15. The warm-up

It was not long after dawn and the grass was still wet with dew. The sun was low in the sky and the air still cool. Hermione stood in a field behind her house, concentrated on a spot in front of her. The silence of the morning was violently interrupted as she held up a revolver and fired a series of shots at a row of trees that ran along the edge of the field. Then she reloaded the gun and started again. So far a handful of shots had hit the target she had set herself, a particularly old and broad oak tree.

After a while she heard the sound of someone trudging through the wet grass. She didn't turn around, and continued to shoot at the old oak tree. Once within earshot the person shouted out in a gruff voice:

'What the hell do you think you're doing?'

She lowered the gun and turned around.

'Practising,' she said, looking at Ron with a defiant expression.

'Where did you get one of those?' he said, looking at the gun in her hand.

'They're not hard to come by.'

'And why have you got one?'

'Self-defence,' came the reply.

'What makes you think that thing's going to help you? A tube that shoots little pieces of metal out of the end?'

'I know how a gun works, Ron. But for someone who spends so much time playing with imaginary guns, you don't seem to think much of them.'

'Very funny. Anyway, guns have no subtlety to them. A wand's much better.'

'This is in addition to magic, Ron,' she replied, looking at the gun in her hand. 'Since witchfinders can't use magic, they're just as likely to use regular weapons such as guns. I intend to be fully prepared, that's all.'

'For what?'

She turned back and looked at the tree she was using for target practice.

'For no reason,' she replied curtly, looking down the barrel of the gun. 'Just more paranoia on my part. There's nothing going on. It's not as if Florian Whittaker and his family were chased out of their home by a mob.'

Ron scowled.

'You know the Ministry's investigating that.'

'Muggle Relations is investigating. Not the Auror Office.'

'No traces of magic were found at the scene, so I heard.'

'That's because the wizards involved cleaned up after they'd finished. Cleaned up their handiwork at least, not the damage done by the mob.'

'I know that's what Isaac Edwards says.'

'And he's making it up, is he?'

It would be awkward to explain why she had been there. Let alone Harry.

'The report's not finished yet.'

'But it's hardly the first time something like this has happened,' Ron remarked.

'No, it isn't. But there'll be more and more.'

Ron paused, pursing his lips and looking grimly at the gun in her hand.

'The neighbours are going to think you're some sort of...'

She looked round at him with a withering stare.

'Some sort of lunatic, Ron?'

He shook his head.

'It's been two years, Hermione. The Ministry's still there. Hogwarts is still there, not to mention Diagon Alley and every other wizard place in the country. And no one has come crashing in here to kidnap you either. In fact, barely anyone even knows where we live. You won't let me give out our address. Not even the village.'

'As long as I live here, Ron, that's how I intend to keep it.'

She turned away from him and began loading bullets into her gun. Then she raised her arm and once again started firing at the oak tree. This time all six bullets hit their target.

'Once you've finished vandalising the countryside,' said Ron, glaring at her, 'perhaps you'll come in and have some breakfast. I was hoping to sleep late, but there's no chance of getting back to sleep now.'

'Sleep, eat, whatever. Do it while you can,' she called out as he began to walk away.

'I'm not even going to bother to say that you're mental, Hermione. It's gone way beyond that,' Ron called out from across the field.

'Why don't you have me committed then?' shouted Hermione over her shoulder.

'I don't know what that means!' Ron shouted back.

'Well look it up then, you're so much the expert on muggles these days!'

He disappeared over the style at the top of the field. She reloaded and fired again. One bullet out of six missed its target.

Half an hour later Hermione stepped into the kitchen. Ron was drinking a cup of coffee and reading The Daily Prophet.

'I've repaired the tree,' said Hermione in a quiet voice. Ron looked up at her with a vacant expression.

'Ron, I'm a wanted person,' she continued.

'That's what you've been saying for the past two years,' he replied in a tone of tranquil resignation.

She propped herself up against the kitchen dresser.

'I wonder what you'd say if someone had forced you to dig up graves at wand point?'

'I thought you were over that.'

'I am over it. But I won't forget the intent behind it. The hatred, directed at us.'

Ron turned away. He seemed to be looking towards the kitchen window.

'Is there someone outside?' Hermione asked.

He turned back to her. His scowl had deepened.

'It's that Mrs Shepherd from down the road.'

'She's not coming here?'

'She just passed the gate.'

'Oh good.'

'But actually, why shouldn't she come here? We're her neighbours. Though maybe she heard the shooting. That sort of thing would normally make people worried.'

Hermione took the revolver out of her pocket and started examining it.

'Out in the country people are shooting all the time,' she remarked in a distracted voice.

'Just how many guns have you got?' said Ron. She looked up in his direction.

'I have three,' she said, now looking straight at him. 'A revolver and two semi-automatic pistols.'

'A revolver and two semi-automatic pistols,' he repeated sardonically.

'It's no good knowing how to use just one type of weapon,' Hermione retorted. 'It's like knowing just one spell.'

'I suppose that makes sense,' replied Ron, reaching into his pocket and drawing out his wand. 'Accio guns!' he shouted, flourishing the wand over the kitchen table. Hermione stood motionless and passive as the gun lifted itself out of her hand and prostrated itself on the kitchen table. A few moments later, a further pair of guns came floating in through the open kitchen door and presented themselves on the table next to the first.

'What a lovely collection,' remarked Ron drily.

'What do you want with them?' asked Hermione coolly, not moving from her spot by the dresser.

Ron gave no answer. Instead he conjured up a little black bag. Then, with his next trick, he made the guns stuff themselves into the bag. Once full, the bag disappeared with a slight pop.

'Give me those back,' said Hermione quietly.

'No,' said Ron.

'Why not, are they more dangerous than a wand?' asked Hermione, her wand suddenly in her hand and pointed at Ron. 'Since I'm mad, you'd better take this off me as well, in case I perform some unforgivable curse on you.'

She brandished the wand in Ron's direction, as if she meant to hand it over to him. He looked at her quizzically, not sure if she was serious.

'Take it,' she repeated. 'Take it away and have me locked up somewhere safe.'

Ron looked grimly at the outstretched wand and said nothing. Hermione sighed loudly and lowered her wand.

'Listen Ron,' she said, 'either I am completely wrong about the threat we're facing, in which case I am completely paranoid and insane, or I'm right and we're screwed anyway.'

Ron continued in silence. Apparently deep in thought, he too was chewing on his lip.

'It's Saturday morning,' he said in a low voice. 'Can we take a break from this, at least for this weekend?'

Hermione sighed deeply again, in apparent resignation.

Nothing more was said about the Witchfinder or the Seven-Pointed Circle for the rest of Saturday. Ron and Hermione had lunch in the isolated country pub where Ron often drank with Harry, then walked back to the house, following a winding route through a small wood and across open fields. The weather was warm, excessively warm for late October. Shortly after returning home, Ron announced that he wanted to call on Ginny and Harry. Hermione began to express her reluctance, but Ron made no attempt to insist that she accompany him, so he left her watching television alone in the house. In any case, he completed his errand in less than half an hour, in time for them to begin preparing dinner. Not once in the course of the afternoon or the evening did Hermione enter her office. She tried to focus her mind on seeing only what was immediately in front of her: the comfortable and spacious house, the food spread out on the kitchen table, the view of green fields and woodland, the muted shades of the bedroom. When at last she lay in bed and her eyes grew heavy, she entertained a vague hope that the night might pass in the same vein.

She had not long been asleep when she found herself on the corridors of Hogwarts, answering a summons to the Headmaster's Office. She was already in the vestibule when it occurred to her that she had never actually been inside. When the door swung open, the office looked as she supposed it must have done: a great high room, its walls lined with ancient books, portraits of headmasters past and all manner of arcane magical devices, but sitting in the Headmaster's Chair was Lillian Herrick, dressed soberly in robes like those Professor McGonagall wore.

'Hermione, you're not looking too well,' she said with what sounded remarkably like concern, and inviting her to take a seat.

Hermione ascended to the headmaster's desk and sat down in silence.

'I suppose it's all the blood loss,' Lillian continued.

Hermione looked around her.

'I'd call this sacrilege, but I suppose that's one of your specialities,' she answered at last.

Lillian Herrick smiled.

'You know how important education is to me. And I would have loved to have been a teacher here.'

'What on earth would you have taught?' asked Hermione, almost amused at the prospect.

'Transfiguration?' suggested Lillian blithely. 'Potions? Or even divination?'

Hermione had to admit that Lillian could probably give a rather entertaining class in any of those subjects. She said nothing, but the vaguest of smiles escaped her lips. The smile did not go unnoticed.

'To tell you the truth, most of all I'd have loved to teach you, Hermione. You and Harry. I could have made something very interesting out of you.'

'Oh I think we would have seen through you.'

'Yes, I suppose you would have.'

They looked at each other for a moment across the Headmaster's desk. It was Lillian who interrupted the silence.

'You'll be pleased to know that I won't be asking for any more blood.'

'Is that right?' said Hermione. 'Vampirism not doing it for you anymore?'

Lillian tutted.

'Once you get past the initial symbolism, you're just left staring at a flask of red liquid,' she remarked nonchalantly. 'And you've already been the recipient of enough pain. If you want to see any more you're going to have to be the one to inflict it.'

Hermione felt her heart beating faster.

'What do you mean?' she asked, in a voice as calm as she could muster.

'Victimhood is so seductive,' Lillian replied. 'It's insidious. Very bad for the spirit.'

Her gaze was now fixed on Hermione.

'So the best remedy is an act of cruelty towards someone close to you: there's nothing so good for focusing the mind. Or to put it another way: your guilt is worth more than your blood.'

Hermione tried to smile but couldn't get her mouth into the right shape.

'Maybe I don't want to see any more of your gates,' she replied calmly. Lillian smiled.

'I see: ignore poor Lillian and she'll go away. She's nothing more than an attention-seeker anyway.'

'Something like that.'

'You have enough information to stop me now, is that it?'

Hermione said nothing.

'You know, Hermione,' Lillian continued, 'So far I've shown amazing powers of self-restraint.'

'I suppose that's a threat.'

'I just want you to understand that thinking that you can call my bluff by ignoring me is an illusion.' The friendly tone was gone, replaced by cold malice. 'Just try me: what would you like to see? Shall I have poor Ron put one of those guns of yours in his mouth and shoot?'

She allowed the threat to linger in the silence between them. Hermione looked at her in silent horror.

'I thought you said you don't put guns in people's hands.'

'I don't want to do it of course.' Her tone was friendly again. 'But you understand that it wouldn't be difficult. And anyway, I would only really be continuing your work.'

This is pointless anyway. I can't turn away.

'Tell me something,' she said at last, suddenly thinking of something worth trying on Lillian. 'Gondulph Belhaine says he's been tipped off that the Witchfinder is going to expose us. Was that you who tipped him off?'

The strange green eyes were upon her. Their scrutiny was hard to bear, but Hermione had the feeling that the eyes were somehow probing her for the truth, no longer sparkling with mischief but dry, cold and focused, like the eyes of a hunter. Maybe she isn't Belhaine's source?

Suddenly Lillian's eyes regained their usual dazzling glaze. 'If you want to know more,' she replied. 'You know what to do.'

Hermione sat back in her chair and glanced up at the portraits on the wall. Among them was a portrait of Dumbledore, apparently lost in sleep. He couldn't help her. And even if he was still alive, she suspected she was already beyond his help.

'You say you want me to feel guilty,' she replied at last. 'What makes you think I don't already feel guilty?'

'You've just dipped your toes in it so far,' said Lillian. 'If you want to really make the Circle work for you, as it does for me, then you have to be in over your head. Happy Halloween.'

The walls of the Headmaster's Office slowly began to fade, until only Lillian's triumphant eyes were visible. Then she disappeared altogether and Hermione could remember nothing more.

Sunday passed slowly and quietly. Ron and Hermione ate breakfast together then walked in the fields around Chase End. The weather was even warmer and sunnier than the previous day, growing hotter as the morning went on. By noon the sky had been emptied of its last scattered clouds. In search of shelter from the sun they changed course, heading into the larger village that provided the nearest shops and services to Chase End. While Chase End was little more than a scattering of houses and high hedges along a winding country lane, its neighbour boasted a high street of tall Victorian and Georgian buildings, a wide village green and a rather eccentrically built Baroque church. They walked along the high street, past smart women browsing in specialist shops or engrossed in conversations on coffee shop terraces, and jovial groups of men outside pubs, talking loudly over their pints. Hermione felt exposed, as if the sun was burning down to her very bones. She looked into a shop window to try and tranquilise herself. The window was filled with a display of ghoulish masks, skulls and little witches on broomsticks. The display was bathed in an orange light emitted by a ring of glowing jack o'lanterns. She had forgotten it was Halloween. The evening might bring trick-or-treaters to their doorstep. She stepped away from the window display, shivering despite the heat, and walked quickly down the street to catch up with Ron. A mother passed her, flanked by two small children, both dressed in Halloween costumes. Hermione shot them a searching glance. A real witch just walked past you. What do you think of that? Would you be frightened if you knew?

She followed Ron into a convenience store, the only chain store on the High Street. As he picked out groceries she lingered between two narrow aisles, pretending to look at the items on the shelves. She smiled and politely answered enquiries after her health when they met a neighbour from Chase End. Ron had at some point put into circulation the story that she was suffering from chronic illness. She had never sought to deny it. By the time they began the two-mile walk back to Chase End, light clouds were tempering the sunlight and making the heat gentler. She felt a kind of drowsiness wash over her, which brought with it a feeling that perhaps she could let everything go after all, that it would be a pleasant thing to experience the end of her world in such surroundings. They arrived home after four o'clock, and when Ron came in with a pot of tea he found her asleep on the sofa.

After taking tea with Ron, she went upstairs for a shower. While she was in the shower, she heard Ginny's voice in the hall downstairs. It was odd that Ron hadn't said anything, but maybe it was an impromptu visit. But as she entered the living room, she found to her shock that it was full: in addition to Ron and Ginny, sitting before her were Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Mr and Mrs Weasley, George, Percy, Bill and Fleur. Even Harry was there, sitting quietly in a corner. She backed up against the wall and looked coolly out at them.