The idea was first born for Evadne Twix when she was just a Second Class Apprentice of the Guild of Engineers and chose to write her Dissertation on the Resurrected Men, in order to graduate to the First Class Honours programme.

Her thesis, as it went, was relatively simple: not all people were the same, so it followed that not all Stalkers would be the same. They had been soldiers in life, some better than others, so it was logical to assume that some Stalkers would be better than others, too.

But then came the genus of the idea. What sort of human would make the best type of Stalker?

When the long forgotten empires waged war over the volcano-maze of Europe, they simply dragged fallen warriors from the battlefield and brought them back to a sort of life, by wiring their nervous systems into Old-Tech machines, that had been dug up in the ruins and underground bunkers of poor, nuclear-devastated America and traded along the Silicon Roads of Indo-China. But they were focused on quantity over quality.

For there was an old saying back then, used by the military generals of the time ... it went, 'our Stalkers are bigger than theirs and we have more of them'. War was very much a numbers game to those ancient ancestors.

But for Dr Twix, the focus was definitely on quality. Better machines, better programming, and better humans to combine them with. Her thesis weighed up the pros and cons of gender, of different ethic attributes, all with the intended goal of identifying a human master race of sorts. And if they couldn't find one, then Dr Twix would just have to breed one.

It would be nothing new for the Guild of Engineers. They had long been breeding a certain style of human to work in the mines of the very Northern and Western hills of what had once been Britain. Hardy, strong and eminently expendable, these clones dug out the minerals and ores that were used to power London on its never-ceasing skulk around that wet and mountainous Northern region of the Great Land Mass. With traditional prey so scarce in that area, these resources were vital in making sure that London didn't simply run out of fuel and come to a grinding halt, making it prey for other, equally hungry towns and cities.

So Dr Twix stuck to conventional ideas of ethnic cleansing and targeted breeding, aiming to design the perfect human/Stalker combination. That was until Thaddeus Valentine walked into her lab one day, having found a very unusual artefact in a tomb in Cambria in the West. This artefact would change Dr Twix's thinking entirely. It was a long, thin piece of wood, intricately carved with unusual markings, and emitting a power that registered on Dr Twix's instruments, but was of a type she didn't recognise at all.

But more intriguing than that, was that this stick was one half of a pair.

"The horizontal section of what the Ancients called a Mortal Cross," Valentine had explained. "Two Royal souls, buried together, with these sticks of power arranged into a cross-like pattern to bind them in the afterlife ... or so the ritual was explained to me. They were the weapons the souls would wield to regain power ... when they returned from the dead to rule once again!"

Valentine was always so dramatic. Dr Twix had scoffed at his fantastical tale, firmly convinced that this 'wand' was simply an elaborate bit of Old-Tech more different and older than any found before. More powerful than the machines dug up from the ground, or than the metal moons still going round and round in the orbit of the poor old Earth.

Evadne Twix just had to work out how they functioned, and then London would be in possession of a power so great that no city in the world ... neither Traction nor Static ... would dare to oppose oppose her.

So Dr Twix sipped on her camomile tea, pulled her microphone close and whispered into it softly.

"Wake up, Hermione."

Miles and miles away, the Eastern sun was rising, prowling over the gnawed and broken hills of Cambria, chasing away the rags of moonlight and the dusky dawn twilight, that still lingered like a band of belligerent squatters amongst the sparse trees and vegetation of the Out-Country. The sunlight glistened against the polished armoured shell of The Jily Harmony's long flight balloon, dazzling birds and creeping into the bedroom at the back of the gondola, waking its single occupant.

Hermione reached over into the cool spot that was Harry's side of the bed. He wasn't there, and Hermione felt a sad chill at his absence and looked up, just as a nasally snore came from the cockpit. Smiling fondly, Hermione pulled back the quilt and padded along the carpeted floor of her airship, not bothering to wear any clothes bar her knickers, and thrilling at the racy delinquency of having her bare breasts bouncing around in front of her as she walked.

And Harry was snoring away and missed the sexy little show.

Hermione grinned deeply to herself as she reached Harry and saw him fast asleep at The Jily's controls. The high winds looked to have blown them wildly off-course, and Harry had been slumbering away and not noticed to correct it. Not that Hermione had any issue with that ... it was a little bit exciting to just go wherever the wind decided to take them.

So she left Harry to sleep, tucked his flight jacket in around his shoulders and kissed his downy head. Then she went back to the galley and flicked the kettle on, throwing one of Harry's shirts over her shoulders while she waited for it to boil. A few minutes later and she was sat back on her bed, blowing at a steaming mug of tea to cool it.

Without Harry to talk to, Hermione was forced to make conversation with her favourite stuffed toy. It was a fluffy ginger cat and it had once been flattened by something heavy, giving it a very squashed face. Hermione couldn't remember how that happened, and the fact bothered her.

For there were a lot of things about her past that she couldn't remember clearly.

She supposed it was because of the conversation with the sooth-sayer, Trelawney, but Hermione had found herself thinking about her past very often. She tried to imagine this other life that she and Harry were supposed to have lived before ... what sort of people had they been, what had the world been like back then, what adventures did they have together? Without concrete records to correct her, Hermione could make up pretty much anything she liked. There were no limits on what they might have done.

And her dreams were not helping matters on that score. She didn't want to bother Harry with them, as she was worried he might find them silly or dismiss them altogether, but there was something about them that just unsettled her.

So, with no humans to talk to, Crookshanks the Stuffed Cat would just have to do.

"I had another bad dream, Crooksie," Hermione whispered, holding the cuddly toy close to her face. "I was in a bathroom somewhere, there were lots of toilet stalls and the floor was soaking wet, as though a pipe had burst or something. And there was a terrible smell, like something had died nearby. It was worse than Harry's first bowel movements of the day ... yes, it was that bad!

"Anyway, then there was a great roar and things were being smashed above my head. I screamed, I was so very scared. Something big and warty and smelly was swinging a great sword or club and breaking everything in sight! I was sure I was going to be killed by it.

"But then Harry came along and started throwing things at it. Then he jumped on the thing's back and stuck a bit of wood right up it's nose! Then it passed out and fell down.

"That was when I woke up. It felt so real, Crooksie ... like it was more memory than dream. The sounds, the smells, the emotions ... they were all so much more vivid than other dreams. And it isn't the first one like that I've had lately. I don't know what's happening, but I'm a bit scared.

"Yes, I know I should tell Harry, but I just cant. I don't want him to worry, or to think I'm going funny in the head. We have just set out on this great adventure ... I don't want him to turn around and take me back to London to have my brain examined by one of the Doctors there."

Hermione sighed to herself and hitched her knees into her chest to look out of the gondola window. It was so bright up here, with no clouds or engine smoke to obscure the view, so Hermione just enjoyed the warmth of the morning sun where it fell brightly against her cheeks. She could still see the Moon, pale in the distant sky, and she supposed those little white dots all about it must be the satellites that the Ancients had put into orbit, to survey their nearest celestial neighbour.

But then the perspective shifted, the Moon stayed where it was, and those little lights moved in relation to The Jily Harmony. Hermione watched them for a few more moments, a prickle of anxiety pinching at her neck as she realised something ... these lights were following them.

Now she had heard of Foo Fighters, and orbs, and other light anomalies that aviators often reported seeing in the skies. These Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, as they had come to be termed, were simply part and parcel of the air-trade. There wasn't a sky clipper Captain from the Tannhaüser Snow Wastes to the Turkish Sea who didn't have a story or two about something weird they'd seen while cruising above the cloud deck.

But Hermione Granger never imagined she'd ever get to have one of her own.

After a minute of watching the tiny specks of light, Hermione decided to go and rouse Harry to see if he could spot them too. But when she got to the cockpit he was waking abruptly from his sleep, crying out in terror as he did so.

"No! Mum!" Harry shrieked as he was suddenly jerked awake. He looked around frantically in his panic, searching for the glasses that had slipped from his nose. Hermione found them on the floor and handed them to him.

"Are you alright?" she asked in anxious concern.

"Yeah ... yeah, m'alright," Harry mumbled drunkenly as he came to. "B-bad dream, that's all."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Harry looked up ashamedly. He seemed to be clammy and very pale. "Nah, you'd just laugh at me."

"I would never laugh at you," Hermione protested passionately. "I would have thought the fact that I never laugh at your awful jokes would have made that clear by now!"

Harry smiled weakly at the gentle ribbing. "Well, it's just that ... the dream ... it seemed so real. I felt like I was actually there, living it."

Hermione shifted awkwardly in the co-pilot's seat, fixing Harry with a stern stare. "What were you dreaming about?"

"It was ... the day my Mum and Dad died," Harry confessed in a little voice. "It was in the Big Tilt, over ten years ago, that it happened ... the same one that killed Tom Natsworthy's parents. Parts of Tier Two collapsed onto Tier Three during a chase over uneven ground. Mum and Dad were crushed under a pile of metal and stone from The Barbican above."

"And you were dreaming about that?" Hermione asked in gentle pity.

"Yes and no," Harry frowned. "I mean, I could hear my Mum screaming ... that must have been from when she saw the deck plate about to squash her ... but then I heard something else, something worse in a way ... a laugh. It was a laugh, Hermione. A high-pitched, maniacal laugh. Then there was a flash of bright green light ... I have no idea what that might have come from ... and then I woke up."

Hermione scrunched her face in concern. "And you said the dream felt real?"

"Yeah," Harry nodded, closing his eyes to try and remember. "There was something about it ... something visceral, tangible like -"

"- like you could reach out and grab it if you wanted to," Hermione completed, recalling the sensations of her own lucid dreams. Harry snapped his eyes open in surprise.

"Have you had dreams like that?"

Hermione looked up cautiously, then gave a brief nod. Harry sat up taut in his chair.

"When? And why didn't you say anything?"

"Only recently. And I didn't want you to think I was being silly or panicking over nothing."

"You've been panicking over these dreams?" Harry asked. "Then you should definitely have told me about them. In fact, talk to me about them now."

"It's nothing particularly scary," Hermione reassured him. "But they are like the one you just described. They feel real, almost as if they are memories rather than dreams. That's the only way I can describe it."

"Then what's got you panicked?"

"Oh, it's probably nothing, just my brain been overloaded with all that stuff Trelawney told us, as well as the nervousness of setting out on our own to find our future, but it's got me thinking a lot about the past and ... and ..."

"And what?" Harry urged.

Hermione fixed him with a serious stare. "And I don't seem to be able to remember any of it."

Harry blinked hard as he tried to process that. "What do you mean?"

"Just that ... I can't remember my past, specifically my early childhood," Hermione explained. "I've been thinking a lot about it, and I find I cant recall little things ... my mum teaching me to ride a bike and swim, the bedtime stories my dad told to help me sleep, the books I used to learn to read and write, things like that. I can remember enrolling onto the Apprentice Programme of the Historians Guild, but I don't remember school before that or applying or anything. It's like I simply popped into existence that day I arrived in London and met you. Does that sound weird?"

"Actually ... no," Harry murmured. "I've been having a similar feeling. I was thinking about Tom, hoping he survived Airhaven and wondering if he's safe and where he might be now. I've always been curious about him, because his parents died in the same accident that killed mine. So that got me thinking about them ... and I couldn't remember things about our past. I was seven when the Big Tilt happened, so I should have memories of my parents before that, but I cant recall anything solid, like how my mum dressed or what my dad's voice sounded like or anything."

"This can't be coincidence, Harry," Hermione frowned. "One of us not remembering important things would be unusual, but for us both to not have concrete memories ... that's downright suspicious."

"But why have we never realised this before?" Harry pondered. "I remember everything about you since the day we met. That's the one thing I know is definitely for real."

"Me too," Hermione smiled sweetly. "And if that turns out to be the only thing I can remember, then that'll be more than enough for me."

Harry grinned back rather goofily. "Let's not get all soppy and sentimental. It's too early in the morning for that. I haven't even had a coffee yet!"

"The kettle's not long boiled. I'll just flick it back on," Hermione said, getting she remembered why she'd left her own tea back in the bedroom. "Ooh, Harry! Before that, come here ... I want to show you something."

Hermione reached out a hand and led Harry to the bedroom.

"This old trick again," Harry whispered sultrily. "If you want to make love to me, Hermione, we can just as easily do it up here. We haven't tried it in the pilot's seat yet!"

Hermione slapped his arm in a playful chide and flopped down onto the mattress. Then she scanned the horizon, looking for the little orbs she'd been watching not half an hour previous ... but there was no sign of them anywhere.

"They were here, I swear," Hermione huffed, after she'd explained her sighting to Harry. "Six of them, all in a type of formation. They were here, Harry, you have to believe me."

"If you say you saw something, I do believe you," Harry replied. "But it might not have been anything sinister. They could have been birds, or insects, or maybe an airship sending off distress flares. It might not have been something following us, and even if it was, what could it be? What can fly without a balloon or a gasbag? You know we've never been able to recreate the powered flight of the aeroplanes that the Ancients used to zoom about in."

"I know that, but this did seem to be intelligently controlled," Hermione insisted. "They were too small to be flares, but I suppose they could have been birds or insects."

"But you're not convinced?"

"No."

Harry grinned at her stubbornness. "Okay, come on. Let's get back to the flight deck and we'll go in search of your little foo fighters, alright? Will that do?"

Hermione leapt up happily. "Yes, thank you, Harry. I'll fly, you navigate."

But as soon as they reached the controls of the airship they realised something was wrong. The compass was spinning wildly, the gyroscope too. Both pieces of equipment were going haywire.

"What's happening?" Hermione asked as she sat down at the controls. "All the instruments are out of control."

"I don't know," Harry frowned. "But even the weather monitor is playing up. It's showing all sorts of magnetic and atmospheric disturbances, but the sky is clear and still. I don't understand. What could cause that?"

"If it's not something up here, it must be something powerful on the ground," Hermione surmised. "Take a look through the telescope on the undercarriage, see if there's anything down there."

So Harry did, pulling a lever next to his seat and sticking his face against the eyepiece when the telescope was extended.

"What can you see?" Hermione demanded.

"There's the ruins of an old Traction town just below us," Harry replied. "Single decker, no houses or town hall to speak of, just some rough huts. Probably a mining town or ... or an excavator."

Harry's excited tone drew Hermione's attention. "What is it, Harry?"

"I can see a transit system!" Harry hushed keenly. "Ropes, pulleys, a sort of crude conveyor. The town was digging into those hills, Hermione."

"Are you thinking the same as me?" Hermione whispered back. "That we should go down there and investigate?"

Harry looked up with the enthusiasm of a child finding presents under a Quirkemas tree. "Well, I'm game if you are!"

"Then let's play!" Hermione grinned, angling the controls to guide The Jily Harmony into a descent.

Harry reached over and squeezed Hermione's arm. "I love you, do you know?"

"I love you, too," Hermione smiled back. "Now, you'd better get our gear together if we're going for a dig. Lights, axes, sample containers. Who knows, this might even be the first clue that leads us to Hogwarts."

"Then take us down, Captain Granger," Harry cried, jumping up. Then he looked over teasingly. "You do know how to land this thing, right?"

"Shut up, Harry, of course I do!" Hermione fired back, mock affronted. "Just hold on tight ... I'm taking us down."

So The Jily Harmony circled and circled, getting lower and lower, until the makeshift air quay of the mining town was in touching distance. Then she touched down safely and Harry secured the mooring clamps, as Hermione disengaged the power to the engine pods.

And fifty feet away, hidden from sight in the craggy holes of a range of rocks, those little lights touched down too, their cameras tightening focus as they prepared to watch.