A/N 1: You guys rock. So many lovely reviews, and plenty of adds and favourites on top of a great hit count - you all sure know how to spoil a writer. Thank you, especially to the guest reviewers, whom I can't PM to thank personally.
A/N 2: This is a short chapter. Our heroine needs some time to breathe - and plan - before she can join our (anti)hero at Hogwarts. The next update will be extra hefty to make up for the lightness of this one.

Chapter 4

"You okay, Hermione?"

"Yeah, Gin, I'm fine."

"You keep going off on your own. Mum's been worrying about you." Her friend nudged her elbow gently. "I have, too. Where do you go?"

"I walk," Hermione answered simply.

"Mum doesn't want you to anymore, you know. She says you'll be captured."

"I already was captured. They don't want me anymore, believe me."

"Are you okay, 'Mione?"

Hermione felt herself shrugging.

"I miss my parents, and Harry and Ron," she answered after a long moment.

"Have you heard from them?"

"From my parents? Yes, almost daily."

Silence. Ginny got up from the bed Hermione had kept in her room by silent mutual agreement. It had been weeks since she'd come out of the fire in the kitchen, and Hermione still wasn't used to being here again. Everything was different in the Burrow, despite the same furnishings, arrangements, and people. Everything had changed.

"Should we go over it again?" Ginny asked as she stacked her new school books neatly next to her trunk.

"Absolutely," Hermione answered.

"Okay," Ginny said, suddenly businesslike. "My first move is to round up Neville, Luna, Parvati, Lavender, Susan, and Michael." She snorted before continuing haughtily, "Not that I want to see that toe-rag again anytime soon, but I'll rise above my disgust and get him to come with us into a compartment."

Hermione nodded, and did her best to smile. Ginny lookayed at her for a moment too long before continuing smoothly.

"Luna will see to the younger Ravenclaws, while Michael lookays after the older ones. Susan will re-recruit Ernie after he's done with the other prefects, and they'll split Hufflepuff the same way. Neville will be in charge of the first, second and third year Gryffindors, and I'll be in charge of the rest. Lavender and Parvati will run interference. We will tell no one. We will recruit no one else. But we will watch over everyone. We will meet in the Room of Requirement that night after the feast at nine o'clock."

"Perfect," Hermione said. "In the meantime, I will be meeting with the Head Boy – "

"Head Bastard," Ginny interrupted.

"Ginny," Hermione reprimanded through a suppressed smile. "I'll be meeting with Malfoy and the prefects. I will toe the line and say nothing inflammatory in either direction. I will stress that calm should be kept, and that no one should be persecuted on the train. I will split the prefects to patrol the Express, but I will ensure that any former members of the DA are paired up with Malfoy's people – "

"We'll call them the DEs," Ginny interrupted again. "Short for –"

"Death Eaters, yes, I get it," Hermione said, smiling for real this time. Ginny smiled back, but was soon uncharacteristically serious.

"You're worried, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes. But we'll do fine," Hermione said firmly. "You, Neville, Luna, Parvati, Lavender, Ernie, Susan, Michael and I will discuss the DA's next moves in the Room of Requirement. We will stress the need for secrecy above all, and we will organize slow but steady recruitment starting with previous members and working our way outwards from there."

Ginny huffed an irritated breath, and Hermione raised her eyebrows.

"Come on, 'Mione," she said, pleadingly, "we can at least put some stuff up –"

"No." Hermione was the one to cut her friend off this time. "No. We are not going to graffiti the halls. We're not putting up recruitment posters. We're not revealing ourselves in any way. The DA has always been about safety above anything else, and that's what it will be this year. Not insurrection – protection."

"Wanna put that on a button?" Ginny muttered mutinously.

"No, as that would fall under the revealing ourselves category."

Ginny stuck her tongue out, and Hermione smiled grimly.

"Anything else?" Ginny asked, starting to fold the school robes piled at the foot of her bed.

"Yes. We'll want to subtly advise everyone to walk in groups, and to not break curfew. We don't want to give Professor Snape's people anything to hit us with."

"That asshat," Ginny said, suddenly fierce. "I'd give anything to hit him with a –"

"Professor Snape," Hermione said firmly, enunciating every syllable, "is not an asshat, nor a greasy bat, nor a bastard. He is our Headmaster."

"But –"

"No," Hermione said. "No. He is our superior at Hogwarts and we will show him respect." She grinned at Ginny's scowl, and patted the younger girl on the shoulder. "And we will undermine, frustrate, and generally fuck with him in every way we can manage. Only subtly."

Ginny grinned back.

Hermione checked over her things once more before settling down in front of her twinned parchment. It had gone from white to black right on schedule, and so she tapped it with her wand and waited.

"Terrier and stag reporting for duty," scrawled the words across the parchment before disappearing.

"Otter ready and waiting," Hermione wrote back, completing her half of the code. It indicated that she was ready to correspond in real time, and that she was on her own. "How are you boys?"

"We're fine, but we miss you like crazy." The writing had changed from Harry's untidy scrawl to Ron's wide, loopy hand. "It's dull as tombs without you around, you know."

"Same here," she wrote back, smiling.

They exchanged a few more pleasantries before she decided to get down to business. Ginny was still downstairs at the dinner table, and Hermione was sure she'd be heading up to their room any time now. She wrote hastily.

"Not much time on my end, so I'll jump right into it. I updated the Order on my plans for Hogwarts last night. They were amenable, after they finally gave up asking questions. Hagrid and McGonagall are on board, and they'll work on the rest of the staff. How was the Ministry today?"

"Good on McGonagall," Ron wrote back. "Knew she'd jump right on."

Harry took over: "Ministry was boring, as usual, but I think I've really nailed down the timing of the loos in the morning. It'll be tight, but we should be able to get Ron and me Polyjuiced quick enough. I think I'll stick with your idea of improvising my 'victim.'"

"That's good," Hermione answered, running quickly over their plan to infiltrate the Ministry once more. She and the boys had been developing it for most of August, and she felt her stomach do somersaults at the thought of them finally putting it into action. "When do you think you'll go in?"

"Tomorrow," Harry wrote promptly.

Hermione grimaced and shook her head.

"No, Harry. The Hogwarts Express leaves tomorrow and everyone at the Ministry will be on high alert for stunts of any kind."

"Come on," he scrawled back. "We've got to get a move on."

"Just wait an extra day, Harry. Ron agrees with me, I'm sure."

She smiled as she pictured Harry's green eyes flashing in indignation. Sure enough, the next hand that wrote was Ron's.

"He's stormed off, but I think it's because he knows you're right."

"Good. Be careful, Ron. Don't let him do anything rash. Stick to the plan, okay?"

"I know. You too, though. You're going right into the lion's den tomorrow."

"The snake pit, you mean?"

"Ha. Just be careful."

"You too. Don't forget to pack the beaded bag and bring it with you. All of the original supplies. And don't forget that the portrait of Phineas Nigellus is in there – make sure you never say anything important while the bag is open."

"I know, I know."

"I'm not sure when I'll be able to talk again from Hogwarts. I'll want to get a feel for the new regime before risking it."

"Right, just watch your back, Hermione, like we would."

Hermione swiped at the tears running down her cheeks as she heard movement on the stairs outside the room.

"Got to go. Love you both. Xoxo."

That night, after Ginny's breathing had evened out, Hermione sat upright in bed. She called up her Mind's Eye and was pleased when the interface appeared immediately, fully-formed and ready to go. In the past month, it had grown both in size and complexity, and Hermione smiled inwardly as she examined the neatly-stored emotions, the files of memories, the containers of lies, and the sharp blade for Intercision. The latter always made her shiver, and so she pushed it away, towards the back and out of sight, where it glimmered faintly. She carefully called up her memory of the evening's written conversation with the boys and filtered her emotions out. She distilled the most sensitive information – the infiltration of the Ministry, and the Horcrux they hoped to retrieve therein – and packaged it neatly in an iron box and put it at the far end of the storage room, back near the blade.

Throughout the month of August that back area had grown from a small trunk-sized space to a large, dim storage closet and Hermione tried not to think of the ramifications of cutting off such a large part of her mind, should such a thing become necessary. She quickly placed the anxiety, fear, and disgust into their separate compartments, and came forward into the well-lit, more cheerful area, and looked at the damage her sojourn with the Dementors had left. It took the form of gaps, not in memories nor in emotions, but in the surroundings, in the infrastructure of the Mind's Eye itself. Despite her immersive study of Escutcheon – she must have read the man's book at least a dozen times by now – she could not distinguish the parts of her interface that held her soul. She'd tried, of course, to construct such an infrastructure, but such things didn't come easily to certain witches and wizards, as Escutcheon pointed out. Apparently she was one of those who would have to find the soul in the details, slowly but surely, and hope to Merlin that she didn't have to Intercise anything before she figured it out.

Hermione sighed and let her Mind's Eye disintegrate slowly. She took her full dose of Veritaserum and was pleased when she felt no pull to tell any kind of truth. The last thing she saw before she fell asleep was an image of Professor Snape, looking into her eyes as green flames enveloped them both.