25. Sealing the circle

Isaac swung the window open and a gust of wind rushed in. Hermione leaned circumspectly out of the window and looked down through the dizzying darkness, steadying herself by gripping tightly to the window frame. From where she was standing, she could see the dark mass of the Ministry building, surrounded by small fires in the vast square that enclosed it, like a vast crater in the centre of London. Further out, blinking lights sprawled outwards in the streets all around it. Isaac poked his wand out of the window and fired off a burst of light in a horizontal line into the night sky. The beam of light travelled in a straight line for about twenty metres, then suddenly began to plummet downwards, shattering and dissipating in all directions a short distance below.

'That's the edge of the zone,' said Isaac. 'It hasn't moved recently. The window's still open. Ready?' he added, turning to Hermione and Rachel. Isaac took Rachel's hand and Hermione took hers. She took another glance out over the vast glowing expanse of London and the uneasy night unfolding below. Then it was all gone.

They emerged on a country lane under a star-filled sky, London left far behind. After walking in silence for about half a mile, they passed a scattering of mostly dark houses, with only the occasional light here and there. The village soon petered out first into a collection of farm buildings, open country beyond them. Isaac stopped before the entrance to a double garage, its doors down and locked, illuminated by a single streetlight. He rummaged in his pocket, took out a key and initiated the unlocking mechanism. The garage doors rose up in a smooth motion, whirring in the quiet of the evening. Inside the garage a single car was parked; otherwise there was little inside apart from some rusting agricultural machinery.

'Where are we?' Hermione asked.

'A quick stop on the way to our destination,' he replied. 'I never quite trust the idea of apparating straight to my house: you never know who's monitoring who and what. This warehouse belongs to a relative. He lets me park my car here whenever I need to. You just need to drive the rest of the way.'

He turned to Hermione and Rachel, the car keys outstretched in his hand in the darkness.

'Can either of you drive?'

Hermione shook her head.

'I can,' replied Rachel.

He handed her the car keys.

'I've left directions in the glove compartment. My house is about twenty miles from here. The front door key is in the letterbox. I'll try and make it back tomorrow, but don't be surprised if it takes longer. You shouldn't need to worry about shopping for food. There are enough supplies in the house to last a few weeks.'

Rachel unlocked the car door and slid into the driver's seat, a tired, vacant air about her. Hermione hung back for a moment, leaning slightly against the side of the car.

'You're well prepared,' she said quietly.

'This day has been coming for a long time,' he replied grimly. She nodded sadly. Her face was pale under the streetlight, her eyes dark and moist and ringed by shadows.

'This isn't your fault,' he said, touching her on the arm. 'Take it from someone who knows what it means to be at fault.'

'Why isn't it my fault?' Hermione asked. 'Is it because all this was supposed to happen?'

'Who really thinks that?' said Isaac. 'Not even Lillian Herrick.'

'She didn't cause all this, not exactly,' said Hermione. 'It's like she says: she shows you the path and people walk onto it. Which means I played my part to the full in creating all this. Even what happened to …' She smothered the sob before it got out.

There was something vaguely comforting in the familiar grimness of Isaac's expression.

'You didn't put Harry in a coma,' he replied in a low, but firm voice. 'Not even Lillian did it. Hatred did it.'

She looked at him in silence.

'One thing I know is that it isn't over,' she said finally. 'I have to go and find her, take the next step.'

'Not tonight,' he replied. 'First get some rest.'

He opened the passenger door and made a little gesture for her to get in. Slowly she relented and sat down in the passenger seat. Isaac shut the door and the car pulled away onto the country lane.

The car sped through the night, along country lanes that rose and fell over hills and followed the contours of others. For the most part the roads were veiled on either side by tall hedges, but here and there they caught a glimpse of valleys dropping away in the distance, scattered lights visible in vast grey expanses of emptiness. Never before had Hermione witnessed someone drive as fast as Rachel. She had to ask her several times to slow down before she finally got the message and let up on the accelerator. To fend off a vague sensation of nausea, Hermione opened the window. When not reading out directions from Isaac's scribbled piece of paper, she leaned out a little into the chill breeze whipping past, which made her feel better.

The house they pulled up outside was a small, one-storey stone cottage, sitting low up against the side of the road in a hollow and surrounded on two sides by small clumps of woodland. The nearest neighbours were a little way up the lane; the cottage seemed suitably secluded. Rachel eased the car onto the grass-covered sideway and the girls stepped out into the cool night air. Rachel located the front door key as Hermione looked around and up into the sky, which was full of stars. She wondered how long it had been since she had looked up and seen a star-filled sky. She could barely remember what the night sky looked like from Chase End, and doubted that she had ever taken the time to look at it. She could scarcely remember a night when she had done anything other than cloister herself in her office, surrounded by books and papers. Indulging myself.

They ate a frugal supper in the cottage's sparse, down-at-heel kitchen, stooped over sandwiches at the kitchen table, unable to summon much in the way of conversation. Rachel quickly disappeared to the bathroom, leaving Hermione on her own. She went into the living room, where she lingered in the middle of the room, looking at the blank television screen. I have to see him.

Harry had been moved to a different ward. At that hour the hospital was quiet, the corridor in semi-darkness. She pulled up a chair and sat down by his bed, reaching for his hand, slipping hers into his. This will be my nightly vigil from now on. Thank goodness for the Circle.

Rachel was still in the bathroom, so Hermione switched on the television, to see if she could bear to see images of the Ministry, of Diagon Alley, of Hogwarts. Within a minute she had turned the sound off: the journalist's frenzied commentary and the barrage of opinions from experts ranging from the political to the paranormal seemed unbearably harsh. Instead she watched the repeating images of the black hulk of the Ministry rising up in the midst of London, swathed in black light, the disorder on the streets, the passengers evacuated from derailed tube trains, bleeding, bandaged and dusty. Now came the first images from inside the Ministry: a shaking camera passing down corridors all too familiar to her, now deserted and sinister, and images of huddled groups of wizards, hiding in offices and amassed in the great atrium of the Ministry. Terrified she would see a familiar face, she switched the television off altogether and sat rigidly in silence on the sofa. Finally she went and knocked on the bathroom door.

'Are you alright in there?' she called through the door.

'I'm fine,' came the reply after a few seconds' delay. 'I'll be right out. Sorry.'

'It's no problem,' she replied. 'I'm just going to bed.'

'Sorry,' came the reply again.

The cottage had two bedrooms, which were of similar sizes, and both so equally sparsely furnished that it was hard to tell which one was Isaac's. Hermione gave up trying to avoid sleeping in the master bedroom, deciding that the notion had no sense there, and instead chose a bed at random. She managed to climb out of her clothes and into the bed before her strength gave way altogether.

It was pitch black when Hermione awoke. She felt somewhat rested, so she deduced that she had been asleep for several hours. She lay on her back for a while, staring at the featureless ceiling above her. When she looked around the room she saw a chink of light under the door. Wondering whether Isaac had returned, she lifted herself up off the bed, silently put some of her clothes back on and crept out of the room. The narrow hall was silent; the light was coming from the other bedroom. She crossed the hall and knocked on the bedroom door.

'Is that you Hermione?' came Rachel's voice from behind the door.

'Yes, it's me,' Hermione replied.

'Did I wake you?' Rachel asked.

'No, don't worry. Can I come in?'

'Of course.'

Rachel was sitting on the bed. She was in a t-shirt, the marks and scars on her arms clear in the bare light from the light bulb. She looked over at Hermione.

'I'm glad you're awake too,' she said.

Hermione crept slowly into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed.

'It's so dark outside,' she said.

Rachel seemed to smile at this.

'Yes, but we have our eyes wide open in the darkness.'

Hermione took her meaning in an instant.

'You were the one who brought the knife to me, the night I left with Harry's wand.'

Rachel nodded, a smile Hermione couldn't interpret still on her lips.

'Yes, I was the messenger.'

'My evil twin.'

'Something like that.'

'Was that your idea or Lillian's?'

'Mine. Do you think Lillian has all the good ideas?'

'It was a pretty sick one, if you don't mind me saying.'

Rachel smiled at this.

'We aim to please. Or I did. Particularly in those days.'

Hermione drew a little closer to her.

'And do I look more like her now?'

'To a certain extent. But don't worry, you're not all the way there yet.'

'You're not the first one to tell me that. You all love telling me how weak I am. How self-pitying I am.'

'Take it as a compliment,' Rachel replied. 'A bit of encouragement. If we tell you that it's because we think you've got potential.'

'You still say we, I see,' said Hermione.

'I told you I'm not a traitor,' Rachel replied. 'But really I've no right to say we. I'm just doing it for old time's sake. I'm out of the Circle.'

'You say it with regret.'

'I do regret it.'

'And if I asked you to take me to Lillian right now, would you?' Hermione continued. 'You could turn me in, regain your place among them.'

Rachel smiled.

'It's an interesting proposition. But the answer's no.'

'Why not?'

'Even without me the seven are still seven. You're the seventh, Hermione. I don't need to turn you in, as you put it. To all intents and purposes, you've replaced me already.'

'What?!' Hermione exclaimed.

'You've sealed the circle.'

'What do you mean?'

Rachel lifted her head swiftly towards her. She was half prostrate, half crouching on the bed, in a position that reminded Hermione of a cat watching a bird.

'You've closed it so tightly around you, you can scarcely breathe.'

She remembered the feeling that had taken hold of her on top of the Ministry as she looked down at Harry's wrecked body. That was where her plan had led them. Along its merry way from torturing Ron and Ginny to putting bullet holes in Harry. That was its logical conclusion. It was her fault. She listened to the silence. Are you still saying nothing, Lillian? You're very discreet in victory, I have to say.

'It's true,' she said, 'I have sealed the circle. But if I am the seventh, it will only be to break the Circle entirely. I'll put my guilt to a good cause.'

Rachel's face betrayed no emotion.

'Maybe that's the idea.'

Hermione glanced at the pitch black window and shivered.

'I want to ask you something,' she said, turning back to Rachel.

'Go ahead.'

'When Isaac freed you, why did you go to that building under the red sky?'

Rachel looked at her oddly.

'You mean the scriptorium.'

'Is that its name?'

'That's what I've heard it called.'

'So why did you go there, to the scriptorium?'

'Don't you know why?'

'I have an idea.'

'Tell me. I'm sure you'll be right, someone as perceptive as you.'

'I know you were looking for your friend Caleb. But I had the feeling that you wanted to go somewhere where Lillian couldn't follow you.'

Rachel seemed to shiver.

'I told you you were perceptive.'

'Why can't she go there?'

Rachel leaned closer.

'Because what she feels is her pain, not the pain of others. For me that changed the moment I stopped feeling my pain and started to feel what my family felt when I set off on this life, which I don't regret, by the way, even now. That's why I could go into the scriptorium. And that's why you could go in too.'

Hermione frowned.

'But I haven't really felt the pain of another.'

'You're too modest, Hermione. You think that in order to feel Harry's pain you have to have bullet holes in you too. Do you know what Lillian once said about you? I've never seen empathy so strong, so blind to itself, that it all turns to guilt.'

Hermione stopped to think about what Rachel had just told her. Is that why she's so interested in me?

'And Lillian,' she began, 'does she want to enter the scriptorium?'

'She's the only one who can answer that question. But if you want my opinion, she knows she has to go there eventually.'

Hermione stared out of the window and the silent dark beyond it. Is that it, Lillian? Is empathy what you really need, only you're afraid it will annihilate you? There was no reply from the dark. She turned back to Rachel.

'Did you speak with him in there?'

A look of sadness flashed across Rachel's face.

'With Caleb? No.'

'But I thought I saw him in the distance.'

'You did. But he's hiding from me.'

'Why?'

Rachel fixed her with an empty gaze

'Because of what he did to seal the circle.'

Hermione swallowed.

'He did something to you…'

Rachel laughed bitterly to herself.

'He thought my way of sealing the circle was a bit pathetic. Too weak to work properly.'

'But isn't it the scale of the guilt that counts, not the scale of the act?' said Hermione.

'Oh that's all too true. But Caleb is a bit more of a perfectionist. First he considered killing me. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. So he did the next best thing. And drugged Justin so he'd have to watch but couldn't do anything. He cried as he did it. And when he left he said now you know how much you mean to me. In a way it was a declaration of love.'

Now Rachel looked away, lost in a reverie. What can I possibly say?

'But now he feels your pain.'

Rachel looked back at her, glassy eyed.

'Yes. So I suppose the closer I get to him, the more excruciating it becomes for him.'

The bedroom and the night outside were silent. Rachel stretched out on her side, tiredness apparently overcoming her.

'Do you want to sleep now?' said Hermione softly.

'Very soon,' replied Rachel. 'I wonder where Isaac is.'

'Back at Muirton Tower I should think,' replied Hermione.

'I hope he comes back soon,' said Rachel. 'His presence does me good. Makes me feel you can feel the pain of others and live with it. You have the same effect on me.'

Two days passed without any sign of Isaac. Outside the cottage nothing seemed to move. Birdsong was the only sound to interrupt the silence. The sky was pale and cloudless and the mornings and nights were chill. A fever took hold of Rachel and she largely withdrew to her bedroom, trying to sleep off the effects. Hermione found some paracetamol for her in a cupboard and made her cups of tea and soup. In spite of the sickness, Rachel was oddly cheerful.

Hermione was unwilling to walk far from the cottage, distrusting the winding country lanes around it for fear of whom she might meet there. Every day she followed a circuit in a tight loop over the fields behind the cottage, avoiding the neighbouring houses. Occasionally she heard a car or a tractor passing on the lane outside, and when evening fell lights were visible in the nearby houses. But otherwise she interacted with no one.

On the third morning, Hermione found Isaac slumped over the kitchen table, exhausted.

'We've shut things down at the tower,' he said, looking up at Hermione through bloodshot eyes. He had spent three nights there with Kingsley, Argenta and Mr Weasley, receiving everyone who passed through there.

'We had witch-hunters sniffing around at reception first thing this morning,' he muttered, almost to himself. 'There were about twenty of us upstairs at the time. We got everyone out then left a message saying we had closed down. We got out just in time.'

'Where are the rest?' said Hermione.

'In hiding,' he replied. 'Some have even left the country, although things are happening abroad as well. Seems other governments have wizards in their midst too,' he added drily, before slumping back in his seat again. Hermione thought it best not to ask any more questions and to just let him sleep.

Two days passed with scarcely a word being spoken. Hermione vacated the spare room and slept on blankets on the living room floor. Isaac seemed too tired even to protest at the arrangement. Rachel was only partially recovered and still spending most of the time sleeping.

The next morning Hermione awoke around dawn. It was still half dark outside, the cottage surrounded by its customary silence. When she got up and went to the window, she found a low mist hanging around the house.

She washed and packed her few remaining possessions into her bag, then ate a sparse breakfast alone in the kitchen as it gradually grew lighter outside. Standing noiselessly by the kitchen door, she put her shoes on then stepped out into the cold morning. She paused for a moment before leaving as she stood on the back step, buttoning her jacket right up to the collar. Behind the cottage lay a small, secluded garden with an empty vegetable patch, and beyond it a low dry stone wall. She crossed the garden, eased herself over the wall and jumped down into the grass on the other side. She skirted along the edge of a farmer's field, following a rough track she had found a few days earlier. The track led away from the hamlet in which Isaac's cottage was located, moving gradually uphill. After about fifteen minutes' walk, she came to a point where the rough track joined with a bridleway: this marked the furthest extent of her daily walks around the cottage. She glanced back at the path behind her, thinking vaguely of the note she had left on the kitchen table. It read simply: Don't worry about me. I'm fine. It's time for me to go, to take the next step. She walked on.

She followed the bridleway across country for more than an hour. The sky was pale grey, covered by a thin layer of cloud. At one point a few spots of drizzle began to fall, but they petered out after a couple of minutes. At one point she met a grey-haired couple out hiking. They nodded curtly at her as they passed in the other direction. Otherwise the bridleway was empty. It wound its way around a ridge of low hills, before gradually descending on the other side into flatter country. Soon she could see overhead railway lines crossing the horizon. The bridleway led all the way to the railway line, terminating in a small wooden gate. She eased open the gate, listening for the sound of an approaching train. Silence hung over the tracks.

The path resumed on the other side of the tracks, running alongside the railway for some distance, widening until it was the width of a road, the dirt track turning first to gravel, then to cracked and weatherworn tarmac. On one side of the road ran the wire fence that served as a barrier to the railway line; on the other stretched a flat, featureless field. She followed the road until she came to what looked like an abandoned signal box. The roof of the squat, rectangular building had caved in and weeds were poking through cracks in the walls. Even in such a remote place, the remains of the building had been daubed with graffiti. She stared for a few moments at the ruin then glanced back over her shoulder: there was no one on the road, no cars and no one on foot. Turning her back to the signal box, she walked in a straight line into the adjacent field. After 25 paces she stopped and glanced around her again: the field was empty and silent. She kneeled on the earth and took her wand out of her jacket. Here, surely, magic would not be traced. In any case, she needed to cast only the faintest of spells. Looking down at the ground, she traced a small rectangle in the earth with the tip of her wand, whispering a few words under her breath. Laying her wand to one side, she prised open a layer of earth, revealing a small, perfectly smooth and dry cavity inside. Then she took up her wand and laid it inside the cavity.

'I hope we see each other again,' she had told Rachel out of the blue, the last time they had spoken.

'I reckon we will,' Rachel had said finally in an affable voice. 'Maybe there'll be another time when we get to fight together. Although I'm not sure what against.'

'When I work it out I'll let you know,' Hermione had replied. 'If you're up for a good suicide mission, I'm sure we can think of something.'

'Yes, those are the best,' had been Rachel's reply.

Once she had folded back the layer of earth there was no indication that the ground had been opened. She made no further marking, trusting that her memory of the place would remain fixed in her mind until she could reclaim the wand. As she knelt on the soft earth, she felt a little wind at her back, ruffling her hair. She shivered, but she knew it wasn't from the cold.

'You are the seventh,' Rachel had said. The shiver ran up her back and down her arms, and she felt her neck stiffen. The sensation was almost pleasing. She closed her eyes, whispering the incantations, which seemed to take no time at all.

Light was flooding into Harry's room: here the morning was brighter. Thankfully there was no one else in the room. She took up her usual seat at his bedside, leaning over him until her cheek was just resting against his. She stayed in that position for a few moments, then took hold of his limp hand and moved it until it was touching the bracelet on her wrist. The lights raced on as always; she often checked for any sign that they were moving more slowly, but that never seemed to happen. Footsteps could be heard in the corridor, then the door handle turned; by the time the door was open she was gone from the room.

She allowed her head to drop downwards so that she was facing the earth, the tautness in her limbs fading and softening. She placed her hands on the ground and closed her eyes again. The moment her eyes were closed, the ground seemed to fall away so that she was standing on the edge of a great precipice, invisible in the dark. In her head she heard myriad voices whispering at great speed. She could not make out the words, but she took them all in nevertheless. Gradually the whispering faded out until just seven words remained. Remade in the pain of the other. The words were an invitation. An open door. An empty page in a book. No, I won't open my eyes. She teetered on the edge of the precipice, in complete darkness, for a few moments more. Then she opened them.

The landscape before her was vaster than any that she had even seen before, or could even have imagined. It seemed to defy what was possible for the human eye to see: there, on a seemingly never-ending plain stretched countless towers, built in every possible material and style, some ornately carved in sombre grey stone, others ramshackle piles of ill-fitting adobe floors, others more like small citadels with battlements and outbuildings, others no more than scattered heaps of dreary debris. However great or miserable, an equal space seemed to have been allotted to them, as if each tower occupied a single square in a giant chessboard.

The landscape was not static: some of the towers shifted left or right in their entirety, an empty space opening up in the place that had been vacated. Above the massed ranks of towers hung a vast, red sky that seemed to pulse as she looked at it. As she looked into the sky, her gaze was caught by something far off in the distance. It towered above everything at an unfathomable distance, like a rainbow, but it was solid, and unlike the lands around it, utterly fixed in the place where it lay. A great domed building, with a vast perforated cupola, from which only darkness seemed to escape: the scriptorium. A mingling of exhaustion and dread seized her. She looked away from the cupola and back at the sprawling land shifting and rearranging itself before her. What am I supposed to do here? Then the answer came to her. You just walk. Wherever you want to. This was her prize: to wander that strange land wherever she wished, and walk right into the mind of any person she desired. The possibilities seemed not only endless, but all the time growing more numerous as they multiplied under the vast red sky. But this is Hermione's prize. She shook her head. Hermione is resting now. There's nothing here for me. Still on her knees, she closed her eyes and wished to see only what was mundane, everyday and real.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself once again in the middle of the sad, muddy field, next to the unmarked grave she had made for her magic. She lingered a little while longer, a chill wind swirling around her, until it occurred to her that her knees must be damp. Then she stood up and walked away without looking back.

A station building came into view up ahead, sitting atop a raised embankment, no other buildings around it. The station platform was open to the elements, apart from a small concrete shelter. The stone station building was locked up and there were no other passengers on the platforms. The only signs that any trains were scheduled to stop at the station came from the scrolling electronic display fixed to the wall of the station building and from the fact that the ticket machine duly dispensed a ticket when she fed it with a ten pound note. Attached to the outer wall of the station building was a public toilet, and she was surprised to find that the door yielded when she pushed it. The interior had bare concrete walls, but it was clean. She shut herself in the only cubicle and sat down, placing her beaded bag, the only magical device still in her possession, on her lap. After rummaging through the bag, she took out a black plastic box. A mirror was fitted to the box's inside lid. She examined her thin, pale face with a sigh, and a tiny, almost silent sob escaped from her. She wiped her eyes and took out the first tube from the box. In silence she began to apply a layer of foundation to her face, smiling grimly as she thought what instruments she had at her disposal in the absence of magic. The chemical smell of the various products made her recoil slightly: with magic, a disguise could be put on and taken off in an instant. The application of a thick layer of make-up to her skin seemed more invasive, more permanent somehow, more of a betrayal. When she was finished, she peered into the small mirror. The layer of foundation gave her face an almost mask-like appearance, and the eye make-up and lip gloss accentuated her eyes and mouth. Vile, she thought to herself, but this is how it's going to have to be. I already look like a different person. With a different hairstyle, clothes and accent, the disguise would be complete, and as hard to penetrate as if applied by magic.

A vague wind was blowing down the platform as she sat down on a peeling wooden bench, pulling her jacket tighter around her. 'Muggle means of transport only from now on,' she had said to herself as she walked out of the cottage that morning. As she heard the line repeated in her head, she told herself that muggle was a word she would have to forget. When the train glided into the station, she was the only passenger to board. Only a handful of passengers were scattered about the carriage. A glimpse of her reflection in the blurry glass was enough to make her breath catch in her throat: that's not Hermione.

As the train pulled out of the station, she silently began to practise a new incantation: the story of the passenger on the train, a nondescript girl from nowhere in particular, with no ambitions and nothing of importance in her past. Until it was safe to bring her back, Hermione Granger would have to stay asleep, clutching her wand as she lay in the earth.

End of part two.