Hello, my lovelies! Seemed like everyone really enjoyed last chapter which is wonderful, this chapter is part two of three! I hope you enjoy this one as it's one of my faves. JessariOfErebor worked her butt off editing this one with me right up until midnight last night, so thank you! Please read the chapter notes at the end as there's some very important info in there!

Hermione and Lucius came to the edge of the school grounds. Just a few feet further and the strongest of the wards would start to ease off.

It was like standing at the foot of death.

They went over their equipment. Hermione was pleasantly surprised, but not exactly shocked, to see that Lucius had also thought to bring a spare wand. The long, dark wand was tucked into a long sleeve inside his jacket. Hermione held her vinewood in her hand. Her spare, the apple wand she'd used for years before Lucius had returned her wand to her, was strapped along her calf. It was not as powerfully attuned to her as the vinewood, but it would do perfectly well in a pinch.

Resting on his hip was a strange glass flask inside which a nauseating, grey-green mixture swirled.

"Seven parts despair, three parts terror." He explained. "The glass will shatter if thrown. I thought it might draw them off."

She eyed the flask with a new appreciation. It was a fantastic idea. One which she absolutely did not want to know how he had come up with.

Lucius let his coat fall into place again. "And you? Let us see what miracle you have made."

Hermione smiled and reached into her pocket and brought out the Stone.

Like so many of her inventions, she's got the idea from the war. Specifically, she'd gotten it from Harry.

Harry had told her about the dementors he'd had to pass by to get to Voldemort on the day of the final battle. He hadn't been able to use his patronus for fear of giving away his position, but somehow he'd been able to do it. It had always struck her as a little odd. When she'd heard the news about the dementors being expelled from Azkaban, she'd asked him about it.

He'd told her about the resurrection stone. He'd told her about his parents, and Sirius, and Remus, and how their protective aura had been able to keep him safe. The dementors had had no power over him when they had walked by his side. This was a very beautiful, sweet story, but Hermione wasn't quite sure it had been right. It was the joy the resurrection stone had granted him that had kept him safe. He hadn't needed a patronus. Happiness, and more than that, peace, had been a shield around him.

The idea had fascinated her. The patronus was the only known defence against dementors, and it was far beyond the skill of most witches and wizards. And what about the squibs and the muggles? With dementors running rampant, people needed a better alternative. The Stone was her solution.

She'd been waiting for it, so she noticed when a warm, peaceful feeling rolled over her. Hermione suppressed it as best she could. She was starting to develop a resistance to it. The Stone's power had made her downright dopey the first time she had ever held it.

She held it up so Lucius could see it better. "I'd take a step back, if I were you." She warned, and was rewarded with the sight of Lucius Malfoy stumbling backwards to get away from her.

The Stone was small enough to fit comfortably in the palm of her hand. The chalk was white, lumpy, and encased in a smooth, clear glass. The Stone made a gentle tapping noise as it moved inside its shell. The overall effect was not particularly impressive. She hadn't had time to inscribe it with glyphs, as you usually would with a signature creation.

From a safe distance, Lucius peered at it, obviously perplexed. "Chalk?" He guessed.

"Yes, chalk. It holds positive emotions the best out of everything I've tried. I injected it with Millywicke's Tinctured Joy and a Peace Potion. Then I cast three charms on it. A charm to deflect dark spirits, a fortitude charm, and a binding charm to seal them together. The glass has a projecting charm to send it all outwards." She blushed nervously. "I call it the Joy Stone."

"A wonder indeed."

"Thank you." Hermione said simply. "There's one problem, though."

Lucius looked warily at her. "And what would that be?"

A stab of mirth took her surprise and Hermione let out an explosive giggle. Lucius flinched back from the sudden sound.

A little annoyed with herself for letting the Stone's magic get the better of her, she explained, "It isn't exactly finished. It has a radius of a few feet, and I have to take about five different potions to stop it from affecting me when I'm holding it. As you can see, it's a work in progress."

Lucius blinked owlishly and she started screeching with laughter at the sight, unable to stop herself.

"May I assume that you did not have time to take these potions tonight?" Lucius asked calmly.

She nodded in between gales of laughter. "It's sporadic. After a while you sort of get used to it. Just don't say or do anything funny."

"Well," Lucius said. "Given the situation, I don't think that will be particularly difficult."

It took her another fifteen minutes to get used to the Stone. Lucius did not comment on her condition, and they talked tactics as they went.

Before they went into the village, Hermione cast a Disillusionment charm over the pair of them, then a charm of Discernment that would allow them to see one another. Lucius cast a spell on their shoes that would stop them from making any noise when they walked. She didn't know if muffliato would work on dementors, but she cast it anyway.

When they were ready, she led him through the village. The streets were all but empty, and Hermione wondered if Minerva had summoned the people of Hogsmeade to Hogwarts yet.

Her senses were stretched to their limit, trying to catch where the barrier had fallen. So far, all she could feel were the spells people had cast around their houses. They were the simple sort that most witches and wizards could cast, and therefore not at all effective against dementors.

"I don't suppose this invention of yours has ever been tested on a real dementor, has it?" Lucius asked dubiously. Despite their stealth-enhancing spells, he spoke in a whisper. Empty streets tended to have that effect on people.

"Well, not exactly, but my research was very thorough-"

Lucius sagged for just a moment, before recovering himself. She didn't say anything further.

As soon as they reached the outer edge of the barrier she was able to cast a few sounding charms to pinpoint the source of the dementors entry. She could feel the wrongness past the far side of Hogsmeade, a short way into the Forbidden Forest. Of course it was.

"Come on." She said, nodding her head. "It isn't far."

They wasted no time, heading straight for the break in the charm-wall. They kept the barrier firmly to their right the entire time. Every now and then, Hermione would check the charmwork again to make sure they were heading the right way. They were on high-alert, as the forest was an extremely dangerous place on a good day… and this was not a good day.

Even compared to the empty wizarding village, the Forest was quiet. Unnaturally hushed. The trees seemed grey, washed out and lifeless. The air was still and damp. Hermione found herself wanting to hold her breath. Lucius seemed similarly affected. He gave her a comforting, if unconvincing, smile.

When they finally approached the breach, Hermione fully expected to see hordes of dementors pressing up against the charms. Instead, all she saw was the faint shimmer of the charmwork in the air, like petrol in water.

She approached slowly, wand at the ready. She murmured under her breath and her vision shifted, and she saw the great tapestry of the protective barriers Minerva, Flitwick and herself had made. Charms that had been cast around Hogsmeade in a great net. Each layer of spellwork was in a slightly different colour.

And right in front of her, a gaping hole.

"By all means, Hermione, take your time," Lucius hissed from behind her, making her jump. "We are in no hurry!"

Hermione ignored him. She peeled back layer after layer of the magic around the entry point, trying to find where it had gone wrong. The shreds that were left hadn't been unravelled, or cut. What she was looking for, what she had feared she would find, was not there. The spells had not been tampered with. How had they been broken, then? It was strange that it was only one section that had been affected, and there so drastically.

The answer came to her, and she swayed in horror. The charms had drained themselves dry.

Hermione pulled her attention back to her surroundings.

Nearby, she heard Lucius whisper, "Well, what have you discovered?"

"It's worse than I thought." She said slowly. The implications…

He swiftly asked, "Sabotage?" And she knew that he had been thinking it too.

"No. The spells fell apart. They've been… drained."

There was a long pause, and she could almost hear him thinking. "I don't follow. They were cast only a year or so ago, weren't they?"

"I think they were put under too much pressure. McGonagall, Flitwick and I only built them to withstand a few dozen dementors at once."

Lucius said nothing for a long time, and by the look on his face, she thought that he was giving serious consideration to the idea of running away. All things considered, she probably wouldn't have held it against him.

"By your estimation," Lucius said at last, "How many dementors do you think broke through the barrier?"

It was impossible to say for sure, but she could guess. "At least a hundred. All pushing down at a single, concentrated point." She said.

The look on his face, as she said those words, took her back. It took her back to the moment in the Ministry when the Prophecy had shattered. The face of a man confronted with total, irreparable disaster.

"Can the spells be rewoven?" He asked.

"I think so." She grimaced at the uncertainty in her voice, and she tried again. "I'm sure they can be. But all I can do for now is patch them up so that one or two of them couldn't get through. To make them strong enough to withstand that many dementors…"

Impossible. At least, not without the help of more witches and wizards than she could call here at short notice. The wards she, Flitwick and Minerva had cast were an imitation of the ones the Founders had placed on Hogwarts. But even those had their limits.

Lucius said nothing, and she turned her strength to remaking the spellwork as best as she could. It wasn't easy, and she was sweating by the time she was done. Trying to completely rebuild something it had taken all three of them to create was like pushing a boulder up hill. It would have been easier if the threads of the magic had just been cut. As they were, ragged and frayed, it was a lot more complicated than a simple reweaving.

Finally, Hermione had to accept that she had done the best job she could. It might hold against two or three dementors sweeping by. They had to tell McGonagall what they had discovered, but she gave herself a much needed minute to catch her breath. Lucius kept glancing at her, anxious to be on their way.

As she recuperated from the intense spellwork, Lucius asked her, "This Stone of yours. Exactly how many dementors do you think it could repel?"

Hermione managed to say something about how it would be useless to speculate. She'd tested it only once, and that had only been on a poltergeist. There was no way of knowing what would happen if the Stone had to fend off a real dementor.

She tried, "Well, theoretically, in the right conditions-"

Lucius let her babble for a good long while before he finally forgot his manners and interrupted her.

"How many?" He asked, his tone making it clear that he expected an answer.

She didn't think she could avoid it. She had dragged him into this. The least she could do was tell him the truth.

In a small voice, she told him. "Maybe five of them?"

The safety of Hogwarts had never felt so far away.

They were in an impossible position, and she had put them there.

In coming to the Forbidden Forest, they were exactly halfway between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. They could go to Hogsmeade and send McGonagall a Howler from there, by which time it might be too late and countless more dementors could have infested the village. Or they could go straight for Hogwarts with all haste.

They reasoned, quite soundly, that the route through the Forbidden Forest to Hogsmeade was by no means guaranteed to be any safer than the route to Hogwarts. Either way, they might not make it. Hundreds of dementors were very likely in the Forest, and they weren't the Forest's only dangers.

They had to get a message to McGonagall. Normally, Hermione would send out a patronus, but in this situation it would be criminally stupid to leave themselves with only one for protection. Unable to think of any other way, Hermione Transfigured a handful of leaves into a pencil and a piece of paper. Then, she turned a worm into an owl. She wrote down everything they had discovered onto the piece of paper and tied it to the bird's leg. She tried to write it in such a way that they sounded like calm, dedicated professionals, rather the terrified witch and wizard they actually were.

She enchanted the owl to be drawn to Hogwarts and set it free. Lucius watched silently as the bird soared up through the trees. At least it seemed to be heading in the right direction.

"That should work." She said to bolster his spirits and hers. They needed any sort of hope they could get right now.

He didn't question it. Perhaps he knew it would have served no purpose.

They didn't exactly run back to the castle, but their pace was relentless. Her chest was burning before long. His long legs ate up the distance and she found a strength she didn't know she had to keep up with him.

It was difficult to judge exactly how far they'd come. The light was different here, a premature dusk, and though they'd surely been walking for at least half an hour, it didn't seem to have gotten any darker. As far as she could tell, they were making excellent time. Fear of the unknown was an excellent expedient, of course, but there was more to it than that.

Hermione knew all about the creatures, real and imagined, that were rumoured to make their home in the Forbidden Forest. Acromantulas. Shade wraiths. The Fell Lady and her pack of hounds. The nightmare pools and their gatherers, the bone groves. An actual demon that was said to have nested here, centuries ago. Hermione wondered just how long a demon lived for. No-one knew. They were meant to be extinct.

None of these creatures had hunted Lucius and Hermione as she had feared they would. This, she knew, was the true reason they had made such good time. The Forbidden Forest was not actually that huge, it was merely dense.

This was not to say that they saw nothing at all. Just as Hermione had been about to lift Lucius up and over a thicket of thorns, he had frantically waved for her to put him down. He pulled her beneath the shadow of a tree and pressed a finger to his lips. They cowered there for about a minute until Hermione heard something lumber away. Something huge.

When she asked Lucius what he had seen, he only shook his head. Trembling, he motioned her on, and they kept going.

Whatever it was, going around it might have saved their lives but it meant going deeper into the Forest than Hermione would have liked. The trees hung lower and thicker. Their branches gouged at one another, engaged in their centuries-long battle for sunlight. She could no longer see the sky. She could see fog, though. It swirled around their feet.

She tried to tell herself that it might mean nothing. The Forbidden Forest had fog all year round.

But it wasn't nothing, was it? Something slotted together in her mind. It had been foggy all over the highlands at the time of their first Quidditch match against each other. Fog that her weather-clock hadn't predicted.

It was too big a coincidence. It must have been the dementors. Had they been breeding around Hogwarts for that long? How long ago had they broken through their defensive charms?

Hermione felt sick. She had blamed Lucius for it. Accused him of charming the weather to give his team the advantage.

Hating herself, she very nearly gave into despair, but Lucius broke the silence.

His tone was almost light, and Hermione thought he might be trying to cheer her up. "Remind me again why McGonagall decided to place anti-apparition charms over the entire Forbidden Forest, won't you?"

"Probably so a bunch of Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself couldn't just turn up again?"

Lucius said nothing, and she bit her lip. "Sorry. That was really rude. I'm just-" Just what? It didn't help for them to lash out at one another. Taking her guilt out on him didn't change the fact that her determination to think the worst of him had made her miss a vital clue. Lucius had come here of his own accord, albeit with a little peer pressure, to help her. For that alone, he deserved her respect. Her kindness.

He did not seem fazed. "Not at all. Besides, you are right. Once again, my past follies are my own destruction."

Under any normal circumstances such a statement would have given her food for thought, maybe even prompted a conversation between them. As it was, she could only nod and keep going.

They were perhaps fifteen minutes from the castle wards when she noticed that in all her years, she had never heard a forest so quiet. Not even this one. As if every animal in the forest was standing completely still and holding its breath. Hermione came to such a sudden stop that she almost tripped, and Lucius looked back at her, eyebrow raised in a question.

An unnatural cold slithered over her skin. It started in her heart and spread out all the way to her fingertips.

She and Lucius looked at one another. He had realised; it was written all over his face.

Their breath fogged the air in rapid little puffs. The dementors must be very close. It was not as painful or as crippling as she remembered, and because of that she knew that the Joy Stone was working. As the chill grew greater Lucius unconsciously drifted closer and closer to her, seeking the warmth and comfort of the Stone.

"We'll fight back to back." Hermione said, moving into position behind him. Her wand was ready as she took a careful step backwards, eyes on the trees. "Straight for the main gates. Don't stop moving, no matter what happens."

They went on. The fog around their feet thickened until they could not see the earth.

Hermione heard their rattling breath, first. Then she saw the ragged edge of a cloak flash behind a tree not ten feet away.

Lucius faltered and groaned in terror, and she kept walking backwards, forcing him on. "Keep going!" She hissed.

She wasn't angry. She couldn't afford to be angry. She had to think happy thoughts.

Her mother and father. So proud of their daughter, no matter what. The way they had taken her back into their lives, even after what she had done. Hagrid's shelf, and the photo in the middle. Her Charms class. The sound of the Great Hall welcoming her home. Getting drunk at the Head Club. Lucius' arm around her waist as they spun through the Great Hall together. Days and nights sequestered in the Teacher's Nook in the library with him, working to create something the world hadn't seen in centuries. Even if they had failed, it had still been beautiful.

Life was beautiful.

She had so many happy memories. The words "expecto patronum" were barely even out of her mouth before the otter formed, solid and shining with a nimbus of light. It launched itself headlong at a dementor that floated watchfully and drove it off into the shadow of the trees.

Behind her, she heard Lucius' "expecto patronum!" and they picked up their pace a little.

Patronus or no patronus, a witch and a wizard alone were enticing prey. The dementors were relentless. The patronus didn't kill them, just weakened and scattered them. Soon they came not singly, or in pairs, but as a whole pack. Too many to count.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the peacock. Its light was stuttering, flickering. Its proud head dipped low. She looked over her shoulder at Lucius and sure enough, the wizard was faltering. His breathing was haggard and as she watched, a paroxysm of fear made him flinch back from a dementor that braved the light of his patronus.

Sensing his vulnerability, the dementors swooped towards him. The peacock was drowned in the grey of their cloaks, skeletal hands grasped to choke the life out of it-

Hermione heard the sucking noise of a dementor and knew she had allowed one to come too close. A wave of her wand and the otter banished the thing. She risked another look over her shoulder and saw that the peacock's definition was gone, and Lucius was protected by a mere silvery haze.

They came to a standstill. He could go no further. The dementors were swarming, dozens and dozens of them, and Hermione's heart seized.

Lucius Malfoy was going to die.

What he told her echoed in her mind. He had been willing to die so that she could get the students to safety. He'd dismissed it as a matter of practicality. As if the idea didn't bother him at all. As if his life was somehow less precious than hers, or anyone else's.

Hermione didn't believe that. She couldn't. The fact that he couldn't do some of the things that she could do didn't make him any less brave, or less loyal, for coming with her. It made him more so. And it had been bravery and loyalty, she knew. Lucius hadn't come here because it was the right thing to do. He'd come here so she wouldn't have to go alone.

Lucius Malfoy, you are wrong about so many things. You're wrong about me. Most importantly, you're wrong about yourself.

I hope, one day, I can explain that to you.

"Lucius!" She called, and he turned. She could barely see him through all the dementors. There was no time. She shoved the Joy Stone into his free hand.

The second the Stone left her, the awful cold snapped around her with a painful force. Her breath came out in a fogged gasp.

The despair. It was a current all around her, tearing off chunks of her strength, her will. It would feed on her until there was nothing left.

Hermione refused to give up. Desperate, she clung to that certainty, that hope, she'd felt only moments ago. Her parents. Her friends. Old and new. Him. She held them up as a shield, forged them into a sword. The otter held strong.

In Lucius' hand, the Stone burst into light. A dementor surged forward and tried to wrench his face upwards. Others hung above him. Lucius didn't seem to care. His gaze fell downwards, downwards, to the Stone, as though transfixed-

A few dementors still came for her. She fought to keep her memories alive. The struggle was brutal, but she remembered. The otter scattered one, two, three dementors. They regrouped. Did they understand that without the Stone she couldn't hold them back forever?

Her lungs struggled for air in the deathly cold. Her fingers were growing numb on her wand.

A flickering light pulsed around the edges of her vision. Incredibly, paradoxically, she heard the sound of laughter. She turned and saw-

Lucius Malfoy held the Joy Stone up high. His hair and cloak snapped in a fierce wind. The Stone was singing like a struck crystal gong, and his face was filled with hope, peace, and wonder.

His eyes fell upon her and he cried, "I FEEL YOUNG!"

Between his fingers, the rays of light from the Joy Stone were searing now, molten. Where it fell upon the dementors, they were scoured away. Not sent running, or banished, just… gone. The waves of delight coming from the Stone were too much, overwhelming, and Hermione pinched her eyes shut and tried to stifle the maniacal laugh growing in her belly-

When she opened her eyes, the dementors were gone. Lucius was crumpled, motionless, on the ground. There were leaves in his hair. He was laughing breathlessly, eyes crinkled with mirth. He sounded exhausted.

Exhausted or not, he was alive. Thanks to him, to his reaction to the Stone, they had survived. The dementors were… dead. Elation and gratitude swelled up in her, and she swayed over to him and helped him up.

Slipping an arm around him to support him, she gently said, "Come on, let's go, not far now-"

It wasn't enough. Very soon, she realised the necessity of leading Lucius by the hand. She let go of him, just for a moment, to try to make sure they were going the right way, only to turn back and see him attempting to do a cartwheel, with a moderate degree of success.

She was able to get him to stop and kept leading him on, commiserating all the while. "Oh, it's so annoying isn't it? I'm really sorry about this, but it isn't completely finished, bound to be a few problems-" But Lucius didn't seem to be paying much attention to her, or to anything, and so she trailed off.

Hermione led him on, praying with every step she took that she would see the trees break and catch a glimpse of Hogwarts. But then, she was praying for a lot of things. Praying that everyone had been evacuated to Hogwarts in time. Praying that Minerva had gotten her note.

She busied herself with these thoughts to keep herself from thinking of the very immediate danger they were still in. Lucius could not cast magic, and she wasn't much better off. The Forest would be coming alive now, in its awful way. All manner of creatures would be emerging from their nests, realising the dementors were gone, and venturing out again… If any one of those things should stumble across her and Lucius or, worse, if more dementors came...

Best not to think about that.

But the trees did break, and she saw it. Daylight. Even more wonderful, she saw the castle. Timeless, welcoming, and safe.

By then, walking was almost more than Lucius could manage. He kept himself upright and sort of shuffled his feet forward, but Hermione had to do all the rest. He leaned on her, the thin huffs of his breath warm against her scalp. Her breath came red-raw and ragged in her chest. God, he was heavy. If only she could have trusted herself to lift him by magic, she would have done it. Drained as she was, she was terrified that she would only drop him.

Near the castle boundaries, Hermione saw them. A gaggle of teachers and Hagrid. They rushed to meet them. Overjoyed to see them alive. Concerned at their dishevelled and exhausted state. Minerva started talking about the bird she'd sent. Hermione couldn't keep her attention on the exact words. Keeping herself and Lucius standing was taking everything she had.

They led her for an interminable time, and when she next lifted up her eyes she saw that she was in the Infirmary. She did not let go of Lucius, not until Pomfrey convinced her that what he really needed was rest. Only then did Hermione release him to his bed and allow Pomfrey to convince her to take a sleeping draught herself. She didn't need it, but she took it anyway.

She fell into a deep sleep in the bed beside his, and did not wake until morning.

Okay SO. Firstly, really really hoped you loved this chapter as much as I did. Were you sweating at certain points? I know I was. Even so, this was honestly an absolute *joy* (get it, get it?) to write. Secondly, I got some bad news, some good news, and some more good news, so please listen up. Bad news first? Bad news first. I know I promised that next chapter, part three, would come a couple of days after this one. Unfortunately I'mma have to break that promise by the looks of it, and it may be more like 5-7 days. The first bit of good news is that the reason it might be a bit slow is because the next chapter is LONG. It's grown to 7k and it's not stopping any time soon. So when you get it in about 5-7 days time, it's probably going to be sitting around about the 8-10k mark. So you'll effectively be getting two chapters for the price of one. Pretty cool, right? The second bit of good news is that we are getting a Christmas chapter! Yay! I'm going to release it somewhere around the 22nd-23rd my time, as I know we have readers from various different time zones ect. I myself am in Australia so I hope this plan works out well for you guys. This way, you've got a bit more leeway as to when to read it and hopefully still have it feel like Christmas Day for you. Thank you very very much for reading the story so far. I really hope you guys stay safe and well. Let me know your thoughts for the chapter, and I'll see you in 5-7 days for part three!