"'Half of my desert for a day,' Ron said quickly. 'I just want you to look up a word.'" –Rorschach's Blot, "Hermione the Harem Girl"

"Really?" said Neville, arching an eyebrow. "Must be quite a word, if you're willing to sacrifice half your realm for it, even temporarily. Which half, by the way?"

"The one that adjoins your jungle, of course," said Ron impatiently. "The eastern half."

"Where the diamond mines are," Neville mused. "Quite a word."

"Look, it wasn't my idea," said Ron. "It's just that the only Curupi dictionary in this school is in your castle's library, and Hermione thinks that she could work out a plan to painlessly defeat You-Know-Who if she could figure out one particular allusion in the annals of the Paraguayan Jesuits. Under the circumstances, I think I can swallow having to trust you with my desert for a few hours."

"Or half of it, anyway," Neville remarked.

"Right."

Neville nodded. "All right, it's a deal," he said, and chuckled. "And to think, Gran tried to discourage me from picking the jungle when Dumbledore was assigning the Lands Within to the former D.A. members. Said it was full of nasty tropical parasites, and I'd be sure to get some weird disease that would make my privates turn green and fall off."

"And did you?" said Ron, intrigued.

"That's beside the point," said Neville sharply.

"Harry Potter? Is it really? Merlins beard!" –Monster In The Dark, "That Dumbledore!"

Snape's lip curled. "Yes, I know they do," he said. "I myself have been bearded by merlins on multiple occasions. But I fail to see, Lupin, how the tendency of pigeon hawks toward insolent defiance renders Potter any less likely to be the author of this letter."

"Well, take another look at it," said Lupin. "Doesn't the handwriting seem a bit awkward – almost as though the quill were being grasped in a claw rather than a hand? And the expressions used: 'won't let you clip my pinions'; 'won't be your tiercel any longer' – you know what a tiercel is, don't you, Snape?"

Snape studied the parchment again, and began to feel a certain unease. "Then you think," he said slowly, "that Mr Henery…"

"Most likely," said Lupin. "You haven't been exactly easy on the Nephelococcygian transfer students, you know; even Miss Olor has complained about your overbearing approach. And anyone who moves even a mute swan to speak out," he added wisely, "oughtn't to be surprised when a merlin beards him."

"He continued to weep for the dark robed castor, even as the energy from the spell faded." –TheDragonsTale, "When Life Is Lost"

"Harry," Hermione whispered, nudging her friend gently, "come on, we need to finish this potion. I've exposed the castor to the light energy of three minutes' Lumos, and now you need to…"

"B-but it was so beautiful!" Harry bawled, drawing a number of odd stares from his classmates. "Such a becoming reddish-brown, and so adorably shaped into a little effigy of Merlin – and you just tore off its robe, and mashed it up, and boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"

"Harry," said Hermione through her teeth, her already limited patience rapidly fading, "it's a secretion from a beaver's groin region, dressed up and sculpted for marketing purposes. Now, can we please…"

"No," Harry whimpered. "It was more than that… it was tender, and precious, and…"

"Something wrong, Potter?"

It was remarkable what a sobering effect Snape's sudden appearance had on Harry. He abruptly jerked his head up, blinked the moisture out of his eyes, and spoke in a firm if rather hoarse tone. "No… no, Professor," he said. "Nothing's wrong."

"Good," said Snape, with a nasty gleam in his eye. "I'd hate to think I had taken ten points from Gryffindor just because you'd had bad news from home. And now, perhaps you and Miss Granger would see fit to carry on with the assignment…"

"Looking him in the eye with false bravado, she spoke firmly, 'My magic wants you, Sirius, not me.'" –nottonyharrison, "What Is and What Should Never Be"

"What?" said Sirius. "That's ridiculous. What would I do with your magic, when I have plenty of my own? And whoever heard of a witch's magic not wanting her, anyway?"

"Oh, it's been documented before," said Hermione, still trying to act cool and nonchalant. "Apparently I overworked my magic by so much study and practice at such a young age – too much too fast, you know – and now it's rebelled and won't work for me any longer. And it's settled on you as someone who will give it the rest it wants, on account of your opportunities for spellwork being so limited during my acquaintance with you – and of course the fact of my living under your roof predisposed it in that direction anyway. So now all I have to do is touch you, and my magical soul will transfer to you and mingle itself with your own; you'll become the most naturally powerful wizard on Earth, and I –" here her bravado nearly broke down, but she rallied and finished "– will rejoin the Muggle world I was born into."

"And if I don't touch you?" said Sirius.

"Then I'll probably turn slowly into stone over the course of the next year," said Hermione. "That's the most usual result of retaining magic that wants another. And, if it's all the same to you, I'd much rather be a Muggle than a statue."

Then Sirius consented; Hermione reached out and pressed her hand to his cheek, and he felt her magic enter into him. It took perhaps thirty seconds, at the end of which Hermione withdrew her hand, her lower lip trembling violently, and turned and walked out of the room without a word.

The next morning, she was gone; her wand lay broken on her bedside table, and no clue remained as to where she might have gone. Sirius, understanding her reasons, never made any enquiries; others did, but their quarry's knowledge and cleverness proved sufficient to baffle them. And so it came about that Harry Potter, though he did eventually triumph over Lord Voldemort (thanks in no small part to the newly superhuman magical powers of his godfather), lost, in the process, the nearest thing to a sister that he had ever known.