SIXTY-TWO
"You're joking," Antonin said, his tone awed as he walked one of the many cemetery paths beside his witch. "She actually wants to help me?"
"Mostly that seems to translate to ensuring no one in the village catches onto your existence and doing what she can—within reason—to cover for us should that seem likely to happen." Hermione gave a sheepish grin and shrugged. "As far as helping you, I think more precisely she wants to help me and recognizes that that means helping you."
He feigned a deadpan expression. "Well, aren't you a dream killer?"
Laughing, she shook her head. At first, he'd responded to learning that the elder witch knew what he was much the way Hermione'd expected—panic, outright and lacking for any semblance of logic—but after she made it through a quick, concise explanation of the conversation which followed Oksana's revelation, he'd settled down. She suspected the way she'd stroked delicate fingertips along the sides of his throat as she'd offered said explanation had probably helped, at least a little.
With a sigh, she lifted her illuminated wand and peered about the edges of the trail upon which they stood. Yes, she'd absolutely been of a mind to conduct this search during daylight hours, but—shockingly, perhaps—Oksana and Antonin had been in agreement that her searching for the Book alone was unwise given recent events. Simply because most of her encounters with the drekavac and its apparent horde of accompanying entities had seemed to occur at night did not mean that all those entities were bound by the ticking of the clock in such a fashion.
Much to her chagrin, Hermione had agreed, and so here they were, in a necropolis under cover of darkness yet again. Honestly, she was beginning to feel like she'd develop cat's eye syndrome at this rate. Not that that was possible, as far as she was aware. She touched a finger to her chin. Didn't one have to be born with—oh, bloody hell! There she went sidetracking.
Giving her head another shake, she closed her eyes, recalling again the path she'd walked in her dream. Recalling what exact markers signified the moment she broke from the well-worn earth beneath their feet to wander through the ever-thickening brush.
Her eyes opening, she nodded with perhaps a forced confidence. "This way," she whispered, starting through the shrubbery crowding the treeline.
She would wait until after they'd secured the Book and were certain he could be cured to tell him that along with offering her aid, Oksana had, in stern, motherly-figure-fashion—precisely as Minerva would—demanded to meet him.
