Hermione sat by Harry's bed in the hospital wing, eyes red and twin muddy tracks in the dust on her face. Harry was the best friend she had ever had—the only true friend she had ever had—and, because of her, he was lying here hurt. Because she had gone back to help that bully Ronald Weasley, rather than simply dividing the black fire potion between them. How could she have been so stupid? Hermione knew she wasn't really to fault, but her sadness, and what she suspected to be a mild form of survivor's guilt wouldn't let her mind rest. He just looked so helpless lying there. Hurt. Because she hadn't been strong enough…
Shaking her head, bushy hair flying, Hermione rubbed the tears off her cheeks and turned her thoughts to what Dumbledore had told her when he had brought Harry out of the traps to the hospital wing. Lord Voldemort was a wraith, a sort of unconcentrated malevolent ghost that, instead of being incorporeal like the school ghosts or solid like Peeves, existed as a black sulfurous smoke that was able to possess and control people. She briefly remembered at the beginning of the year, when she first learned that ghosts were real, finding a book in the school library that talked about different types of spirits and how the ministry regulated them. Surely researching such things would be more helpful to her best and only friend than sitting by his bed crying like a useless ninny? Getting up, the bucktoothed brunette placed a small kiss in Harry's forehead, patted Ron's arm, and left the ward.
Three hours later, and some help from Madam Pince, the young witch found the book she was looking for. Thanking the woman profusely, Hermione received a rare smile from the old crone as she skipped off toward the hospital wing once more. Hermione spent the next three days reading, ignoring Ron who had woken up fully healed the first day, and only leaving Harry's side to eat and sleep. The book was fascinating, full of spells and rituals used to control, harm, banish, ward against and bind specters and spirits across the last thousand years. Madam Pince had insisted this was the tome the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures: Spirit Division used whenever they needed to deal with a particularly pushy ghost or violent poltergeist.
Reading through the book carefully, Hermione learned about a wide variety of things, such as how to do a proper séance, how to force a ghost to 'move on', banish inferi, the proper way to collect various types of ectoplasm and references for potions it could be used in, seven different ways to ward yourself against possession and even the basic theory behind Lich and their Phylacteries, items which were mentioned to be the basis for the creation of Horcruxes, an item the book refused to elaborate on due to its dark and horrible nature, even when compared to the rest of the book's contents.
That's probably what Voldemort is using to be a ghost, Hermione groused as she reread the chapter on Lich and the accompanying reference. It's dark and horrible beyond belief, so much so that even a necromantic text refuses to mention it, that's exactly the type of thing he'd do, assuming he could ever figure out how.
After five days of reading and rereading, Hermione was confident she knew what to do. Harry had woken up that morning and, as someone with a close connection to the offending spirit, would be an incredibly powerful talisman in the ritual she was considering. Now, she just had to get Harry to go along with it.
Hermione put several locking charms on the empty classroom she had set up the rituals in as well as an anti-poltergeist ward to keep Peeves from doing anything disastrous and went to find Harry. He was in the boys' dormitory, flipping slowly and longingly through that scrapbook of his parents Hagrid had made when she found him and it caused her to shake her head in melancholy, her own eyes tearing up slightly as she remembered what her friend had suffered because of Lord Voldemort, what he had lost.
"Hello Harry," she said quietly, hoping not to startle him.
"Oh, hello Hermione," he said looking up with red, puffy eyes and a smile. "I was just looking through Hagrid's scrap book again; see this one here? It's their wedding. She looks so happy here. Dad's wearing some funky robes and mom's dress looks like those funny togas you see in old movies about Rome. I can imagine her as a goddess," he added, face grinning and tearstained.
Hermione moved to sit on the bed beside him and looked through the pictures as well, examining each one as Harry pointed out his favorites. It was warm and beautifully sad feeling as Hermione sat there with him, being shown a softer side to Harry, being trusted with something so private and special. It just made her all the more determined to do what she had planned and prepared all week for.
"Harry…" Hermione said hesitantly, looking into his eyes for several long seconds before bowing her head and continuing. "What if I were to tell you I'd found a way to make Voldemort pay for what he did to your parents?" She looked up slowly and was caught by serious and intense gaze unlike any she had seen from her friend before. She trembled slightly, feeling as if she was being judged and felt a streak of fear at what he might decide. Would he find her worthy? She'd hate to lose the friendship between them for any reason.
"What do you mean?" the boy before her asked slowly, his voice level and emotionless.
"Well, since Professor Dumbledore told me how Voldemort escaped at the end of your battle with Professor Quierrel, I've been doing research in the library. I'd found reference to books and spells the ministry was supposed to use to control ghosts and spirits in passing before and wondered if there was something more concrete to it, so I asked Madam Pince and she found this for me," she explained in a rush, pulling out the thick hide bound book. Harry took it from her and opened up the first of her book marks, indicating the ritual for summoning existing malevolent specters.
Harry read the next two bookmarked pages quietly while Hermione fidgeted beside him on the bed. She was glad he hadn't pulled away or started yelling at her and it gave her hope that their relationship just might continue, but this long silence was beginning to scare her.
"Hermione?" Harry asked, his voice hesitant, heavy with something Hermione was sure was sorrow and not a little bit of fear.
"Yes?" she asked, nervous energy building in her own gut as well at the green eyed boy's demeanor.
"Do you think there's a spell in this book that could allow me to talk to my parents?" Their eyes met and Hermione's heart almost broke at the depth of sadness, longing, and strangely, most frighteningly, hope, in those brilliant emerald orbs.
"Oh, Harry, I don't know," she said, looking down and hugging him tightly. "It references a few divinations that can allow you to speak to the dead who didn't leave ghosts, but it doesn't list any actual details because the ministry deems most necromancy to be illegal."
"Oh," he said looking down to hide fresh tears. "I suppose what we're about to do is illegal as well?"
"No, Harry," Hermione replied, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing lightly "just restricted. There's a department in the control and regulation of magical creatures that uses these spells to police ghosts and those who deal with them. If we're caught we'll get in trouble for not having licensed supervision, but not for doing it to begin with. On your first question though, Hogwarts is supposed to have a divination teacher and a divination class as an elective in our third years, perhaps after were done with Voldemort we could go and ask the professors about it?"
Hermione's heart clenched painfully at the tremulous smile Harry gave her at the suggestion.
"So, I suppose you want my help on this?" he asked softly after several minutes sitting there.
"Yes," Hermione nodded. "First off, because I don't think I'm going to be powerful enough for the ritual I've set up for us to do and could use the support, second because your experiences with Voldemort previously in both a living and unliving capacity would make you a powerful totem for allowing us to draw him in, and finally because I think you deserve to be a part of this. A part of his downfall… something is keeping him alive and none of them described methods are in any ways pleasant and several of them are quite alarming."
Harry looked again at the bookmarked pages and then looked her straight in the eye. "You want to put him in a box?" he asked incredulously.
Hermione blushed furiously under his gaze. "Yes," she said defiantly, "If whatever method he's using to keep himself around won't let us send him to the other side, I plan to put him in this and burry it on holy ground." She said pulling a shiny pink plastic pencil case covered in rhinestones.
Harry snickered, snorted and then broke out laughing hysterically as he stared at the container Hermione had proffered. "Harry," Hermione whined after several minutes of this "please don't laugh! It's not that funny…" Harry gave her an incredulous look and she relented slightly, "Well, ok, I guess it is, but I'd intended it to be more humiliating than amusing. See here," she said opening the box and pointing to the runes painted on the inside of the container "this is an old Greek binding for what's known as a doom box, sort of a container for any kind of mystical nasty's in the area. According to the book it can also hold corrupted souls such as poltergeists, wraiths and dementors."
Harry nodded as Hermione showed him the page and began explaining how it worked. She could see he was losing interest as the details wore on, but that he allowed her to speak where others would cut her off or blatantly stop paying attention made her feel special.
Half an hour later, the pair of them were down in the room she had prepared for the occasion and Harry was fingering the ring of salt with interest.
"I've got to ask," the tousle-haired boy said, turning to her, "why salt?"
"The honest answer?" Hermione replied, looking up from her book as she reread the instructions for the hundredth time "I don't know. The book said something about purity, but it also mentions how ghosts have trouble crossing running water, as if it were somehow difficult for them so my best guess is it has something to do with electricity. You can't use most muggle technology in magical areas because the magic enhances electrical currents in a random manner causing shorts, arcs and occasionally explosions or electrical fires, so perhaps the ionized particles in that make up most salts are dampened by the grains being too close. It would also explain the water thing. More than likely though there's probably something mystical about salt I just don't understand right now."
Harry nodded as he took that in and Hermione smiled before turning back to her book. Reading it one last time to make absolutely certain she hadn't miss-memorized something, she motioned for Harry to take his place and began. Moving her wand in the pattern prescribed by the book Hermione began chanting, tapping her wand against the various ingredients and runes to activate them before motioning to Harry. Nodding Harry used the silver potions knife, an athame, to open his finger and draw a symbol in the center of the circle while she held the book open to a picture of it for him. "Blood of the victim, spilt in wrath, I summon my persecutor. Spirit of the damned, by this most holy of rites I bind you to this circle and bid you come before me. So I have said, so mote it be, so I have bled, so mote it be, so I have entreated, so mote it be."
As Harry stood there, the circle of salt began to glow with an eerie, dappled teal light. A feeling of power built in the room as unnoticed by them a storm built in the formerly clear, sunny sky. Then, as the power peaked in the room, causing the furniture to creak and groan under the pressure of the magic in the area, a small black dot tore itself into existence above the rune Harry had drawn and black smoke began to billow out of it, screaming bloody murder.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Talk about clichés, Hermione thought, slightly shell-shocked at the sheer amount of power Harry had just been made to expend.
"Potter!"
Hermione shuddered as the voice slid over her, high and cold. The smoke had only spoken a single word, but even still it was enough to make her feel sullied and dirty. How had Harry managed to escape a conversation with this thing without vomiting?
"Voldemort," Harry replied, fury boiling though his voice despite its lack of volume. God, she hoped he would never speak to her like that.
"How is it that you, a boy of eleven with no extraordinary magical talent have managed to summon me here?" the specter asked, snarling as it surged forward, grinding its shadowy face against a translucent barrier directly over the salt line.
"That would probably have something to do with my friend Hermione," Harry said coolly, gesturing towards her. "People don't call her the smartest witch in our year for nothing."
Voldemort rounded on her, seeming to study her, though it had no eyes. Or throat and tongue for that matter, but for all that it was still managing to speak. "Stupid meddling mudblood bitch!" it snarled, before turning back to Harry. "She's just like your mother, interfering where she isn't wanted. I spared her this time, like I offered to spare your own mother, but no more. Next time she will die screaming while you watch, Potter. It's fitting I think, your own mother died the same way!"
Harry's eyes, angry before, were absolutely frightening now. "Hermione. Forget the spell and hand me that box. This bastard doesn't deserve a chance at peace."
Nodding jerkily Hermione rushed around the table, extracting the pink pencil case from her messenger bag and handing it to him. "You're right, Voldemort, it is fitting. A mudblood very near and dear to me deprived you of your body and ended your reign of terror, and now another similar mudblood is going to ensure that you never hurt anyone ever again, once again using me as the tool to do it. Enjoy eternity, asshole," Harry spat as he took the box from her and opened it within the salt line. Voldemort screamed. Without lungs or vocal chords to limit him, he screamed horrible, terrified and agonized screams as he was drawn into the lurid pink plastic, growing smaller and smaller until he was finally compressed within and the lid snapped tight shut.
Over the next century, the occasional person would stumble across a horcrux and become possessed. Each one tried to become a dark lord in their own right, following in the footsteps of their creator and each summarily died at the hands of Harry and Hermione Potter; but Harry's remaining six years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were relatively peaceful. There was a little bit of turbulence in his second year with the diary and the third with the return of his Godfather, but both events were quickly resolved by the duo, neither lasting much past Christmas.