"This," Hermione said, sitting down and promptly getting lost behind the stack of books she had gathered, "is not going to be easy."

"You love it and you know it," Ron grumbled.

She peered around the stack of books, smiling. "Of course I do! Look at this! These books were never even in the restricted section. I don't know where Dumbledore got them from, but they're even more secret than secret. He must have had them hidden away in his office or something." She breathed deeply, inhaling the musty smell of old books with relish. "Even if we don't find the answers we're looking for, just imagine the sort of things we are going to find. The secrets we're going to learn."

Harry and Ron echanged glances. Ron rolled his eyes, but shrugged. "Guess it must be pretty special if they didn't even trust these books in the restricted section."

Harry sighed. "Brilliant. Whichever one's titled 'Secret Magic Needed to Vanquish a Ruddy Dark Lord,' pass it to me."

Hermione threw open her first book, leaning in so close her hair brushed the pages.

Ron tugged at a smaller book and opened it, but made a face and shut it again. "I can't read these. They're in Latin or something."

Harry squinted as he opened his own book. Not Latin, but not proper English. Some sort of Chaucer-speak. Brilliant.

Hermione's wand flashed from between her piles, and she spoke the low words of a translation charm, sounding irritated. The wand vanished again.

Ron went pink, but started flipping through the pages again.

"Think I need a charm for this one, too, and it's in English," Harry muttered to Ron, sharing his pain.

Ron smiled almost gratefully.

Harry went back to his reading, but flipped through when he realized it was going on about moon cycles. He skimmed the pages, then set the book aside. "You'd think if magic that powerful existed, everyone would know which sodding book it was written in."

"Oh, no," Hermione replied, earnest enough to forgive Harry his interruption. "I mean, blood magic like your mother performed is also incredibly powerful, but it's hardly written about anywhere. No one performs it much anymore, because..." She frowned. "Well, I suppose because they're lazy, or they don't really need it."

Ron snickered. "Right. Not like you need to intone the powers of blood and heart in order to get your stew pot to stir itself."

Harry grinned.

Hermione tutted. " i Anyway /i ," she said. "The old arts are mostly lost because magic's changed. It's as if we had to go back and find out how they created the wheel. It's so far back and so much simpler than our ways of thinking today that we have a hard time understanding it."

Harry shut his second book and put it to the side. Some fascinating tidbits about vampires in that one, but nothing that looked even remotely promising for killing a non-alive Dark Lord. "How much simpler can it get than what we've already got? You aim a wand and speak a word and magic happens."

"No, no." She shut her book and put it on top of his. "Old magic has an entirely different feeling to it. The philosophy behind it is more basic. Not simpler, more i basic /i . There's a difference."

Harry and Ron looked at her.

She sighed. "Listen. Back in the days of Merlin it wasn't like they used their magic to stir their stews or make feathers float. Back then it was a force of nature. The tales of Merlin are about making the stars move and the weather change, bringing on thunder and warding off death. Merlin didn't use wands or charms. He had his hands and his will, and that was all."

"So...we're looking for wandless magic?" Ron frowned.

She rolled her eyes. "No! Well, yes, but it's not that simple. Magic is...it's like the sun. It's i enormous /i and powerful. So much more than any one person can control. In the beginning the only wizards were those strong enough to harness its power without destroying themselves. People were born with the ability but never developed the strength. It took dicipline and control, and people studied for decades to learn the art. That's why I think wizards live so much longer than Muggles. They developed long life spans simply to be able to study what they needed to know."

"So what's different about it now? Any Crabbe or Goyle can pick up a wand and do a spell these days."

She shrugged. "Nasty side effect of specificity."

Ron blinked.

Harry dropped his chin in his hand, waiting.

"Alright." Hermione pushed her books away and looked from one to the other of them. "This is how I understand it, and from my talks with Dumbledore I'm pretty sure it's accurate."

"Course it's accurate, coming from you."

She grinned at Ron. "Right. Well. Going back to my sun analogy. Imagine you're around in the time of Merlin and for some reason there's one place where the sun doesn't shine. Imagine that someone's life depends on making the sun hit that one spot. And it has to be someone you care about, because great magic always came from great emotions."

Ron nodded, leaning in. "Right. "

"Magic was discovered in times like those. To save a life or to protect the wellfare of whole villages. At some point someone tried so hard and cared so much that he made the sun move. So to speak."

"Right." Ron grinned at Harry, pride in his eyes. For all their squabbles he loved watching her show off her brains.

Harry chuckled.

"Anyway, time went on and the few who could control this great power taught it to others born with the talent, and of course things progressed - or regressed, perhaps - as things always do. It became easier for later generations as it was discovered that harnassing through a medium, like a wand, made it more controllable. A wand is like a prism, in a way. Something as powerful as the sun can shine on it, and through control and proper alignment you can make simple beams of colored light. They're nowhere near the true energy of the sun, but they're under your control."

"Stirring the stew," Harry said, nudging Ron under the table.

She nodded. "Exactly. We are so used to filters andcharms that going back to controlling the full element of magic is nearly impossible. That's why, even though it's so powerful, so few people study it anymore."

Ron laughed, happiness in his eyes. Harry knew it was relief that he understood everything she had just said. "So Harry's just got to find a way to make the sun shine on You Know Who."

Hermione's mouth quirked, and she laughed. "In a sense, that's it exactly."

Harry moved down the hall, books in one hand and a furrow in his brow.

Ron had been so impressed with his girlfriend's genius that he'd managed to charm her out of her studies, and Harry felt it best to leave them to go do...whatever it was they did that he really preferred not to think about.

So it was off to the common room by the fire, to read and think about what Hermione had explained.

It felt too big. That was the problem. Even the way she had told it felt too big. Harness the sun? He didn't have any idea where to start, and he was pretty sure it took more than a few days to learn something like that.

She did have one bit of good news for him, though. "Your mother obviously understood the old magic. She weaved blood spells over you, which takes some doing. You've got her blood in your veins. If she was close to it and capable of it, you'll be closer for it."

So he had his mum to thank, really. For all of it. If she'd just been happy stirring the stew he would never have survived in the first place.

He turned a corner to go down the stairs, feeling the books weighing heavily in his hand. Reading had never been his strongest point. He got restless too easily, so practical lessons were always the way he learned best. But he had to try.

He couldn't help but wonder if anyone else realized how absurd this entire thing was.

Then again, the magical world had always prided itself on the absurd. Maybe it was fitting.

The stone corridors had a way of warping sounds, and as he moved forward two low voices came clearer than the rest. He realized it wasn't the chatter of portraits but of people. They might have been close or a half dozen turns down the corridor - Hogwarts was tricky that way.

"to know where the hell you were."

Snape. Harry recognized that voice instantly. Low and cold, always seething with bitterness and contempt.

Seamus's light Irish tone was easy to pick out as well. "Just a walk. I like the fresh air, it makes me feel more at home."

"It is bloody well freezing outside, and you can just stop that habit. You're not to walk outside. You're not to leave this castle without my permission."

Harry pulled to a stop, brow furrowed. The prickling sensations he got when Seamus and Snape were together returned full-blast. Snape sounded like his bloody father, or his...owner, or something.

"Alright, Severus." Seamus's answer was late, low.

"Now take this damned potion I've been carrying everywhere looking for you. It's going to be cold, and you can just suffer the taste."

"Severus, please."

" i Now/i "

Harry moved forward on silent feet, skilled enough thanks to years of battling Death Eaters to walk even through the hollow and reflective halls without a sound. He held his breath and peered around the corner.

There they were, just as he might have imagined them. Seamus looked pale and miserable, staring at a goblet in his hands as if it were poisonous.

Snape glared at him, and if there was any affection in him towards Seamus it didn't show on his face.

Harry swallowed, wondering if it was fear he saw in Seamus's eyes. Wondering suddenly for the first time if, more than simply being talked out of this mind-boggling strangeness of being with Severus Snape, Seamus instead needed to actually be saved from him.

Snape spoke again, quieter but no less demanding. "No one is taking you from me. Not even you. Now drink it, Finnigan."

Seamus swallowed, and the goblet trembled as he raised it.

Harry drew back around the corner and stared at the wall, blank, until their footsteps led them away and he was alone.