Author's Note: Here's Chapter Twenty-Five! I hope you enjoy it!

Also, I'd like to remind everyone that I have NEW poll on my profile so go check it out if you haven't already! Right now, "Know Thy Enemy" is winning! I can't wait to see what you all think I should write next!

Chapter Twenty-Five:
"The Dementor's Kiss"

"What? You've never seen a demon before?"

Hermione heard Paige speak the words, but they wouldn't register in her brain. She'd read the words and seen the picture but her mind refused to believe it. There was no way it was possible. Surely the words written on the page were lying and the picture was just some cruel, farce joke? Finally, her jaw unlocked and she was able to speak.

"No…but I know a way to fight this…Deces…off."

Piper smirked and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Yeah, so do I: One kick ass potion."

"No," Hermione said, shaking her head, "It's actually a spell; the Patronus Charm. It's a very complicated spell. You speak, very clearly, the words Expecto Patronum."

"Well…I'd like to know how two words can defeat him," scoffed Phoebe, "when no witch has been able to do so before."

Hermione sighed. Their ignorance of her magic was causing an arrogance in them, they were overly confident in their magic. Sighing once more, Hermione stated calmly, "The spell isn't to defeat him. It will fight him off long enough for you to save Chris. There's no way to defeat him…at least, not that I know of. I don't know. There could be, but I've never heard of it. If there is a way to defeat him, once and for all, I don't know how."

And I was top of my class in Hogwarts, so there probably isn't a way, Hermione thought, knowing that she sounded positively conceited.

Piper made a little "hmmpf" sound and said, "Well…we're going to find out how."

They all then began to work, filing into an unspoken routine that Hermione almost found fascinating. Piper began brewing a potion and Phoebe started to write a spell. Hermione was interested to see how this potion was going to work if the demon was not going to ingest it, as she had already been told he wouldn't. She had been told that the potion would be thrown at the feet of the demon and that after that they would recite the spell, which seemed, to Hermione, to be nothing more than a poem. Then, Hermione, Piper, Phoebe, and Paige prepared to leave.

"Mom! Please! Can I go? I can help, I know I can," Melinda had said when Piper started to gather everything together.

"No," her mother answered simply.

"But Mom! He's my brother! I have to go, I need to know what's happening!"

"You will know…when we get home," Piper retaliated, and then when Melinda began to argue, cut her daughter off, "And you're my daughter. You are not yet an adult, you are too young to be going off and fighting demons. It's too dangerous."

"But," Melinda shouted, now pointing towards Hermione, "You're letting her go!"

Piper flung her arms out in resignation, "Melinda Prudence Halliwell! You will listen to me! This is dangerous! So dangerous that I don't want you or Wyatt going! No witch has ever fought this demon and lived, do you understand that? Hermione is going by her own free will! I couldn't convince her not to go even if I wanted to!"

Piper sighed exasperatedly, "You will listen to me…and you will stay home. Please, Melinda."

"Fine," Melinda concluded, obviously annoyed. Piper placed a hand on each side of her daughter's face, clearly worried that this was her last chance to do so.

"I love you, sweetheart," she said sweetly before turning to Wyatt, "You'll watch her, won't you?"

He nodded and she smiled, "Good, that's my boy. We'll be back as soon as we can. Tell your father not to wait up for us."

"I will Mom," Wyatt said simply.

Hermione cleared her throat, sounding a bit more anxious than she had wanted, "Are we ready?"

"Let's do this," Paige said, and everyone that was going grabbed one of her hands. Except for Hermione, who didn't quite understand.

"Come on," Phoebe ordered pleasantly, "Grab my hand. We've got to go."

Hermione grabbed Phoebe's hand and a second later disappeared in the familiar bright white lights, feeling like she didn't weigh anything until, finally, her feet touched solid ground. Upon the sudden jolt, Hermione swayed a bit, having to lean on Phoebe for a few seconds until she regained her composure.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Phoebe said, chuckling slightly, "I forgot to ask if you've ever orbed before. Have you?"

Oh, yes! Hermione thought, I've definitely done that one too many times!

"I have," she finally answered, after a few moments silence, "But that doesn't mean that I like it."

Piper laughed, "Trust me…if you get involved with this family, you'll get used to it."

Piper and her sisters shared a look that almost made Hermione wonder if they knew something that she didn't. And then Hermione looked around to see where they were at. She saw that they appeared to be in a forest and wondered if they were far up north because of the chill in the air. She saw a cave and, without really knowing how she knew, she knew that that was where Chris was. Maybe it would be easy to find him, caves weren't that big…were they? Finally, the sisters seemed to be done with their silent, private conversation and were now walking up to the entrance. Hermione followed behind them, each step confusing her.

Is it getting colder? she wondered as they were walking through the cave entrance. They had to bend down a bit at first because of the hanging stalactite and cobwebs, the light from outside providing just enough light for them to see. After a few feet of walking like this, they came to an opening that appeared to be the end of the cave. This is it? Hermione asked her consciousness, This can't be it! Where is he?

Piper sighed and brought out a flashlight, shining the light into the secretive darkness, and whispered, "Wyatt said that there would be a hole that we'd have to crawl through that will take us to some catacombs and that Chris is in there somewhere. Shout if you see anything."

"Catacombs?" Hermione mumbled to herself, her eyes peeling through the blackness, looking for some sign of a hole.

They stood for a few moments in silence, their eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets from all the straining. Piper continuously waved the light slowly around the round opening, over every inch of wall and floor and ceiling. The light splayed out over solid ground, rocky walls and a hole, slightly covered up by weeds. A hole! Hermione shouted excitedly in her mind.

But just as she went to voice that she'd found the hole that they were looking for, Paige chimed in, pointing towards the hole, "I found it!"

She grabbed the flashlight from Piper's hand and shined the light over the hole, cautiously walking up to it. She brushed away the weeds, tossed Phoebe the flashlight and began to crawl through the hole.

"Paige," Piper exclaimed, "What the Hell are you doing?"

Paige pulled herself out of the hole so that Piper could see her face, "I'm saving my nephew. I didn't realize that it was such a problem."

Piper shouted, "But you can't freeze something or blow something up if you need to!"

Paige glared at her, "Well…no, I can't. But I can orb myself out if something should attack me."

Piper sighed and waved her arm, allowing Paige to continue. Once Paige had gone through, Piper went, then Phoebe and then Hermione. Taking her wand out, Hermione looked around and felt like she was in an old mausoleum. There were torches on every wall and the floor was made from marble. Each step they took echoed off the floor and resounded again in some deeper part of the catacombs. They continued to walk through the labyrinth, wandering aimlessly about in hopes of finding Chris and vanquishing the demon. As they walked, they became less and less sure that they would find Chris and more sure that he was dead and that there was no hope in finding him or the demon. Paige had even said a few times, "We're not going to find him. We're not going to find him…" We might as well give up, Hermione thought to herself, feeling as if all the hope was being sucked from her and all that was left was a shell of who she was before she met Chris and his family.

Finally, Deces appeared around a corner and began to come after them, floating weightlessly across the floor with a decayed flesh hand extended towards them. Piper grabbed out the potion bottle and threw it at the feet of the demon, who stopped as if puzzled by this gesture.

Gathering together, the Halliwell sisters stood side by side, Phoebe in the middle holding the paper with the spell on it, and began to recite the spell.

"Demon of Despair
we vanquish thee
Feel the wrath of
the Power of Three

Will of magic
Power of spell
We witches condemn
you back to Hell!"

A great cloud of smoke erupted from the potion on the floor and filled the room, but, though the sisters seemed to think that it worked, Hermione knew that the potion and spell had not been powerful enough to defeat him and, to her horror, when the smoke cleared she discovered that it had not even been powerful enough to fight him off, to scare him away.

Gasping slightly, she pulled out her wand and shouted, "Expecto Patronum!"

Hermione's Patronus erupted from the tip of her wand and the little otter charged at the Dementor. Upon sensing the beacon of light, the beacon of hope the demented being fled back down the catacombs in the opposite direction. The little otter sped off down another corridor and then left, then right, then left again. They followed the silver being until they came to a small chamber filled with numerous decaying bodies, where the otter disappeared. The smell was unbearable and the darkness penetrated their eyes. Before Piper could get out the flashlight and cut it on, Hermione had lit her wand and was now peering around in the infinite darkness for a sign of life, knowing that her otter had lead them to Chris' location.

For a few moments, the sisters and Hermione stared in silence just waiting for something to move or acknowledge their presence. Hermione took a breath and, ignoring the horrid stench of death and decay that seemed to plague her and was being absorbed in her clothing so that she may have to face the stench once again when they were out of the catacombs, stepped into the room. She stepped over many bodies, all rotted and decayed with nothing left to identify them as bodies but their tattered clothing and bones. Tripping slightly, she pointed her wand in nearly every direction possible and sought desperately for Chris, knowing full and well that he could already be dead. She tripped again and fell upon one of the bodies and screamed. She looked down at the body and gasped to realize that it was Chris she'd fallen on.

"Chris! I found him!" she yelled to his family.

In horror, she gazed at his pale and lifeless form. Hesitating, for she was sure she already knew what the results would be, she placed her fingers aside his neck, noticing how freezing his skin was to the touch, and checked for a pulse. She was amazed to discover that he had a very slight, very slow pulse. Her mind reeled with possibilities until her mind registered what had happened.

"Oh, Merlin," she whispered slowly, "the Dementor's Kiss!"