Oy… this was a pain in arse to write. I do hope I caught the epic world-gone-interestingly-crazy vibe. Ah well. I've had an eventful month or so, which has included starting a new project that rather breaks new ground, in the form of a Hobbit/Star Wars crossover called 'In the Face of Desolation' (it's on Archive of Our Own if you want to read it, I use more or less the same pen-name there, if you remove the space between the words).

It's also included more job-hunting hell, including nearly getting caught in what seemed like a tax-related shell game/pyramid scheme that essentially lured in desperate graduates under false pretences to work for 100% commission as door to door salesman, despite the job description indicating it was salaried and an admin trainee position. So, yeah, that was a fun narrow miss.

Still, here we close off the arc, there is an unexpected appearance, Hermione gets closer to some important information, and Dumbledore gets to show that, yeah, he really is considered the greatest wanded wizard in the world for reasons other than his Chocolate Frog cards.

Trigon: Thank you. I… had actually forgotten about that. It was a relic of a much older plan that I've largely discarded. Not entirely, though. The entity has been mentioned by another name, I will say that.

Lucifer666: Wakandan battle armour is very good at dealing with blunt force strikes and energy blasts, less so at stab wounds. In other words, it maps pretty neatly onto Harry's own strengths and weaknesses, meaning that it won't really help. Also, demands for me to update do not amuse me. Or make me likely to do so.

Corvette69: Quite possibly. I will happily accept your reviews from the afterlife if it goes on that long.

Guest: Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it so much – though given the rate you implied you read it, I suggest going back and reading it again. There's a lot of little nuggets of information and foreshadowing hidden within…

The woods that had become known as the Forbidden Forest were ancient. They had been old when the ancestors of humanity had first reached the North. Some parts, a select few, had been woodland, fresh and new, when the Eternals awoke from their creation and first bestrode the world, giving names to all the things that they saw.

Some of those things still existed, while many were long dead, and so it was with the trees, the hills, and even the mountains whose slopes bounded the edges of the Forest. Much had changed. Almost all of the most ancient trees had died – not just individuals, entire species, demolished by walls of ice that had buried all before them, or destroyed by the wars of gods and men.

But like a seed buried in winter, through trials of ice and fire, the forest remained. The forest endured. It absorbed magic into its very soil, just as it did the rain from the skies and the rivers off the mountains. And as the ages had passed, it had developed an awareness. While it had shrunk on the outside, it had expanded within – for while an awareness is not a mind, something does not become so old without at least learning how to adapt.

That awareness had seen many battles, clashes for the ages where demons were cast down and new pantheons arose, and struggles for the sake of all Nine Realms. If it was in a position to judge, it wouldn't classify what was taking place now as one of them. But, if it could say, then it would say that this was most certainly greatest clash it had witnessed in this age of men.

The clash itself was of an ancient essence: god against demon, hero against villain… and, after a fashion, friend against friend. With its primary mortal participant set aside, and those remaining occupied with tempering the devastation, that sense of the primordial infused the battle as the conflict became more fluid and unearthly by the second.

Initially, there had been a initial renewed test of strength, as the Hermione-Thing tested her new limits by hurling miniature singularities like grenades of infinite darkness, the likes of which had not been seen in age, chewing holes in the earth and sky. Yet Harry weaved past them, defying their pull and muttering a binding spell, symbols and runes flowing from his fingers to take the form of a green-gold chain, which he cracked at the Hermione-Thing like a whip; once, twice, thrice, each at a different angle, before it seared her ankle, causing her to vanish in a startled shift of space.

Yet as the Hermione-Thing moved, so did Harry, and for all that she moved in an instant, he was little slower, always hounding her. In desperation, she shifted, her shape stretching and undulating in mid-air like bronze-skinned serpent, before exploding into reddish-black smoke in mid-flight, swirling and coiling away from the chain. Yet Harry still followed, shooting through the sky like a silver-gold comet.

A careful observer would spot how, darting across the battlefield and shaping the winds about them, he steadily chased the smoke downwards. Then, suddenly, the light around him flared, a sudden sharp gesture barely perceptible through the glare. Instantly, the chain shot out of his hand and exploded, joined by dozens more like it, each piece snapping into place in a globe around the Hermione-Thing, one that slammed into the ground with earth-shaking force, swiftly followed by Harry himself.

In the aftermath of the impact, there was one soft, modulated growl of satisfaction.

"Got you."

OoOoO

Until she had gone to Hogwarts, Hermione's life – odd bursts of what she now knew to be accidental magic aside – had been pretty normal. Uneventful. Then, she had gone to Hogwarts and become one of Harry Potter's best friends, after which it had become very eventful and not even remotely normal. Some of the strangeness hadn't even had anything to do with him, either.

This, though? This was quite possibly the single strangest incident in her life so far.

And yes, she was counting the entire year she'd spent using a time travel device to fit in extra schoolwork while trying to make sure she didn't accidentally cross paths with a past or future self.

"This… this is Harry's head," she said to herself in disbelief. "I am inside Harry's head."

There was no response, but she hadn't expected one. She also hadn't expected Harry's mental landscape to look the way it did: the centre, a cluttered circular control room with a vast array of screens and speakers of varying size and clarity that each seemed to connect to a different form of sensory input. Some were standard screens, as if she was looking out through Harry's eyes – and even allowing for the brightness surrounding him, the clarity was astonishing, his night vision inhumanly acute – while others… others seemed to display senses that gave Hermione headaches when she tried to process them.

Could you have headaches as a disembodied spirit? It certainly felt like you could. She'd about psychic wounds before, so maybe this was related to that. And what exactly was she? Was she a consciousness, a spirit, a soul, or all of the above? While her studies hadn't really taken her into astral projection (like Harry, she much preferred that her spirit should remain firmly attached to the rest of her), she recalled a few commentaries that suggested the latter –

She took a deep breath, trying to stop her thoughts before they ran away from her in a panic. She was fine. She was in someone else's head, yes, and that someone might have some unpleasant things floating around (and unpleasant was, frankly, an extraordinary understatement), and, perhaps, a territorial defence mechanism or two that could burn up the whatever-she-was that constituted her being like dry tinder… but she was fine.

She eyed the selection of doors leading out of the control room. Several were firmly locked and bolted, and she left those alone out of a mixture of common decency and common sense. Another, now standing slightly ajar, she stayed as far away from as she physically (metaphysically?) could.

This had something to do less with the fact that it was labelled in neatly stencilled Russian, more that it had giant, tattered yellow and black warning strips dangling down the frame and a hastily scrawled sign saying 'DO NOT ENTER' on the door. The frame was also surrounded by stains, as if something had seeped out through the seams, before dripping down to pool at the bottom. The stains, Hermione felt, were familiar. Unpleasantly familiar. And if you listened closely… well. Hermione certainly wasn't going to try that again.

There were other, less disturbing doors, which seemed to be opened with casual frequency, and Hermione had curiously poked a head through them. They led to what seemed like entire branches of corridors, each splitting off from one another at random, organic intervals, rising and falling, curving and bending, in ways that set Hermione's perceptions spinning.

They weren't organised to any particular layout, either: not only were some corridors shorter than others, but the walls were full not just of doors to rooms or other corridors, but swirling panoramas of images, sounds, smells, even sensations, some mixed together and some entirely independent of others.

There also, she thought, a fearsome blush creeping across her face until her entire insubstantial being was burning with embarrassment, wasn't much warning about what you might come across.

"Enjoying the accommodations?"

Hermione shrieked. She didn't want to admit it, but yeah, she shrieked.

A familiar, merry laugh burst out behind her, and she slowly turned, metaphorical heart still hammering, to see Harry grinning at her. He looked… well, more or less like he usually did, but wearing jeans, a scruffy hoodie, and an expression that promised mischief.

"Harry," she said, after a moment. "Did you have to do that?"

"Well, no," Harry said. "But I have spent the evening dealing with a fear-inducing god-eating eldritch horror, trying to stop it from tormenting people I care about, and now trying to eject it from your body without doing too much damage." He shrugged. "Need to get my amusements somewhere."

Hermione grimaced. She had quite firmly been trying not to think about that. Or what it had been like in her head. She shivered, a sense memory of cold-greasy-sharp-trapped crawling over her skin like some kind of invisible slug.

"Yes," she said. "My body."

Harry's amusement faded, and he glanced at the array of screens, expression serious. "It's fine," he said. "It will be fine. You will be fine."

The phrasing carried the measured cadence of a promise, no, a vow.

"I'm not sure if I'll ever be fine," Hermione said quietly. "Not… not after this."

Harry sighed. "You will be," he said gently. "But I can understand why you don't feel that way."

Hermione followed his gaze to that slightly ajar door, and shivered. "Are you fine?" she asked. "Really?"

She immediately regretted it, Harry's face shutting down completely.

"Harry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean," she began, before trailing off. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"Maybe not," he said quietly. "But you have reason." He met her gaze. "Am I fine?" He half-smiled. "Most days," he said softly. "Yes. Most days, I'm fine."

"Do you think I'll be?" Hermione asked, after a moment.

The half-smile turned into something warmer and fuller – adjectives that Hermione then tried to strike from her mind as they reminded her what she'd stumbled across and embarrassment reigned once more. As she did, Harry blinked, then began to blush himself, mortified.

"Hermione," he whispered, caught between outrage, amusement, and utter mortification.

"I didn't see anything!" Hermione squeaked. "Nothing! Nothing at all!"

Harry looked sceptical.

"Okay, I saw something. Something that I would much rather not have seen and would like to have removed from my memory as soon as is convenient," Hermione said. "Now can we please not talk about that?"

"Gladly," Harry mumbled, running his hands through his hair.

Hermione hesitated, then, curiosity too great, images dancing in her memory, contradicted her previous words in morbid fascination. "Just… out of interest, have you two –"

"Hermione!"

"Sorry! I just – sorry!"

Harry, face crimson, pinched his brow. "No," he said. "No, we have not. And yes, I do know what you were going to ask – I'm a telepath and this is my head. We're not actually physically speaking, after all." He waved a hand all around this. "This? This is just a convenient way for our minds to interpret what's going on."

"Yes, I had realised that," Hermione said, a little irritable at being so embarrassed, and all the more so for knowing that it was her fault.

"Well, you're not psychically trained, so you don't know how to compartmentalise," Harry said, calming somewhat. "There's not much difference between the thoughts you project at me in conversation and the thoughts you just think. I'm not even technically here – 'I'm' just a small part of my greater focus."

"I was wondering," Hermione admitted. "I thought you'd just found a moment to talk, because everything moves faster in here."

"Nah," Harry said. "I'm multi-tasking." He gestured off to one side, towards some of the doors, and when Hermione concentrated, she could see them flickering open and shut, faint figures darting in and out.

"You're tapping into different memories," she said. "Spells and psychic powers?"

"Mostly spells," Harry said. "I don't have the skill to do anything too precise at range, and I'm not close enough to use what precision work I do know. What I'm currently using, psychically speaking, is pretty reflexive."

That, Hermione thought, covered a multitude of sins and virtues, as Harry's skills with his psychic powers were far more extensive than Harry himself either realised or was willing to admit. They were also instinctive. One tendency that both she and their teachers had noticed was that Harry had an unfortunate habit of defaulting to his psychic abilities when his attention slipped.

While this intuitive skill was remarkable, so deep in his bones that it was practically hardwired into his reflexes, it was also an impediment to learning, even with Harry's remarkable muscle memory. Yes, he picked up spells like nobody's business, but that wasn't the same as actually understanding them, let alone the theory behind them.

It was, she thought privately, why he made for an excellent duellist, but a relatively average potion maker. Finely honed magical senses weren't much use in that particular department, aside from telling you when a potion was about to go critical.

In fairness, though, Harry had worked very hard on it. His habit of defaulting to psionics was much less of one than it had been near the start of the year, but he did still occasionally need to think his way through using magic first. And, she thought, a sudden revelation coming upon her, considering that he'd been primarily drilled in psychic combat, of course that would be his default in a situation like this.

It also, she thought with a chill, probably wasn't going to be enough.

She had absolutely no doubt that if this was simply a death match, Harry would win. As little as five months ago – had it only been five months? – she would have scoffed. Four months ago, she would have doubted. Now… now, she understood what Carol had hinted at, to an extent that even the girl with a back-door into Harry's head hadn't yet understood. She understood, with true, aching clarity, what her friend was capable of.

She had seen him fight before, when HYDRA had attacked, but she hadn't appreciated what it had meant. She had heard part of the story about what had happened at the World Cup, but even that had been at a remove, another adventure of Harry's to add to the extensive list.

Now… it had been lots of things that had come together to make her realise it: his attitude after his return, the razor-edged coldness that had lingered even as he recovered, sheathed but available at a moment's notice. His half-story of what had happened on Halloween. Viktor's quiet account of how Harry had saved the other Champions in the First Task, from both Wights and the Elder Wyrm, tactics shifting from daring swagger and subtle obfuscation to calculated viciousness and ruthless economy in the blink of an eye.

And then, finally, something she had just seen, in his memories. Something that he had not said, and she wasn't sure that he would have ever said. Or at least, she inwardly amended, not without prompting. The formerly dripping door was not the only room in his head that had been locked at some point, not the only room that was still locked.

One, made of gleaming wood that shaded from shining silver to ivory, carved with violet-pink flowers – Viscaria – twining through white flowering and vibrantly green ivy, forming an arch that was crowned with three roses: deep red, warm blue, and warm gold. It was locked, but only nominally, and the edges of the door were smoothed and rounded with frequent passage, as the carvings were softened with regular touches.

In no doubt of what it was, she cast a fond look at Harry, who went bright pink. She knew the meanings of each flower. Not all of them were used in either Potions or Herbology, but when she'd first discovered the subjects, she'd naturally done as much background reading as she could, about flowers and plants in general, and meanings often cropped up.

Another was made of a dark wood that seeped to weep with regret. This one was locked, bolted, and shut in every conceivable way possible. Neatly carved at eye height was one word: 'Secrets'. Hermione stayed well clear of that one. She had no doubt that there were things Harry was keeping from her, and while her curiosity ached to know, she was pretty sure that was better off in ignorance – at least, so long as none of them pertained to her. Or Ron, for that matter.

And then there were others, more non-descript, but still firmly shut. She stayed away from those, too, especially the one that seemed to radiate warmth. She rather suspected what was behind it, and was rather certain she wanted nothing to do with it. For starters, she was pretty sure that it didn't like chaos very much.

But that memory, that confirmation… that hadn't been hidden. Or maybe it had just come to mind, when rifling through possible methods. Or, it emerged in light of a similarly severe provocation (Hermione was under no illusions about what Harry was like when his friends were threatened, or hurt).

It had only been one snapshot, a glimpse of a moment, but it had been all-encompassing, allowing Hermione to not just see it, but smell it, hear it, feel it.

It had been a chilly night in a park; Harry, pale as death, garbed in the dark clothes of an executioner, silvery blade gleaming like a shard of moonlight, slowly circling a hulking figure, denuded of its arms, eyes red, blood-soaked fangs bared, forced to its knees by sheer strength of will.

"Not for fun, not even for revenge. Just… cold. Goodbye."

A swish, and a thump. A head fell.

A head that had once belonged to a vampire.

A vampire that had nearly killed Uhtred Ullrson, one of his Harry's close friends.

A vampire that had once been Dudley Dursley, Harry's muggle cousin.

And Harry had killed him without batting an eye. One moment, there was a threat. The next… there was nothing.

If Hermione had had any remaining doubts about what Harry was capable of in a death-match, that would have erased them.

"That wasn't exactly a death-match," Harry said evenly, reminding her once again that her thoughts weren't exactly private.

"Harry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to see it," Hermione said, embarrassed, a little bit ashamed, and rather sorry.

Harry half-shrugged. "It came to mind," he said, with almost disturbing calm. "It was something I'd rather not have had to do. Something where, technically, the body running around wasn't really inhabited by its original owner anymore."

Hermione said nothing. She'd done a lot of reading about the Grey Court, if only from scavenging Harry's books when he was done with them. She knew the differences between a vampire and this possession. She also knew that on that particular night, in that particular moment, Harry hadn't actually cared that what he was facing was no longer his cousin. In fact, she was pretty sure that he wouldn't have cared all that much if it had been…

"For instance," Harry said, apparently ignoring her thoughts. "I'd rather not have to skewer your body – and that sounded far worse than I meant, sorry – or do something horribly painful to exorcise that spirit. But if I have to… I will." He glowered. "Though that does mean that I'll have to pin it down, first."

Hermione cleared her throat. "That," she said. "I believe I can help with."

Harry turned to her, blinking his surprise, and she smiled slightly. "I may not have your powers," she said. "Or anywhere near your combat skills. But I'm pretty sure that I know a few spells that might just be helpful. If you can pull them off."

Harry's surprise turned into an embarrassed I-should-have-thought-of-that look, before shifting into a sly smile.

"Hermione Granger, are you about to start backseat driving?" he asked playfully.

"Not unless it becomes necessary, Harry Thorson," Hermione said archly. "This is my body we're talking about, however, so I am rather invested. Shall we begin?"

"Where do you suggest we start?"

Hermione scrutinised the sensory input feeds. "That chain could be modified," she said. "If you want to pin her, it, down, you're going to need something more like a globe…"

OoOoO

Ron gaped as Harry advanced on the dome in front of him, fingers blurring as they spun through the air, wand flying out of his pocket into his right hand, which began to flicker and dance. He'd seen the kind of speed and grace that Harry was capable of, even occasionally this precision when he'd got a blade in hand, but he'd never, ever, seen anything like this.

To analogise it chess terms, Harry had several basic strategies that he altered to suit the situation, and he employed a selection of different tactics to pull them off. He varied them, naturally, and the tactics themselves are varied enough in their form and application to give him an array of options. Combine that with a flair for getting under people's skin and shifting tactics, even strategies, without much in the way of warning, and you have someone who was both unpredictable and incredibly dangerous.

However… Ron had also noticed that while Harry tended to be unpredictable, it was in a fairly predictable way. He had a broader array of abilities than he let on, even simply in terms of the kinds of spells and psychic tricks (the two of which overlapping in ways that Ron didn't quite understand, and he wasn't sure that Harry truly understood either) he could use in a fight. When pushed, he could, and would, use them – he'd shown that already, with the water magic in particular, something Ron could never actually recall Harry ever using before.

But usually, it was some form of fire magic, telekinesis, his sword, or, at a push, his telepathy. It made sense, really, because he'd had to get very good, very fast, because it was that or die. Or worse. And more to the point, it worked, because Harry was incredibly fast, exceptionally powerful, extremely adaptable, obscenely well-trained, and, as Ron had come to reluctantly realise, utterly ruthless. He would go for the kill immediately, ending a fight however he needed to, meaning that most people didn't have the time to figure him out.

Ron had. He wouldn't pretend that he understood even a fraction of what his friend was truly capable of, and he certainly wouldn't delude himself into believing that he could beat his best friend in a duel. He was perfectly aware that even if the other boy was blindfolded, deafened, and had his psychic powers leashed, he'd never stand a chance. Knowing where a storm is going to pass is not even close to the same as being able to stop it.

So this sudden burst of sheer variety, spells pouring forth in a torrent, woven with ease into a web of… of, well, Ron wasn't quite sure what it was, but it was settling in a multicoloured web of light around the dome. The dome itself bulged and and cracked convulsed, as the thing wearing Hermione's skin thrashed about within it, that terrible scarlet power bursting against it in bolts, crashing against it in waves.

And yet, the dome held, contorting into the web of light, which swirled and reshaped like a kaleidoscope.

Krum breathed softly in what Ron guessed was Bulgarian. It could have been Russian. Merlin, it could be English and he still wouldn't have understood it, he was so fixed on the magic that Harry was pulling off. There was, however, no mistaking the awe in his voice.

"Extraordinary," Dumbledore said, in a tone that mixed pride with something approaching reverence.

"That's putting it bloody mildly," Sirius Black said. Ron had known for some time that Harry's long-lost godfather was not in fact a traitor and Voldemort's lethal right-hand, but the innocent victim of a frame by Ron's own pet rat, Scabbers, who had turned out to be none other than the supposedly dead Peter Pettigrew, and the brother of the terrifying and probably insane Peter Wisdom. But he'd never actually met the man, for a variety of reasons, and his initial impression had been… well, he'd been impressed.

It was one thing for Harry, with his incredibly powerful protection and vast mental powers, to resist that thing in the Fortress, now in Hermione. It was the sort of thing he did. But for a powerful wizard (and he was, very powerful, unless Ron drastically missed his guess), a powerful but otherwise ordinary wizard, to do it was no mean feat.

He'd also shrugged off more than a decade in Azkaban, when Ron had found a brief encounter with a Dementor to be one of the most horrible experiences of his life, a day had left his father shaking, and no more than a couple of weeks had left Hagrid traumatised in much the same way that one of Harry's more horrifying experiences did him. And speaking of Harry, the first time he'd encountered a Dementor, it had laid him out flat! Yet Sirius had seemed untouched. Carol had suggested Sirius as a mentor for him after Halloween, for magical fighting rather than just muggle fighting. On this evidence, Ron had to admit that it was a pretty good suggestion.

"It's impressive," Betsy Braddock said. "He's mixing magic and psychic attacks, I know that. But…" She trailed off, apparently aware that she was missing something, without knowing what.

Ron didn't know too much about the beautiful psychic, other than that she was one of Harry's teachers, she was very fond of him, and that according to Harry, she was very important at MI13 and a seriously powerful psychic in her own right. This, her attractiveness, and her proclivity for tight clothing, made Ron a little uncomfortable around her. He already knew that his idle thoughts were detectable to Harry, and while she was almost certainly far less powerful, she was definitely far better trained. The very possibility was just… awkward.

She was also close to Ginny, he recalled. Apparently, she'd been helping her with… stuff. Ginny changed the subject whenever the question of 'what' came up, though from half-remarks from Harry, Hermione, and Professor Cassidy, Ron assumed it had something to do with the Diary and the Chamber of Secrets. He thought she was helping, like she was supposed to be here. At least, he hoped that she was. That she could.

"It's more than impressive," Sirius said, excited and intense. "That's master-work, right there. This isn't just power, though there's a lot of that – it's skill, it's precision,and most of all, it's control. Harry's putting exactly the right spells in the right places at the right moments to keep Hermione – or whatever's running around in her body – contained. It's the difference between blasting something and vanishing it, or, or, oh, I don't know, blocking lightning and earthing it."

He pointed his wand at the dome.

"Every single bit of energy that's flying out of that thing isn't just being corked up. No, it's being blunted, smoothed, and given a way out. I didn't know that Harry was capable of it, I could count on the fingers of both hands the witches and wizards I know who could, and that was before you said he was laying down a psychic attack too."

"That, Sirius, is because strictly speaking, Harry isn't capable of it," Dumbledore said. "And he probably won't be for some years, even if he is a great deal closer to it thanks to the tutelage he has been receiving."

There was a moment of puzzlement, then Krum made a noise of understanding. "Herm-own-ninny is helping," he said.

"Indeed she is, Mr Krum," Dumbledore said. "Harry has a remarkably intuitive grasp of magic, an instinctive understanding for its ebbs and flows, and in certain areas, he is rather more knowledgeable than most. One of them is combat. However, he has always had something of a blind spot when it comes to magical theory. He knows that spells work, but not always how, or, for that matter, why. Hermione, by contrast, has an excellent understanding of theory, has extensively researched what I believe to be a truly remarkable number of spells in her capacity as a student of Hogwarts and a student of Loki, and has a very methodical and organised turn of mind. They complement each other perfectly, and have coordinated accordingly. I am very proud of them." His lips twitched into a grim smile. "And were circumstances less dire, I would almost pity their opponent; who, I hope, is finding that they have bitten off rather more than they can chew…"

OoOoO

The Hermione-Thing was indeed in dire straits. Its shape was now only semi-human, bronze limbs, spines, fangs, and claws extruding from conceivable angle as it bent and twisted, trying desperately to find a weakness in the shrinking dome. But every time it struck, the dome flexed rather than failed, Harry and Hermione's combined spellwork tightening its grip.

To make matters even worse, its focus was continually disrupted by the effort of bearing up under Harry's psychic attack. The attack wasn't lethally precise, brutally powerful, or multi-pronged as might have been expected from Harry's usual tactics. It wasn't a single blow designed to end the battle, or a probing attack designed to confuse and exhaust. Instead, it was a matter of sheer inexorable force, pressure that was increasing slowly and steadily.

The Hermione-Thing tried to counter, millennia of malice twisted through the baffling matrix of chaos. All it received was the echo of mocking laughter, and a derisive message:

Is that really the best you can do?

Harry, after all, had gone mind to mind with Chthon, the Elder God of Chaos himself, progenitor of that breed of magic, and Surtur, the true Dark Phoenix, a force of frozen rationality and molten madness more than a million years in the making, whose very consciousness transcended time. Both were ancient in hatred and cruelty on levels that even such a creature as this couldn't understand, and with merely a few millennia of pain and evil under its metaphorical belt, it didn't even come close to comparing.

The Hermione-Thing flickered in uncertainty for a moment, just a moment, but that was enough. Harry, sensing an advantage, pressed his advantage, adding more spells to his onslaught: Air, spun to bind; Light, bent to blind; and Gravity, one of its own weapons, loosed to unbind it. Unable to move, blinded, and spinning wildly, it was helpless for the first time in eons.

It did not adjust well.

The creature screamed and thrashed, bulging and twisting its form, trying to find some escape, but there was none. And all the while, Harry bore down without mercy, encircling its mind in an iron fist, its mental defences, flawed by panic, cracking under the relentless pressure.

Unfortunately, however, Harry had miscalculated. And while anyone can make a mistake, this is one that he of all people should have been wary of making.

He, after all, should have realised what happens when you take something powerful, something that barely understands what it is now and what it can do, and make it so afraid it can't even think.

He, more than anyone else, should have realised the power of desperation. And perhaps if Hermione had not been occupied, she might have reminded him.

But she was. And in all due fairness, there is no way that either of them could have imagined what would happen next.

OoOoO

Hermione had indeed become occupied. Or rather, they had hammered out the basic strategy and she had given him access to her mental library of spells – and that was actually how it had manifested in Harry's head, as a kind of portable walk-in library, one entirely separate from Hermione's own mental projection of herself. Despite the fact that it was part of her actual mind. When she had pointed out the incongruity of this, a headache building as she sought to explain it to herself, Harry's response had been less than helpful.

"When you're in a mindscape, logic and reality don't really matter. Everything is shaped by our perceptions, our imaginations. I find it more convenient to imagine the magical knowledge and understanding that you are very graciously sharing with me –"

There, he had given her a small bow that might have amused her on another occasion.

"– as a sort of portable walk-in library. It gives me something to focus on when I want to look at it, making it easier to avoid straying anywhere else in your head by accident, it fits because I associate you with libraries, and it helps underline the fact that this knowledge and connection are necessary. After all, it's your knowledge, and no offence, but I really don't want another Carol situation. I already have three passive psychic connections going, and those are quite enough to be going on with." He paused. "Also, your mind is scarily well-organised. There's an actual filing system. It's kind of scary."

The last part had both amused her and made her preen a little, but the whole had given her a headache. Even though, currently, she didn't actually have a head to have a headache with. That headache was, perversely, only made worse by the fact that on a symbolic level, it all made sense.

Headache aside, she was now unoccupied. Thanks to her very detailed instructions, Harry knew what he was looking for, and being by far the more experienced combatant, he knew better than her how to apply it. He had also politely, but quite firmly, said that he didn't want any backseat driving. Hermione had objected to the very idea that she would backseat drive, until he had given her a look that said very clearly, 'my mind may not be as organised as yours, but I can find plenty of embarrassing examples to prove you wrong, and if you push me, I will'.

Harry, even – perhaps especially – in mental projection form, was sometimes a very expressive person.

He had then made the very logical argument that, since he was in the kind of fight where he couldn't afford his focus to slip for a single second, they would either have to do a full mind-meld and risk any combination of at least 73 different horrible consequences. Hermione was a very methodical young woman and, after one of her best friends had become a telepath, had done a lot of reading on the subject. She was also – generally – very logical, and had grudgingly conceded the point.

So, now, she was sitting in the mental construct of a chair and watching the battle with a mixture of nervous tension, frustration, and boredom, trying to ignore the pounding sounds in her head. After a few moments, however, she realised that the pounding wasn't coming from inside her head – or mind, spirit, or whatever. Slowly, warily, she looked up, as the knocking – polite, firm, and insistent – repeated itself. It was coming from one of the doors.

It wasn't hard to pick out which. For one thing, it was the one that had been radiating warmth. For another, it was now glowing. And slightly ajar.

Slowly, cautiously, Hermione stood up as the knocking repeated itself yet again, more insistent this time, and made her way over to the door, before hesitating. She had a very good idea what part of Harry's mind this led to. For starters, it wasn't technically his mind, and it was most certainly not something that she should be messing with. Even still, though… she was curious.

Then, she took a deep, non-literal breath, and stepped back. Curiosity killed the cat, and no amount of satisfaction would bring her back. Not from that. She turned away, mind made up, and promptly got the fright of her entire life (and considering her life, that took some doing).

"The door was open, you know."

Hermione let out an involuntary shriek, and whipped around. The doorway was now open, and occupied by someone who looked as incongruously normal as the voice had sounded. Leaning against the door frame and holding a mug of tea, she was young, a little above average height, with thick red hair and bright emerald green eyes. She was also wearing a green fluffy jumper, comfy looking jeans, and what Hermione could have sworn were red and white Converses.

For a moment, Hermione thought she had to be looking at Jean, the other Grey twin; she resembled Maddie and fit how Jean was generally described. Then, as she looked closer, she realised that wasn't the case – even allowing for differences in how they were raised and personal style, this woman looked too different to Maddie to be her twin. More than that, though, she didn't exactly look young. Or, she did, but… it was somehow indefinable, as if she was both young and old at the same time, somehow ageless, something in-between.

Hermione's eyes had already widened as far as her physical body would have normally allowed. But now, as she realised just who – and more pertinently, what – she was talking to, they widened even further.

"Come on in," Lily Potter, White Phoenix of the Crown, Destruction Incarnate, and mother of Harry Thorson, said. "I don't often get the chance to meet my son's friends."

Hermione, stunned, stupefied, and just a little bit scared witless, followed her.

OoOoO

As would be reflected later, the shift was so drastic that it was barely possible to comprehend, let alone describe.

All of a sudden, there was a thousand of everything; the people, the battlefield, even the forest and the mountains behind, all reflected as if caught between four all encompassing mirrors, images bending off and around into a twisted kaleidoscope of infinity like the inside of some gigantic tesseract.

Mountains expanded and stretched with volcanic geometry, each outcrop splicing off and echoing outwards, each and every single edge splitting and fragmenting into a tooth in an endless inverted drill that kept turning ominously inwards, all as every loose stone drifted loose, merging and inverting themselves into pulsing distorted shapes, half sea-mine, half Morningstar, that lazily drifted and intersected on impossible gravitational currents.

Grass spread upwards to reach the trees, which bent in on themselves and split, flowing and thinning like they were woven of green-grey webs, collected into swirling copses that captured starlight, glowing softly as they spun downwards and outwards, no matter which direction you looked – a fractal forest designed to entrance, obscure, and entrap.

Even the sky bent, the moon becoming a series of grand, overlapping rings, revolving and intersecting with earth and heavens, stars and constellations bending and shaping themselves into stairs and bridges that split eternally, leading to everywhere that could be and nowhere you wanted to go.

The landscape around them became an eternal spiral in a bubble of coldly mathematical madness detached from reality, where anything or anyone that was not fixed was trapped in an endless plummet into a horrifyingly tessellated reality. It was sanity, a form of sanity so painfully clear and detached from normal understanding that it reached into insanity from the other side, and any wrong move left one in danger of falling in any and every direction simultaneously.

The view through the magical spectrum was even more disturbing, space being unravelled and re-ravelled, knots tied into this fraction of the fabric of reality, as magic poured in and in, folded back into and onto itself endlessly, filling the bubble of existence with power so tangible that you could feel its tang and taste its fire.

And at the heart of it floated the Hermione-Thing, its bronze shape now only vaguely humanoid; unnaturally fluid in form, its limbs extending, rotating, and reshaping themselves to fit both needs and whims, with both eyes now glowing an eerie blue as the foxfire symbols on its body burned with crimson-black lightning, its mad metallic cackle reverberated through every molecule in the pocket reality as a billion reflections laughed with it, three-dimensional shadows curving around and above the twisted world, echoing back onto itself over and over.

And yet, some of those molecules were fighting back, humming with their own resonance. With tangles of veins rolling and pulsing in mid-air, slices of red muscle threaded with pale tenons flexing and straining, and his skeleton being almost absently rearranged like Lego blocks while his skin twirled around like an escaped wind sock, Harry's body had been sliced into thin pieces like the pages of an anatomy book.

Normally, this would kill someone. Even the greatest of gods would be hard pressed to survive such extensive dismemberment. However, if the slicing was performed by bending the fabric of reality and altering space itself, then technically, the pieces of the body were still connected. And the victim would still be alive.

This particular victim didn't really think of himself as one.

Most people would accept the status amidst a flurry of existential horror at being turned into a surreal salami and the resultant attempts to throw up that might be somewhat hindered by the fact that their stomach was now floating fifty feet above their gullet, which was now emerging from somewhere behind them.

Harry was not most people.

He had experience of reality warping combat, and imaginations far more twisted than this one. He'd never been… spread like this, but he'd seen far weirder and far worse. Being possessed by an Elder God will do that to you. Hell, sometimes he'd been the cause of it.

That was how, despite his eyeballs no longer being attached to his body, or indeed, his eyelids, they had narrowed - and they were burning gold. Harry Thorson had not given up the fight just yet.

But it was a losing fight.

A mind can be attacked when, and because, it is coherent and can be pinned down. A lot of psychic combat is like dealing with viruses and infections. It's about identifying the target, making sure that it isn't hiding, then cutting off escape routes and preventing the target mind from slipping sideways, to ensure that defeat is total. When a mind is spread across multiple sites, when it's spread seemingly everywhere, with no centre to target, all clear thoughts scrambled by the warp of space and the chaos coursing through it… then you might as well try punching fog, or the Earth itself.

It could be worked around, if you were lucky, patient, and careful. You might identify a pattern, a way to corner and corral the mind, burn it out and leave it nowhere to go.

Unfortunately, while Harry would have had the strength in a purely mental battle, this certainly wasn't one of those. This was a battle intertwined with control over the very nature of reality around them, undoing a twisting of space so comprehensive that it would take an eye trained to mastery to even perceive it, let alone understand it, as the Hermione-Thing flickered what might once have been a limb, creating a singularity the size of a quaffle about twenty feet behind Harry's eyes.

They burned brighter, in defiance of this sudden pull, one that irresistibly drew in every piece of him, no matter how far flung, drawing him into the blue-limned miniature black hole. The Hermione-Thing leaned forward to enjoy the show, leering grotesquely, now barely even humanoid, a mouth full of white fog spreading in a smile of anticipated triumph, tearing metal from ear to ear.

That was its mistake.

The singularity behind Harry vanished with an almost startled pop, and as the Hermione-Thing tried to see through a thousand eyes at once, it found the world beginning to reverse its rotation. What had fallen now rose, while what had risen now fell, as order began to reassert itself.

Harry had done what he always did, draw all of the attention, and he had done it for just long enough.

Ascending on a disc made of pieces of reality, wand raised and eyes ablaze, was Albus Dumbledore. The veil of the amiably eccentric grandfatherly headmaster was gone, revealing a face both ancient and ageless, as if carved from granite, cold calm and terrible resolve in every line of his face. With power earthing itself and crackling off him like a lightning rod in a storm, facing a demon of the ancient world that had a mastery of nightmares and the power of a god without a shred of fear, there was no doubt that here stood the greatest wanded wizard of his era, and one of the greatest of any kind, in any age.

"That is enough," he said, and though his tone was deadly soft, it was clear as a bell.

The Hermione-Thing turned on him, stretching out like a serpent and undulating through the air towards and around him. It looked supremely confident, but closer attention revealed a sense of caution; whether through its own awareness or its exposure to recent minds and their view of Dumbledore's towering reputation, it kept a careful distance.

"Enough?" it asked, then pouted – a disturbing sight from a creature that now seemed to have three nested mouths. "But Professor, I've hardly even begun!"

"You have stolen the body of my student and perverted her powers," Dumbledore said. His tone didn't change, nor his voice raise, but a new layer of threat was nevertheless present within it. "You have tormented her and several others in my care. You have even attempted to kill them. In the past, I have left you be. If you return to your former dwelling, then I will continue to do so. Let me be very clear: if you refuse, then the consequences shall be upon your own head."

"Consequences?" the Hermione-Thing sneered. "The Asgardian Princeling said something like that. The only 'consequences' involved him learning just what he was dealing with."It smiled. "But you know better, don't you, Professor? The boy suspected that my new body would be powerful, and I think he knew why. You, though… you knew. And you know my power."

"Her power," Dumbledore corrected. "Not yours. As it happens, I do recognise it." He glanced around at the surroundings with a critical eye. "I even recognise the combination of powers that you have used. A different variant, of course, through different methods, but familiar enough."

The Hermione-Thing's eyes narrowed.

"Good," it said hatefully. "Then you'll have the privilege of knowing exactly how you died."

Then, moving impossibly fast, it thrust out multiple limbs, unleashing thousands of shards of shattered space, backed by a literal tidal wave of burning scarlet chaos. It was power enough to scour a small city and transmute the rest into a ruined wasteland of impossibilities, designed to make sure that its target had never been, and never could be.

Against someone else, it might have had more luck.

Dumbledore swept his wand up like a conductor's baton, sweeping the shards of reality up and over, covering him in a dome that resembled nothing so much as half of a disco-ball. The wave of chaos crashed against it, ripping through all of reality in its path, but instead of tearing straight through to get devour Dumbledore, it stuck to the dome of shards, insinuating itself into every crack. A stunned instant later, the crimson lined cracks sealed themselves, the dome becoming as smooth as a pond on a still day, before flowing away like water off a duck's back. And, standing exactly where he had been, hardly looking as if he'd even blinked, was Dumbledore.

It wasn't, observers would later reflect, a stunning display of power. Power was simple. This was quite the opposite, and truly masterful for that very reason. For Dumbledore had not confronted power with power. He had not even turned it back on his opponent, not really. Instead, if the attack was like a rock thrown into a pool, its effects the ripples and waves that resulted, Dumbledore had simply cancelled them out, countering them with scrupulous exactness. He had made the water smooth again.

Sometimes, even the most towering reputations did not hold a candle to the reality.

"I am afraid that you will have to do better than that," he said calmly.

The Hermione-Thing flowed back and away from him, and as inhuman as its eyes now were, there was no mistaking the wariness within them. It was quite clearly reassessing Dumbledore, and with good reason, trying to work out just how the hell he'd done that. To be fair, it wasn't the only one wondering that – Harry and Hermione, both well-versed in some extraordinary uses of magic, would later admit that they hadn't previously known that such a thing was even possible.

If it had been truly canny, it might have started trying to ransack minds for every bit of knowledge about Dumbledore and his exploits, his education, his background and known skills – details, rather than generalities. Instead, it focused on something more obvious: his wand.

"That weapon you wield is touched by more darkness than you know," the Hermione-thing said, eyeing the wand in question. "It has passed through many hands, and never peacefully - I am of the dead and I recognise my own."

The focus on the object in question was unsurprising. Carved by Death herself, a token for an arrogant man who'd thought that in receiving it he was gaining mastery over her, the Elder Wand was supposedly the most powerful wand in the world.

This was technically true: in the right hands, its potential was almost limitless. That was what everyone latched onto. Yet spirit and mortal alike both failed to recognise one thing: the important part was not the wand.

It was the wielder.

"I am well aware of my wand's history, and its nature," Dumbledore said calmly. "If you think it is a burden to me, then you are very much mistaken. It has been my companion these long years, much like Death herself. Someday, she will come for me and when she does, I will set it aside and go with her as a friend." He raised the Elder Wand into a duellist's salute, his own gaze calm and utterly implacable. "But not today, I think. Not today."

OoOoO

Hermione sat in a comfy armchair that looked, felt, even smelt exactly like her favourite chair in Gryffindor Tower, with a mug of what-smelled-like-but-couldn't-possibly-be tea in front of her, in a clear white room that radiated a soft but vaguely disquieting heat and wondered how on Earth she'd ended up in this situation. After all, making small talk with the parents of one of your best friends could be a bit awkward at times.

That being said, Hermione felt it was exponentially worse when you were a detached consciousness/soul hanging around inside said best friend's head while he fought the body snatching monster that was using her body and powers, and the parent in question happened to be a) one of the most powerful cosmic entities in existence, a being of literally cosmic significance that could snuff out stars with less effort than blowing out a candle, b) technically dead.

"So," the being that had been and technically-sort-of-still-was Lily Potter said. "I hear that you're one of the best students at Hogwarts."

Hermione blinked. "Um," she said eloquently. "W-w-well, I suppose. I mean, I try."

How Harry treated this sort of thing so casually, she had no idea. Well, she inwardly amended, probably not this sort of thing, specifically, given his attitude to family.

"Harry admires you a great deal," Lily said. "He told me."

Hermione blinked. "When?" she asked, startled. As far as she understood it, Lily was dead, which meant –

"Gone? Mostly," Lily said candidly, plucking the thought straight out of Hermione's mind. This was somehow both less surprising than her son doing it and more disturbing. "The Rules," she continued, effortlessly capitalising the word. "Are quite strict on the subject of offspring, especially in my case, and especially right now. Technically, I'm not actually here; I'm projecting my consciousness, or a small part of it, through the small fragment of my power in Harry's body. You being here actually presented me with the first opportunity to do it again in a while, especially given that Harry's distracted – interaction rules and all that."

"I see," Hermione said, frowning.

Lily smiled faintly. "Yes, you do, don't you?" she said. "You're very quick. I like that. Anyway, I was allowed to put in a special visit on Red Sky Day thanks to exigent circumstances, and stuck around for the after-party. Harry and I got to catch up a little. Not nearly enough, of course… but it was something, at least. Like any mother, I asked about his friends, and my goodness, I might as well have opened the Three Gorges Dam." Her smile turned fond. "Not that I minded. I could have listened all day, and for a thousand years after."

Hermione found herself smiling too. Harry, she had noticed, had developed a tendency to babble a bit when he got excited. It was rather sweet.

"He holds you in very high regard," Lily continued. "And he's right to do so. I, naturally, have been keeping my own eye out. Mostly for Harry's sake, but also for yours."

"Mine?"

Lily smiled. It was both secretive and sad and… well, frankly, it was a smile that reminded Hermione intensely of Harry. 'I know something that you don't, and part of me wishes I could tell you', it said. The other part, she thought a little uncharitably, enjoyed keeping secrets a little too much for their own good.

"Of course," she said mysteriously, and yes, there was the resemblance to Harry again. The more she saw Lily, Hermione thought, the more she could see the similarities between mother and son. Then, Lily sat back in her own chair, getting comfortable. "Now," she said. "What's bothering you?"

Hermione bit back the immediate snappish response, both out of good manners and a desire not to be incinerated. While she didn't think that Lily would ever mean to hurt her, any more than Mrs Weasley would, the fact of the matter was that Lily was not just Lily. Instead, she gave the question serious consideration. To her surprise, it was not yet another shocking manifestation of powers, or even this specific situation.

"Being possessed," she said eventually. "No… being helpless."

"That would bother anyone, and with good reason," Lily said grimly. Something bright and ominous flickered in her eyes for a moment, and Hermione had to restrain the urge to run. That subject would naturally be a particularly sore spot for Harry's mother, given what had happened to him – especially since any intervention she'd been able to make, possibly only in terms of that fragment Harry had, that she was using to talk through now. Harry had never been all that free with the details of what had happened, or his rescue, and given what had happened… Hermione shuddered.

"Still," Lily continued, calm apparently restored. "I don't think that's it. You mentioned secrets, earlier."

"I… I'm afraid I didn't," Hermione said.

Lily blinked, then sighed. "You thought it," she corrected herself. "I'm so sorry, Hermione. I'm afraid that I'm not very good at filtering between thoughts and words, especially in a place like this. It's one of the downsides of being the Phoenix."

Hermione's mind drifted to her chaos magic, that strange and elusive sorcery of staggering power and terrifying possibilities, which seemed to less what it was told, more what it wished (or, as Wanda had firmly drummed into her, what she wished. Not everything could be blamed on the magic itself being tricky). Then, it touched on this new set of powers, hideously powerful and destructive abilities of mysterious origin that she'd never imagined she possessed – and frankly, never wanted to either. Power, she thought, was much overrated.

"I think I can understand," she said eventually.

"Yes, I rather think you can," Lily agreed. "In some ways, we're both at the mercy of the next passing whim. Wanda will be able to help you there." She shot Hermione a pointed look. "If you choose to properly open up to her."

Hermione flushed. She had taken her lessons with Wanda very seriously, she wanted to control her chaos magic, she really did. But she had been rather reticent about going beyond the technicalities. After all, studying the technical aspects of magic was what she was good at, what she was comfortable with. She wasn't an idiot – she knew that there was more to it, or different approaches, at least. Even if she hadn't, the experience of working magic with and through Harry, feeling the flow of his intuitive style, would have left her in no doubt.

Nevertheless, she had hoped that she wouldn't have to get into that, especially not with a teacher who, while she liked her, was a living legend who cast a very long shadow. While she had another of those in Loki, a lot of his teaching these days was by correspondence, and, well… he was almost more approachable. And if she made a mistake in front of Loki, well, he was the God of Magic – he'd seen it all. His own standards were inhumanly high, and in a way, there was no shame in messing up in front of someone so eminent. More to the point, she'd had more time to get used to him, as Harry's uncle if nothing else.

Wanda, meanwhile, was relatively new to her life. Yes, she was Harry's godmother and had taken to the surrogate mother role with a vengeance now that she was finally free to do so (Hermione wasn't totally clear on why she hadn't been previously, other than that it had involved her enemies and Doctor Strange). But at the same time, she mostly mothered Harry when no one else – or at least, no one from Hogwarts – was around, and being human, the scale of her ability and achievements, including simultaneously mastering vast and mysterious set of mutant abilities, was almost all the more daunting for it.

This was all the truer in the field of chaos magic: the Scarlet Witch was widely acknowledged to be the greatest master (mistress) of chaos magic in centuries, if not millennia. Being her immediate successor was not a comfortable prospect – no one wants to look like a fool in front of their idol, much less be rebuked or corrected by them, even kindly.

And what made it even more difficult was that Wanda was strangely nervous around her, carefully reserved, acting as if she was standing on egg-shells, and for the life of her, Hermione couldn't imagine why. She hadn't exactly chosen to teach, either, having been clearly reluctant and just as clearly unhappy when Doctor Strange had manipulated her into doing so. She'd immediately reassured Hermione otherwise, which was nice of her, but… it hadn't rung entirely true. Perhaps it was discomfort at being reminded of her own teenage years, Hermione thought.

After all, it probably didn't help that there was a passing resemblance between the two of them – they were about the same height, with similar complexions (though Wanda was a touch darker), and curly brown hair. It was only a passing resemblance, of course. Aside from the difference in eye colours, grass green meeting ordinary brown, Hermione was realistic about her looks; her front teeth had shrunken a small but significant amount, her hair was a bit less awkwardly bushy, and she knew that she cleaned up fairly nicely.

However, she also knew that barring hours of preparation, she was decent looking, and no more. She certainly wasn't effortlessly beautiful like some of her peers; Carol, Diana, Fleur, Cho Chang, or even Ginny, to name but a few. It had to be said that this didn't bother her – she was quite content the way she was. Yes, she was relieved at the changes to teeth and hair, if slightly unnerved at their means, but it would have hardly been the end of the world if they hadn't come about. In any case, any resemblance to the famously beautiful Scarlet Witch was a passing one at most.

But perhaps, she mused, it was enough to put the other woman off.

She shot a half-wary, half-expectant look at Lily. The other woman/being could hear her every thought whether she wanted to or not, and from what Harry had said, she had been very close friends with Wanda in life. Yet, this time, she chose to say nothing, even when part of Hermione had wanted her to. This, she thought somewhat sourly, was another area of convergence between mother and son, and an annoying one at that.

"You might not want to open up to Wanda, though," Lily added, as if struck by a sudden thought and completely unaware of Hermione's musings. "Particularly not after this. Maybe not Harry, either." She looked thoughtful. "Maybe you should get into contact with the Grey twins. Both of them will rather empathise with your situation, and both should be able to offer advice. While Maddie's thought processes are closer to yours than Jean's, I think that Jean might have the more pertinent suggestions."

Hermione frowned, but nodded, filing this away. A fatalistic part of her was resigned to the fact that she was going to have to get her new abilities looked at. Moreover, they were almost certainly X-gene related, any remaining doubt having been eliminated by Lily's comments and their implications, which, realistically, meant the Xavier Institute. And Lily was right – she knew enough about the raw power of both Jean and Maddie Grey that handling this kind of reality bending power was right up their street.

Of course, that left the question of why she wouldn't want to talk to Harry – who was also very familiar with having this kind of power dropped on his head, and then some – 'after this'.

"Questions and decisions, of course, must wait," said Lily, finishing her mug of mentally-constructed-who-knows-what-tea and crossing the distance between chair and door in a single step. It was unclear whether she'd moved them closer to the door, or the door closer to them. It was also unclear if it even mattered. "Do tell Harry that I send my love; Albus, Sirius, and Hagrid, Remus and Wanda if you get the opportunity. And James – Thor – of course. And do give Lady Braddock my thanks; learning the psychic ropes isn't easy, and she's been a kind teacher and an excellent guide to Harry." She snorted. "Patient, too."

"I will," Hermione promised, a little baffled, then glanced guiltily at her untouched mug. "Um, thank you for the talk. And the, um, tea."

Lily shot her a look full of twinkling amusement.

"It was my pleasure, darling," she said. "Also, please give your friend Ron my regards – and my advice to be somewhat more careful about managing his impulses in the future. They might land him in worse trouble than this."

Hermione, having trouble imagining that, nodded.

"Good," Lily said, and smiled slightly wistfully. "I would say that I hope we could speak again soon, and hopefully in a way that's more conversation than lecture –" Another amused look, coupled with a blush from Hermione. " – but given the likely required circumstances, perhaps not. Still," she added. "I can say that it was a pleasure to meet you, Hermione."

"Likewise, Mrs Potter," Hermione said.

"Call me Lily, darling," Lily said. "Be seeing you."

The door shut, and abruptly, Hermione realised that she was on the other side, back in the control room. Despite never having walked through it. She shivered, and turned to the screens. Some things were better not thought of.

The view, though, didn't have much more to recommend it.

OoOoO

The fight was not going badly. Quite the opposite, in fact. However, the reason for her disquiet was that in its increasing desperation, the Hermione-Thing had got exponentially more brutal, throwing caution to the wind.

Tiny shards of space sluiced down and around in an endless downpour, ebbing and flowing with the curses of scarlet reality storms that engulfed everything they could reach and spat out transmutations, inversions, and empty shadows, gaping wounds in reality where things had and should have been.

There were many causes for this.

Harry and Betsy were one, moving in the kind of perfect tandem they'd managed when she'd taught him how to dance. Harry, now all of one piece again thanks to a deceptively casual flick of Dumbledore's wand, was combining his raw psychic power and lateral thinking with Betsy's own considerable strength and needle-sharp precision. Together, they were pinning it down in one place and as one thing – one cornered, desperate, and deadly dangerous thing.

Sirius, Ron, and Krum were another; the older Wizard using his mastery of transfiguration as never before to shape a path down and up and back again so they could find the pieces of the fortress – those that weren't currently adorning the Hermione-Thing – and bring together as many as possible on the most stable tableau available in this twisted reality bubble. That was also something it might see as cause for concern.

But the one cause above all others was Dumbledore.

He didn't try to strike back or to bind his enemy, or to enter a contest of power and will. Instead, standing on his platform of shaped reality, he conducted the battle like it was a symphony of his own devising.

His wand spun and danced as he shaped the world around him, his platform revolving on every axis to allow him a clear view of every part of the warped reality and address it in turn, reorienting itself like a gyroscope whenever it encountered a particularly disrupted piece of reality or an attempt by the Hermione-Thing to throw him off.

The world spun and swirled around him like an orchestra in perfect time; reality storms, rains of space shards, flattenings, disassemblies, inversions, and singularities, all of them were attempted, and all them failed. Despite their jarring attempts to disrupt the tune and replace it with discord once more, they were merely notes here and there, easily swept up and woven into the greater symphony, giving it a depth and richness that it had not previously had. And as every moment passed, the world got smoother and saner. Reflections vanished, fragments of space reformed, and pieces of earth and sky flew back into place as if they had never been gone.

It was not like fighting a battle. It was like standing against an incoming tide, destined to wash everything aside.

Even the echoes of the Hermione-Thing, reflections and three-dimensional shadows, began to vanish, first quickly, then slower and slower as the world began to compress into normality around the creature. For while its works were undone, those works had opened endlessly repeated ley lines, cracking open the surface of reality to reveal the power within. Power aplenty, for one who knew how to shape not merely that within themselves, but that in the world about them, which Dumbledore had done with practiced ease. He had, in his time, encountered some very strange dimensions, and some bending of space very much like this during the War, when HYDRA's Tesseract powered weaponry and Grindelwald's magic had interacted.

As if on cue, two blindly bright beams of scorching blue lashed from what might tentatively be called the Hermione-Thing's hands, beams that echoed the power of the Tesseract in appearance and effect. Or they would have done, had Dumbledore not dealt with the like before.

Accordingly, he spun like a dancer, slowed somewhat by age but still graceful, wrapping the power around himself in a bubble as he had before, one that collapsed, vanishing with him. For several long moments the Hermione-Thing cast about, only to find that Dumbledore had twisted the power designed to displace each and every one of his atoms into one that displaced him, platform and all, to the other side of the battlefield, and had taken the opportunity of being unobserved to build up momentum.

It was a virtuoso performance, a classical master's-piece of magic.

But even the greatest master reaches a point where skill alone is not enough, particularly not when age and disrupted sleep impact upon stamina. His progress continued, but now at a snail's pace as the Hermione-Thing fought with all its strength to break free once more, and with the closeness to success and the sweat upon his brow, the impression was that something must give.

Like Sisyphus, his task was nearly done. Like Sisyphus, it threatened to be undone entirely if he slipped for even the slightest moment. The lesson, therefore, was not to be like Sisyphus.

After all, as he would later reflect, Sisyphus was alone. And he was in no position to take risks.

So, for a moment, he let himself falter.

The Hermione-Thing, a predator to the fabric of its being, pounced. It could no more have resisted than a cat could resist leaping on a feather. That would not, however, prove any comfort to it considering what happened next. It, after all, was not the only predator on the field.

OoOoO

As the Hermione-Thing coiled to strike at the faltering Dumbledore, the world seemed to slow for Harry. He knew in his bones what would happen next. So as it struck, lowering its defences for just a moment, he struck too, descending upon like a stooping falcon, slamming it headfirst into the once more intact and blessedly ordinary ground (if you ignored the large missing chunks and generalised destruction), forcing his will upon it, trapping it as it thrashed madly. He could only hold it for a matter of moments, but moments were all he needed, as Betsy, close behind him, lunged, driving her humming violet psi-blade straight into the Hermione-Thing's skull.

There was a moment, a single and utterly minute moment of crystal-clear silence as the world teetered on the edge of a knife.

Then, the Hermione-Thing screamed.

In that scream was agony, terror, defeat, frustrated rage, and eons of pain. It shook the Forest, rattling their very bones. But it was the last cry of a doomed being, and they all knew it, as Harry reached out and for the second time that evening, delivered a palm-strike that reached beyond the physical, finally dislodging the spirit in cloud of mist. It squirmed and writhed before them, congealing into shape after shape, before dispersing and reshaping itself again, trying to find one that worked: Harry's darker self, the mysteriously armoured man, the Winter Soldier of Ron's nightmares, the twisted Hermione, a larger-than-life Dementor, a ratty little man that Harry didn't recognise, and then countless others, from acromantulae and centaurs to winged women and painted warriors, flickering faster and faster until they blurred together, until finally, it exploded into a ball of mist, which tried to flow away as fast as it could.

Dumbledore, however, was quicker, whirling his wand to carve out a simple circle the size of a teacher's desk.

"There is, I am afraid, more work still to be done," he said. He looked tired, but he did not show it, radiating strength and certainty and, frankly, a surprising amount of dignity for someone still in his colourful dressing-gown. "Sirius, Messrs Krum and Weasley, your trap looks suitable for a temporary binding. However, if you could please check its stability, I would be much obliged."

Harry followed his gaze ton said trap. It was, he vaguely recognised, the remains of the fortress, now shaped into something like a cross between a small pyramid and a medium sized barrow, made of that same stone and propped up with that same wood and bronze.

"It'll do for a couple of days," Sirius said, after the three finished their inspection.

"Good," Dumbledore said. "Harry, Elizabeth, I will need your help in keeping this creature subdued as Sirius and I bind it."

"Whenever you're ready, headmaster," Betsy said.

"What she said," Harry muttered, rubbing his head. Aside from the truly unnecessary travails of the evening, he could just feel a truly monstrous headache coming on. As a result, he was not in a good mood, even with supportive commentary – and delighted relief – coming in from Hermione, especially since that was leavened with fretting about her newly developed powers and the state of her body. That, mercifully, had reverted to its former shape, with the metal slowly dribbling off her like it was melting, but it didn't stop Hermione worrying and Harry couldn't entirely blame her – there was still a lot of metal there, and who knew what else had been done to it. Besides, he too had an unexpected and unwanted metal limb to contend with. Not that it was his first time, so he could be a bit philosophical about it, but it was cold and it ached. As did most of him, actually. Especially his head.

His mood was somewhat improved by the chance to pin down the spirit once more and help force it into its container, which he did rather enthusiastically. Harry had never claimed to be a saint, he was bone-tired, and after all that had happened, he was feeling justifiably vindictive.

Once that was done, he exhaled slowly, grimacing against the building headache.

"I think it's all over," he said eventually, before glancing around the formerly creepily picturesque valley, which now looked like someone had discovered an old arms depot and had a competition to see who could make the biggest bang. "Bar the landscaping."

"And the aspirin," Betsy said dryly, shooting him a look that said she knew exactly how he was feeling, because she felt the exact same way.

"For tonight, it is," Dumbledore said, finishing his removal of the metal coating from Hermione, as Sirius conjured a blanket to cover the fact that she was as naked as the day she was born. Harry grimaced, against a wave of second-hand embarrassment from Hermione and an increase in the headache. "For most of us." He shot a pointed look at Harry's metal arm.

Harry groaned. "Please tell me that I don't have to be awake when you fix it, Professor," he said.

"I am afraid that I can make no such promises, Harry. You can try and sleep, but I do not think it will be comfortable."

"Fine," Harry said, resigned. "Can I at least decant Hermione first?"

He winced, again, as Dumbledore began inspecting Hermione's body. This time, it was indignation. What? He thought, perhaps more irritably than was fair. That's more or less what's going to happen.

There are still better ways of putting it, came the tart reply. I am a person, not a bottle of wine.

Harry very carefully did not comment on that.

"I believe it would be safe to do so, yes," Dumbledore said eventually.

"Oh, thank the fucking gods."

"Language, Harry."

"Sorry, Professor."

As with the world around them, normality, it seemed, was restored.

Or at least, as much as it was going to be. Because as with the world around them, some of the consequences of what had happened were not so easily undone…

And on that ominous note, I conclude the chapter. I have no idea if I will be able to create a chapter in time for Christmas, since this one was a ginormous pain in the arse to write, so that either means the next one will follow in that vein or be way easier. I don't know. But I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope the ending wasn't too rushed.