Harry and Theo had left the soup on the burner, which was now burnt to the saucepan, breadcrumbs on the counter, and no note. With a sigh of irritation, she flicked off the stove and filled the pot with water; Harry could wash it properly when he came home.

They were nowhere to be seen on the ground floor; she raced back up the stairs and down the hall to Harry's room, pushing open the door and shielding her eyes, a measure which proved unnecessary. The covers were twisted around themselves, clearly displaying the empty hollow of a bed.

Rather than waste time trying to find them when it was clear the house was empty, she snatched the box of Floo powder from its shelf in the cupboard and barrelled into the living room.

"Auror headquarters," she said, sprinkling the green dust onto the fire and kneeling before it.

The familiar office materialised before her eyes, although it was emptier than usual. Only one man sat behind the reception desk—a trainee she had been introduced to only a couple of weeks before—shuffling a deck of cards and taking the occasional sip from a mug that she was willing to bet contained something much stronger than butterbeer.

She cleared her throat in an attempt to catch his attention and, when that failed, tried again.

"Excuse me," she said, with more than a slight bite in her voice, and felt a stab of satisfaction when he jumped and nearly fell off of his chair. "A little help, if you don't mind?"

"Sorry—I didn't hear you arrive."

"Obviously." She tried to channel her inner Snape; judging by the way he all but stood at attention, her attempt was succeeding. "I need you to get me a small team of Aurors—I think I've made a break in the Stonehenge case and need back-up."

"I thought the case was solved last night."

She resisted the urge to pop through the fire the rest of the way and strangle him. "No, that was the serial killer. This is different."

"Assembling a team when almost all of them are on holiday?" The expression on his face told her that this conversation was going to be a fruitless endeavour. "You must be from one of the bureaucratic departments—everyone says you lot are useless."

"I have evidence that there are people being imprisoned—"

"What kind of evidence?"

"Just a letter, but that isn't the point—the point is that you should be on your way at the slightest hint of something illegal. Your job is to stop people from getting hurt."

"And how am I supposed to tell whether or not the letter is a fake?"

For a moment, the only sound that broke the silence was the crackling of the fire, until Hermione decided that the question wasn't worth a response. It was probably a miracle that Reginald Barker could remember to breathe.

"I'm sorry," she said, plastering a sweet smile on her face and hoping that the effect wasn't lost in the green flames. "I didn't catch your name."

"Reginald," he said. "Reginald Barker."

"Reginald, you've been an Auror for, what? Two weeks?"

"Three," he said stiffly.

"After that stunning lack of judgment, I doubt you'll make it to four. Do you have any idea to whom you are speaking?"

He shook his head, traces of alarm showing in the whites of his eyes.

"In that case, I'm not going to tell you. It'll be so much more amusing when you read it on your release form—but if you don't want to be totally useless, would you mind owling Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley to tell them that they're needed at home for an emergency? And while your at it, I want you to dig out the Daily Prophet from earlier this week and study the photographs of the corpse at Stonehenge, and then very seriously consider whether you want to be responsible for another death like that."

Instead of waiting to hear his reply, she closed the connection and returned to the study and began rummaging through her bag. She came out with the mobile that her parents had given her for Christmas the year before last, and which she had promptly forgotten about.

Her laptop still had the instant messaging program she had installed in her initial fit of excitement and, rather like her mobile, had barely used; she opened it and logged in, glad that she had always used the same password for everything. It was the work of minutes to find instructions and set up her mobile to send text messages to someone online, and create a second account.

"I'm about to do something exceptionally stupid," she told Snape, beckoning him over, "and I need you to help me."

She rotated the screen so that he could see it from where he was standing, and he leaned forward.

"I think Amos Diggory is the murderer—the note was from Cedric, telling me that he found some incriminating documents in the house and thinks his father is holding people in his shed. I'm going to poke around to see if I can find anything conclusive. I haven't the faintest idea where Theo is, otherwise I would drag him along, and if there are people I don't want to wait for the genius behind the Auror reception desk to decide it's a good idea to pass the message on.

"This is a programme that will allow us to send messages back and forth immediately—I need you to sit here and watch it as long as I'm gone, and tell whomever comes home first where I've gone."

As she spoke, thunderous clouds built up in his eyes, sparking with unspoken fury. When she paused, he cut in, voice crackling.

"I've learned to expect nothing less than exceptional idiocy from Gryffindors, but this by far outweighs them all. You can't expect me to help you go to the house of a potential murderer alone—"

"I won't be alone, though. Not if you do your part."

"Can't you Floo for backup?"

"I just tried the Aurors—sodding useless group of people—and Mysteries is on holiday at the moment, which means I'd have to sell this house to get enough money to bribe them to do anything resembling work."

She shifted to match his pose—crossed arms, narrowed eyes—and stared him down until he let his hands fall and gesture helplessly towards her laptop.

"If you insist."

She bared her teeth in a feral grin. "Oh, I do."

—

Outside of the city, the sleet changed to snow that clung to the dead grass and swirled around her on the wind, making Hermione grateful for the extra layer the Invisibility Cloak provided. She Apparated to a point within sight of the Diggorys' house, and sighted out the shed, glad to see that the door faced away from the house—at the very least, they wouldn't be able to see her footprints by looking out.

She shifted the weight of Theo's camera, making the strap fit more comfortably on her neck, and dug through the bag, placing the contents she would need immediately in her coat pockets—a set of magically reinforced lock-picks for when Alohomora wouldn't do the trick. Before Apparating the rest of the way, she pulled her mobile from the other pocket and punched in her message with painstaking care: "Behind garden, going closer."

A moment later, she was smiling at his reply: "Idiot."

As she had suspected, the padlock on the door was warded against simple spells; she searched through the ring of picks until she found one that looked approximately the correct size. Recalling the months of lessons Theo had given her in the fine art of breaking and entering, she slid it in and used her wand to turn it with enough force to snap an ordinary scrap of metal.

She swore under her breath when it came out twisted with heat, and, with a quick glance over her shoulder, lowered the hood of the cloak so she could work more freely. After it became clear that the same would happen to any of them, whether or not they fit, she chose one of the key blanks and warmed it until it was malleable, letting it form inside the lock.

This time, it turned effortlessly, complete with a satisfying click; the door creaked as she pulled it open, and was followed by the sound of her gasp.

For a moment—several moments—the only sound she heard was the roaring of her own blood. The crunching of footsteps on snow reached her ears too late for her to raise her wand—she could only pull the hood up and duck, hoping he would miss and buy her enough time to escape.

The jet of red light caught her left side and sent waves of numbness spreading out from where it hit.

—

The tinny ring of her mobile dragged her back into consciousness, and sent her fumbling through her pockets.

"It's done that about five times, now," said a boy's voice in the corner. "I don't suppose that means you'll be able to ring someone up to come rescue us, does it?"

She held up a hand as she clumsily tried to navigate the unfamiliar buttons.

Five rings—she'd promised Snape she would message him every ten minutes… Her brain worked sluggishly as she tried to guess how long it would have taken him to panic, until it occurred to her that she would be able to check the time on her mobile.

Just after half-four told her she'd been in the shed for just over fifteen minutes. She selected the most recent message and sent a reply without reading it: "Dig. definitely did it. Have been captured, am in the shed, send help."

"With any luck, that will have done the trick. I'm Hermione Granger—and you are?"

"Nick Littlecombe—there's a girl here named Lucy, but I think she's asleep right now." The total lack of reaction to her name told her that he was almost certainly Muggle.

Hermione shuffled towards the corner from which his voice was coming, and held open the mobile as a makeshift torch. To her surprise, the boy was almost full grown—at least sixteen, with the beginnings of a heavy build, and sandy hair that hung in unwashed locks: the pitch of his voice was probably more from terror than anything. Shackles glinted on his wrists and ankles, and when she flashed the light in the sleeping girl's direction, she saw the same.

"How long have you been in here, Nick? Do you know?"

He shrugged, casting long shadows in the green light. "My mobile died about a day after being put in here, but judging by the meals, about four days? Lucy has been here about a day longer than me, if that helps?"

She counted back—his reasoning dated Lucy's imprisonment on the twenty-third of December, two days after the Stonehenge killing, and about a day before Snape had turned up at their door.

"You were kidnapped on Christmas Eve, then?"

He nodded.

"Can you tell me what time?"

"Two in the afternoon."

Which explained the Diggorys' terse silence at Christmas dinner—they had already known the resurrection had gone wrong, and already had a backup plan—or two—in place.

The mobile rang again, and she read the message eagerly–"Potter and Weasley not back yet. Going to get police if you're not back soon"—as she forced her mind to race through their escape options. It was beginning to occur to her that she could well be dead before Harry and Ron so much as found out where she had gone, and it was with shaking fingers that she replied, "No, don't want Muggles hurt. Have two children with me in shed." Before she sent it, she added the afterthought of, "If not back soon, use owl in Harry's bedroom to send message."

She forced herself to breathe deeply as the message sent, then snapped the mobile shut, finding the camera strap around her neck.

"Have you got anything we can use as a torch?" she asked. "I have a camera, and I want pictures to prove what I've found, but I'm not sure if I broke it in my fall."

If she had, she was fairly certain Theo would kill her.

"There's a fixture in the ceiling, but the bulb has burnt out."

"All right," she said, thinking. "I have some lock picks that I'm going to use to get these cuffs off, and then you're going to help me find a replacement bulb. Do you know how often Am—the man who's holding you here checks in on you?"

"The first two days, it was noon for lunch, and around half-five or six for dinner."

"Which gives us about an hour—the first sign of movement outside, and I need you to at least pretend to put them back on."

He nodded and she handed over the mobile, and retrieved the picks from her pocket. "Hold the light steady."

He obeyed, and it took barely five minutes of effort to pop them off. She dictated her messages to Snape, and marvelled at the speed at which his fingers found the keys, so that by the time the chains were off of his ankles, she knew that Pansy had stopped at the house to drop off several bags of shopping, and had gone off in search of Ron.

Nick climbed to his feet with an alarming lack of energy for someone as young and fit as he was and rubbed at the chafing on his wrists.

"Wake up the girl," she said. "I'll see what I can find."

She dug through her pockets and back, and then swept the floor in the faint hope that Amos hadn't had the foresight to take her wand, but it wasn't to be found—he had taken it, along with the Invisibility Cloak. Her next step was to root through the boxes sitting on the worktable and in the cupboards, in search of a light bulb, and finding only oil that clung to her hands and made everything she lifted slide through them—the shed had at one point, at least, been used to fix up cars after all.

From the corner where Nick was crouched over Lucy, she heard quiet whimpers of protest, and his voice cracking and trembling as he tried to calm her. In straining her ears to hear their conversation, she tripped over something solid, and dropped the box she was holding; it clattered to the floor with the tinkling of broken shards of glass as they scattered across the floor. She bent down to push aside the offending object, and her hands ran along the outline of a beater bat.

"Right," she said. "Change of plan. Nick, do you know how to play cricket?"

At the very least it would be a fitting revenge.

—

Once she had finished waking up, Lucy proved to be as helpful as Nick. She had the energy he lacked, and was tiny enough that he could lift her up to reach the ceiling, where she could screw in the bulb that Hermione finally found in a long-untouched box hidden in the back of the cupboard.

The light was uneven from the grime that she had smeared across it, but it was bright enough that they had to blink sunspots from their eyes.

Now that Hermione could get a proper look at both of them, she was even more horrified. Nick appeared to be the age she had expected, but Lucy looked much younger—twelve would be a generous guess—and wearing a grubby school uniform that only highlighted her scrawny legs and undeveloped form.

She had her theories as to what use Nick was being put to—his lack of energy suggested that he was the one Cedric was draining, whether or not the undead boy knew it—but couldn't—or didn't want—to imagine what purpose Amos Diggory had for her.

As Lucy hunted through the shed, setting aside anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon, Hermione kept in touch with Snape and snapped photographs of the shed, sending up a silent prayer to any deity that might happen to feel benevolent that nothing would happen to the camera between now and her escape.

"If you've been texting someone, why don't you use your mobile to take pictures and send them?"

Hermione studied the device in her hand with newfound respect. "I can do that?"

The girl looked at her as though she were a complete idiot. "Of course you can."

The second she got out of this shed, Hermione decided, she would use her budget to buy mobiles for the entire department, regardless of the disapproval of her superiors—she paused at the thought, realising that she would have the control of a department once this was over.

But only if she made it out alive.

Realising that trying to explain she lived in a world where people communicated by shouting into their fireplaces and tying letters to owls as though they were carrier pigeons would probably be an exercise in futility, she handed it over, saying, "I don't really understand how it works—do you mind doing it for me?"

The girl's eyes narrowed in concentration as took and sent the pictures, and read aloud Snape's replies—neither Harry nor Theo were anywhere to be found, but Pansy and Ron had returned and were preparing a rescue—that involved a team of Aurors.

Hermione was both impressed and relieved at Lucy's ability to work without asking questions, just chattering about her parents, her friends, anything to keep a desperate silence from descending.

Nick was even quieter than Hermione, working his way slowly but steadily through the boxes, until Hermione stopped him.

"You're exhausted," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "Rest—I'll wake you up before we need your brute strength.

He obeyed, sagging against the wall with a frightening level of fatigue.

"The battery won't last much longer," Lucy said when she had finished sending the last of the pictures.

Mobile phones with enhanced batteries, she thought, typing out a last text message to let Snape and Ron and Pansy know that she wouldn't be in touch any longer. Ones that wouldn't die right when you needed them most.

She turned off the mobile and the lights at the same time, and shook Nick into alertness.

"Time to take positions," she said, taking off her coat and jeans, swapping them for Lucy's skirt; Lucy pulled on the clothing, tucked her head into the hood, and laid on the floor in approximately the same position that Hermione had woken up in—with any luck, Amos wouldn't see past her to realise his two other captives weren't in their places until after they had knocked him over the head a few times.

Nick crouched on one side of the door, hefting the bat in his hands, and Hermione shivered in her too-small skirt, clutching a rubber mallet and rusted penknife. The silence was deafening; she tried to focus on her breathing, a bird chirruping outside—anything—but, when combined with the darkness, it pressed in on her.

Finally, after what seemed like years, she heard footsteps, and the scratch of a key in the lock. The floor shifted slightly under her feet as Nick tensed, and then light had flooded the shed, and he became a blur of motion rather than a shadow.

The blow caught Amos on his back, and sent him stumbling into Hermione, who jabbed the knife into his stomach and tried to drag it down—it snapped off before she could cause any real damage, and he recovered his balance, launching himself at her with a roar and shoving his wand into the base of her throat.

"Nick—Lucy—run!"

Still holding his bat, Nick helped Lucy to his feet, and she saw him gesture her towards the door.

"Drop the hammer," he said, rage contorting his usually calm voice into a deep snarl.

She let it fall to the ground, feeling real terror for the first time—less for herself than for Nick and Lucy, who had no idea what they were up against, and who hadn't moved.

"You, too," Amos said, without looking back. "Put the bat on the floor, or I will kill her. I'll know as soon as you so much as think about swinging it."

"He will," Hermione lied, trying to keep the trembling from her voice. "Just put it down and get out—I promise I'll be all right."

Nick let it slide from his grasp as he took hold of Lucy's hand, but she brushed him off and launched herself at Amos's back, wrapping her arms around his neck and using all of her weight to choke him. She hadn't a hope of succeeding, but it threw him off balance long enough for Hermione to snatch his wand from him and aim it.

The next moment was a flurry of movement as a blur of red streaked in and leapt for his throat, Nick caught hold of Lucy and dragged her outside, and a voice shouted, "Dad, no!"

As Ron kept Amos pinned to the floor, Hermione cast a Body-Bind, then stumbled out into the snow, where someone caught her by the waist and pulled her close, smoothing her back in an attempt to calm her trembling.

"You complete and utter idiot."

Her burst of laughter rapidly descended into a series of hysterical gasps for air.

—

Fighting her instincts, which told her that nobody would be able to arrest the Diggorys, and question Cedric, Nick, and Lucy quite as well as she could, Hermione let Theo take over. He did it with a degree of cool-headedness that she knew she wouldn't be capable of for quite some time, only leaving his directorial position, once, to approach Hermione stiffly, and with narrowed eyes.

"Just so you know," he said, "I'm never speaking to you again. You couldn't have waited another hour?"

"I didn't know where you were and how long you'd be gone—and there were people at risk." Seeing he was unimpressed, she added, "I didn't intend to get caught, did I?"

"Then obviously I have taught you nothing about survival tactics. When there is a shed with potential victims inside of it, you shouldn't be anywhere near it."

Hermione glanced down at Lucy, who was glued to her side, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "We were doing perfectly fine before you lot decided to show up—which, speaking of, could you have taken any longer?"

"Perfectly fine? Perfectly fine would have been not getting caught! Perfectly fine would have been waiting for someone—no, multiple someones—to play lookout for your exercise in extreme stupidity. I have days where I wonder how you've made it to this age without accidentally killing yourself."

"Don't worry about him," Hermione muttered to Lucy. "He can be a bit of a drama queen."

"I'm always perfectly justified," he snarled. "Especially right now."

"I thought you weren't talking to me."

"I'm not." He curled his lip and stalked away.

Lucy stared after him, wide-eyed, and Hermione, rather than feeling chastised, had to hide a smile behind her hand.

"He's right, you know," Snape said, from somewhere behind her. "He has every reason to be furious with you."

"So do you—I practically blackmailed you into helping me."

She knew she ought to feel guilty, and half-wanted him to lash out at her, make her release the tears that had built up behind her eyes. As though he had read her mind and was determined to be ornery, he merely brushed her spine with the back of his hand.

"But I understand why you did it."

Hermione flushed at the knowing glance Lucy shot them and turned her face to the ground, as Snape pulled his hand back and shoved it into his pocket. Before she could make her apologies and run away to see how Nick was getting on, Pansy reappeared, bearing a pair of trousers.

"Put these on before you die of frostbite."

"Hypothermia," Hermione said. "Frostbite doesn't kill so much as cause pain."

Pansy rolled her eyes. "Whatever—that skirt looks ridiculous, and if a Daily Prophet reporter shows up to take pictures, I want to look like I've spent my evening rescuing someone with some inkling of fashion sense."

Hermione seemed to be picking up the desire to be as ornery as possible from Snape, because rather than giving the earned biting reply, she smiled and thanked her, making Pansy back away slowly.

"What about you, Professor Snape?" Pansy asked. "Can I bring you anything? Take you home, as you're probably terribly bored? Club Granger over the head to make up for being left on your own, totally helpless?"

Hermione pulled the trousers on over her trainers and under the skirt, turning her back on the people clustered in the garden, but otherwise not much caring who was watching her.

"Here," she said, smoothing the pleats and handing the skirt to Lucy. "I'm going to check on Nick."

She left Lucy to Pansy and Snape with a slight stab of guilt—if there were two people a traumatised child ought not be left with, it was them—and hurried over to where the boy was huddled against the side of the house in one of Ron's old jackets.

"This isn't normal," he said, eyeing her warily. "I don't think you're normal either."

"I've made it my life's work to constantly exceed expectations."

His lips didn't so much as twitch.

"I'd tell you more if I could, believe me," she said, "but it's really better for everyone involved if you just know what you've seen. We can selectively wipe your memory in the space of a second if we don't think you can keep your mouth shut—I hate doing it, but I understand why it happens. The best way to keep you from talking is to not give you anything to talk about."

It was obvious from the set of his jaw that he was less than pleased with what she was telling him, that he was trying hard not to show his fear for a world against which he could do nothing to protect himself. The only reason that she didn't toss him some scrap of information that would help him understand was because of the sharp reminder the previous night had provided her—what people were willing to do for power.

Instead she only patted his arm, and said, "Believe me, I know what it's like to see things happen that you don't understand."

And, deciding that she likely wasn't helping, she wandered off in search of something to do.

—

The rest of the evening passed in a flurry of paperwork, filled out on various people's using an old ballpoint pen from Hermione's bag, and questioning. She found the menial tasks that usually frustrated her the easiest; anything that kept her from focussing on Cedric, who hovered at the edge of their investigation, looking lost, and Nick's accusing eyes.

But when it came time to search the house, she knew that it couldn't be avoided any longer. Waving Cedric over, to the front door, she tried to smile, even though she knew he must feel anything less than happy to see her.

"Thank you for you letter," she said. "We might not have found out in time to…"

In time to—what? Save Nick and Lucy? Stop his father from completing the ritual?

Cedric shifted on his feet, pushing his hair from his eyes and settling them on her shoulder. "I've suspected from the beginning," he said, " but I didn't want to accuse them without anything solid—and I didn't want to believe that they were capable of… that."

"Of course you didn't."

Even she hadn't been fully able to believe that quiet, grieving Amos Diggory was capable of murder, not even for the sake of his son.

"What made you suspect it?"

He shrugged. "When I showed up at the door, they didn't seem terribly surprised to see me—but they were horrified to find out that I wasn't fully alive either. And, then, when you came to question them, they lied about when I—when I came home."

She nodded. That much, at least, had been obvious. "But you didn't want to accuse them without some sort of proof?"

"I'd read up on the murder in the paper, so when I went digging through Father's study and found his research… I had just confronted Mum about it when Potter arrived at the door with some pretty incriminating photographs of the inside of his shed."

"Can you show me those papers?"

Nodding, he opened the door and waited until she was inside before following. The blast of warm air was a shock after first the shed and then running round outside trying to form some semblance of order; she curled and flexed her fingers, trying to help the stiffness melt from the joints, and rubbed her legs through the rough fabric of her jeans.

"I'm sorry," he said, leading the way up the stairs. "I ought to have invited you in earlier—I had forgotten…"

"Do you not feel pain, then?"

"Not in the same way that I remember—I know when something has touched me, and I know when something ought to hurt, but it's almost like I've been dosed with Pain Relief Potion, and some dreamless sleep. It's hard to want to live again, when everything that made it worthwhile is gone."

It struck her like a knife between her ribs that this must be how Snape had felt from the very beginning but no one had bothered to ask, part of why Tonks couldn't bear to touch Teddy, why Colin had seemed so distant when she had met with his family. They suddenly seemed less human than they had, more out of reach than she had thought possible—yet, at the same time, real in their tragedy.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to keep the quaver from her voice. Her fingers traced a stretch of banister, and she let a splinter lodge itself into her skin as a reminder that she was still capable of feeling.

"Why? I haven't felt anything at all for the last decade."

They paused outside a door, and Cedric pulled a hairpin from his pocket, using it to jab the lock open. Hermione hid a grin, remembering how she had done much the same thing only a few hours ago, then felt curiosity return to her, alongside a sense of gravity.

"Doesn't the taste you're getting make you want it back?"

He led the way to the filing cabinet, and pulled open the top drawer, shoulders sagging as soon as he was leaning over it.

"Not particularly—it's so much work, and I'm… Well, more than anything, it's showed me that I'm finished here. Everyone—except my parents—has moved on, or changed, or grown up. There's no point in grasping for something that isn't mine, that I'm not sure I even want." He paused, using both hands to wriggle a folder out of the space it had been squeezed into. "It's hard to fear dying when you're already dead."

Had it not been for the note of finality in his tone, she would have persisted, but instead she only took the folder from his hands and flipped it open to the first page.

"All of the information you need should be in there, but you're free to look around if you like."

"Thank you, I think I will."

—

By the time she arrived home, near midnight, she was bordering on collapse; rather than attempting a sensible remedy like sleep, she brought the stacks of files up to the study with her, retrieved an ancient (and probably stale) packet of crisps from the pantry, and set to work, trying to keep from smudging grease stains across Amos Diggory's papers.

Insane criminal or not, she had to admit that he was brilliant—precise, detailed notes on each side of the parchment combined with meticulous research, almost endeared her to him; his detailed calculations and complete absence of leaps in logic made her wonder if his punishment could involve secretary work for whichever department she ended up in.

She became so engrossed in the work that she didn't notice Harry until he tapped her on the shoulder.

"I have been sent to inform you that Ron isn't speaking to you any more, and that Theo is still not speaking to you."

"Ron?" Surprise sent her eyebrows upwards. "Why?"

"When Ron came home, Snape was in a state, which sent Pansy into a state. I think it's his idea of manly protectiveness."

"Our Ron is a keeper, isn't he?"

Harry grinned. "Now, be nice—he's just looking out for his girl."

"Pansy can take care of anything that faces both of them with a single poisonous glare."

"Anyway, I also came up here to tell you, if you're going to kill yourself with overwork, then you should at least let me cook you one last meal."

"And when you say 'meal', you mean…"

"Full spread. Anything you want—you've had a trying day."

She steepled her fingers and peered over them with a dangerous glint in her eye. "I shall have my ideal menu prepared in ten minutes time—why don't you make a pot of tea and bring it upstairs for me?"

As Harry shook his head and left, she turned her attention from reading to making a list of things she would like to eat—salad with blue cheese, elaborate chicken concoction with a side of pasta—and had just made it to the dessert when Harry returned, bearing a tray with tea, cup, and saucer.

"I'm almost done," she told him, pausing her quill above the parchment. "Just trying to decide between chocolate éclairs and cheesecake."

He snatched the list from her, leaving a trail of ink along it, and read it, shaking his head. "I was hoping you wanted curry, and I could just step out for takeaway."

"You promised."

"Blue cheese? Really?"

"Yes, really," she said, setting down the quill and pouring herself a cup of tea. "Now, go—cook—I need to be productive."

She pulled the files towards her and tried to pick up where she had left off, but found that her concentration had been broken. A quick skim of what she had read up to that point didn't help, nor did casting a silencing spell around the cracks in the door. When she caught herself rereading the same line for the third time without absorbing it, she shoved the papers aside and stared blankly at the wall.

It hadn't even been a week, and she had already grown used to Snape's presence in the room—the way he propped her head up on pillows when she fell asleep, his ability to locate useful scraps of information, even just the fact that someone would respond when she began talking to herself. Irritation welled up inside of her as she realised that his absence was what made her lose focus; without him, she didn't have to prove her work ethic to anyone, didn't have anyone who could follow her threads of thought—didn't have anyone with a sharp enough eye to critique them.

She had been fine, before him—complacent, perhaps, but nothing had struck her that she couldn't work through. She would have to be fine again, once she had found a way to reverse the spell, and he was… gone.

Tears slid around the corners of her eyes and she blinked them away—it struck her that the weight her lungs were struggling against was grief, and that the urge to lie on her back on the floor and ignore it was her response to the inevitable loss of something that she couldn't—didn't want—to name.

He was as good as gone already; he just hadn't left yet.

—

When Harry returned with a tray of food, she was lying on the floor behind her desk, trying to shut her eyes against the swell of emotions. The smell roused her first, making her wonder if she had moped long enough to have died and woken up in a delicious afterlife of food; when she opened her eyes to see Harry had set it down beside her and was using his hands to waft the scent towards her, she moaned.

"Marry me."

Harry laughed. "Give me a few years to settle down—I'm experimenting."

"Theo is a walking experiment—when he's done with you, you'll have experienced all the experimentation you can possibly imagine."

"As long as he doesn't decide to rip my heart out and have his mother feed it back to me, I'm sure I'll survive."

"Then you're in luck—his mother doesn't cook. In fact," she added, picking up her fork and using it to prod the chicken breast before her, "I'm sure you could stun her into loving you by cooking for her. This is beautiful—I think I might cry."

"You already look like you're about to."

"And your cooking is about to make it all better—you even brought up little éclairs."

He pulled the fork from her fingers, and shielded the tray with his torso. "You aren't getting away with it that easily—I will withhold food until you share."

"That's torture, that is."

"It is one of my many Auror-ly skills." He stuck out his tongue. "Besides, you're torturing yourself as it is—how much more can this hurt?"

She scowled, flinging herself at him in a desperate bid to reclaim the cutlery. "Trust me, you don't want to know."

"I think I already do know."

"Somehow, I doubt it, but I'm sure your guesses will amuse me."

"Gosh," he said, rolling his eyes. "So much opportunity for angst in the last couple of days. I'm not sure how I'll choose which bit is eating you up inside—oh, yes, you're feeling guilty because you didn't solve the case quickly enough to save those children from being hurt."

"No."

"The werewolf girl, and how you ought to do more to help the conditions of werewolf life?"

"Not really, no, although give me a few days and I'm sure it will hit me."

"Having to send all our zombie friends back to their proper state?"

"A bit," she said morosely, shooting a glance at Snape's empty chair. "But not quite."

Harry followed her gaze and paused as comprehension dawned; he shook his head, as though trying to dislodge the shock from his features. "I don't know why I'm surprised."

"Because he's dead-ish?"

"You'd fall for the shortest, most shrivelled goblin, if it had brains."

"Short and shrivelled is a mark of beauty in goblin culture."

"Snape makes more sense than a goblin," he said, patting her shoulder.

She rolled her eyes to disguise the fact that tears were beginning to well up. "Thanks—that was incredibly helpful."

"Here," he said, moving the food so that she could access it and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. "I'd tell you that you need sleep, but I know you won't listen, so at least accept my offerings of energy. It scares me when you start to lose your sense of humour."

—

The meal didn't energise her, but it did manage to fill the hollow ache that had developed between her ribcage and abdomen enough that she convinced Harry to leave her propped up at her desk, giving her stack of files another attempt.

In spite of the complexity of the arrangement of Ogham symbols, she was beginning to realise that the ritual was really rather simple—it had more to do with timing and a balancing act than complex incantations. Some careful application of arithmancy to the calculations Diggory had already provided for her, and…

The source of her hesitation chose that moment to push his way into the room, and Hermione felt the hollowness return. It wasn't only that Cedric's words were echoing in her mind—that life was too much work for the dead to want to bother with—but the way that his eyes refused to seek hers out and instead chose to focus on the bookshelf; she couldn't help but feel it was anything short of a deliberate slight.

"Cedric Diggory told me something today," she said, "about how he couldn't quite feel things in the same way—and I was curious…"

"You want to talk about my feelings?"

Coming from his lips, it sounded every bit as ridiculous as she felt asking; she tried to laugh it off, but it sounded high-pitched and uneven, like a fresh coat of paint that failed to hide the cracks and peeling edges.

"Yes," she said, pushing back the chair and approaching him from behind. "I do."

She reached out and traced a finger down his spine, keeping it to barely more than a tickle. His muscles tensed, but otherwise he didn't respond.

"Can you feel this?"

He turned his head just enough that she could see the taut lines of his jaw. "Yes."

Her hands slid up to his shoulder blades, where she applied pressure. "This?"

Another nod, as he shifted his head so that she could no longer read his expression.

Before he could shy away, she grabbed hold of his shoulders and squeezed until her fingers locked. He squirmed, but didn't break away.

"Christ—yes, that hurts," he snapped. "Just not quite as much as it ought to—as I want it to. Does that prove your point?"

"You want it to hurt?"

This time he did step away, as though her words hurt him more than her hands were capable of.

"It would mean that I were alive, wouldn't it?"