Next chapter! I hope you like it. It's short, but I thought it was right to end it here. I think the next one will be longer again.

I don't own the characters or places in this story!


Chapter 45

Hermione POV

In the garden, Harry told me to come to his room after everyone went to sleep. I knew he wanted to talk about everything that happened this evening, so I just nodded. Sirius would be there too, he had many questions about the things Scrimgeour said. We didn't talk about the previous events anymore, all we did was to show the others the things Dumbledore had left us. Fred and George were discussing why he would have done it, but I wasn't interested in that conversation very much. And it seemed as if Harry and Ron didn't care either. They were sitting on their table, the cake in front of them and stared into the air.

We helped Mrs Weasley to clean up the garden and carry the tables inside. After that, everyone went to their rooms to go to bed. I waited for a few minutes after the house had become silent and tried to go upstairs as quiet as possible. Once I reached the door and went inside Ron's room, I pointed at it with my wand. "Muffliato." I whispered and relaxed a little bit. Luckily, no one had noticed that I left the room and went upstairs. I turned around to see Ron and Sirius sitting on the bed, while Harry was standing on the window, the Snitch in his hands.

"I thought you didn't like that spell." Ron said and I rolled my eyes.

"Times change." I replied simply and sat down next to Sirius, who wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "And now show us that Deluminator."

Ron did it at once and took it out of his pocked. He clicked it and the light of the lamp went out at once. I knew that it would happen, Ron had done it before in the garden, but it surprised me either way.

"The thing is that we could have also done that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder." I whispered, but then there was another click and the light returned to the lamp.

"But Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder can't do this." Ron said and grinned. "With this, we can get the light back whenever we want. And I think it's cool, from what they said Dumbledore invented it himself!"

"But I don't think that he just gave it to you because he wanted to help us turn out the lights." I said thoughtfully and Sirius nodded.

"There has to be a reason why he mentioned you three in his will." Sirius said slowly. "He wanted you to have those things. What I would like to know is why."

On the window, Harry laughed dryly. "Would have been easier if he just told us why he wanted us to have them, wouldn't it? And if we would have done it, he could have just given them to us. Then there wouldn't have been the problem of the Ministry trying to find secret messages or hidden objects in those things."

"I think Dumbledore knew what he was doing." I tried to defend him, but Harry just turned around and raised his eyebrows.

"Did he? Then why didn't he tell us that we were mentioned in his will? Why didn't he tell me that he wanted us to have those things? And what use do they have?" Harry sounded frustrated now and I understood him very well. He had trusted Dumbledore and nevertheless, he hadn't told Harry everything.

"Maybe he wanted you to find it out yourselves." Sirius suggested and Harry sighed.

"I still think that it would have been easier if he had given us those things when he was still alive." He murmured and sat down on the bed as well.

I looked at my copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard and opened it. "If these things are important enough to pass on right under the nose of the Ministry, you'd think he'd have let us know why… unless he thought it was obvious?"

"Thought wrong then, didn't he?" Ron said. "I always said he was mental. Brilliant, but cracked. Leaving Harry an old Snitch – what the hell was that about?"

"I don't know." I said. "Scrimgeour seemed to be sure that something was going to happen when Harry took it. And I thought that too."

"Yeah, well." Harry began and hesitated for a moment. Next to me, I saw Sirius looking at the Snitch with new interest. There was something in his eyes, I thought it looked like realization. "I wasn't going to try too hard in front of Scrimgeour, was I?" Harry asked and looked at Sirius, who had started to grin. I felt like I had missed something important.

"What do you mean?" I asked, looking from Harry to Sirius and back.

"The Snitch I caught in my first ever Quidditch match? Don't you remember?" Harry asked, now smiling as well.

I still didn't understand what he meant, but on the other side of the bed, Ron gasped. "That was the one you nearly swallowed!" He said loudly and Harry nodded.

"Exactly." He said and pressed his mouth to the Snitch. First, nothing seemed to happen. The Snitch didn't open and I saw the disappointment in the faces of the others. Ron sighed and Harry exchanged an unhappy look with Sirius, who was frowning at the Snitch. And that's when I saw it. Now I was the one who gasped loudly.

"Writing! There's writing on it, quick, look!" I pointed at the Snitch and at my words, Harry nearly dropped it. He turned it around so he could read what was written on it. However, his excitement turned to disappointment again.

"I open at the close." He whispered and looked at us, a confused expression on his face. "What does that mean?"

We all shook our heads. I open at the close… It sounded like a message, something we should understand. But I didn't. What did Dumbledore mean with it? The close… the end, maybe? But when should that be? And even more important, how should we know?

"I open at the close… at the close… I open at the close…" Harry whispered it over and over again. But I knew that he couldn't find a meaning behind those words as well.

"Sounds like a message to you." Sirius said slowly and I nodded.

"What message?" Harry asked.

"I think you'll know when the right time comes to open that Snitch." I said. "At the close. It has to be a special moment. We can't know yet. But I'm sure you'll know when the moment's there. Somehow."

Harry raised his eyebrows, he didn't look as if I had convinced him. "Hermione, are you sure?"

"It makes sense." Sirius defended me. "It would be typical for Albus to do something like this."

Harry sighed. "Why did he have to make everything so difficult?"

"I'm sure everything was clear to him. He thought in a different way than we do." Sirius said.

"He should have known that I wouldn't understand all those things." Harry muttered darkly.

"And the sword." Ron said suddenly to change the subject. "Why did he want Harry to have the sword?"

"And why couldn't he just have told me?" Harry said quietly. "It was there, right on the wall of his office during all our lessons last year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn't he just give it to me then?"

No one knew the answer to that question. I would have loved to give Harry an answer, but this time I didn't have one. And the others were just as clueless as I felt myself.

"And as for this book…" I said after many minutes of silence. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard… I've never even heard of them!"

"You've never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?" Ron asked, sounding completely surprised. "You're kidding, right?"

I shook my head. Why did he ask something like that? "No, I'm not!" I said loudly and looked at Harry, who just shrugged. "Do you know them, then?"

"Of course I do!" Ron said immediately and next to me, Sirius touched my shoulder.

"It is a book full of stories for children." Sirius said. "To be honest, I'm surprised that Dumbledore left it to you as well."

"Children's stories?" I asked and looked at the book in surprise.

"How can't you know those stories?" Ron asked again.

"Ron, you know full well Harry and I were brought up by Muggles!" I said and hoped he would stop to tell us all the names of the stories in this book. "We were told different stories when we were little."

"What I don't understand" Harry started "is why Dumbledore thought you would read those stories."

"I don't know." I said simply. "But I'll read the book soon, maybe I understand why Dumbledore left it to me then."

"He really liked to make things difficult…" Harry muttered and Sirius sighed.

"You don't know that, Harry. I think Albus had good reasons to do the things in the way he did. Maybe we'll understand it later."

Harry didn't look convinced, but before he could say anything else, there was a sound downstairs.

"What was that?" I asked, looking at Sirius. I knew he heard much better than most others.

"Someone's on the stairs." He said.

"Probably just Charlie, now Mum's asleep, sneaking off to regrow his hair." Ron said nervously.

"We should go to bed now, shouldn't we?" I asked. "It wouldn't do to oversleep tomorrow."

"No." Ron agreed. "A brutal triple murder by the bridegroom's mother might put a bit of a damper on the wedding. I'll get the lights." He said and once Sirius and I had left the room, I heard the sound of the Deluminator behind us.