Chapter Seven

October, 1921.

For two years Hermione had been fervently researching dragon lines. Information more substantial than smoke and mirrors had been particularly evasive and the more time she spent the more mad she was becoming. She'd spent her time questioning so-called geomancers on their craft and following leads to some of the most remote villages in China with no luck.

Hermione didn't let the lack of returns dissuade her from continuing her research. Answers were not a luxury; they were a necessity.

Most recently, her research had brought her to the southern slope of the Himalayas, a region called 'Motuo' that remained untouched by modernity. Locals called Motuo 'Hidden Lotus' and upon arriving Hermione had to admit the name was an apt description; it was unlike any landscape she'd seen before. A vast array of exotic foliage stretched across the dips of valleys and hills. Snow peaked mountains proudly towered over the land, Hermione found herself longing for a camera as she hiked through kilometers of desolate and treacherous terrain.

If ever she were to take up broom riding, it would be now.

Perish the thought.

She had read that Motuo was Tibet's 'holiest' region. The text had implied that those who sought answers should seek a temple hidden within the mountains, however, there was a stipulation that the path would not reveal itself to an unworthy seeker.

It sounded like a load of shit, but Chinese culture was known for ancient magic and knowledge that the western world had yet to discover. Hermione had followed leads with far less promise since she'd been in the country, and if nothing came from her journey in Motuo then the least she could do was enjoy it's enriching beauty.

She was three days into her slow hike through the trails laid out for travelers when she saw the first flare of magic in her peripheral vision. When she'd first made it to the village leading into Motuo the locals had warned Hermione to stay on the path, lest she lose her way and find herself dead. Losing her way hadn't been much of a concern for the witch, knowing she could apparate back to the path if needed, but the recollection of the villager's warnings caused her to pause.

It was rare that magic would take such a form, Hermione eyed the faint glow from where she stood. She couldn't make out a shape, only a general glow of light from between the trees. The color put her in the mind of a patronus. Before that thought had fully passed through her mind she was moving towards it, drawing the parallel between the color and the type of magic used to conjure a patronus; light magic could be trusted.

Like a moth to the flame, Hermione moved through the trees, pushing branches and leaves out of her way as she drew nearer to the bright light. She noticed nothing but what was in front of her, trying to make out whether or not the magic truly was a patronus.

Hermione was completely blindsided by the blunt object that smacked against her head. She fell to the ground, crying out in pain as she landed on her ankle wrong and heard a distinct snap of a broken bone. She looked around frantically for the culprit, but found no one.

She didn't even register the second hit as her world was consumed by darkness.

The stench of burning wood and cackling sounds of fire woke her. Hermione groaned, raising her left hand to clutch her head as she struggled to pull herself into an upright position. Memories of being attacked rushed back after she'd managed to make her consciousness known and she mentally cursed, and grappled for her wand.

Her heart dropped when it wasn't up her sleeve.

"You are no more aware of my presence now than you had been this morning," a light, gentle voice rang softly, speaking Chinese, from her right. Hermione turned her head and scrambled backwards as quickly as she could manage, stopping when a sharp pain shot through her body from her ankle. "Careful, you are injured."

Hermione surveyed her captor for ill intent, eyes narrowed in suspicion. A man sat mere yards from where she'd lain unconscious, legs crossed and balancing on a large rock. His age was clearly defined by the wrinkles and wide smile that adorned his face and his body sat perfectly still, as though a statue etched from his perch and sculpted into the likeness of a man. Hermione narrowed her eyes, he was a monk, if his style of dress was anything to go by.

"Injured by your hand?" Hermione challenged.

The man's grin didn't falter. "You fell on your ankle."

"Because you hit me!"

"No… and yes."

Hermione groaned, mumbling under her breath about how Dumbledore-esque this man was acting. She'd had enough of elderly men talking in circles and leaving her to decipher their intentions. It wasn't helpful then, and she doubted it would be now. She glared at him silently from her position, nestled in the dirt.

"I see you've filled your quota for indulging old men in your lifetime." He chuckled at Hermione's stunned expression. "I did not hit you, the energy rendered you unconscious."

"Energy?" She questioned.

He nodded, his legs falling to the forest floor. "Energy. Chakra. Chi. Your people call it 'magic.'"

The light magic had knocked her out? How could that be possible, Hermione wondered? Magic was manifested through the intent of the witch or wizard.

"All things are possible through energy." The man stood, his soft voice answered her thoughts.

"You're a legilimens." She would have to monitor her thoughts, she'd never practiced occlumency, shielding from him would be impossible. When he nodded she asked; "Who are you?"

"I am known as Shen Li," he began, striding towards her and crouching so his eyes were level with hers, "and you are Hermione Granger."

Hermione's eyes grew wide, her heart rate climbing so quickly she could practically hear it pounding like tribal drums. She unconsciously dried her sweaty hands on her trousers, mindful of Shen Li's proximity, and realized she was completely fucked without her wand.

"You are afraid." Li stated simply, tipping his head to the side as though he were observing a small animal.

Who wouldn't be, in her situation?

"Do not be, I know what you seek." Li's smile had not once left his face as he leaned closer to her, gently touching his hand to her ankle. Where the limbs met glowed with an almost blinding white light, and then he rose from his crouch and extended a hand to her. "Come with me, if you wish to understand."

She accepted his hand and he helped her to her feet.

There was no pain in her ankle.

March, 1922.

"You are impatient." Shen Li said, lashing at her side with his staff once again.

Hermione hissed when the staff connected to her already bruised flesh, once again she'd been too slow to dodge. She hadn't been welt free since the day Shen had brought her back to his temple in Motuo. Hermione hadn't known her body could endure such rigorous training but Shen had taught her much in the last five months.

He still refused to divulge his secrets, but he'd taken her under his wing as an acolyte of sorts.

"I'm trying."

Shen shifted his stance once again. "You are too busy thinking. You must feel."

Hermione nearly growled, but bit the insides of her cheeks again. Shen had been on this for months. She didn't understand what he meant. Logic was how she'd gotten out of every situation she'd ever been thrown into. She couldn't stop thinking. She dismissed his words once more, and focused on his stance and how to evade him. If he moved left it could be a faint, he was prone to them.

He went left and she shielded her right. Hermione hissed when the bamboo staff connected to her left side.

"I'm not here for this, Shen Li! I've been beaten every day for months and still I have no knowledge of Dragon Lines! I am wasting my time here!" Hermione broke, her frustration reaching its peak.

Shen's face stretched onto a crooked grin. "You are impatient."

Hermione threw her staff, growling, sore, and in pain. Tears pricked at her eyes and her chest constricted. I want to go home, she thought.

"You think too much," Shen said, relaxing his stance, still smiling. "You would do best to continue your meditations. I will call you for an evening meal."

Hermione bent to pick up her staff and turned on her heel, stalking out of the temples dojo, pausing only to place her borrowed staff on the rack Shen had designed for them. Her footsteps echoed through the moss covered stone halls of the pagoda. More than once she'd admired the architecture of the structure. It had been carved out of the mountain itself over a thousand years ago by people long forgotten.

Nature had been allowed to run the temple. Vines grew through the open windows of the carved stone structure. Shin Li had found the pagoda abandoned fifty years ago and had since decided to inhabit it, leaving it in its natural state. He often said that it wasn't the place of man to force nature to submit to him, but rather for man to submit to nature.

She still argued that if these were his beliefs he should at least wear shoes to protect himself.

Hermione entered the four stone walls she'd come to call her room. She looked over her workbench where several herbs sat drying for later use and plucked one of the many clay pots that she'd left on the sill of the stone window. She opened a jar of crudely made bruise paste and sat gingerly, careful of her injuries, on the conjured bed, raising her shirt to spread the paste to her sides.

As temporary relief flooded her, her mounting frustrations began to soothe. She closed the jar and set it back on the sill, then grabbed a change of clothes from the dresser she'd conjured in the corner of the room. Shen had given her her wand back after her first night in the temple just long enough to make herself a comfortable room. She'd intended on keeping her wand far away from him after she had received it back, but when she'd woke the next morning it was missing from under her pillow. She'd been living completely without magic since that day.

At first, her stay here had been unsettling. It still was, at times. Ancient, sentient magic thrummed through the halls and deep into the mountain. She tried to follow the magic, but each time she would find herself twisting through the halls, feeling like she was drawing nearer to its origins, she'd find herself in the courtyard, half blinded by the sudden light.

Shen said there were secrets the temple had not judged her worthy of, and therefore she would not be allowed to unearth them.

It was the same excuse he had for not teaching her about Dragon Lines. Except that iteration went more like; "The truths will reveal themselves when your energy is right."

And, of course, the energy would only be right if she mastered his regimen. Like meditation and somehow managing to avoid his vicious and brutal beatings would make magic find Hermione suitable to bestow their limitless wisdom upon. Hermione often regretted following him that day in the forest.

Yet… she stayed. Her interest was well and thoroughly piqued. He could do things… things with his magic she couldn't explain with her classic education and logic.

A month ago, Shen had hit her so hard she'd been launched into the east side of the courtyard. As her body impacted several of her ribs hand broken and the structure started to crumble. Her vision had been limited, and she'd braced for pounds and pounds of stone to crush her. Without her magic she'd known that if she didn't have a burst of accidental magic she'd be dead for certain.

When no impact came, she'd opened her eyes to see Shen Li, with his hands raised as if he was cradling something in them. Above her, the broken bits of stone that would have killed her were slowly rearranging themselves. Seconds later, the archways and pillars looked like they'd never fallen.

Until that moment she'd only ever seen Albus Dumbledore use wandless magic to that extent.

It was enough to give Hermione some pause to consider the man.

Deciding that there was some weight to what he was trying to teach her, Hermione re-dedicated herself to his training regime. Today had been the crux of her mounting frustrations with not getting far. She'd prided herself on her intellect for so long that to see it thwarted was impossible to rationalize.

Hermione sat on her bed and breathed slowly, relaxing into her meditations. She still wasn't good at them. It was difficult for her to silence her brain, and even after months of trying she still found herself using her meditations as a way to contemplate what she knew of her situation and of Dragon lines.

Dinner was a quiet affair. They ate a modest rice and vegetable soup that Shen had prepared. They lived off the lands here, as the nearest town was dozens of kilometers away. She hadn't tasted meat since coming here, either. Shen had explained that he'd dedicated his life long ago to minimizing the deaths he caused with his life.

Halfway through the meal, Shen Li lowered his bowl and took a sip of his tea, staring at Hermione critically. She met his dark eyes with a raised brow.

"You rely too heavily on your mind."

She snorted inelegantly. "As you've said."

"The energy cannot be intellectually beaten into submission, Hermione Granger."

Hermione placed her bowl on the ground in front of her. It seemed that Shen Li wanted to communicate something to her. "Is that not what magical people have been doing for centuries?"

Shen shook his head. "Before there were wands, wizardkind had a more spiritual relationship with the energies they now manipulate forcefully. This is why they have lost their way." He paused, and at Hermione's quizzical look he continued. "Man has lost his way. Wizardkind has as well. For the same reasons. Instead of spirituality, they submit to the idea that everything can be explained through logic and reason. Because the ancient questions, long before modernity, can not be answered through rationality. What is life? Why do we live? Why must we suffer? Where did the energies come from? These questions cannot be answered with the mind. In many cases they cannot be answered at all."

Shen reached forward and picked his bowl from the ground, rising from his seat and walking away without another word.

Hermione stared at his vacant seat, trying to understand his words.

June, 1925.

"I understand nothing." Hermione gasped, eyes wide as she starred unseeing at the vine covered stone wall before her.

It seems so Socratic but the answer had been there all along. Magic, energy, spirit, chi, whatever it was called could not be beaten into submission. It must have been why she'd never had the proclivity for creating original spells, though she'd tried. Magic didn't yield to intellect… intellect was meant to yield to a power it couldn't understand.

'Shen Li is right,' Hermione thought, as she settled into a meditative stance, 'I think too much.'

So for the first time in her life, Hermione fully cleared her mind. Her mind blanked, her breathing evened and finally, finally she saw and felt and heard.

The rivers and streams that ran through the mountains and their crystalline waters had never been so vibrant. The light reflected like kaleidoscope colors across the scales of every fish. The natural greenery of the forest had never jarred her so. She could hear the patter of the insects that scrambled across the leaves, branches and forest floors. She watched the predators ready to pounce their prey, felt the wind from the birds' wings as they flew eastward.

It was overwhelming.

And then she was falling, falling, falling down into a whirlpool, clawing helplessly at air until she collided with something solid.

And there he was. Aged a few decades since she'd last seen him. Crows feet around his startling emerald eyes, a distinguished grey had developed in the black of his hair around his temples and the same smile she remembered from her childhood.

Harry.

Hermione launched herself from her spot on the ground and leapt forward to embrace him. Tears of joy became tears of sorrow as she fell through him and collided with the door behind him. She punched the door, one she barely recognized as the door to the library at Grimmauld Place, in frustration.

Why, why, why, why?

She whirled around, crying and frantically calling his name. He did not turn, he did not hear her. He hadn't seen her or even felt her passing through him as he would've a ghost.

"Daddy!" An excited young feminine voice called. Harry crouched and suddenly there was a girl running through the dark mist and leaping into his arms, hair like fire fanning out around her and then settling against her shoulders. "Daddy, Mummy's making Shepherd's Pie for supper." Her happy smile faded into a faint grimmance and Hermione saw Harry's eyes reflected in the small girls.

Harry gasped. "Your Mum is making dinner?"

Lily giggled and nodded her head.

"Well I guess," Harry whispered conspiratorially, "we should make sure she doesn't burn the kitchen down."

Lily nodded solemnly and the scene was changing. Hermione landed more gracefully, this time standing beside a very pregnant Ginny Potter and two boys grinning impishly, sitting atop the counter handing their mother utensils as she called for them.

Harry came up behind his wife and embraced her.

"Welcome home, love." Ginny said, turning to face him with a smile. They kissed.

A chorus of 'eww' the thud of two boys leaving the counter and the married couple were alone. The couple laughed.

Harry's hands rested atop Ginny's stomach. "Did she give you any trouble today?"

Ginny scoffed. "Oh she's a right spitfire. Albus and Lily were so easy, they lulled me into a false sense of security."

Harry laughed. "Just like her namesake."

A sadness clouded the couple then, and Ginny's hand raised to stroke Harry's face. "It's been twenty six years since she disappeared and it gets no easier. I wonder if it ever will." Ginny's eyes filled with the tears of old hurts that still stung.

"I dunno," Harry responded, "All we can do is deal with it like we have been I suppose."

The conversation sounded rehearsed, like it was one they'd had often.

Harry sank to his knees and placed his hands on Ginny's bump. "Mummy and Daddy love you, Hermione Jean Potter."

'Oh Harry!' Hermione cried, placing a hand on his shoulder and adding no pressure so it wouldn't fall through. 'Oh Harry, Ginny. I wish I could come home. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry!'

The scene was warping again and Hermione panicked, grabbing at the surfaces of the counters, the oven. Her hands falling through them all. She whirled around and focused on Harry, committing to memory every line of his face until her tears made clarity impossible and then she screamed for him, screamed for herself.

He didn't move to save her. And everything faded and she was falling. The ethereal threads of time warping around her. The glittering expanse of the cosmos and she felt so tiny and insignificant staring out at the edge of the universe. The feelings became so overwhelming she couldn't move, couldn't breathe.

Her fingernails clawed at her chest and she couldn't breathe. She was dying, dying, dying.

And then her eyes opened, staring at the green covered stone walls.

She collapsed.

September, 1927.

Two staves connected together with a resounding crack. Shen Li smiled toothless at his protege and spun. Hermione met him blow for blow in a dance as old as man.

Twirl, strafe, parry, block, duck, they continued on ignoring the pangs of exertion. Each refused to back down until the other forced them.

"How about we up the stakes, Shen?"

Shen's smile never wavered, and instead of answering Hermione ducked as a rock the size of her head came flying through the air towards her, just narrowly missing colliding with her temple. She heard the whistling of Shen's staff coming down to incapacitate her, and fell to the ground on her stomach, rolling to the left and springing back up into her fighting stance. She felt out with the energy, the magic, and found the stone, broke it into chunks, and hurled them all at Shen without ever touching them.

October, 1928.

His body was cold and hard when she found him. He was sitting in a meditative position on a broken slab of stone, not even slumped over. Vaguely she recalled an old theory that a monk had once meditated themselves to death but had never thought it could actually happen.

She didn't even notice as the tears fell from her face. Didn't feel the hard ground when her knees slammed against it.

Barely registered the mangled cry that came from her throat as the world darkened.

Why does everyone leave her just when she's gaining a semblance of happiness?