FIFTEEN

It seemed funny to Hermione, in a strange sort of way of course, that even after all the things she'd lived through—or, in far too many cases, just barely lived through—and all she'd witnessed, the very thought of a cemetery at night should still raise the fine hairs on the back of her neck. And that was simply the thought ….

Just now, stepping across the threshold of the cemetery's gateway threatened to kick off an icy churning in the pit of her stomach.

Shaking her head, she let out a trembling breath from between pursed lips. "Get it together, Hermione. You've done far dumber things in far spookier places." Letting her eyes drift closed a moment, she squared her shoulders and nodded.

But then she opened her eyes. She looked about her surroundings. The statues, the trees and climbing vines, the shadowy tombstones, the rise of mausoleums in the distance.

"Perhaps not much stupider, though," she tacked on in a whisper. Lychakiv was enormous, and she had no idea where she might've been when she'd attracted the creature's attention.

Conjuring a Lumos, she held her wand out before her as she tried to recreate her path from last night.


Antonin's eyes snapped open. There it was again, just like last night. The flashes of memory, the sense of something familiar drawing near. He watched those hollow stars a moment, verifying that it was again after sundown.

What on earth was she doing back here?

Climbing to his feet, he approached the doors on careful, silent footfalls.

He paused at the doors, listening.

And then he heard it, beneath the breeze through the leaves. Apart from the nocturnal insects and creatures who roamed the wilderness that intermingled with the stonework.

The beat of her pulse. The rush of her blood through her veins.

The shock of her breath escaping her lips as she turned her head this way and that, looking about as she carried on some hurried, muttered conversation with herself.

Then she called out, startling him. But it was what she did when she received no answer that had him immediately and thoughtlessly slipping out the doors to find her.