the Aurors. "Everyone alright?" she called.

They were. The rest of the group had had more room to run. "Thank you, Granger-sensei," the lead Auror said, bowing to her.

Hermione awkwardly bowed in return. "You're welcome, Auror. But I'm sorry I attracted it here in the first place. You should really thank George."

"Thanks to you both, then," he replied. "You did defeat it, and we would have had to fight somewhere if not here."

And that was that. Once the Japanese Ministry had things under control, they quickly left.

"George, that was absolutely brilliant," Hermione said.

He smiled winningly at her: "Thank you, love. And I think the Mementoscope recorded the whole thing."

Oh, that was going to make an interesting home movie. "How did you stop it with a firebreak like that?" she asked. "It's a dragon."

"It wasn't the fire; it was the brimstone. Burning sulphur hurts a dragon's eyes and lungs the same as us. A wizard in Poland killed a dragon with just sulphur once, Charlie says. What did I tell you? Hell in a Handbasket: a bit much for pranks, but great for dragon-fighting."

Hermione stopped, agape. She knew George could fight, but seeing him go against a dragon like that was something else. She slowly turned to her apprentice: "Georgina…you're in charge for now. I need this man to tear all my clothes off."

George grinned and took her by the hand. "We'll be in our bunk," he said, then added, "I officially love that show now."

A/N: Many of the ideas for Hermione's experimental wands come from Core Threads by theaceoffire.