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31st October 2006

The lake was very still the day Tom Riddle came back.

The school had sent a carriage to collect Hermione, Harry, and two Unspeakables from the station and carry them up the long drive to the castle, and she could see the shining water through the vehicle's little window. It lay restful, reflecting the wild purples, reds, browns, golds, and greens of the Highlands in autumn, yet unstirred by by the breezes ruffling those colours.

It was Samhain, when the veil between this world and whatever it was that lay beyond was at its thinnest. It was the day when the souls of the dead could reach out and brush the earth. It was the day Hermione would keep her promise to Helena Ravenclaw and send her on to her next adventure.

She had been Hermione Granger Dearborn for seven years now. In that time she had founded a school and a university, and she had been the catalyst for several societal changes, though only a few were publicly linked to her. She'd set something bigger than herself in motion, and as they drove up to her old school she thought of her last visit to Riddle House, where she'd seen the scions of ancient families playing with those who were the first magic-wielder in their family. True change took time, but year by year Hogwarts reported fewer instances of blood-related bullying. One day, perhaps, the terms themselves would change: at Riddle House the terms Pure-blood, Halfblood, Muggleborn, and Squib were discouraged.

But, busy though she'd been, Hermione had never forgotten her promise to The Grey Lady. Nor, indeed, had the great and extraordinary life she'd chosen ever meant she had forgotten the other founder's heir whose soul was trapped in the castle.

Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die, Hagrid had told Harry long ago, confirmation of something she had suspected for years. They had destroyed Tom Riddle's Horcruxes and destroyed the created-body he'd used to house the scrap of him that had been left after he'd tried to kill Harry. But that didn't make him quite... dead. Destroyed, certainly, but not dead.

And now, today, as witches and wizards across the country openly celebrated around fires for the first time in three quarters of a century, she would release them both. What would happen after that was the subject of her deepest, most secret fears and hopes.

"Do you really think this will work, Archchancellor?" the Unspeakable said.

They only knew about her intention to send Helena on, of course. No one else had worked out that another heir lay in a liminal space. No one else could know that years ago Hermione had left a soul catcher down in the Chamber, its threads spun from a thousand silver memories. Memories of joy and love, of mothers holding their babies, memories from childhood, siblings playing, fighting, memories of first kisses and failed exams, memories that spun a web of what it meant to be human in all its depths and finest moments.

She didn't know if he would step back or forward, didn't know if he could, but she knew the only way he would ever feel enough remorse for his soul to heal was if he had the capacity to feel remorse in the first place. And that meant forcing it through all those things he had missed: the love and the laughter and the tears. To try to give him the empathy she believed his magic had deprived him of as an abandoned and unloved baby.

"Yes," she replied as politely as she could. "Otherwise I wouldn't have come all this way, would I?"

It had been some years since Hermione had been stricken with the old nerves, but her perfectionist anxiety had never quite left her and she did not want the option of failure, in front of the faculty and dozens of students, to be offered up on quite so shiny a platter. However, the Unspeakable didn't seem to pick up on the tension in her voice.

"It has never been done before," the Unspeakable commented fretfully, for the millionth time since Hermione had applied for permission to do the spell. Asking the Department had been calculated: unlike on Iðunna she couldn't do whatever magic she liked in Britain and the spell was blood-magic, though it was hardly what you'd call dark. She'd had to risk refusal, and it had taken years to persuade them.

But, she needed them there: not least because if (unthinkable, unhopable, and yet, if) Tom Riddle stepped back and not forward the Unspeakables would be able to say they had overseen the spell, overseen the creation of all the elements Hermione would use, had approved the theory.

A side-effect, they would say. Impossible to predict.

And Harry - well, Harry was there because he was the Master of Death, though he thought he was just representing the Ministry and helping out one of his oldest friends.

The lake was so still it was unnatural, she thought, as she pointedly glanced back out of the window to avoid the fretful banalities. Perhaps Hogwarts itself was waiting to be cut free from a thousand-year-old-bond that had long since worn out its use. Binding the old school to their bloodlines had no doubt seemed a fantastic idea a millenia ago, a way to keep it thriving and strong and safe. Now, though, with two lines ended, one fractured into weakness, and the last broken and mad, it seemed like the height of stupidity.

Hogwarts shouldn't have empty rooms, and crumbling ceilings, she had told them. I believe it is weakening every year.

But to cut it free from the chains of the past was no small thing.

"I am an expert in things that have never been done before," she said eventually, wishing she didn't have to have this audience. She should have come in secret and damn the consequences. "Have some courage, Number 57. If that even is your real name."

Harry was asleep, so he didn't have to try not to laugh at her sniping and ease the tension. Long nights looking after James had taken their toll. He never had quit the Aurors to play Quidditch for England, and now it was too late. But he had come to terms with it and married Ginny, unfettered by envy of her career. Now, James was there, anyway, and nothing else mattered to Harry. He was the most wonderful father, and seeing them all so happy lit her up with joy. And yet, sometimes, seeing the black-haired baby made a hollowness inside Hermione echo with something desperate.

At last the interminable carriage ride ended, and they clambered out into the cold afternoon air, Harry's hair more aggressively at odds with itself than usual.

"Welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Professor Granger-Dearborn. I am a tremendous fan of your work and we are so excited to see you perform this spell today." The speaker was a young witch in grey robes, whose face seemed to be enlivened beyond its usual limits.

"Professor Heartwood. Arithmancy," the woman added, with a slight stammer. Nerves, rather than a speech impediment, Hermione thought. "I took over from Professor Vector last year. The Headmistress said I might come and welcome you. It is such an honour to see you again."

"Ahh," Hermione's brow cleared as enlightenment dawned. "One of our first students, weren't you? I remember you now."

She shook the younger woman's hand, feeling old in the face of such eagerness, though their faces were equally unlined.

"Yes! Oh it was the most amazing -"

"Well, don't stand around there all afternoon, Heather," the familiar Scottish brogue cut through the younger woman's stammering as only Headmistress McGonagall's voice could, and despite her age, Hermione felt herself straighten up slightly. "Bring them in."

"Professor McGonagall," she said, taking the woman's hands in greeting. "What a pleasure. You're looking splendid."

"I hear you've come to break my castle." But the older woman was smiling. "Come on then. I'm afraid you've got quite an audience."

"That's quite alright," Hermione lied, with a warm smile. "I just hope I pull it off or the university's reputation will be in tatters."

They walked up into the all-too familiar entrance hall.

"We'll have a spot of tea in my office and you can tell me where you want to do it. Sunset, you said?"

"Anywhere is fine. I'm not sure how the castle will react, so I think it's best if the younger students at least are outside and behind shield charms."

McGonagall pursed her lips, but she nodded.

"See to it, Professor Heartwood," she ordered. "And you'd better go along as well Potter, don't skulk about over there. Go and distract them from missing out. Take these two with you," she added pointing at the Unspeakables who were loitering at a safe distance.

"We are here to oversee proceedings," 57 said officiously. Their partner had hardly said a word since they'd left London, leaving it up to this irritating witch or wizard to make a nuisance of themselves. "Auror Potter should also be present at all times."

McGonagall drew herself up, all ready to cut 57 down to size but Hermione stepped in. She needed them to be able to swear she had never left their sight, but couldn't look like she was acquisencing easily.

"If you really feel the need to take notes as we compare notes on running academic institutions then by all means, come along. Perhaps you'll learn something. But before that, I need to find Helena Ravenclaw."

She strode off towards Ravenclaw Tower, long red cloak trailing behind her.

After they'd found Helena's ghost, and had a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit in the Head's office, they all followed her back down the stairs to watch her set up.

Hermione marked out a triangle with the glittering powder the Unspeakables had watched her make over the last year. The powder itself was something she'd created with her Head of Potions, an extraordinary self-taught Chinese wizard, who'd fled his homeland after rumours of his magic spread in his village. It had been his invention, transmuting potions into powders that could be set alight, but Hermione had refined this one herself.

Inside the triangle she drew runes, in ink made of snake blood and ground, burned eagle feathers, for this great working of magic would draw on nearly all of her skills. Uruz first, to both harness and release power. Othala to dictate what power she was bringing up. Laguz to bring about a state of transition. Sowilo to guide the spirits.

Raidho to invoke the dead.

"Keep the main door open please," she said to a Prefect when she'd finished. Then she turned to the student volunteers, who'd flocked to the hall as she worked, lining the stairs and peering through doorways and from alcoves. This was to be a learning opportunity for them, part of the price of performing the spell at all.

"I need to be able to see when the sun is about to set. We need that period when day turns to night, you see."

Some students began whispering excitedly at her addressing them, some looked bored. Some of the wiser ones looked nervous.

"This spell is all about harnessing liminality. I'm going to break the old, worn out blood magic to let the Grey Lady pass on." She nodded to Helena's ghost, floating silently next to her. "It'll be very dangerous and I don't know how the castle will react so you must all be… vigilant. Then I have to tie that broken strand to something new. For that we're not really experimenting. I've done a form of it before, in Iðunna."

The spell was more sleight-of-hand than anything else but she'd done it wandlessly and on a huge scale, even for the students not in her direct line of sight. They gasped as they realised they were holding a parchment.

"That's when I'll signal you and I need all of you to read the words written on this parchment over and over. Keep reading until I tell you to stop."

She paused to let them read.

"Now, I know the Headmistress has already explained what we are planning to do here, and thank you for all volunteering to take part. To be safe I'll just go back over the outline. Instead of a tying the castle to a few individuals, we'll use the power of the student body as a whole. So no need to tie you all to it personally… it's just the ethos. I'll write up a better explanation for you when I know if it works. The parchment will cause a small paper cut, but the real dangers may come from Hogwarts itself. It's unlikely it will gently submit to the initial part of the ritual. If anyone is uncomfortable with that, please leave now."

"The sun should be dipping soon," Harry said, looking at his watch. "It's cloudy out there but I think we're about on time Hermione."

"Another minute."

"Before we start," Helena's thin, echo of a living voice drifted out of her, "I want to thank you all. This half-life has been a hell for me. I hope none of you choose to become a ghost. Remember me, at your time, and carry bravely on into the unknown. Whatever it is, it is better than this."

She turned to Hermione and added, so quietly only Hermione could hear, "And you, Lady Hermione. You are giving up your own forever today, I see. It is a good choice. Many men dream of eternal life, but it is no blessing. Thank you for what you are doing for me, and good luck."

The ghost was gladly stepping into whatever lay beyond, her millennium of torment at end, and yet Hermione still felt a pang of loss.

Without replying, she set the triangle alight and cut open her own hand, letting blood drip onto all three corners.

"Hogwarts, I offer you my blood as a Breaking," she said in Latin.

Wind whistled around their feet, as the ancient castle stirred. The flames rose up, higher, and the wind began to howl, blowing Hermione's long cloak around her legs. Helena stepped forward onto the point of the triangle closest to the door.

"Let me go," the ghost whispered desperately to the vast sense of awakening around them. It was not part of the spell, but magic was as driven by intent as much as it was by anything else. It would not hurt.

In response, the great stone floor cracked, Hermione, Helena, Harry and the blazing triangle on one side, the rest of the gathered masses on the other.

"Hermione," Harry yelled over the ensuring uproar, "is this meant to be happening?"

But she couldn't answer. Just as he finished speaking, stones began to fall from the ceiling and rise, careering and mad, up from the crack all at once, flying in all directions. And then the floor began to shake, and the walls with it. Screams pierced the din from outside.

Professor McGonagall stepped forward, her wand raised.

"Miss Granger!" she shouted, reverting to Hermione's former name in her panic, "I believe that is enough."

Hermione, fighting to hold a shield charm and work the great spell lost herself in her spell work for a moment, unweaving old threads, chasing them down. She blocked out the melee around her.

The castle was fighting back against the cut she had made in its magic, thrashing against her hold like a wild beast running with one foot in a broken trap. But, Hermione was not broken, and she grasped its will with her own.

I have brought you something better, she thought, on her knees now with the pain and exertion. No easy casting, this. Listen.

"Now," she called out, her voice sliding past the flying rocks and crouching to avoid the shouts and screams of others and slipping, low and reassuring in every ear.

First one voice, then ten more, then all the students and teachers were reading aloud the spell she had written for them. It was more an offering than a spell, in truth, for the castle had enough magic of its own to deflect anything forced upon it.

As one, hundreds of voices stood for themselves and for those that would follow, but it did not seem to be enough. It was full dark now, and the castle was fighting back. The torches went out, one by one. But most of the students knew the words now, and they kept going at her screamed order.

Then, right on cue, Harry stepped forward to the third point on the triangle she'd drawn on the floor and suddenly Hermione had the strength to keep going. Master of Death, though he pretended he wasn't.

Hermione focused all of her remaining power on the faculty and students, who gasped as one as the parchment cut their hands, then rose up and over the broken floor and into the fire. It blazed up and up and up to the ceiling, thirty feet above her head.

Hermione let the Philosopher's Stone fall into the centre of the flames. She was shielded from view by the fire itself. It was covered in blood, Tom Riddle's blood. She'd used half the vial to make the soul-catcher and she had saved half for this. If it didn't work she would likely not know until she died herself.

"Oh," Helena said softly as the last parchment caught light, and she stepped forward into nothingness.

As Hermione knelt to draw the final rune and end the ritual, a tall boy in a Hogwarts uniform stepped out of mid air from the exact place Helena had vanished. He was glowing with golden light for a moment, bright and lovely in the dim hall. It faded as he looked around confusedly for a moment, and then fell to the ground and began to scream.

She was frozen, hands shaking in shock. Her wildest dreams, the very depths of her longing, had come true. And now, only the reality of it was left.

"What have I done?" she whispered, and Harry gasped in recognition.

The spell began to slip from her, the castle shaking and she forced herself to draw the final rune, her vision blurred with tears. She whispered the spell to invoke it, sealing the promise and all around them the castle seemed to settle. Just like that the stones returned to where they had always been, the crack in the floor sealed itself, and the fire died down to ash.

She stayed kneeling on the floor, too tired to get up, Tom Riddle's screams shattering her brain. Around her she was vaguely aware of commotion, of students being cleared away to bed, of Harry taking charge.

"Hermione Granger Dearborn," he said, standing over her once Tom was silenced, bound, and on a stretcher, "You are under arrest for… for necromancy and… supporting Lord Voldemort."

She nodded, rising to her feet. His green eyes were hard and cold, and it stung but not so much as to stop the knowledge singing in her veins.

He was back. She had done it, done the impossible, and he was back.

"I need to handcuff you," Harry said and there was a faint hint of apology there.

She held out her hands but the cuffs wouldn't close around them.

"Stop it," he ordered, furiously. Other Aurors were there now, and they carried Tom away through the door and out into the night.

"It's not me. Oh. My diplomatic immunity. It's alright. I'll come quietly, Harry. Where have you sent him?"

"Azkaban," he replied grimly. "Which, coincidentally, is where I'm taking you."

.

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well, then.

Lots of you have hoped we'd end up here, one way or another. I always knew we would, and sharing it with you all is TERRIFYING. I'll try not to leave you on a cliffhanger for too long.

This chapter is dedicated to Bernd, who has never to my knowledge left a review, but likes forums and feels this story has grown too far beyond its premise and is dragging along going nowhere for the next 20 years. Happy New Year, Bernd!