Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Bon Jovi…(I've written the same thing 49 times now I think the message must have got across by now…)
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Chapter 49: Something to Believe in
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Two weeks after the disappearance of Bill Weasley Hermione sat at the large wooden desk in her and Sirius' chambers, books and parchment scattered around her as she attempted to figure out what it was she was actually looking for. Her long curly hair had resorted to a semi-remnant of her bushy days, her eyes were drawn and her skin pale.
Sirius was sitting on the couch going over some Order business, his grey eyes occasionally darting to Hermione. He was rapidly growing concerned for his fiancée, the task she had set herself about doing was causing Hermione to skip meals and stay up late. He had tried to help her but found it was no good when Hermione herself wasn't sure what she was looking for.
He saw her ring catch in the candlelight and smiled faintly as he remembered their friends reactions at breakfast the morning after they had arrived back.
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Sirius and Hermione were in the Great Hall with Tonks and Remus, who, much to Hermione's disappointment had been too wrapped up in the disappearance of Bill to get any time alone together, when the morning light reflected off Hermione's ring catching Tonks' attention. The Auror looked from Hermione's ring to Hermione, to Sirius and back to Hermione again. She gasped suddenly and whacked Remus upside the head.
"Ow…Merlin Tonks!" He exclaimed rubbing the back of his head. "What the hell was that for?"
"Why didn't you tell me Sirius proposed?"
Remus glanced at Hermione's hand. "I didn't realise he'd actually asked."
Tonks' hand found the back of his head again, by now Sirius and Hermione, along with most of the students were watching in amusement as their Defence teacher was walloped by Tonks.
"Merlin Tonks, quit it."
"You could have at least told me he was considering it."
"I thought he was going to tell you, don't hit me, hit Sirius."
"Hey!"
Hermione turned to Sirius with a curious smile. "Who else did you tell?"
Sirius drew a wary eye away from his cousin and turned to Hermione. "Just Moony, Harry and your parents."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "My parents?"
"I wanted to ask them for permission."
While Hermione had Sirius attention Tonks had grabbed a long handled serving spoon and proceeded to reach around the back of both Remus and Hermione to hit Sirius over the back of the head.
"OW…Merlin…Tonks…bloody hell…what the….OW!"
"That's for not telling your own cousin."
Sirius grinned mischievously while rubbing the back of his head, "but I did," he said preparing himself to run. "I owled your mum this morning."
Sirius was out of his chair like lightning and ran from the hall, the pink haired witch hobbling along on her bad leg behind him muttering about what she'd do to him when her bung leg let her catch up.
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Sirius smiled and rubbed the fading bruise he had on the back of his scalp
"That's it!"
Sirius was pulled out of his memory by Hermione's cry from across the room.
"What's it?" he asked rising to his feet.
"I don't know why I didn't think of it before!" Hermione exclaimed, ignoring Sirius' question.
Hermione had also risen to her feet and was clutching various pieces of parchment.
"I have to go to the library," she said, more to herself than Sirius, whom she seemed to forget was even in the room. By this time however he was right behind her as she started for the door.
"Uh-uh," he said reaching out and grabbing her around the waist. "I don't think so; you need to sleep, not go gallivanting around the library in the middle of the night."
Hermione frowned. "But I worked it out, at least I think I did, that's why I need to go to the library; so I can get more books."
"The library's closed," Sirius said quietly, "and I'm not sure if Madame Pince will let you get anymore books out," he commented glancing at the piles of texts that Hermione had gathered in the last few weeks.
Hermione glanced at the grandfather clock across the room and sighed, relaxing in Sirius' arms. "I didn't realise how late it was."
"Obviously," Sirius said with a small smile. "Are you going to tell me what you think you've worked out?"
"Oh," Hermione pulled herself from Sirius arms and lead him over to the desk. "I think I might have figured out part of that dream I had," she said grinning.
Sirius nodded. "The weird one you had at the hotel?"
"Yes, I think it's a key to help Harry," she said her eyes on Sirius' face to gauge his reaction.
Sirius eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You think you had a dream that can help Harry….how?"
"That's why I needed to go to the library, but what I think is, is that we need to build a new spell, Harry can't defeat Voldemort with his wand alone…and vice-versa, so next to giving Harry a muggle gun and telling him to shoot Voldemort point blank I think building a spell to help him is the next best thing," Hermione said this in one breath and Sirius took her pause as an opportunity to jump in.
"What kind of spell?" he asked moving closer to the desk and looking at Hermione's notes.
"Like a protective spell, but one that can be used offensively too, we need to parallel Harry and Voldmort in five ways," she explained moving over and showing Sirius her notes. "Like opposite emotions, or ideals; that's what the number five meant."
"And the star?" Sirius asked smiling at the sparkle in Hermione's eyes.
"I think that needs to be part of the spell, like Harry standing in the centre and the five points representing the five ideals we need to come up with."
"Wait, if there needs to be something concrete like Harry standing in the centre of a star then how can we do this? We have no idea when or where Harry will face Voldemort," Sirius argued.
"I think we might be able to perform the spell as soon as we've worked it out," Hermione explained, picking up a piece of parchment with her neat script on it and handing it to Sirius. "It's a essentially a protective spell so it would work in the same way as the one placed on Harry when Lily sacrificed herself."
Sirius nodded in understanding. "So once you've…we've created this spell we can perform in at anytime and it should help Harry next time he's up against Voldemort," Sirius ventured, he wasn't going to let this lay solely on Hermione's shoulders.
Hermione grinned. "In theory, yes."
"Well, it's the best we've got at the moment; I guess the next thing to do is go to the library…tomorrow." Sirius added when Hermione's eyes lit up.
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Three days later and Hermione still hadn't found what she was looking for; she had enlisted in the help of not only Sirius, but also Remus, Tonks, Harry, Ginny and, to her surprise even Draco had offered to help, he seemed to be rather bored lately after Dumbldore had given him his own chambers.
Together they scoured the library looking for anything that may be of relevance to what Hermione was looking for. Of course all of this occurred within the spare time between and after classes and Hermione was beginning to wish Dumbledore could find a different replacement for Potions, which was were she was presently, keeping her eye on the seventh year Gryffindors and Slytherins as they completed their mild Veritaserum potions.
Draco was back in classes now; he sat at the back of the Slytherins preferring to work alone than with either of the two houses in the advanced NEWTs class. The hostility between him and Harry had lessoned slightly but the biting comments were still exchanged. Hermione had yet to find out who had beaten the blonde but her instincts pointed to his fellow seventh years.
She glanced over at aforementioned seventh years, Nott, Crabbe and Goyle; the trio were talking quietly together while glancing at her every so often and snickering to themselves.
Hermione frowned. "Care to share something with the class Mister Nott?" she asked causing the rest of the room to quieten and turn to face the boy.
"We, were just wondering, Professor," he sneered, "what sort of lust potion could be used to get a mudblood like you into the sack," he answered waggling his eyebrows in a crude suggestive manner. The rest of the class swung their eyes to Hermione waiting for her reply.
"You do not need a lust potion to do that Mister Nott," she said with a small smile. "You just need to be tall, dark and handsome with piercing grey eyes," noting that Nott would be bound to fit himself into all three of these categories she continued before he could say anything. "It's also a bonus if you can turn yourself into a large furry canine, was once an escaped convict and have a werewolf as a best friend."
On the Gryffindor side of the class Harry was grinning at Hermione, his and the rest of the class' potions forgotten as they started to simmer and turn pink, not something that was ideally meant to happen.
"I'm seeing a lot of pink here," Hermione pointed out with an amused smile causing a bustle of activity as the students struggled to fix their potions.
Hermione relaxed back in her chair and picked up another book to skim through. She flicked through the pages till one in particular caught her eye. She sat forward and placed the book on her desk staring down at the diagram of the same star shape from her dream. 'The scrolls of Zhou are thought to be ancient Chinese prophecies depicting future events. Little is known about the scrolls and are thought to have been lost a millennia ago…'
"Hermione?"
Hermione looked up to see Harry standing in front of her, the rest of the classroom empty; the students having finished for the day.
"Find something?" He asked with a grin. "You seemed a little distracted," he said picking up some of her books to help her carry them back up to her chambers.
"I think I did, but I'm not too sure how much help it'll be," she explained as she closed the heavy potions door behind her. "I need to find some ancient Chinese scrolls that apparently went missing thousands of years ago."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Good luck."
"I think," she said as they started to climb the stairs. "I'm going to need it."
The pair walked quietly for a few minutes before Hermione broke the silence. "How's Ginny holding up?" she asked quietly. "She doesn't come and visit us as near as much as she used to."
Harry smiled sadly. "She's holding up as best as she can, first Ron, and well now Bill, I guess the reality of having a big family during a war situation is starting to catch up with her."
Hermione nodded, the losses of the war were starting to creep up on the older students; more and more often owls would arrive with the morning post from the ministry delivering bad news, the seal so familiar now that each student that received one knew what it contained.
"Hermione?" Harry asked tearing her from her thoughts once again.
"Hmm?"
"Why do you let Nott get away with…with what he says?" he asked.
"Does Nott act like that in your other classes with him?"
"Well, yes, he does have a pretty foul mouth."
"What does Remus do?" Hermione asked.
Harry smiled. "He ignores him or embarrasses him."
"What do I do?" She asked with a small smile.
"You ignore him or embarrass him," Harry answered with a grin. "But it's different, I mean he's being rude to you, you're a female Professor; you shouldn't have to put up with that."
Hermione shook her head. "Nott doesn't bother me, not this one at least."
"You knew his father?"
Hermione shook her head again. "Mother. And I'd be happier if I'd never met her, she caused Sirius and I some problems, still is, most likely if she's still alive and following Voldemort like the Order suspects," she explained as they approached her chambers.
Upon entering Harry and Hermione were greeted with Dumbledore and Sirius talking quietly on the couch.
"Ahh, Hermione," Dumbledore greeted. "Hello Harry."
"Hello Professor," Harry answered, moving into the room behind Hermione.
"Find anything yet?" Sirius asked Hermione.
Hermione moved and placed her books down on the large desk, picking up the one from the top of the pile and wandering over to where Dumbledore and Sirius were sitting.
"Actually, I think I have stumbled across something," she said turning to the page she had marked in the book. "Here," she said pointing to the drawings. "This is exactly what the images looked like in my dreams."
Dumbledore looked at the images before turning to Hermione, curiosity sparkling in his blue eyes and Harry took a seat next to Sirius. "You're sure these are the same images?"
"Positive."
Dumbledore nodded. "Keep looking for as much information as you can on these Zhou scrolls," Hermione nodded, she'd already planned on doing this. "I'm not sure if the originals can be located," Dumbledore continued. "But I'll see what I can do."
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Three days later Hermione and Tonks were surrounded by books on the desk while Sirius and Remus sat on the soft couches each with rather large books on their laps.
"You know, this is really frustrating," Tonks pointed out her pink hair catching the candlelight. "We work something out, research it for weeks before we can get any relevant information and when we do we need more information on that which we can't find, hence more reading through every book known to the wizarding world," she ended this with a large sigh.
"Oh Nymph, it's the never ending cycle of research, how will you ever survive?" Remus teased from the couch before ducking to avoid a well aimed book heading for his head, while Hermione sent Sirius a grin at the apparent nickname Remus had for Tonks, ignoring the fact that that was possibly the reason for the flying book in the first place.
"Without annoying hairy Werewolves for starters," Tonks answered Remus.
"Hey, I'm not that hairy."
"How do you know? Do you look in the mirror when you transform?" Tonks asked with a grin.
Hermione stifled her laughter at the image of Moony looking at himself in the mirror; glancing over at Sirius it seemed he was imagining along the lines of the same thing.
"Do you?" Remus retorted with a grin, his amber eyes flicking to her wild pink hair.
"Ohh ouch…" Sirius snickered from the couch where he had to duck to avoid another book chucked in their general direction.
The light hearted banter was interrupted by a soft nock at the door.
"Come in," Hermione called wondering who would be visiting so late and was surprised to find Dumbledore standing at the door.
"Professor…" Hermione queried standing up.
Dumbledore smiled and stepped into the room. "I believe I have found someone who is willing to assist you in your research," he explained, his blue eyes sparkling as he stepped further into the room to let his companion follow.
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A/N..Ohhhhh WHO is it?...any guesses? (Here's a hint, read the beginning of this A/N out loud and see if it comes to you ; ).
