The lights from the London Eye faded from blue to red in a slow bleed, the neon colours a drifting, flickering reflection in the slow moving waters of the dark Thames below. Westminster Bridge stretched out across the great river, groaning under the weight of red buses, black taxis and the feet of a thousand tourists, whose bright camera flashes punctuated the blackness of the night beyond.

Lyra watched it all with a curious sense of amusement, as she sipped on a rapidly cooling coffee and marvelled at the strangeness of the coincidence.

"You know, I've never realised it before, but I'm pretty certain now that this flat is in exactly the same spot as the one I own back in my world," Lyra pondered out loud. "I always knew they were close, but looking at this view I recognise it as almost identical."

"Mmm," Hermione agreed, sliding onto the bay window cushion with her knees beneath her, as she joined Lyra to look out at the London night. "Harry and I discussed that once, when we noticed the similarities. Harry told me he saw a vision of a girl in the Mirror of Erised when it was stored here, one that looked like me. I thought about it later and realised it happened at the same time I was staying at your flat, Lyra. I wondered if we were both looking into the Mirror at the same time, but in different worlds, and that's what caused the vision."

"What was the vision of?" Lyra asked, turning her eyes down with a playful sort of grin crossing them.

"Just someone Harry was going to meet ... someone important," Hermione replied, unabashed. "It might have been Dust's way of subtly preparing Harry for our destiny, sort of introducing me to him before we met for real."

"It might have been," Lyra agreed with a smirk. "There are many things that are the same in both worlds. We aren't so different, you know."

"We haven't got the Eye in our world, of course, but the aërodock at Vauxhall Gardens would be just over there, right where the Sea Life Centre is here," Hermione went on, turning her head back to the view and pointing out across the river. "I've never been in there. Harry and I were intending to go, but we never got round to it. Maybe I'll bully him into taking me at Christmas!"

"And since when do you need to bully my Harry into doing anything with you?" James asked with a chuckle. "He's normally pretty pliable to your whims."

Hermione coloured a little as she looked over, before replying in a sheepish voice, "I hear things might have changed on that score. I may have to use tricks and schemes and blackmail to get Harry's attention these days."

"I'm sure that's not true."

Just then, Lily entered the room carrying baby Seren. Hermione immediately sprang up and trotted over to see the baby.

"Can I hold her?" she asked, enthusiastically.

"Of course," Lily beamed. "Just be careful not to bounce her or anything. She's just been fed and I'm sure you don't want her being sick all over you."

"I'll be careful," Hermione promised, cradling the baby gently as Lily passed the little bundle of blankets over. She sat down as Lily turned to address Lyra.

"So, Lyra, you were about to make a request of us, before my little girl decided to scream her lungs out!" Lily began, wryly. "What can we do for you?"

"And what can you tell us about Sirius?" James added, sitting up in his eagerness.

"Not much on that score," Lyra began, crossing the room and joining Hermione on the comfy couch where they faced the Potters. "He's stayed behind in my world, hoping he can do some good there. He's gone off to find Malcolm and see if they can disrupt the plans of the Magisterium. If anyone can make a nuisance of himself, it's my Sirius."

James grinned in agreement. Then he swapped a cautious look with Lily before continuing. "And they aren't alone there. Do you know that?"

Lyra nodded. "I do. Before we left Trollesund I checked in with my Oakley Street contacts. They told me that Will was spotted in Astana, near the Kazakh Sea. How do you know about that, if you don't mind my asking?"

"We've been working with Will for some time," Lily confessed. "We didn't know of his connections to you until just recently, as we never used our real names, but since his defection to our side we've been in far more regular contact. He told us that he was going, and promised to keep Sirius out of too much mischief!"

"As if he could!" James chortled out. "Sirius and mischief are so well entwined the concept might as well be a second dæmon for him!"

All three adults laughed fondly at that. Hermione was too busy cooing at Seren to join in, as the baby was reaching up to try and play with Hermione's curly hair.

"I think she likes me," Hermione suggested uncertainly. "Are they 'liking' noises, Mrs Potter? I've read that mothers can tell things like that."

"They sound like them from here," Lily smiled back.

"Will I know all that, do you think, when I have a baby?" Hermione asked, pleasantly. "Will I be able to tell, because it doesn't seem like a language you can just learn from a book or something?"

Lily and James exchanged a wild, fleeting look. James braved the reply. "It'll be a long time before you have to think about that sort of thing. I'd put it from your mind for now."

"Oh, I know that," Hermione replied, briskly. "But if I have to learn how to do it I could start now, couldn't I? But if it comes naturally I wont have to worry about it at all."

"Don't worry, Hermione," Lily took over. "When, or if, you decide to have children of your own, you will learn everything you need along the way. Just make sure your partner is a good sort and that you are both ready to take that step, whenever the time comes."

"Oh, I'll pick well alright," Hermione replied, blushing all the way up to her sparkling eyes. "Only the best will do for me ... the very best, Mrs Potter."

Hermione and Lily shared a knowing smile, then the latter turned back to Lyra before the conversation caused her head to explode.

"So, with Sirius and Malcolm and Will all looking after each other, I'm guessing your request of us might involve protecting you?"

Lyra nodded. "Protecting us both, actually. Hermione might be in just as much danger from this Lestrange witch as I am."

Hermione turned her head up in shock. "Me? Why would she come after me?"

"Because, honey, if she can't get to me directly she'll look for other routes," Lyra explained. "And none is more obvious than you."

"I tend to agree," James nodded grimly. "If it weren't such a futile suggestion, I'd advise you not returning to Hogwarts at all, Hermione. You'd be much safer placed under magical protection somewhere. You both would."

"No!" Hermione cried, hotly. "I'm not being made a prisoner in a safe house! I'd go stir crazy in a week!"

"As would I," Lyra added. "I'm too free-spirited for captivity. And besides, I intend to find this Bellatrix character before she has a chance to do us harm. In any case, Hermione needs to continue her education. That may be the key to our long-term victory anyway."

A prickly silence rose in the air. Lily and James sat on one side of it, preaching caution and restraint, while on the other Lyra bristled for battle and Hermione began to panic slightly at the prospect of not returning to Harry for an even more extended period of time. Pantalaimon hooted angrily from a perch on the far side of the room, while Papageno stuck his bottle-brush tail firmly upright as he padded in circles at Hermione's side.

"What do you need from us?" Lily asked, conceding the debate before it had even begun.

"Information and assistance," Lyra returned firmly. "I need to know as much as I can about this Bellatrix. I need to know her strengths, weaknesses, her allies and her techniques. I understand she is a particularly famous villain in your world. I need to know why."

"She is," James confirmed. "Not every bad guy can claim to have an urban legend attributed to them."

"But this Bellatrix does?" Hermione asked, her voice inflected with a little tremble.

James nodded again. "It comes from her Animagus form ... her ability to transform into an animal, Lyra, if you didn't know ... which takes the shape of a wolf. In fact, it is a particularly vicious type of a wolf, known as a Dire Wolf. Extinct in the wild for nearly ten thousand years, it is a brutal sort of animal. A bit like Bella herself, actually."

"The urban legend was born during Lord Voldemort's reign of terror, when Bella was right by his side," Lily took over. "Bellatrix would regularly pounce from the darkness at her victims, often stalking them or appearing briefly to unsettle them. This gave rise to the idea of a Dark Omen, the appearance of a fierce, black animal was a portent of doom. Some thought it was a dog, others a beast from the underworld, but the legend was born."

"The Legend of the Grim!" Hermione whispered in her terror. "Bellatrix was the origin of that?"

"She was," James confirmed. "Only it wasn't so much of a myth back in those days. If Bellatrix Lestrange showed up at your door it was only a matter of time before another Dark symbol would appear nearby ... namely a giant skull that the Death Eaters would cast into the sky to announce that they had committed another murder."

Hermione shuddered in her seat and clung tightly to baby Seren for support. Suddenly, isolation had become quite appealing. If a witch this dangerous was after them maybe they were better off just hiding from her.

But Lyra wasn't the cowardly type. She squared her jaw as she addressed the Potters. "Be that as it may, I don't intend to let this witch pose a threat to my Hermione. She was captured before, so she must be beatable. I need to know how."

"It was her own bravado that was her undoing," Lily replied. "In the wake of Voldemort's disappearance she wanted to go out in a blaze of glory to follow him. Stealth was replaced by reckless insanity. She tried to blow up as many Muggles as she could in Piccadilly Circus. Luckily the Aurors were waiting for her and subdued her before she could do too much damage."

"Thirteen people still lost their lives," Lily recalled sadly. "And it took ten Aurors to bring Bellatrix to heel. The Muggle authorities blamed the deaths on a gas explosion, but it took a team of wizards over a month to modify the memories of the Muggles who saw what really happened."

Even Lyra in her stoutness paled at this disclosure. Suddenly, her plan to hunt Bellatrix didn't seem such a sane one after all. Lily seemed to sense the turn in Lyra's mind.

"So, you see, protection may be better than prevention in this case," she went on, quietly. "I admire your tenacity, but Bellatrix Lestrange is as dangerous a witch as they come. They say she learned the Dark Arts from Tom Riddle himself, and I can well believe that to be true."

"But how did she escape Azkaban?" Hermione asked with a tremor in her tone. "Only Sirius has ever managed it before, hasn't he?"

"And I'm sure he'll be just devastated to lose that piece of infamy!" James grinned. "It's not an easy task, to be sure, and there's only one known way to do it."

"And what's that?"

"Use your Animagus form," Lily explained. "Dementors, the creatures who guard the prison, don't sense animals as acutely as they do humans. So, if a prisoner can stay in their animal form they are relatively immune to the Dementors' power."

"But that's not as simple as it sounds," James added. "Staying in your animal form for too long can begin to affect the mind. It can lead to insanity in the end, but Bella was already pretty twisted so it probably wouldn't have mattered much to her."

"Then why not break out sooner?" Hermione queried. "If she could resist the Dementors why not simply walk out like Sirius did?"

"Motivation and opportunity," Lily took over. "Bella might have thought all was lost, so lost the will to escape. Then there's the very chance to escape at all, of course. After Sirius, the Dementors were never so careless with their captives again. Bella might simply not have had the opportunity to slip through their clutches."

"Then what changed?" asked Lyra.

"You," James replied, bluntly. "Someone wants you out of the way, so they facilitated Bella's escape to make it happen."

"And how did they do that?"

"Our working theory is that they used another wizard with Animagus skills to help break Bella out," Lily replied. "The animal would have to be small enough to slide through bars and under cell doors, but big enough to steal keys to get Bella free. We're looking for someone who can turn into a rat or something similar."

"Apt," Lyra snorted, wrinkling her nose. "Any leads?"

James and Lily swapped another loaded look before James continued. "Just one, but it's pretty wild. And pretty personal, too ... to me."

Hermione felt her eyebrows disappear into her fringe. "Personal to you, Mr Potter? How?"

"I once knew a wizard who had a rat as his Animagus form," James revealed, his jaw tightening bitterly. "In fact, he was a good friend of ours. That was until he turned traitor and starting spying on us, passing on information and secrets to the other side.

"He went underground after Voldemort's defeat, quite literally. He disappeared into the sewers exposed on Piccadilly Circus when Bellatrix Lestrange blew up the pavement there. They were fierce allies, you see ... Bellatrix was responsible for recruiting Peter to the Death Eaters. It was fitting they were together at the end."

"Peter?"

"Pettigrew," Lily took over. "He was part of James and Sirius' little gang when they were at Hogwarts, but very much the runt of the litter."

"We were not a gang," James protested.

"No?" Lily quirked. "Try telling that to all the Slytherins you bullied."

"They were Slytherins, they were fair game," James winked. "We were doing a public service against those Dark cretins."

Lily shook her head in her pity at James' feeble argument. "Anyway, Peter clung to James and Sirius like a smitten fan boy. But then he turned during the War, and used that as a cover to gather intelligence on us for Voldemort. We never really knew what happened to him."

"But if Bella is back on the scene, you can bet Peter is too," James added, darkly. "He's probably been skulking in the shadows for all these years, masquerading as someone's pet or something, biding his time until he could return under the protection of someone more talented than him. He always was too squeamish for the lifestyle of a conventional rat. He likely cosied up to a family sympathetic to the Death Eater cause, kept his snout down and his ears pricked, just waiting for the rise of the Dark tide."

"And now it's happened," Hermione shuddered. "But where are they?"

"Out there ... somewhere," James replied in a hush. "That's why I really wish you'd reconsider school. Even Hogwarts may not be safe."

But Hermione simply shook her head at that. "I disagree, Mr Potter. I'll be near Harry when I'm back at Hogwarts, and there's nowhere safer for me to be. If we, together, possess the key to defeating Voldemort for good, then we will likely be able to fend off any other Darkness that may come our way I imagine. I taught Harry how to not be afraid of the dark ... now I have to show him that I'm not afraid of it either."

"It may not only be Dark witches that you have to protect Harry from, Hermione," Lily began, cautiously. "Temptation and danger can come in other forms, too ... namely pretty girls with golden hair and beaming smiles that could melt an iceberg!"

Hermione snapped her head to Lily and frowned angrily. "Mrs Potter ... please tell me how you, of all people, know about her?!"

"I have been helping out my old friend, Lyndy, who teaches Alchemy Studies at Hogwarts," Lily explained. "I have noticed that, in your absence, a girl called Sally-Anne has become very friendly with my Harry. He is really quite taken with her, but I'm not so sure I like the situation very much. Harry only ever gave those sort of eyes to another witch, and I much prefer her to this new one. I'm sure that this girl has bewitched Harry with her bright hair and that cute little nose she has."

"It really is too cute to be allowed, isn't it?" Hermione fumed, too angry to even blush at Lily's veiled reference to herself. "I think it may soon have to be involved in an accident involving a Quidditch match, a rogue bludger and a bottle of Skele-Gro tampered with to re-grow bones to hideous proportions rather than to repair them. Not that I'd ever be involved in such a thing, of course."

She added this last bit as a hasty afterthought, but Lily's look didn't seem to condemn Hermione's wild plots of violent revenge. On the contrary, Hermione swore that she saw Lily give an almost imperceptible nod by way of encouragement, but she dismissed the notion a moment later as utter madness. She took in a deep breath to calm herself.

"Has Harry made Sally his girlfriend?" Hermione demanded in a business-like manner.

"No, but he is taking her to the Hogwarts Halloween Ball as his date," James replied.

Hermione felt her heart slam to the floor as her whole body slumped into the couch. Her mind was whirring at a mile-a-minute. She couldn't think, her breathing was shallow and laboured, and she had to blink to keep herself cogent. Mustering her composure as best she could, she looked up at James.

"How do you know that?" she asked in a little voice.

"He wrote to me, asking for advice," James smirked. "But don't worry, Hermione, I've got your back. I told him no kissing until the thirty-seventh date. It was a random number, but I think he took it seriously. I said it was all about Arithmancy and he bought it completely. Doing these extra classes for you has really made him gullible to some things!"

Hermione's heart hammered back into her ribcage. Life and hope flooded back to her like a flash storm. She leaned forward, eager for an explanation. "My classes? What do you mean? How is Harry taking them?"

"A little present from his Aunt Minerva, though a curse might be a better description," James mused humorously. "She gave him her Time-Turner, and he's been using it to sit your classes, so that you wouldn't miss too much while you were away."

"He ... he did all that ... for me?" Hermione breathed, almost to herself. She felt a smile cross her entire body, and she suddenly knew she was completely safe. She was full up with emotion for Harry, full to the very brim. That was quite a sacrifice ... no, a commitment ... from Harry. What could Sally-Anne or anyone else boast compared to that?

"He did," Lily whispered softly, fondly. "But he's being a bit wayward, straying from his path. I think he needs his guide to get him and his quest back on track."

Hermione grinned as prettily as Sally-Anne ever could, then she turned to Lyra and placed the baby into her arms.

"If you'll excuse me, everyone, I have to pack my things and go to bed," Hermione announced brightly. "I need a good night's sleep to make sure I'm ready and refreshed for tomorrow. After all, I have school in the morning!"