"What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone."

― Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems


Hermione drove in silence down the long lane to the castle. It turned out of the woods to wind through the small valley beyond, an avenue of bare-leaved oaks standing sentinel either side of the driveway. As they drove, Tom was preoccupied by the stinging imprint of her lips against his. They'd been soft as rose petals, and just as like to make him bleed. How desperately she'd returned his kiss for a single, glorious moment, her body melting against his, a moment that might have been seconds or might have been hours or might have been forever.

A moment that made him fear her for the strange power she had over him - and yet - in all seventeen years and three hundred and sixty three days, Tom couldn't remember a single occasion where he'd felt more. Better, worse, yes but never so much.

I killed him, she'd said.

Mine, he'd thought. Mine mine mine.

Hermione had pulled away from him too soon for his body, not soon enough for his racing mind. Her face had been shuttered ever since, retreating somewhere he couldn't follow.

But if he'd once been angry with himself for being so human, so ordinary, as to be distracted by a girl at least, he thought, at least he knew this one was remarkable. Efficient and calm and powerful and clever and so pragmatic - he could only wonder at her.

He eyed the parkland stretching either side of the avenue of oaks, ancient trees planted at what he assumed was an aesthetically pleasing distance, the grey-green of the winter grass on the hills in the distance, the arching woods that curved around the boundary, the tall winged horses that indicated this was a place of magic, the narrow valley itself, wooded down to the lake.

As they curved back around the hill the castle came into view. They crossed over a wide stone bridge, high above the wide stretch of water that seemed half-lake half-river. As the car drew up in front of the door he felt a surge of anticipation: finally finally he would see the roots of this strange, unpredictable witch, this witch that had him tied in the same knots he despised in others.

It was a stunningly beautiful place, even to Tom's eyes. The castle itself was smaller than he'd imagined and quite unlike the photographs and paintings of Muggle citadels.

It was perched on a rocky outcrop above the water, half-built into the cliffs behind it, with three towers. The warm stone grey of its walls was broken up by mullioned windows. At the far corner perched the tallest spire, gazing out over the wide band of water below.

That water, all around, was its most extraordinary feature - nothing to do with the building itself however charming it was. The river he'd thought was a moat widened into a lake that lapped at the rocks. A thunderous waterfall poured down from the steep cliffs, parting around the castle with what could only be magic. A balcony floated out of one of the towers, almost catching the spray from the falls. It didn't seem attached to anything at all. As he looked closer, there were other signs of magic. Trees with strange red and gold leaves. He caught a glimpse of exotic flowers peeking over a stone wall leading back the way they'd come and then retreating. It seemed to be some sort of walled garden. A stone griffin prowled along its top, turning to snarl back at a sulking dragon, which spread its granite wings menacingly from its perch on top of the second-tallest tower.

Hermione parked the car on a sweep of rock in front of a set of stone steps that lead up to the entrance's great, carved wooden doors, and turned to him. "Don't mention what happened in the woods to my father, alright?"

His eyebrows rose up.

"I don't want to worry him... he'll blame himself," she explained.

Tom nodded, surprised. It was her father's fault she'd been attacked - why wouldn't she tell him? He considered the correct response.

"Are you alright?" he selected, and was pleased to see her eyes soften. He felt a surge of some strange muchness in his chest, a pleased, possessive ache.

"Yes, I think so. Sorry I, um, you know. About back there." She turned away awkwardly, opening the door as she spoke. "Anyway, let's go in. You must be hungry."

He was hungry, now that she mentioned it and, remembering the cakes she'd sent, he clambered out of the car more eagerly than was perhaps wholly dignified.

"This is amazing," he told her, gazing back up at the house.

At last, a smile tugged at her mouth.

"It's something," she agreed. The doors swung open without a touch and Tom felt familiar envy rise up in him. He should have been born somewhere like this. He should have had a childhood where magic was normal, a great house filled with impossible and extraordinary things, a family to be proud of, instead of a bleak institution where the dregs of Muggle London were sent to be kept out of the way and then unceremoniously turfed out a few years later.

Swallowing the bitter taste jealousy left, he followed her into the house.

The first thing he noticed was the relentless dedication to Christmas: a flurry of snow was enchanted to fall from the ceiling in one corner, a tree bearing what he now knew were the hallmarks of Hermione's decorative taste stood gold and merry in another. A great fireplace dancing with tall flames took up much of the left-hand wall, stockings hung either side, an ancient-looking dog asleep in front of it. The dark, paneled walls were hung with richly coloured tapestries and despite its size it was oddly welcoming. As they walked in, the dog staggered up revealing its immensity. Tom paused warily.

"Hello boy," Hermione said, patting its great head. It was half as high as she was and Tom wondered why on earth you'd want such a dangerous beast in the house. The only canines he'd ever really encountered had been savage things: guard-dogs who had a taste for the ankles of small orphan boys stealing apples, and territorial strays that hunted London's rats. "This is Tom."

He inched forward, reluctant to show her that he did not like dogs. Especially dogs this size. It belonged in a field, with the other horse-sized creatures.

Gingerly he tapped its head and was rewarded with a smile from his hostess.

"His name's Alhabor. Let's go and put your bag upstairs - I'll show you your room - and then get something to eat. Father will be in his work room - I did remind him you'd be coming but if he's caught up in something we'll have to go and kick him out."

Taking a last look at the tapestried entrance hall, and backing away from the great wolf-hound, Tom followed Hermione, thinking how she fitted this strange, remote, magical castle with its unexpected warmth.

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"This is your room," Hermione said, pausing in front of yet another wooden door. He was pleased to see her cheeks had a faint tinge of pink. She wasn't as collected as she was trying to seem, having him in her house.

He pushed open the door and took in the room. A vast window spread across the far wall, drawing his eye out and across the water. He dropped his bag by the bed and went to look out. Tom was often indifferent to the beauty of nature but he gazed, stunned, at the great impossible drop down to the lake. They'd climbed the steps up to the house, and one flight of stairs inside - and yet somehow they had ended up at the top of the house. Falling away below him was a sheer precipice of some two hundred feet. The lake, reflecting the setting sun in its burnished glory, spread away to the west, licking at the dark curve of the trees on the other side of the valley.

Hermione hovered nervously in the doorway.

"There's a bathroom through there," she pointed at an ancient oak door. It was low enough that he'd have to duck. "If you need to find anything the castle will... um, you know how the stairs and things move around at Hogwarts? It's like that, only it's helpful instead of making you get lost. Usually, anyway."

He repressed a sigh of resentment at the sheer, ridiculous, wonderful magic of this house, following her out of the room, and back down the staircase they'd come up. Despite taking what appeared to be the route back to the entrance hall, they turned instead into a little sitting room-cum-library.

Its square bay window looked out over the waterfall at the back of the house, still reflecting the dying light from the sun. It formed a small plunge pool in the rock before gushing down again to the lake, foaming white and green, a silver barked weeping birch just clinging to the edge, trailing its spiny branches in the water. The window had a door built into it, almost totally disguised, which seemed to lead onto a veranda. The room itself was neat and tidy, but full of books and paintings and yet more tapestries. A warm fire crackled under a great stone mantle. A little table in the window was heaped with tidy piles of Hogwarts textbooks and neatly rolled scrolls of parchment. This, it was immediately clear, was Hermione's room. Not her bedroom, but where she worked perhaps, and read and spent her time.

"Please make yourself comfortable. I'll be back in a minute."

She vanished and Tom examined the room in more detail. Some things leapt out - a gramophone, a painting of Hogwarts, more curious pictures that might be Muggle but he didn't know, various bottled potions with her neat writing on the labels, endless books. He paused to look and was less surprised than he once might have been to see three shelves of Muggle works. He spotted the odd sign of her childhood tucked away - some children's books, a few magical toys he supposed had been favourites, textbooks she wouldn't have looked at in years, books to practice reading and writing, languages and three editions of Hogwarts, A History.

Hermione came back in holding a tray piled up with food and set it down on the table in the window, pushing books out of the way. The sun had finally slipped away behind the wooded hills on the west side of the valley and it was growing dark outside, although it wasn't yet four o'clock.

"I hope you're hungry," she told him. "Our elf and I have very different ideas about the appropriate amount of food for an afternoon snack."

Tom watched as she crammed four cakes, a plate of cream buns, two stacks of little sandwiches, and a plate of scones with thick yellow cream and a dark purpley jam onto the table. He slid into a chair.

"Tea or hot chocolate?" she asked. "Buttons has provided both."

Tom sensed an old argument and took the opportunity to ask about this most secret relationship of wizards.

"Tea please. Doesn't the elf just do what you tell him?"

She pushed the pot and a cup and saucer towards him.

"Just... help yourself. To everything. And yes, technically, although I think it depends on the elf and the family they... um belong to. Buttons knows we'd never punish him, and the clothes he came with are long hidden in the castle so even if I wanted to I probably couldn't free him. He won't even let me in the kitchen usually," she huffed. "If I try to help he just sort squeaks mournfully and wonders what went wrong in my upbringing."

There was no book about house-elves, no way to find out how one might be acquired. They did seem useful, although he could hardly have one in Little Hangleton. Asking those sort of questions was usually a quick way to find yourself labelled a Mudblood no-nothing and Tom repressed the urge to fire off a dozen curious questions.

After weeks of war-rations, the food was quite astonishingly delicious. Tom had eaten three sandwiches, two scones, and a piece of bara brith before he noticed that Hermione had hardly touched a thing. Instead, she was blowing gently on a cup of tea, staring out at the darkening waterfall.

She was, he thought, unusually pale.

"You should eat something," he suggested, more gently than usual.

Tending to the younger children had been a hated chore, and indeed had left him almost unable to hear a baby or toddler cry without feeling a visceral urge to kill it, but he did know that feeding them usually fixed the worst of any shock. And she was, probably, in shock. The events of that afternoon had fled to the back of his mind in the face of her magical home, her searing kiss but he supposed shock would be a natural reaction to being attacked and killing someone.

She nodded, but didn't pick anything up.

(His thoughts skated past the memory of his own shaking break-down after -)

"You look terrible - paler than the Bloody Baron. I think you're in shock. Go on, you should have something to eat."

She looked tremendously surprised and a little offended, so he added, "Please."

As he'd expected, she softened and took a sandwich.

.

"Why did you do it?" he asked, when she'd eaten something and the colour had returned to her face. He'd wondered, because it seemed so unlike her, so unlike her warmth and kindness, her desire to see good in things that seemed so worthless to him. Then suddenly there had been that other her, ruthless and pragmatic, eyes as cold as when he'd first met her.

She didn't pretend to misunderstand.

"I won't be hunted," she said at last, her voice low. Her dark fathomless eyes swept to meet his. "It's a terrible existence, to always be waiting and waiting for something to catch you."

Her haunted gaze told him he'd been right, back in the woods, right to assume she'd been taken. The pieces of her were beginning to make sense and yet instead of satisfying him he thirsted to know more.

"The compass," she said, before he could press her, "it points to danger right?"

"It's more specific than that."

Hermione ran a hand through her hair, which had half-escaped the bounds she'd put on it.

"Danger to the wearer? Perhaps life-threatening danger?"

"Warmer," he agreed, mildly amused at how quickly she'd recovered her spirits in the face of an intellectual challenge.

She pulled it out from under her shirt, the chain sliding over her collar, and examined it. He wondered how long it would keep the warmth from her skin.

"The most dangerous thing. It's a compass so it would point to the most dangerous threat to the wearer?"

"That's much well it. It came with a little note about its history, I'll give it to you later."

"You're a prat," she told him mildly. "But thank you. It's a wonderful present."

"You're welcome," he said, stiffly. He didn't want to get into an oh no your present was wonderful too conversation and so he was grateful when she continued.

"And thank you for this afternoon. I wasn't prepared - so stupid of me. Can you tell me a little more about the people trying to take me?"

Her fingers ran along the gold chain, eyes distant.

"Yes, but not tonight. We'll talk about it tomorrow before I go," Tom said firmly.

Kidnappers usually didn't expect their victims to fight back - or for the captors to be returned one dead and one soon to die, so he thought her message would be quite effective in stopping a second attempt, although it was possible they would retaliate.

"Alright," she murmured. "Shall I show you where Cerdic is?"

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Cerdic Dearborn's workroom was a vast hall built into the rock beneath the castle. An enchanted window gave the appearance of light shining through stained glass, stopping the room from feeling oppressive. But the air was tinged with damp despite a fire blazing at the far end, and the walls, carved with symbols, looked clammy. It was extraordinary despite that, filled with cauldrons, piles of half-transformed crystals, shelves bearing jars of powder in a dizzying array of colours, and stacks of scrolls and ancient-looking vellum texts. A great jar the same height as Tom stood against one wall, a tree-like structure inside the colour of blood. Shining gold lumps were carelessly piled in one corner, glimmering enticingly in the firelight, a taunting, garish reminder of Hermione's value to those unwilling to work for their own gold.

"Tom m'boy!" Cerdic greeted him enthusiastically, looking up from a great book half the size of the table it was laid out on, a richly coloured pentagram occupying most of the open page. "How are you?"

Hermione left him in the mysterious room with her father tasking Tom with making sure they both were upstairs before eight o'clock because they had guests.

Cerdic Dearborn was an excellent companion. He was both engaging and informative on a subject few had the privilege to learn about in person, and the hours before dinner wiled away far quicker than any of his recent Hogwarts lessons. Tom found himself intellectually challenged for once - and wishing Hogwarts took a more cerebral approach rather than focussing on the practical application of magic.

When he said as much to Cerdic the man snorted and gestured his hands, which came alarmingly close to a large bottle full of some strange purple fire.

"That's not how it works in our world. They teach you the basics and expect you to either be satisfied or go it alone. Sometimes I think it's deliberate - a way to stop Wizards and Witches learning too much. Most of 'em never access a fraction of their power. Just do the bare minimum of spells and then they're off to push paper for the Ministry and whatnot. Most folk seem happy enough like that, and too much magic can be a dangerous thing, I suppose."

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Later, Tom found his way back to his room with disappointing ease. He'd been hoping for a chance to snoop, but the castle led him to his room where he changed into smarter robes. Hermione had apologised for the necessity, but he didn't mind. He liked the traditional robes. They made him look like he felt - powerful, belonging.

Wandering out of his room, carrying a bottle of wine he'd brought for Cerdic, and wondering where Hermione would be, Tom saw an archway down the hall that he was fairly certain hadn't been there earlier. Going through it took him to a walkway, almost a bridge, with windows either side that revealed a courtyard to the left and the steep drop to the lake on the right. The water reflected the quarter-moon rising from behind the mountain. There was a single door at the end, the dark wood cut thick and heavy. It looked ancient, with swirling, starry symbols scudding across it as though blown by some unfelt breeze. When he pressed against it he felt a rush of magic tingle up his arm, and stepped back in surprise.

A moment later the door swung open, inviting him onto the tiny landing with a spiral staircase. He assumed he was in one of the towers - perhaps the one at the far end of the castle.

A strange clacking sound from below drew his interest and so he chose to go down instead of up. The room he found was round, notably chilly compared to the rest of the castle. It seemed to be a disused schoolroom: largely bare with a few stacks of books and two old desks pushed together out of the way. But its most notable aspect was the eight pairs of knitting needles floating in midair, weaving khaki yarn into thick socks of various degrees of completion. He stared at them, baffled.

It was jarring - quite bizzare - not least because the clack of the needles reminded him of Mrs Cole. The needles weren't syncronised with each other. Instead, they seemed to be on some sort of rota and yes, that was right, he saw as a large box floated around to the a finished pair. The thread tied itself up and dropped down into the container, which zoomed off to wait for the next pair to fall in.

"What...?" he muttered.

"Oh, there you are," Hermione said, making him jump. He hadn't heard her shoes over the clacking racket of knitting needles.

He turned and felt his stomach flip, the beat of his heart change, as though his blood had thickened in his veins and it suddenly had to work harder. Her dress was green and gold, her dark hair smoothed, flowing loose.

But she looked unusually bashful, and, picking up on it as an escape, he gestured behind him.

"I was admiring your… factory."

"Yes, well, never mind that. Let's go downstairs and have a drink before dinner," she suggested, half-turning to go but he caught her arm gently, amused.

"Not until you explain this extraordinary set up. Why are you knitting socks?"

"It'sfortharmy," she hissed.

"Pardon?"

"They're for the army…" she said, concentrating very hard on something over his shoulder, cheeks as fully aflame as he'd ever seen them. "I read that the soldiers were getting chilblained feet and it's horribly wet this winter so… I thought I'd send some socks."

He stared at her.

"Magic makes things so much easier," she was babbling– again – and he wondered how nervous she got underneath that composed image, "so I feel guilty sometimes, you know? And if there's a little temperate or impervius charms woven into the yarn, who's going to know?"

"You are an extraordinary person," he said eventually, confronted again with her unusual goodness. "Although I feel obligated to tell you that you're wasting your sympathies."

"I don't think I am. Before Christmas I went to Muggle London with my cousins and it was rather eye-opening."

Tom bit back his jealousy at the thought of her spending time with anyone else, and tried to imagine her in the Muggle world. It was a strangely easy fit.

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Tom, with practiced insouciance, handed the bottle of wine he'd picked from his grandfather's cellar to Cerdic, who eyed the label approvingly.

"You can certainly come back," he said, eyeing the label with a quick flick of his eyes.

He caught a flash of surprise on Hermione's face.

I can do it too, he thought, triumphantly. He was not just some poor orphan boy, to be thrown out with the bathwater.

Both Hermione and Cerdic looked up at the same time, as though they'd heard a sound.

"That'll be Dominic coming through the wards," Cerdic said, handing Tom a glass of champagne. "Haven't seen him for years. He's an interesting fellow, bit of an historian."

"I've never met these people," Hermione explained to Tom as Cerdic went off to welcome his friend. "But I am assured they are interesting. His friend wants to study the castle's foundations. I can't think why he didn't come in daylight, but here we are."

She looked much better than she had earlier that day. Colour had reignited her face. Her eyes were warm, her smile ready - and yet there was some barrier she'd erected between them. He noticed it in the subtle way she avoided his gaze, the pinking tinge of her cheeks when she did meet his eyes, the furrow in the brow when she thought he wasn't looking, the light, polite patter of the questions she sent him (about how he'd found Cerdic's alchemy lab and oh she'd got that Arithmancy book out for him, don't let her forget, and where was he going tomorrow). She was trying to disarm him with charming nothings, but he was patient. He knew her well enough to know it couldn't last.

Eventually, Cerdic and his friends returned. They had a displeasingly handsome young man, obviously a son, in tow, behind a plump witch with the most enormous pink-clad bosom and a short, thin bearded man with tanned skin, assessing green eyes and gold-framed pince nez.

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Dinner was delicious and luxuriant. There were pigeon breasts to start, followed by an enormous venison wellington, with mounds of roast potatoes and buttery vegetables and pools gravy so potent it was almost as rich as the red wine from golden goblets that never ran low.

The other guests, the Gonzagas, weren't especially interesting to Tom, and, sitting diagonally across from Hermione, he was able to watch her as she charmed her father's friend, watch the play of candlelight on her skin the pink flush in her cheeks, the way her sleeked hair grew yearned more and more for the wild as the evening wore on.

His attention remained focused on her through an especially boring conversation with Deodatus, the son, who was a few years older than Tom and who'd been educated at a magical school in Italy. This was the most interesting aspect of their conversation, and both he and Hermione rather grilled the young man. Magical schools guarded their secrets jealously. She didn't flirt with him, Tom was pleased to note, but it was obvious Deodatus had been brought along to meet her. He remembered Slughorn's description and wondered what other young men would be dragged to Wales to meet the alchemist's daughter.

The meal drifted on, and Tom was halfway through his bowl of trifle (laced with whiskey instead of sherry and full of succulent raspberries) when the reason for the Italian family's visit came up.

"We'll have a look after supper," Cerdic was assuring the thin historian.

"If it is a fae-fall I'll need to come back and study it at length, no?"

Tom sent an inquiring look over to Hermione, who explained. "Dominic thinks the waterfalls were built as protection against the fae, but the castle was built after the last of them had vanished."

"The fae?" he asked, fascinated. "I thought they were just a myth."

"Who knows?" Cerdic asked rhetorically, passing a bottle of golden pudding wine around. "Dominic is trying to answer the question, although as he believes in them I expect the study will be quite tremendously biased."

Hermione's father sent his friend a wicked grin.

"Nonsense. This castle is very special," Dominic said, turning to Tom. "All across Europe we find magical dwellings built near running water. All with some foundation that's more than a thousand years old – that's when the last fae were seen. Not so very far from here, in fact. Wales and Ireland were their last strongholds – most of them were killed by Roman wizards you see when that Empire was at full strength - but around here they lingered on for another thousand years."

"Rounded them up and then killed them – they were too powerful, see," Cerdic interjected. "Just like Muggles tried to do with us later on."

"When were the last sightings?" Hermione asked Dominic, a strange look on her face as though she'd made a connection none of them could yet follow.

"Not long after your school was built," the little man said gesturing enthusiastically. His passion for the topic was infectious.

"But Father the castle is more than a thousand years old – or your alchemical room is at least. I'm fairly certain it's mentioned in Perceval Dearborn's diaries."

"Aha!" Dominic exclaimed, looking at Hermione as though she were the Grail itself. "There you go! I knew it. The placement is too perfect."

"So little magical history is shared, I think it's terrible. Texts are kept and passed down in families so we miss so many connections and truths and what scholarship there is is reliant on the goodwill of owners – most people don't want to share their family secrets," Hermione said.

"Quite right," Cerdic commented dotingly.

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After dinner, when Cerdic had led Dominic and his family off to inspect the castle's foundations or something equally tedious, Tom followed Hermione back to the little drawing room they'd been in before dinner. It was the mirror of hers, but larger with with fewer books. They played chess for a while, drinking wine and talking of very little. The silence was heavy with the weight of all he wanted to say and do to her, the knowledge that mere hours ago they'd been pressed together, mouths melding and exploring, but he held back. The bond he felt – a bond of trust that he'd never felt before – gave him rare patience.

She was his. He was sure of it. He'd felt it in the brush of their mouths, in the way she'd turned to him when her tears came. And then Hermione looked up after moving a piece and he was look at her and if it was as if he couldn't drag his eyes back down to the board, she seemed equally as trapped in the moment, which stretched on until Tom felt vertigo, like he was on the edge of a great cliff deciding whether to jump or –

Voices carried down the corridor and Hermione's eyes flickered towards the door. The moment of possibility was broken.

The foundations were promising, Dominic told them. They sat for a while and then, later, as the family said goodbye Hermione handed him a little book.

"Don't lose that," she told him, smiling.

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When Cerdic had gone to bed, and Hermione's eyes were as drowsy as his own must have been, Tom allowed himself to touch her again. They were sitting side by side on a sofa and he brushed a lock of her hair, rebelling into waves now, that had fallen across her cheek.

"Earlier… why did you kiss me?" she whispered, her voice husky with brandy and sleep.

He just looked at her, and felt that sense inside that – unlike most people – she looked back, assessing, reading, seeing. It was irritating, therefore, that she had asked such a question.

Words seemed like wind and so he brushed his fingers along the exposed skin of her inside wrist, drawing them round it and down the back of her hand, which was warm and smooth under his fingertips as they brushed it, feather light. Her dark lashes fluttered, a breath escaping the soft rose of her mouth and he knew it was answer enough.

"I should go to bed," she said softly, pulling her wrist away. "What time is your train in the morning?"

"Not until eleven. I'll Apparate from here."

"Alright. See you in the morning. Goodnight."

He let her run away to her room, half-relieved for the respite from the great burning thing that lay between them, and half-aching to close the chasm.

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Thank you thank you thank you for the amazing response I've had for this story recently. It's been really exciting! Lots of new readers - welcome.

To the people who review every chapter as they read/write essay length reviews - please come over for dinner soon.