Trigger warnings: mild injury

"Just because it's attached to Godric Gryffindor doesn't mean it can't still be a Horcrux, Ronald!"

"I'm not saying that, but it just doesn't seem very likely that You-Know-Who would've chosen to put his soul into something that belonged to an enemy."

"They weren't enemies, though. The house rivalry is a relatively modern thing. Didn't you all read Hogwarts: A History? The significance to the Dark Lord is Hogwarts itself, not the houses."

"Fine. But with the cup gone, that only leaves… the snake, for certain… something from Ravenclaw, maybe, or Gryffindor?"

"And then the Dark Lord himself, but yes, that's all that's left. As far as we know."

Ron rubbed a hand across his face. "Great."

The inky scrawls stared at up at Hermione from their humble spot on the page. She thought they might be mocking her with their simplicity. Following the miraculous acquisition and destruction of Hufflepuff's cup, the four of them now felt quite assuredly back at square one.

Harry hunched over the table, silent and pensive. Narcissa did the same over a cold cup of tea.

Hermione and Ron, having run out of steam to continue arguing, settled into frustrated silence.

Impossible!

"What are the possible ones not related to Hogwarts?"

"No," Harry snapped. "It's absolutely attached to Hogwarts some way. I can feel it. And that's the direction Dumbledore wanted us to go in."

Ron opened his mouth, perhaps to argue that they couldn't be sure of Dumbledore's posthumous advice, then thought better of it.

"There are hardly any relics attached to the remaining founders which have been seen in the last fifty years, let alone that the Dark Lord could have got his hands on," offered Hermione, then swiftly regretted when it only seemed to deepen the lines between everyone's brows.

Hermione looked at Narcissa, whose gaze remained on the table's surface, and willed the other witch to look at her. Narcissa's sombre silence had lingered around the flat like a heavy cloud, and though she did not hide herself away like Hermione had done, Narcissa was hardly approachable these days.

Hermione wondered if it was thoughts of Draco that filled her head, or more general despair about the state of things.

Harry shook his head. "The cup was supposedly lost to history and that obviously didn't stop him." With a sigh, their Chosen One leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Fixating on the relics isn't going to help. At least not today. Let's focus on the snake. How do we get rid of it?"

"Well, we've never had to deal with a living Horcrux, but let's assume that it has to be destroyed in the same way—"

"So that means only the sword or a basilisk fang, yeah?"

"Right, Ron. In this case, the sword would be easier, I think, since it would be hard to stab a moving snake with a fang…"

"We'll never get close enough."

"The Dark Lord will not let her leave his side. Anyone who ventures close enough to the Dark Lord to murder Nagini will not live to do much else."

"Not necessarily. If we leave it until the very end, when I have to face him in person for the last time, or whatever is supposed to happen according to the prophecy… if we do it then, it won't matter."

"Someone will still have to get close enough. And then far away enough."

"I still say that whomever does such a thing is carrying out a suicide mission."

"Honestly, our entire existence is a suicide mission at this point."

"What if we assign someone to do it?"

"Like who?"

"Dunno yet, but if one person has the job and we make sure we give them the sword, I reckon it'll all happen much… cleaner, than if we leave it up to chance. Or luck."

"I volunteer."

"Ronald—"

"No, really. I want to do it." Ron grinned. "I've got pretty good at killing those things, y'know?"

Hermione sighed. She would try to talk him out of it later.

Harry frowned. "Details like that aren't going to be helpful at this stage, not until we know more about how it's going to happen, what it will look like…"

For lack of anything else to say, Hermione summarised their latest musings in neat bullet points in her notebook.

"Any news from Hogwarts?"

"Nah," answered Ron. "Nothing's changed really. Not much worse, but not better, either."

"Ginny alright?"

"Yeah, from what I've heard. Parents still want to take her out of school while they still can, but it'll attract too much attention to us. Give 'em a reason to properly come after us, y'know?"

"What, more than they already are?"

"Exactly."

Hogwarts: Hermione wrote slowly. Unchanged.

The days returned to their steady trot. Narcissa remained quiet, though her eyes lightened when Arthur Weasley kindly informed her that Draco had been recently spotted and looking quite well. He had survived the theft, somehow. Hermione didn't know whether this meant that Voldemort hadn't noticed the Horcrux had been taken, or merely hadn't assumed Draco to be the culprit.

Either way, she supposed that must count as a victory in their books. Narcissa clearly took it as such, though she still seemed distracted all the time.

But then again, so was Harry, and Ron, and even herself. They'd run out of leads; Dumbledore's information had long become irrelevant and they had even less access to the wizarding world in order to search for clues.

The restlessness was unbearable. On and on. Waiting. Needing to do.

Reprieve came in the form of an agile patronus bounding through the flat with such speed that Hermione could only make out that it was a quadruped of some sort. It spoke to Harry alone before dissipating, leaving the wizard's face grave.

None of them asked. No-one wanted to bring the silence to an early end—not when any news could be utterly shattering.

Harry put together enough composure to tell them, "There's been a battle. Lots of casualties. Some people will be arriving soon," and it was enough.

Ron busied himself with tidying, of all things. Hermione watched him nervously and wondered if he was bracing himself for a dead sibling. Or parent.

Harry paced.

Narcissa made tea with agonisingly precise movements. Hermione set cups and saucers on the table alongside the little dish of sugar. The door burst open just as she opened the fridge to fetch the cream.

Tonks was the first Hermione saw, her vibrant red hair making her difficult to miss as she strode into the flat, Remus only a few steps behind. Bill trailed after, followed by Kingsley. They all had such fire in their eyes that Hermione instinctively shrunk backwards, nearly falling into the refrigerator.

"What the bloody hell happened? Where's dad?" demanded Ron.

"Your father is fine, Ron," Remus assured him—

"It's Charlie. Got hit. Dark curse, or something. Nasty."

Hermione couldn't breathe and Ron looked like he was choking on his own Adam's apple—Charlie Weasley? Dead?

"Is he—?"

"Nah. Not for now."

"Merlin," breathed Harry. "What happened?"

"We were ambushed," explained Remus, and Hermione saw now that he had bits of blood speckled across his shirt and a nasty bruise blossoming on his cheek. "We were outnumbered and overpowered. There was very little that could be done."

"Nasty lot," agreed Tonks seriously as she helped her husband to sit. Hermione became aware of the fact she still stood in the door of the fridge, milk in hand, and rushed to set it on the table and tend to their guests.

Bill appeared uninjured, though as he sat himself on the sofa, Hermione could not help but stare at the aura of misery he still carried since Fleur's disappearance.

Kinglsey seemed restless. Tonks sat herself on her husband's lap. "Death Eaters have no sense of style, eh love? No finesse. Just lobbing Dark curses left and right. Oi, Hermione—could I trouble you for a flannel?"

Hermione dashed to the bathroom and returned, dripping flannel in hand.

"Thanks, love," Tonks chirped as she took the thing and began to gently wash blood and grime from Remus' face.

They all settled into an awful stasis. Hermione's heart pounded, her brain accelerating out of her mind as she watched everybody grow stiller, retreating into their own fears.

"What are we doing now?" she blurted.

Bill shrugged. "Dad told us to come here to update you lot and stay out of the way until Charlie…"

…is saved or dead.

"We should perhaps follow Miss Tonks' lead and tend to our own wounds," Kingsley suggested, and the way he held his shoulder made Hermione think he had just discovered some moderate injuries of his own.

Hermione fetched her bag with its stash of medicinal potions and tasked Narcissa with distributing them to whomever was in need—the lot of them had their fair share of scrapes and bruises to go around. Kingsley had some problem with his joint; Hermione suspected it may be dislocated, but didn't dare try to fix it without magic. Bill had a nasty burn on his leg. Remus looked as though he'd been attacked by the Whomping Willow; Tonks looked roughly the same, though her hair kept flickering between vibrant red and a more mellow merlot shade.

Hermione administered as many Muggle treatments as she could, but eventually the task exhausted itself and she found herself slouching at the table alongside a sombre Harry and Ron, who hadn't moved since the arrival of this fragment of the Order.

Silence, ticking along, a funeral march for those who hadn't died yet…

Hermione wondered how Charlie was faring, what exactly had happened to him, who was treating it and the odds of his survival…

What would the Weasleys do if they lost one of their children? Hermione couldn't fathom it without feeling not only her heart breaking into pieces, but perhaps her lungs, too; it got tremendously hard to breathe.

God, Ron won't be able to take it…

Who had done it? Whose wand was responsible for all this pre-mortem grief? Hermione didn't know what the Order had been doing—where or who or why. As he was busy fulfilling his role as headmaster, it seemed unlikely Snape would bother with a skirmish like this. This eased her somewhat, though she could not pinpoint why. Perhaps it was the uneasiness which came from not knowing his true motives; it was so much easier to remember that look in his eyes in his cellar when she also convinced herself he was not truly trying to kill them all.

Then again, he had cursed off George's ear. So perhaps that point is moot, then.

Whom else, then? Lestrange? Dolohov? Malfoy?

Hermione's eyes jumped to Narcissa; the witch seemed as lost in her own thought as everyone else. Is that what she's thinking? Wondering if her husband or son is responsible for all this?

Hermione's breaking heart began to contort itself into horrid knots.

A low hum around her signalled conversation she couldn't bring herself to comprehend as the survivors of whatever exactly had happened chatted, folding Harry into their discussion while the rest remained quiet bystanders.

The hum grew more complex as a radio was switched on (Tonks?) and when Hermione focused her eyes again she saw the witch gently swaying with her husband to the synthetic Muggle pop beating softly.

Kingsley watched them, looking touched, while Harry and Ron schemed beside him in low voices. Narcissa fiddled with her teacup.

Hermione didn't know who to go to; talking to anyone seemed like an intrusion.

She stood quietly from the table and made her way to the sofa.

Bill said nothing, but she didn't ask him to. Just sat beside him on the lumpy cushion. He radiated such tension and fear and yet some of the most profound resignation that made her wonder if he would disintegrate if she prodded him.

"Want a dance?"

Bill gave her such a withering look that Hermione wanted to tell him speaking at all had been a mistake—and it had, truly, she hadn't meant to say that!—but some part of her felt that this was important, so she held his gaze and waited for an answer.

When he realised she wasn't joking, Bill growled, "And why the bloody hell would I want to do that?"

Hermione shrugged and tried to ignore the way he scared her now. This wasn't any Bill Weasley she had known; this was a man who had been brutalised by war so thoroughly that all the light seemed to have been sucked out of him.

"I dunno," answered Hermione truthfully as she stood. She took his hand and gently guided him to stand with her; he let her without protest. "Sometimes you have to just let your body do it and hope your head will follow."

And she held his wrists and began to sway not-quite to the beat of the quiet music. His body followed, not strong enough to resist as she moved his centre of gravity through the space. His sways and stumbles fell even more out of time than hers, and it was fine.

"What did they do to you, Hermione? Do you think they're doing the same to her?"

Hermione didn't let them stop moving as she pondered how to answer his broken whispers. She settled on truth: "I don't know." She had no idea where Fleur was, if she was alive, or how valuable she might be to a band of Death Eaters. Enough to keep alive?

Some cold, logical part of her brain had always known that a family as large and politically active as the Weasleys would not survive a war intact. Whether it was Fleur out in the unknown or Charlie now being frantically tended to by the Order, she just couldn't make the probabilities line up to keep them all alive. Maybe she'd been bracing for this, maybe that's why she felt so floaty and far away right now. Maybe it would all come tumbling down on her shoulders in a few hours when she realised what it meant for someone she loved to be really gone, with no hope of return.

But for now, she softly tugged Bill across the dirty carpet until motion felt so normal that she couldn't imagine ever being still. He didn't look much better, but he didn't look worse, either, and Narcissa sat smiling sadly at her from across the room.

"How do we know there aren't more in Gringotts?"

"We've been over this, Ron. You-Know-Who doesn't trust anyone else to look after a Horcrux."

"Especially not after the mishap with the diary."

"Oi, that 'mishap' nearly killed my little sister!"

"And that is precisely why the Dark Lord wishes to avoid another one!"

"Alright, alright. Let's table Gringotts for now. Hermione, what are our other viable leads?"

Hermione looked to the scrawls in her notebook; the tension at the table made it hard to focus and as she scanned the same words over and over again, she wondered how to tell them that they really didn't have any leads, viable or otherwise.

"Um… Well, we've exhausted just about everything Dumbledore told us," she offered hesitantly, "unless you think Beedle the Bard has anything more to offer. Otherwise… just Hogwarts."

"Impossible to go there, at least right now. Not while Snape is in charge. We'd be rounded up the second we set foot on the grounds."

"That's true."

"Hang on," Ron interrupted. "Why don't we just get the people already in Hogwarts to look?"

"Won't that endanger them?"

Ron snorted. "You two don't understand what kind of state Hogwarts is in at the moment. I literally don't think it can get any worse." He looked to Harry. "We can send word to Ginny or Neville or Seamus to start looking."

Harry bit his lip in thought; Hermione saw worry for Ginny behind his eyes. "Even if we did, what would we tell them to look for? We haven't a clue what the Horcrux is."

All eyes returned to Hermione, who read over her notes again and floundered. "Something related to the founders. That's really all we've got."

Ron made some kind of growling sound; Harry just looked exhausted.

"That may narrow it down more than you may think," offered Narcissa. "There are, after all, a finite number of surviving relics from that period. Most of them didn't make it past the seventeenth century. Anything the Dark Lord may have stumbled upon, he could have only done in the last few decades. And, if you don't mind my saying, I doubt he would have chosen to house a portion of his soul in anything belonging to Gryffindor."

"He really buys into the house rivalries that much?" Asked Harry in something between awe and disgust. Ron looked rather miffed that Narcissa only bothered to prove him right days after he had tried to argue that same point. "I mean, I was pretty into it my first few years of Hogwarts, but as I got older it just all seemed so… irrelevant."

Narcissa shrugged. "The Dark Lord needs categories, I think. He feels more… in control, I suppose, when he is able to put people into neat little boxes. He grows quite attached to those identities."

"So, Gryffindor is out, but Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are alright?"

"Well, we can at least tick Hufflepuff off the list now."

"What relics did Rowena Ravenclaw leave behind?"

Narcissa hummed. "Not very much; her personal life was quite turbulent, as far as we know. Many of her personal effects were destroyed or disregarded, too, as she did not concern herself terribly with material things and her surviving possessions were too feminine for many wizards to deem worth keeping."

Ron snorted, "You mean You-Know-Who put his soul in a pair of frilly bloomers?"

Hermione gave Ron a look which was far less diplomatic than Narcissa's answer, "No, however I have heard of decorative combs and fans which survived most of the millennium. Bits of jewellery, too."

Harry made a noise of frustration and pressed his fingers into his eyes. "Why don't wizards believe in museums? All this stuff should be in some exhibit somewhere!"

"Make it much easier for us to find, that's for sure," agreed Hermione.

"Yeah, or impossible for random evil people to pinch and put parts of their soul into in the first place."

"That, too."

"You know, Mr. Potter, you may not be too far off the mark." Hermione smiled to herself, amused by Narcissa's staunch refusal to participate in their sarcasm as she carefully wrote a list beneath Ravenclaw's name: Comb… Fan… Jewellery… Knickers? "Many scholars and historians have said for centuries that Hogwarts is itself a museum of British magical history. One could very easily make the argument that it is the natural home of those relics, anyway. If the Dark Lord did indeed find a relic of Ravenclaw and—and put himself in it, as it were, it would not surprise me if he shared the belief that it should stay in the founders' castle, regardless of his own personal attachment."

They all thought on that for a moment; Hermione didn't like the way Narcissa had described the nature of a Horcrux, particularly not when in relation to a woman's private belongings. It all made her squirm in discomfort and a distant sense of violation, as though Horcruxes in general didn't unnerve her enough already.

"Alright," concluded Ron with a sigh. He'd been running on fury since news of Charlie, though the latest update that he was stable (for now) had taken the rest of his fuel. "We'll tell the resistance cell at Hogwarts to start looking for something old and shiny that might look like it could've been Ravenclaw's."

Hermione finished writing and when she looked up, saw her two friends looking exhausted and more discouraged than she had seen in a while. The scrambling for clues while time ran out made her antsy and more afraid than battle; she couldn't imagine how Harry must be feeling, who thrived on doing rather than thinking, or Ron, who seemed like he was clawing for more time to keep his family alive.

Narcissa seemed pleased to have helped, but Hermione could see the shadow of Draco's wellbeing under her eyes.

Shutting her notebook, she prayed to Ravenclaw to make this one easy for them all, or for Voldemort to do them all a favour and trip onto the bloody sword himself.

Spring rain beat evenly against the windows, wandering into Hermione's dreams in a steady rhythm which drove her mind through images of Hogwarts and home and abstract combinations of things which only made sense in sleep.

"Hermione!"

She asked the Sorting Hat about Rowena Ravenclaw, who then emerged from the hat itself to scold her eleven-year-old self for being a hatstall—

"Hermione! Please, wake up!"

—except Rowena was actually Cho Chang, and she wouldn't give Hermione a comb because her hair was so frizzy it would surely break it.

"I know," Hermione said apologetically. "I'll cut more of it off, I promise. It's just curly; it won't be so bad when it's shorter—please!"

And then Narcissa appeared, all long silky locks, and the whole thing changed to something else and all Hermione could see was Narcissa being adorned with ancient jewels.

"Hermione! Come on, please!"

The blue of the gems and their bronze settings brought out her eyes, which smiled sweetly behind an intricately embroidered fan. It all sparkled so magnificently in the candlelight; Hermione felt entranced.

"Fuck! HERMIONE! WAKE UP!"

Hermione jolted awake, eyes wide open in the dark and only aware of the fact that she was terribly winded. An endless moment of panic elapsed, then her lungs took in air with a ferocious gasp and Hermione became aware of Ron practically sitting on her, gripping her shoulders hard and staring at her with more fear than she had ever seen.

"Mr. Weasley!" Narcissa sat up in bed beside her.

Ron looked between the two of them, striking icy dread in Hermione's gut and she knew she should savour these last few moments of ignorance before he found the will to speak.

When he did, a horrible croak into the night, Hermione wished she'd never woken up at all.

"Harry's gone."