AN: I was sad to see someone reviewed to say they wouldn't be continuing to read because they thought me pairing Hermione with Remus at all if she is going to end up with Sirius is cruel. I assure you, their break up won't be forced OR one-sided.

Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: Don't own anything!

Chapter Nineteen: Advice

Dear Hermione,

I've been running it over and over again in my head, and I still can't fathom what exactly possessed you to take a chance on me. You're bloody brilliant. You aren't prone to making dumb decisions, so I must hereby assume that dating this sad, half-breed was a momentary lapse in judgement. That said, I'd like you to know that I am enjoying taking advantage of this oversight of yours.

Merry Christmas, Hermione.

I wanted to get you something more. Something worthy of you, but I'm afraid I was set back by more material matters. I'll have you know, I would give you everything if I could.

I'll always be here when you need me, Hermione. I am completely content in my admittance that all five feet of you have taken complete possession of my antiquated and formally idle heart.

I'll hope you'll accept that as something worthy of you for Christmas. Though, I believe that's still not enough.

Yours Forever,

Remus

Hermione, after reading the letter from Remus, had hugged it close to her heart for a few moments before carefully tucking it under her pillow and pulling out her notebook.

She opened it and under their previous conversation, started writing.

I have never met someone more worthy, Remus. You could've given me nothing, and I would be happy.

Hermione after writing that hovered for a moment with the quill over the parchment. Tomorrow morning she would be flooing to Hogwarts and meeting Benjy, Mad-eye, and Dumbledore, to open the Chamber of Secrets.

She looked over at the drawer next to her bed. Harry had said she didn't have to do this alone.

Before she lost her nerve she put the quill back to the paper.

I have another mission tomorrow.

She sighed and stared at her words. Remus wouldn't react well, she knew. Perhaps, she shouldn't have told him. Almost immediately the notebook warmed in her lap.

Will it be dangerous?

Yes, I imagine so.

Will you be going alone?

No. Dumbledore and a couple others will be coming as well.

I'm going to spend all day tomorrow worrying about you.

Try your best not to.

An impossible task.

She frowned. The notebook warmed again.

I don't like this.

Hermione's frown turned into a scowl. She didn't exactly like it either!

I don't have a choice. It's why I'm here.

I know.

"Is that your diary, kitten?"

Hermione looked up and slammed the notebook shut.

"That's none of your business."

Sirius raised his eyebrows and her entire face flushed red.

He walked further into the room and before he could reach the bed she vanished the notebook wandlessly.

He stopped to cross his arms over his chest. His grin dropped into a concerned look.

"What about that notebook has you so angry?"

She pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. That only made Sirius furrow his eyebrows further. She had already developed a habit of fidgeting with her new pendant when she was hiding something.

She hadn't thought Sirius had caught on to it, but then he carefully sat down in front of her toes and tapped her fingers.

"You've been doing that nearly all day."

Hermione shrugged and chewed on her bottom lip.

"Nervous tick, I suppose."

Sirius looked at her curiously before a look of understanding flashed behind his eyes and he scooted away from her. Her eyes narrowed.

"What was that about?" She asked carefully.

He scratched the back of his neck and looked away from her. After a few moments he sighed and said, "This pendant is supposed to take you to safety."

"Yeah, and?" She responded immediately. When he didn't say anything she lifted her foot up and nudged his ribs with her toes. Sirius reached out and grabbed her bare ankle faster than she could blink. Hermione squeaked in response. His grip on it at first was rather harsh, and then slowly he let out a breath and loosened so that his palm and fingers was just grazing her skin there.

"It's supposed to take you to safety, Hermione."

He let go of her ankle, and it was then that she realized what he was implying. He thought she didn't feel safe with him.

His eyes slowly made their way up to hers.

Sirius could see so many things running through her mind. Her dark eyes were burning with intensity and her lip was bright red from how much she'd been chewing on it. He had to look away.

"Sirius…"

He gave her a small smile and said quietly, "It's okay, kitten. I wouldn't feel safe around me either."

He made to get up, but she quite literally, launched herself at him and he had to throw an arm out behind him to catch himself. As soon as he was steady his arms automatically went around her small waist to hold her there.

"What are you doing?" He whispered.

Instead of answering him, Hermione squeezed him harder and said in her most assured voice, "I trust you with my life, Sirius."

He could feel his heart doing the heavy and warm thing it always did when she went full Hermione on him, and he could feel himself beginning to panic. She was too real. Too good.

He squeezed her tighter for a moment before gently pushing her away from him. He cursed himself at the hurt look that flashed in her eyes before she carefully masked it. Dorea would've been proud of her. He scrambled for something to say, and almost hit himself when the question popped out of his mouth.

"Did you see what Marlene got me for Christmas?"

She shook her head and averted her eyes.

He laughed nervously and said, "A shit load of Muggle porn." She gave him an incredulous look so he winked. "Wanna see it, kitten? Might be an excellent bonding experience for us."

That's when James walked in in his pajamas and launched himself on the opposite side of the bed. Face down he mumbled, "Please tell me you did not just ask Hermione to look at that rubbish Marlene sent you."

Sirius smacked James hard on the back and guffawed. "If I remember correctly, Prongs, you weren't too upset to be looking through them earlier!"

James flew up with a tomato red face and yelled, "Lies!" He pointed at Sirius. "He's lying to you, Hermione!"

Hermione just hid a snort behind her hand and said, "I'm sure."

Hermione barely slept that night. She spent most of it frozen in thought going over and over her plan until she was sure she had every moment memorized down to when she would breathe.

When dawn finally broke through her window Hermione quickly snuck out of bed, changed into an outfit similar to what she'd worn last time, grabbed her bag and went down stairs.

She fixed herself a cup of tea and went to the traveling room.

Dorea was sitting in the armchair close to the fireplace when she walked in.

"Off so soon?"

Hermione cringed and sat down across from her. "I'm a bit early. Couldn't sleep."

Dorea nodded understandably and gave her a calculating look. After a couple moments of silence she raised her wand and locked and silenced the room. Hermione's lips thinned.

"Mum?" She prodded.

Dorea's expression broke for a second to give Hermione a kind smile before it dropped into her typical nearly blank look.

"Stop me if I'm incorrect, dear." Hermione set her tea down as Dorea leaned forward. "These last couple of months, your goal was to acquire Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem and the Gaunt Ring, yes?"

Hermione nodded.

"And did you do those things?"

Hermione nodded again.

"But, I believe something must have gone terribly wrong if you lost all the progress you'd made in your health, and somehow along the way you acquired one-third of the Deathly Hallows. Something that is supposedly a myth, but you and I both know isn't actually a myth because your brother has another third."

Hermione just stared at the woman. "Where is this going?"

Dorea ignored her. "So if you have access to two-thirds of the items that can supposedly make you the master of death, and you refuse to let go of these assets even for a moment, my only logical conclusion is that you are preparing yourself to die."

Hermione's eyes widened.

"And if that's not correct than I am sure you are simply holding on to the stone because of its ability to show you the dead." Dorea lowered her chin and narrowed her eyes. "But you are much to clever for just that aren't you, Hermione? Even in your darkest moments you kept yourself alive with thoughts of how to win the war, so that only leads me to the belief that in this time, even at your lowest point, part of you knows that the stone and invisibility cloak will aid you when this all comes to the moment you've been working towards."

Hermione's fingers shook as she laced them together tightly.

"There are always costs."

Dorea eyes widened slightly when Hermione's small words confirmed her line of thought.

Hermione had thought vaguely about what Dorea was saying in regards to the stone and cloak, but it hadn't been a concrete thought in her mind until that moment. Then the thought popped into her mind of what Professor McGonagall had said to her in her third year. She echoed the words now.

"Bad things happen to those who meddle with time." Hermione drained the rest of her tea and went to stand, but Dorea stopped her.

"Do you know why you aren't a Slytherin, my dear?"

Hermione froze and sank back into her chair, "Possibly because I told the hat I'd set it on fire if it put me there."

Not for the first time in their conversation, Dorea completely ignored her. "You may be cunning and clever, but you have none of the self-preservation required. You are a self-sacrificing Gryffindor braveheart completely." Dorea looked Hermione up and down and said, "But you have a Slytherin mother now, so that just won't do."

"I'm sorry?"

"I need you to start thinking like a Slytherin, Hermione. It's the only way you'll make it through this war."

Before Hermione could even think through what she was saying Dorea stood and rested a hand on Hermione's shoulder.

"Stay safe today. Be smart."

Then she started towards the door and said over shoulder, "I am telling the boys you went to your friend Pandora's, for the day."

The small group of Order members followed Hermione without questions. Hagrid was close behind with the clucking roosters tucked under his large arms. Benjy and Moody looked like they were preparing for an attack any moment.

Hermione almost laughed to herself when she imagined the odd procession they probably looked like. There were very few students staying at Hogwarts for the holidays, and Dumbledore had said he set up some kind of diversion to distract from the second floor.

When they reached Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, Hermione took a moment to breathe as she stood in front of the broken tap with the snake on the side. Harry at one moment in the tent, had insisted on teaching her the parseltongue to open it once they'd realized that Basilisk Venom was the one known way to destroy the Horcruxes besides Fiendfyre. She'd acquiesced because the basilisk was dead, but now here she was about to wake it up again.

"Any reason you're waiting, Pup?"

Hermione without answering him hissed out the word for open in Parseltongue.

As stones began to click and slide and slowly the sink sunk to reveal the tunnel, Hermione turned to look at four surprised wizards.

"Ready?" Her voice broke the silence.

Moody stepped up and slapped her on the shoulder. "You're full of surprises, you are."

Hermione smiled at him before it dropped and she gave them all serious looks. "Remember the plan." She made sure to make direct eye-contact with Dumbledore before turning back towards the tunnel and saying, "As soon as you make it to the bottom move aside, so the other person doesn't land on you. I've placed altered caterwauling charms on items and as soon as we open up into the chamber, I'll move them to the openings of the tunnels. That should give us an idea of its location because they'll be set off by movement within ten feet of them." She looked at all of them. "Don't go near the tunnel entrances, and make sure to only look through your mirrors. Even then, look towards the ground and avoid the eyes."

Before she could lose her nerve she moved towards the tunnel and launched herself down it. She didn't know what exactly to expect. All she had were Harry's story to go off of. What she hadn't prepared for were the skeletons and stones at the bottom. She landed with a thud.

"Bloody hell!"

She jumped and shakily made her way to the side just as Moody landed with a string of curses.

Hermione stepped away and silenced her footsteps before looking around.

"Lumos." The walls were covered in slime and dirt and the floor was coated in what looked like skeletons of small mammals.

Hermione turned back just as Benjy appeared with the Roosters in tow.

Hermione had insisted on Hagrid staying which ended up being perfectly fine by him. He'd been talking to Aragog and had no desire to see the great beast for himself.

Hermione pointed at their feet and all of the Wizards silenced them before she turned back.

The tunnel in front of her was eerily quiet and the only noises that could be heard were the occasional drips of liquids she didn't want to know the specifics.

After one deep breath, she carefully began her slow walk into the tunnel.

She extinguished the light from her wand.

When it opened the first thing she saw was the twenty foot long, slimy skin resting along the stones and then the giant statue of Salazar himself. Hermione quickly levitated the items into each tunnel before looking at Dumbledore.

"Fawkes!" He called.

Hermione hoped this would be able to play out similarly to how it played out with Harry. She'd told Dumbledore that they needed to blind the serpent. As soon as the word left Dumbledore's mouth the sounds of slithering could be heard from one of the tunnels.

Hermione gestured and all of them fanned out to different pillars.

Benjy released the roosters before disappearing behind a column of stone. Hermione accioed the handheld mirror from her bag and held it out.

Suddenly, screams could be heard from a certain tunnel in the chamber. Hermione did her best not to flinch as the piercing wail ripped through the tense air. She swung her mirror out and could see movement from the tunnel she suspected the scream came from.

Just as she did this, she heard the cry of Dumbledore's Phoenix, and she watched as a large gut-wrenching shape slithered out of a tunnel and Fawkes dove for the eyes.

Hermione watched through the mirror as Fawkes blinded the Basilisk.

"It's blind!" She shouted as she ran out from the column and dove behind the next one.

Fawkes cried one more time before disappearing to where she assumed Dumbledore was hidden. Hermione used the mirror to look for the roosters, and she saw them somewhere near the center of the chamber. Before she could do anything the Basilisk appeared right next to the column she'd been standing at previously and it's large body plowed into it. Rocks began to tumble down and Hermione dove, but she wasn't quick enough and one landed on her ankle.

She cried out and slammed her hand over her eyes.

Sightless, she pulled her leg out and used her hands to find her way to the opposite side of the pillar.

Before she opened her eyes she heard the crow of a rooster. She let out a breath and opened her eyes. After one rooster's crow, the rest followed suit. She could hear the hissing of the Basilisk, and right as she peaked around the corner she saw it collapse.

Suddenly, she could breathe again. She'd barely taken a few breaths when Mad-Eye rounded the corner and yanked her up by her elbow.

"Nicely done, Pup!"

She tried not to flinch when she put her foot down. She looked down at it and saw that her ankle was mildly swollen and the skin there was covered in cuts.

Her ribs also ached from her elbow slamming into them when she landed. Her wrist was also slightly swollen.

She patted Moody on the arm and started limping towards the head of the Basilisk. Dumbledore rounded on them then with Fawkes on his shoulder.

"Much easier than I was expecting," he said with twinkling eyes.

Hermione stopped right in front of its wide, unhinged jaw and accioed her dragon hide gloves that she'd borrowed from Dorea as well as a lockable box. She reached up and carefully pulled six fangs from the Basilisk's jaw. After only hesitating for a few seconds she quickly extricated three more just in case.

It was only after she'd carefully pulled the gloves off and put the box back in her bag that she saw Dumbledore and Moody looking around nervously.

"Where's Benjy?"

She asked carefully.

"Lad hasn't shown himself," Moody said gruffly.

Hermione's eyes widened.

Dumbledore cast a non-verbal Homenum Revelio and the three of them rushed down the ghostly path the spell created.

Hermione's breath stopped when she saw Benjy crouched on the ground with the mirror propped up outside of the tunnel the Basilisk had first come out of.

She ignored the twinge in her ankle and ran around him to check for a heart beat. After a moment she breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Just petrified."

Moody levitated Benjy as they made their way out of the Chamber and back up into the castle.

Moody grunted out that he would take Benjy to the hospital wing as Hermione followed Dumbledore to his office.

She was limping and the headache that she'd been dealing with the past few weeks was way worse than it had been before she left. When she reached his office, she looked out the windows and saw the sun was close to the middle of the sky.

"Miss Granger, a word before you leave?"

Hermione narrowed her eyes and remained silent.

Dumbledore took a seat and folded his hands in front of him. She had to force herself not to look at his blackened and cursed fingers. She laced her own fingers together tightly.

"I find I must press something upon you, Miss Granger."

Hermione's frown turned into a scowl. First she had Harry telling her to rely more on his family, then she had Dorea tell her to think more of her own preservation, and now she was sure whatever Dumbledore was about to tell her would contradict either one or the other, if not both.

When she didn't say anything he continued, "I think I may have made a mistake in placing you with a family. It may not be wise to to grow attachments. You have set yourself up to do this task alone. Do not forget, Miss Granger, the possible outcome of your decision."

Hermione physically growled. It sounded to her like he was planning on removing her from the Potter's house and force her into isolation. Was she even a person to him? She remembered how he'd insisted that Harry staying with those horribly abusive muggles was the safest option for him.

"Is that a threat, Albus?"

He seemed amused by her anger when he said, "Not a threat, dear child. Just a reminder."

Hermione wanted to hex him. She wanted to hex him almost as badly as she'd wanted to hex Snape.

She took a few deep breaths and said carefully, "I will remain at the Potter's, and trust me when I say, I have done anything but forget the possible outcomes of my decisions."

With that she spun on her heel and flooed to the Manor. Hermione, on a normal day would've remembered that she had to walk through the main sitting room to get to the stairs, but today she hadn't even thought of it.

Sirius and James were on the floor with their miniature quidditch set and Charlus was sitting in an armchair with the Prophet.

All their eyes widened when Hermione stepped into the room with sparking hair and a limp.

She paused when two of the Quidditch Players crashed together and the rest of the players started screaming.

She stared wide eyed at the game for a moment before her eyes darted between the two boys and she quirked an eyebrow.

"How old are you? Twelve?"

Charlus guffawed behind them, and both boys jaws dropped.

James was still sputtering when Sirius jumped to his feet and gestured at her ankle.

"What happened to you?"

He stepped closer to examine her bleeding leg, and Hermione backed away from him. In her effort to stay away she forgot momentarily about her swollen ankle and ended up sprawled on the floor. She groaned from the ground and fell back, so that she was laying sprawled across the floor on her back. When three concerned faces appeared above her, she scowled at them and mumbled, "Pandora has a pet hippogriff."

James suddenly looked very excited. "Bloody hell! I've been wanting to meet one of those! Can we go over there tomorrow?"

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the wrinkles between her brows. "No, James. We will not be going over there tomorrow!"

"What! Why not?"

She threw her arms back to her sides and sighed.

"Hermione, dear, you're bleeding all over my nice carpet," Dorea said as she breezed through the room.

Hermione groaned again and held her hands up. Both boys automatically grabbed her hands and pulled her up, and she winced at the pain in her wrist.

"Dorea, could you help me with healing these?"

After Hermione was healed for the most part she went to her room and locked herself in.

She'd made herself a checklist after her first Order meeting of everything she needed to do. She smiled to herself as she quickly scratched the Basilisk off of her list before grabbing Remus's notebook and scribbling a quick:

Back at the Potter's. Safe. All went as planned.

After that she went to put the notebook back in her drawer and saw the stone.

Her fingers twitched. Harry and her hadn't finished their conversation from earlier.

She snatched the stone and locked herself in the bathroom. This time she was sure to silence the room. She stared at the door for a moment before deciding to ward it as well.

This time when she flipped the stone she kept her eyes wide open when Harry's spirit appeared.

He was smiling when he said, "Funny seeing you here, Mione."

Hermione smiled sadly at him, and his lips thinned.

"You can't keep doing this."

Hermione nodded and said, "I know." She nodded again and looked away. "I know that, Harry."

Hermione looked at him through the mirror. He looked the same as he had last time, but she found it didn't hurt as much to look at him this time. It still brought a crushing pain, but it also seemed like it was manageable.

Harry gave her an imploring look and said, "Don't listen to what, Dumbledore says, Hermione."

Hermione's eyes widened. He hadn't called her Hermione since First Year. "Harry…"

"No! I'm serious." Hermione's hands twisted in her jumper, so that she wouldn't reach out for him. "He's wrong Hermione. You need these people. You need these attachments. I tried to do it alone, and I think that's proof enough that you shouldn't."

Hermione flinched and turned to look at him. "I'm going to save your family, Harry."

He gave her one of his genuine, brilliant smiles when he said, "I believe in you, Hermione."

AN: A shorter chapter in comparison to the last two, but I've discovered action scenes aren't my strongest!

Thanks, as always, for the follows, favorites, and reviews! Every notification I get is motivation;)