The town of Trollesund, on the southernmost tip of Lapland, was internationally known as The Gateway to the North, and was famed for little else besides. A largely insignificant fishing port, and moderately more important transit point, existed beneath this grandiose title, with the harbour as the centre of life in this remote outpost. It was a place awash with the smell of fish and ozone and the ocean, of exotic smokeleaf and strong ale and vodka, all backed by the soundtrack of cranes and wagons and traders of all sorts who came back and forth through this oft-bustling hub.
It was through this strange cacophony of sights and smells that Hermione and her dæmon led Harry and his dæmon, though in truth it was the dæmons doing the actually leading, with Harry and Hermione trotting along in amiable conversation behind them. And it was conversation that largely focused on the two entities in front of them.
"They're acting very odd, aren't they?" Hermione observed, not for the first time, as she watched Papageno and Marici padding along ahead of them, their strides practically in sync. "It's like they are becoming inseparable."
Harry nodded as he agreed. "I don't know enough about dæmons to guess about it though ... but is it possible for dæmons to become friends with each other, despite how the humans get on?"
"I don't know, I've never really thought about it," Hermione mused. "I mean, in most cases, human and dæmon have to stay together all the time, don't they? So, there isn't really much chance to form separate relationships. They sort of mirror the human response to other people."
"So, if you like someone, you dæmon will like them too?" Harry speculated.
"Yes, usually ... but not always," Hermione explained. "Sometimes, your dæmon can see or feel things in another person that you cant, often by interacting with their dæmon in ways that humans don't sense or understand. So, if a person is lying to you or trying to deceive you ... like pretending to be nice, only to do something nasty later ... your dæmon can sometimes spot that even if you miss it yourself. Pap always did, always knew ... he was really good at that when we were younger."
Hermione coloured slightly and bit her lip in her reticence. Harry looked over at her in powerful pity, knowing that she was talking about her early life, and about things that she had never openly discussed with Harry ... things that he felt a best friend really ought to know.
"You had a bad time, didn't you, in your school before Hogwarts?" Harry asked gently, his tone flecked with anger for the invisible people who might have caused Hermione this anguish. She nodded that he was right. "Tell me."
It wasn't a request or a suggestion ... it was a demand. Hermione carried this as a burden still, and Harry was inviting her to share it with him. She blinked at him a moment, her expression lost and confused, as though she'd never expected anyone to come to her rescue about this, to soothe her of this lingering hurt.
"They ... they were mean to me, the girls in my class," Hermione mumbled shyly, turning away from Harry to tell her story. "Jericho Prep was a private academy, you see, and usually only girls from rich and privileged families went there. It was the sort of place my parents could never afford to send me. Their dental practice is for Domestic Health Authority patients mostly ... what the Muggles in our world would call the NHS ... and though they are modestly well off, they still have to work for a living.
"The fees for a place like Jericho demand a much higher income, and the sorts of kids that go there more often than not can afford for private tutors, too. I didn't have any of that, but my grades were so high in my state school that I was offered a unique scholarship ... one that the Academy only offered out about every ten years or so, and only if the candidate was truly outstanding."
"Which I can well believe you were," Harry grinned, in zero doubt about the fact. "You'd be brilliant in any world, Hermione, I'm quite convinced about that."
Hermione blushed hard, but kept her gaze fixed determinedly away from Harry, through there was a crinkle of a smile in her eyes.
"Thank you, Harry," Hermione mumbled in a little voice. "But, anyway, I got in to Jericho Prep on account of this scholarship programme. My parents were so proud of me and I was so excited to start ... because it is such a prestigious school ... but that all lasted for only about a day or so.
"For as soon as the posh little rich girls knew they would have to share a classroom with me ... a dirty townie, as they called me ... they turned on me right away.
"They shunned me totally, wouldn't play with me or talk to me, unless it was to tease me, which was usually about my parents not having as much money as theirs to begin with. They'd compare my newest things ... clothes and shoes and schoolbags and things, which I knew my parents sometimes had to stretch to afford, because even though the scholarship covered my fees, they still had to pay for my term-time accommodation, which wasn't cheap in affluent Oxford, either ... to their worst and cheapest cast-offs.
"They made me feel really worthless and upset, not to mention lonely ... because, obviously, no-one wanted to be friends with a 'grubby little claybed urchin' like me."
Harry ground his jaw in his fury at the story, but he didn't have a chance to offer any sort of counter argument to try and make her feel better ... because Hermione didn't draw breath long enough to give him an opening. The dam had been shattered, and the words of this heavy confession were tumbling out of Hermione now in a race to be heard first.
"It only got worse when I started trouncing them academically," she went on, bitterly. "I went straight to the top of the class almost right away, even without all the extra tuition that the others were getting, and I got nominated for prestigious awards, and was held up as a poster child for recruiting outside of The Establishment for intellectual talent. I even met His Majesty The King once, because I was voted Best Young Student in Oxford. I got a big plaque and a shiny badge for it and everything.
"The girls made a pact after that to never speak to me again for beating them, unless it was to insult me. They couldn't argue with my academic scores, so they starting picking on anything else they could think of ... namely my appearance ... having a go at my clothes, and making fun of me for having such unruly hair and ugly, bucked teeth. It made me so unhappy, I cant tell you."
"And how old were you when all this started?" Harry seethed, his anger roiling freely now beneath his hot, prickly skin.
"Seven ... I was seven, Harry."
"And this went on for the next four years!?" Harry riled, unable to believe how furiously cross this was making him.
"Yes."
"That's appalling! I don't think I've ever heard anything that's made me madder!" Harry cried, vehemently. " And, another thing ... since when were your teeth ugly? I've never noticed that."
"You ... you haven't?" Hermione asked, turning to him in shy hope. "They are a bit big, you have to admit that."
"No I don't!" Harry disagreed hotly. "They fit your face perfectly, just like the rest of your features do."
Harry bit his tongue to stop himself, before he said something that might get him in trouble.
In fact, something it did get him was a huge, beaming smile from Hermione. She leant in very close on a stride just then, almost so that their faces were touching, and for a second Harry thought he felt her lips brush across his cheek in the lightest, most chaste kiss imaginable ... but a moment later Harry was sure he had invented the whole thing, as Hermione jumped away from him as if hit by an electric spark.
"Thank you, Harry," Hermione whispered a little breathlessly. "That was very sweet of you to say."
"It was only the truth," Harry fumbled back, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly as his skin erupted in heat, originating from that imaginary spot where Harry wanted to believe that Hermione had kissed him and spreading to every single part of him that it could reach. "So ... it was just you and Pap then?"
"Yes, it was just the two of us against the world," Hermione nodded, her eyes bright and shiny in the glare of the sun. "And so might it still have been but for my chance meeting with Lyra and her alethiometer, because they led me to you ... my first and best friend."
Harry grinned stupidly to himself at that, a smile that seemed to go inside as well as coating his face without.
"How strange is it that I should be your first friend when you were mine as well?" Harry mused in something like wonder. "What are the chances? It's some fluke, that."
"I like to think of it as serendipity," Hermione relied breezily.
"What? Like no other friends were good enough for us?" Harry quirked. "That's a bit big-headed, don't you think? Even my ego wont stretch that far!"
"You don't have much of an ego, Harry," Hermione frowned in disagreement. "You are so modest and kind ... I don't think you have an arrogant bone in your body. You don't lord anything over anyone."
"That's not entirely true," Harry told her, blushing a little. "See, I don't just have the best friend in theworld ... but the best friend in two worlds ... and I told both sets of our parents that."
"Y-you did?" Hermione mumbled, a crimson sweep stealing over her cheeks. "You said that to my Mum and Dad?"
"Yep, and mine," Harry confirmed, simply. "And I told Sirius and Lyra, and Neville, and maybe Aunt Min ... oh, and I think I might have mentioned it to that witch, Serafina Pekkala, but I cant remember if I did or not. But I probably did, because it's true, and I'm stupidly lucky for it, and I think it's the sort of thing I should be allowed to show off about, don't you?"
Hermione just turned her eyes down coyly, much too embarrassed to know what she was supposed to say to something like that. So Harry kept babbling away in the ensuing silence.
"But I think I know what you mean about serendipity," he went on relentlessly. "It's sort of like the universe, or maybe your Dust, decided that there wasn't much point in us having lots and lots of friends, as we were designed to be the best of friends to each other anyway, so what was the point in starting off with inferior ones?
"So it contrived a way to make us both have no friends, though it was cruel and mean to you and I'm really not happy about that, but then we met and learned what it was to make a friend ... at the same time and with each other ... and what it felt like, so we'd know when we made others, even if they wouldn't be quite so good.
"It probably even gave you a few nasty experiences so that you'd know what a bad friend looked like, so you could tell me, because I had no-one to be horrible to me and teach me like that, which I'd rather have had than you, but I don't make the rules. But the universe gave you and Pap that hard lesson, because it knew you were going to come and find me and you could teach me how to know, after first showing me what a best friend looked and felt like. Yes, I think that's it, that's what happened.
"Hey! Maybe that's part of our destiny! You were meant to come to my world and find me ... to be the best friend I could ever have!"
"Yes ... yes that's probably it," Hermione replied in a timid voice, blushing furiously and avoiding meeting Harry's eye at all costs ... for she was sure that, if she did, the final part of the great secret that she kept from Harry would finally be blurted out, and she still wasn't wholly ready to tell him yet, just as much as she wasn't completely certain he was ready to hear it.
But both things were oh so close now ... closer than Hermione felt they had ever been ... she was certain of that much at least. The idea made her heart flutter uncontrollably around in her chest and she knew she needed to change the subject ... and in double-quick time, too.
Luckily, they were passing the perfect distraction, one guaranteed to flip the mood entirely.
"Ooh, Harry! Look at that!" Hermione whispered in low excitement. "Look what it is!"
Harry followed Hermione's line of sight to a rather nondescript building at the end of a long pier. The green paint on the wooden walls was peeling and weather-beaten, half of the windows were boarded up and there were angry seagulls nesting in the shabby roof. It didn't look like a place worthy of Hermione's exuberance.
"Er ... what is it?" Harry asked, carefully.
"It's the office of the Witch-Consul of the North ... the man who acts on behalf of all the witch clans!" Hermione hissed in a barely audible breath. "Harry ... this was Thomas Riddle's office! This is where I first met him!"
Harry felt his skin crawl and prickle at the mention of a man who was fast becoming his personal enemy. He had already made up his mind about that ... deciding that if Riddle posed one more direct threat against Hermione, then Harry was going to formally declare this deposed Dark Lord as his enemy, no matter how one-sided such a contest might have been if they ever got to do battle with one another.
The events with the Philosopher's Stone ... the violation of Hermione and Pap by Lockhart, and then Riddle's own spirit form ... that was two strikes ... a third and Harry would have to strike back, as anything else would be a shameful dereliction of his best friend-duty.
"So, this was his base then?" Harry mused, as he and Hermione approached the cabin and looked through the dirty glass. "It doesn't look like he's home, does it?"
"It doesn't look like anyone is," Hermione agreed. "I wonder why. I mean, I know that Riddle has been waging war against us, but the Witches still need a Consul to represent their interests."
"Unless Riddle is still doing that," Harry suggested, darkly. "Maybe your Magisterium thinks he's more important than the others, and so they've moved him somewhere grander, perhaps somewhere closer to better resources to do ... whatever it is he might be doing now."
"Whatever that is, Harry, it cant be good ... especially for us," Hermione fretted, anxiously. "You heard what Iorek said ... and besides, Tom Riddle doesn't strike me as a wizard who enjoys being thwarted. I don't think he'll give up on us so easily."
Harry turned and gently took hold of Hermione's forearm as she made to move away from the Witch-Consulate building.
"Are ... are you worried about that? About Iorek's warning, I mean?" Harry asked in concerned softness. "You're not ... scared, are you?"
Hermione rolled her jaw and shrugged. "A little bit, yes. Aren't you?"
Something broke in Harry's chest at the concept of 'Hermione Afraid'. Whatever that feeling was that the idea stirred, Harry detested it, utterly hated the way it sat like poison in his throat. He felt sick to his stomach as the notion bubbled all through him.
"No, I'm not scared," Harry told Hermione, stoutly. "Iorek said that you are with the best people to keep you safe ... and I'm with you. Where else could I be safer? Besides, we've foiled Riddle's plans twice already ... who's to say that we wont keep beating him until he goes away for good?"
Hermione smiled delicately as she pondered Harry's words. "Well, there is that, I suppose. He is still a bit scary though ... and don't forget that massive snake he has to do his bidding. That's dangerous, too, you know."
"Hermione ... I just turned a giant serpent fifty times that size over to our side!" Harry crowed. "If Tom is stupid enough to send that little python after us again, I'll just open the Chamber of Secrets and ask my Basilisk to fight it for us! Or I'll just set a dragon on it! No, Hermione, when it comes to magical beasts, we definitely have the upper hand there!"
The Potter-Granger party didn't linger long in Trollesund. They were due to stay for the better part of the week, and Lyra had formed plans for she and Hermione to visit the fire-mines of Stabaek, to hike over to and bathe in the thermal springs of the Green Lagoon, and to take a trip to the volcanic mountains of the Kolbeinsey Range to see the smouldering giant, Eyjafjallasdottir, which local geologists were convinced could be on the brink of a serious eruption any time soon.
But all of that changed following Iorek's dark portents on Svalbard. For no sooner had they checked into their hotel near the port than Lyra was sending Sirius to arrange them passage on the first ship leaving the North bound for London. Luckily, he managed to get their tickets on the HMSS Harmony bumped forwards a few days, so they would only end up staying in Trollesund for a day and a night, but this came with a slight problem.
"What do you mean, there are too many of us?" Lyra asked, as Sirius told the whole party about the change in travel arrangements. "If you think some of us are staying behind ..."
"Do you really think I'm that stupid?" Sirius volleyed back.
"Do you really want me to answer that?" Lyra smirked at her new husband. "In front of all these people?"
Sirius smirked back at her. "As if they don't know already! No, what I meant was that they only had three cabins left, and only one was a family cabin."
"Meaning?" asked Lily, feeding Seren on her lap.
"Meaning," Sirius replied wryly. "That we have three double beds and one twin bunk room to utilise. We will be on that ship for three days ... and it's going to be a very uncomfortable trip if any of us sleep in those little bunk beds for all that time ... any of us except for Harry and Hermione, of course."
"Ah, I see your point," James smirked as he reached over to re-fill his tea cup. "You don't think we can trust them to be alone like that?"
"You've seen how they are together, Prongs," Sirius quirked. "And if you really knew what it meant ... that their dæmons are all over each other as they are, well ..."
Sirius nodded to the roaring fireplace, where his own woken-again bloodhound dæmon, Padfiette, was curled protectively around the sleeping, coal-black owl that was Pantalaimon. Sirius looked down and pulled Lyra, who was similarly curled up against his chest, tighter to his body.
"I was going to ask you about that," Catherine Granger interjected, lightly. "How long have you known ... that Harry and Hermione were in love?"
Hermione, who had been dozing on the couch on the far side of the room with her head turned from everyone, shot alert in a second, her heart crashing around in her chest as she became fully awake. She couldn't breathe, she felt dizzy and light-headed, oddly even a little sick with nerves, as her mother's question battered into her brain. She was insanely impatient to hear the answer of whoever was going to reply first, but fought to keep herself appearing still and docile.
Harry, who was snoring lightly with Marici on a reclining chair nearby, hadn't heard a thing.
"I think, for Hermione, she was well on the way to being in love by their first Christmas together," Lyra recalled, fondly. "Harry sent her a Christmas Card that she carried around like a security blanket. Mal and I were deeply curious as to what Harry had written it in, so we sneaked a look one night when she was sleeping, but it wasn't anything special. At least not to us. But Hermione never put it down, and was frantic if it was out of her sight for even a few minutes. That was my first real inkling."
"And for Harry?" asked David. "When did it start for him?"
Hermione couldn't believe how calmly her father had asked that! It was just sheer interest, no teasing or crossness ... but deep fascination. Now what in the world did that mean? Papageno dug his claws sharply into her thigh, to make sure she kept faking her inertia.
"Well, that's a little more difficult to pin down," Lily began, thoughtfully. "He was definitely smitten with her at about the same time ... so much so that we knew we had to take him to see her, if we were to have any cheer on Christmas Day!
"But he's very dense, is our boy, and he didn't know what he was feeling at all. He probably still doesn't, though I think he's slowly starting to get a better idea about it all, certainly since Marici has come alive for him. It's given him a whole new perspective on how to feel, I think."
"I blame myself," James chuckled. "I've always been playful and sarcastic with him, perhaps too much, because it's how my father was with me. That's probably created a bit of a disconnect with properly understanding his feelings ... even if he does feel them with a passion that can be quite breathtaking ... especially where Hermione is concerned."
"Totally," Sirius agreed. "Harry is infatuated with her ... head over heels crazy about the girl. And I quite agree, he doesn't really know it yet. But he will ... and Merlin help us all then! You think he never shuts up about Hermione now ... we wont get a word out of him about anything else once they drop this 'best friend' lark and she becomes his proper girlfriend."
Hermione squeaked in her throat ... she couldn't help it. She covered it with a deep and ungainly snort of a pretend snore just in time, which seemed to work as the conversation continued apace.
"So ... should we be worried?" David asked. "That things are going too fast between them? They are both a long way from home during their school time, after all."
"No, I wouldn't fret about that," Lyra replied, off-handedly. "I think I speak for everyone when I say that Harry and Hermione are two of the most sensible kids of their age that we've ever met. When it does happen between them ... which it will ... I think we can trust them to take it slow and steady. And, when things do advance for them physically as they get older, I think we can continue to trust their judgement to keep themselves safe and careful.
"But, we have to remember who we are talking about here. Dust predicted to me that Hermione would travel to another world, find a boy that she would fall in love with there, and embark on a series of great destinies with him. She's done all that and more already.
"Though what I didn't tell her, what I've never told her, is that my alethiometer said something else to me when I read it for her ... it said that this boy she would meet wouldn't just be her lover, but her life partner, too. It is strange, to be sure, and highly unusual, to meet your future spouse at such a young age ... but it happens.
"And I'm sure it has happened for Harry and Hermione. Anyone who has seen how they are together for more than five minutes would struggle to argue anything else."
Hermione had to bite her lip and tongue to keep quiet, but it was the hardest thing to stay still, not when every part of her was just dying to move! She felt sure she was on the verge of a heart attack. She literally couldn't breathe. She wanted to jump up, to run away somewhere private where she and Papageno could chew the bones of all that they had heard this evening. It required the deepest, sharpest, most meticulous deconstruction Hermione Granger was capable of.
But then something happened to drive even this earth-shattering revelation to the back burners of her mind.
It began when her mother started replying to Lyra's monumental statement about Harry and his role in Hermione's future ... which was something that rocked her to her very core, even if she had cautiously considered the possibility in her own musings about their developing relationship. To hear that Lyra knew that Dust had predicted that too, well ... it threatened to knock Hermione's shocked head from her shaking shoulders.
But then, quite abruptly, the lights flickered and her mother stopped talking ... almost as if someone had pressed the pause button on her mouth.
The sharp, curt way that her voice just cut out was so jarring and unexpected that Hermione was compelled to drop all pretence of sleeping and snapped her head around to see what had happened. At first, it didn't look as if anything was wrong at all. Her mother was sat stock still, with a glazed look of dumb surprise on her face, but that was it.
That was until Hermione glanced over to the corner of the room ... and she screamed in her terror, as she saw her mother's dæmon clamped in the jaws of a large, shadowy creature ... which look like a giant, human-sized wolf.
The next thing Hermione heard was a collision of vicious growls and roars, as first Marici, then Padfiette, responded to her ongoing screech by leaping up and diving at the creature. Marici was like a wild ball of fury, biting and scraping and scratching at the thing, while Padfiette snapped hard at the legs of the shadow beast. It howled in agony at the joint assault and dropped Rampula to the floor, before turning and racing straight through the wall. Hermione stopped screaming and bounded over to her mother.
"Mum? Mum? Can you hear me?" Hermione cried desperately. "Dad ... we need to ..."
But when Hermione turned to her father she found him in precisely the same state, as if watching a car crash or something and rendered mute by the sight. His dæmon, Hermione noticed, was lolling drunkenly behind his chair ... grooves of a deep bite evident against his tawny fur.
"What is this? What's going on?" Harry asked groggily, just about recovered from the shocking way he was jerked to consciousness by Marici's action.
"My parents dæmons!" Hermione breathed. "They've been attacked by something. I don't know what's happened to my Mum and Dad, Harry ..."
Hermione had lost all colour from her face from where she was fruitlessly trying to coax a response from her dumbstruck parent. She didn't know how to be.
"What attacked them?" Harry asked.
"I ... I don't really know. It was some sort of ... shadow thing. Like a shadow of a dæmon, if there is such a thing. Which isn't something I've ever heard of."
Harry swallowed, hard and guilty. He'd not mentioned to anyone what he thought he had seen on those last nights at Ice Station Zebra ... he thought everyone would have just laughed at him if he did. He was about to confess when Catherine groaned groggily from her seat.
"Wah ... wha's'appened?" she slurred. "Pula ... where's Pula?"
Nobody seemed prepared to do the thing that nobody wanted to do, that they all knew they mustn't ... that they shouldn't. But Hermione had to, so she stepped forward and did ...
She gently scooped up her mother's limp dæmon into her arms, touching him for the first time since she was a baby without cognitive control, and placed him in her mother's lap. Catherine clutched at him with unfocused eyes and swayed unsteadily in her seat.
"My head hurts ... tired ... so tired," Catherine muttered, her voice distant and weak.
"Come on, Catherine, let's get you lying down," Lyra took over, stepping forward and helping, with Lily's aid, to move Catherine to the couch Hermione had been dozing on. They stretched her out and adjusted her clothes ... and Lily gasped in horrified shock.
"What? What is it?" James asked in abject concern, hurrying to his wife. "Lil?"
"James!" Lily hissed. "Look at that! On her arm!"
James looked to where Lily was pointing ... and sucked in a sharp, angry breath. Sirius hurried over to join them ... his eyes bulging when he saw what the Potters were looking at.
"What is that?" Lyra asked, as she clocked eyes on it too.
"The dæmon was bitten on the foreleg," Sirius assessed quickly. "And it's created an effect on Catherine's arm. James ... check David ... see if he has one, too."
James obeyed the instruction, nodding gravely as he found a similar discolouration behind David's ear, precisely where his dæmon had been bitten by the shadow creature.
"Can someone please explain what we are all looking at?" Harry demanded, looking from one adult to the next for answers.
It was James who took up the role of replying ... and when he did his tone was the most grim and serious one Harry had ever heard from him before.
"We ... that is to say, your mother, Sirius and I ... have all seen this symbol before ... this exact symbol, actually," James breathed, soberly. "It was the one that Lord Voldemort used to use ... to brand and dominate his supporters. It looks like he has found a new use for his most terrifying magic of obedience and control ... for this, Harry, is a symbol that we know as ... The Dark Mark."