A/N: Whew, I should just NOT promise time frames. I've been actively working on all of my stories but the holiday really set me back. Also noodling on my Exchange Fic which I'm pretty excited about.

Nothing you see is mine!


Chapter Three:

December 22, 1998

Winter Solstice – When Dark is at its most powerful


"Did you bring it," Minerva asked as she kneeled to chalk the protective diagram on the great stone floor inside the parapet of the astronomy tower. Above them the last light faded, and Hermione had the vivid impression that they were being tucked away into the dark folds of the night sky.

"I did," she said as she removed the protective cloth bindings from the dagger that was once the Sword of Gryffindor. "I'm not sure why it won't revert to its original form."

Minerva stood and placed her hands on the low of her back, stretching until her spine popped audibly. "It takes whatever shape it thinks we need." She turned to face Hermione and the dagger in her hands. "Little White Hilt - Carnwennan. Never thought I'd see it. Frankly, I wish I still hadn't." The wind howled, tugging at their cloaks as if to toss them into the dark. Hogwarts huddled around them, giving them a sense of solidity, of place so that they wouldn't get lost.

Luna and Draco arrived carrying five black candles between the two of them. Draco cupped a steadying hand around Luna's elbow as she ascended the last step to the tower. She smiled at him, and he glowered, but paused to tuck her cloak tighter around her thin shoulders. "Don't be an idiot. Keep that wrapped tight. It's bloody freezing out here."

"Yes, Draco," Luna said, her voice sweet.

After Professor Flitwick and Sybil Trelawney arrived, Hermione pulled out The Book of Cernunnos which had been tucked under her arm and opened it to its single remaining page. She stepped to the center of the diagram with the spell in one hand and the dagger in the other. "It's time to bring our lost friends home. Let's begin."

The five survivors circled around her, each at a point of the protective diagram, and lit their candles, casting a modified bubblehead charm around the flames. With their wands pointed in toward Hermione, Draco hummed a single pure note, and the others matched it. With one voice, they sang, "Via plana est et recta. Illa via mors est.(1)" They repeated the chorus, each time growing in conviction until the stones beneath their feet seemed to echo and dance with the song. The wind came from every direction, culminating in the spot Hermione stood. Her hair blew straight up and whipped around like a venomous tentacula.

At the close of the seventh invocation, Hermione shouted "Cernunnos cum Morte loqui postulat!(2)" Each word felt like it stripped the skin from her tongue and palate, but she finished and slashed the air at the center of the diagram with Little White Hilt. A tear opened in the air, a passage between here and not here, the now and the after. "Keep the portal open as long as you can! I'll be back with Harry, Ron, and Snape!" and with that, Hermione jumped into the rift in the night air.


She leapt through fog that hung in still, dead air. Her feet were steady on the ground beneath her, and she nimbly jumped from rock to dirt to stream embankment as she made her way down, down, down into the bowels of the Otherland. In her passage, the mist eddied into curling currents that dogged her feet. The air tasted of the tomb as she finally landed on a plane filled with a multitude of gray spirits that stood unmoving. They huddled with each other not as if they were looking for comfort, but as if they couldn't be bothered to move, humped together into an uncaring mass with no yesterday or tomorrow. Here and there, white oak trees grew from the ground, soaring into the air, their crowns obscured by the ever-present mist. Hermione had the impression that they grew through the barrier fog and into the land of the living. An ornate black castle was sketched in the far distance.

Looking down, she saw herself kitted out like a huntsman in heavy leather pants and a green jacket. Little White Hilt was tied at her waist. On her feet were soft brown boots that invited her to run, so she did. She ran toward the castle for what seemed like hours though it never grew closer and she never tired. The shades began to notice her, pressing closer, sticky and slowing her down. They reached for her, their cold hands tangling in her hair or tripping her feet. Frustrated, she finally shouted again "Cernunnos cum Morte loqui postulat!" tasting blood. She closed her eyes and felt a hooking sensation behind her navel.

Hermione opened her eyes to a hall out of a Kay Nielsen painting. Swooping arches stood around a circular chamber, the walls so tall they faded into shadows and fog before she could see the roof. Hermione shivered, and while she wasn't exactly cold, she felt terribly exposed. On the other side of the chamber, a dark man stood. She wretched and spat blood on the floor, hands on her knees. Unwilling to face this man (creature?) in a position of subservience, she pushed until she stood upright.

"So, a new huntsmaster then? A Cernunna(3)?" He moved gracefully around a scrying bowl at the heart of his imposing hall. He was tall and lean, and draped in shining black samite robes that had silver buttons from neckline to hem. Black hair fell straight and sleek in a waterfall of darkness around his face and down his back before trailing on the floor behind him. A crown of curved finger bones rested on his brow, and his skin was an eldritch white, the unnatural pallor of Death, because of course, who else could he be? Hermione thought.

He cocked his head, an unnatural movement. "How very interesting you are, and what nice presents you have given me. I had long sought the soul of that one, and you dropped him right at my very doorstep." He paused and while dangling his fingers in the water in his bowl, he turned to observe her. The splish of his hands was the only noise.

Daring greatly, she tried to look up into his eyes, but he was wreathed in shadows where there were none, as if nighttime had fallen across his face where before the hall had illuminated him as if it were high noon. The silence stretched between them until it became uncomfortable, and she thought to tell him you're welcome as if it hadn't been a feat of almost unimaginable will on her part, and Ron's and Harry's and Severus's part that had accomplished Voldemort's destruction. Some hidden part of her felt a deep distaste for those words, so she just smiled at Death and let the silence linger between them.

"So we are to bargain then?" Where before his voice was a mellow tenor, it dropped deep into bass range and turned so cold that Hermione shivered. "Tell me what you want, speck of dust."

"What is in your power to grant me?" she asked.

"Endless riches," he whispered in her ear. She startled because he had not moved. He was both there and not there, and his breath was the same wind that blew through the cloth walls of their tent in the Forest of Dean where they went hungry four nights out of five.

"I have no need for riches," she shivered.

His arm slid around her waist and pulled her back against his body, and she cried out for the terror and pleasure of it. Old friend, new lover, ancient enemy, maybe all at once. "Adoration of the masses," he hissed.

"I have no need to be loved by all. Just by one," she whispered.

He was gone from her. Back across the hall by a tomb she hadn't noticed before. He placed a hand on it. "Love," he snarled, and she jumped at his tone, and how confusing because it wasn't a tomb at all. It never had been, it was a throne carved of the blackest onyx she'd ever seen. He sat in it and leaned on an elbow. "Love is just as frequently ruin as it is salvation."

"Yes," she agreed. "And it's not something I'd bargain for. Love isn't love if it's not freely given." She walked toward the scrying bowl at the heart of his hall. Hermione looked into the pool of water and saw her friends, Ron and Harry, laughing. They were carrying their gear as they walked to the Quidditch pitch – one free of the pockmarks from war. She saw Severus Snape, somehow younger and happier as he brewed potions in a lab she didn't recognize. He looked up and smiled at someone she couldn't see, and Hermione caught her breath at the joy and ease of it. "I want them home. I want freedom for the three who sacrificed themselves to bring you the soul of Voldemort. Freedom to live their lives as they choose."

Death laughed and in it she heard the baying of his hounds. "Greedy, aren't you. Take them then." And Hermione was ejected from the hall with violence.

She landed hard on the ground by the rift into reality. Disoriented, Hermione took stock and realized she was lying in a puppy pile with Ron, Harry, and Snape all in human form. Bursting into tears, she reached for three of them, touching their faces and shoulders. "Ron, Harry, oh and Professor Snape, I'm so glad to see you all." They looked worn thin from their time in the Otherland, and all three had an odd light in their eyes as they watched her. They still wore the clothes they had on during the final battle. Snape's bare arm showed a faded Dark Mark, and Hermione reached out to touch it. Her professor didn't react.

Lurching to her feet, she moved toward the rift. The three men sat where she left them, watching her as if she were the most interesting thing in the world. "We haven't much time. Our friends are holding this portal open, and if we leave it too long it could kill them." The rift appeared to be holding steady for now, but she didn't like the shimmer at the edges.

Three sets of eyes followed her with interest. "We need to go," she urged. Still, they didn't move.

Heart sinking, Hermione finally said, "Come," and all three jumped to their feet and trotted toward her. "Good dogs," she choked. They dove into the tear in reality.


A/N: Like it, love it, hate it, review it!

(1) The road is flat and straight. That way lies death.

(2) Cernunnos demands to speak with Death!

(3) Feminized form of Cernunnos