Author's Note: To those who might be interested: Yes, this entire story has been finished for months. I completed it back during the summer when I was still on my writing/posting break. I'm posting the chapters as I edit them when I have time. Lately, I've had plenty of time to do it every day. Usually when I have a stockpile of chapters I try not to overload readers by posting too frequently, but honestly, I'm ready to be done with this story (and all of my other WIPs) so I'm going to try to update as often as I can until I get all 25 chapters posted. While I can't promise a daily update, it won't be much longer before they are all posted.

Chapter Eighteen

The first instinct Hermione had after thinking she saw the man at the end of the corridor was to stop moving and immediately report it to Pasha. If there was someone other than his great-grandmother inside the manor, didn't he have a right to know? Then she remembered that Cora Burke Travers was a formidable woman who had every right to have a guest in her own home that they didn't know about. If she wanted them to know she wasn't alone, she would've told them and perhaps even invited her mystery guest to join them for lunch.

Mostly, however, it was the unsettling feel of the entire visit that kept her mouth shut. There was more going on than she understood or their hostess was willing to divulge. If ever there was a woman who had secrets, it was Igor's grandmother. That much was evident just by spending a few minutes in her presence. Knowing her reputation from her time at the Ministry, Hermione had no doubt the witch wasn't telling them everything. Best to get out of the manor and somewhere safe before she said anything, she decided.

Outside in the sunlight she was tempted to ignore that unnerving feeling and tell Pasha anyway, but she stopped herself again. She tried to keep up with the inconsequential conversation her friend was having with her as they walked across the grounds to the heavy iron gates on the edge of the estate. Only when she allowed Pasha to Apparate her back to their building did she start to feel calm again. Before she let him lead her inside the building, she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Does anyone else live in the manor with your great-grandmother?"

Pasha's brow burrowed in confusion at her simple question. Clearly he hadn't seen the man or the figure had been a figment of her overactive imagination. He didn't understand why she was asking him that.

"No, she lives by herself. She sometimes has a witch come in to help her clean the house, but no, it's just her. She's asked me if I wanted to move in there many times because she says it's too quiet. Why?"

Unsure how to tell him, Hermione tried to think of the best way to ease him into her concerns. Of course speaking bluntly was often the easiest and most prudent course of action.

"I think I saw a man in there at the end of the corridor when we were leaving."

Immediately, the wizard was concerned and also a little annoyed.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I wasn't sure I could trust what I saw and I didn't want to worry you."

The look of exasperation on his face was all that he offered her before he spun in place to Disapparate. No doubt he was on his way back to his great-grandmother's home to make certain she wasn't in danger of being murdered by the mystery shadow she wasn't even sure she saw. Maybe she conjured it up in her imagination. Unfortunately, that wouldn't be the first time she did that.

Hermione didn't see the sense in waiting outside in the cold when she knew Pasha would come straight to her flat to tell her what he saw when he returned. As she made her way down the corridor to her home, she couldn't ignore the disappointment she felt at not finding anything new. She had gotten her hopes up that Cora would be able to answer every question she had.

The flat was quiet when she removed the wards and pushed open the door. She wandered around looking for any sign of Igor. No doubt he would want to know how the meal went. When she couldn't find him anywhere, she was surprised but not concerned. Though he didn't leave much, he was still a grown man capable of going out into the real world whenever he wished. She couldn't deny that she was curious about where he was. She usually was.

Inside her bedroom she kicked off her shoes and changed into more comfortable clothes. She had tried to make a good impression with her robes, but they were hardly suitable for spending the rest of the day lounging around her flat. Since they had their intruder, she hadn't felt the desire to leave the safety of the more secure flat. Maybe she was losing some of her Gryffindor traits as she aged because she was concerned that she was starting to feel more like a coward than she ever had been before. Why else wouldn't she shout out the potential danger back at the Travers manor for it to be dealt with in the moment? Instead she sent Pasha off alone to deal with what could very well be a dangerous situation. Some friend she was.

She was only in her bedroom for a minute or two before she heard the front door open. Still in the process of pulling a soft jumper over her head, she peeked out her open door to see Igor enter the flat out of breath carrying a leather satchel.

"Where have you been?"

Not expecting to hear her voice, he was startled when she spoke. Once he saw her standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, he relaxed. Igor opened the satchel and started to pull out several old, dusty books.

"I took advantage of you two keeping Grandmama busy to raid the family library."

Hermione sighed, no longer worried about Pasha.

"So that was you at the end of the corridor."

She rolled her eyes and crossed the lounge to where he was standing.

"I thought it might be an intruder or your grandmother had a lover she didn't want anyone to know about."

Igor's disgusted grimace actually made her laugh. Why was her theory so far-fetched and gross?

"She's still a beautiful woman, Igor."

"She's over a hundred and twenty years old."

"All the more reason to be impressed she has a lover."

"That's disgusting."

He paused for a moment to shudder. She rolled her eyes again. When she was Cora's age, she hoped that she wasn't resigned to spending the rest of her life in a cold, empty bed without any hope of ever feeling the touch of a loved one. It sounded too depressing.

"Yes, you must've seen me though I thought I was more careful."

Something rude was on the tip of her tongue, but she quickly bit it before she uttered it. They had been getting along so well the last few days. It seemed a shame to ruin it with an unnecessary snarky remark.

"Why were you out of breath when you got here?"

"I was nearly caught. Someone came into the manor after you left. Cast a homenum revelio. I had to grab what I could and run before they found me."

A knock at the front door interrupted their discussion before she could offer her own theory. When she opened it, she wasn't surprised to see an upset Pasha also out of breath. It looked like he ran there.

"There was someone there, Hermione, but they ran after I cast homenum revelio."

A dull ache behind her eyes only grew worse. She pointed in Igor's direction.

"Here is the intruder."

"Oh."

Realizing he was only chasing his father, Pasha calmed down immediately.

"Great-Grandmama wants to see you. She knows you're alive."

The change in Igor's mood was instantaneous and, if Hermione was honest, a little frightening. There was no way to hide that he was furious. Turning away from his son, he spun around to cast his glare on her.

"I suppose you were the one to tell her?"

Sometimes anger could be contagious, especially when one was accused of something unfairly. Both irritated and mad, Hermione didn't even bother to keep her temper under control. The tone she used in response wasn't friendly in the slightest.

"I was not. Her cousin told her that a strange man who looked a great deal like her dead grandson came by his shop asking questions."

Igor looked mildly shamed. He couldn't argue or cast any other accusations wildly about. It had been his decision to do his own investigating. Wasn't he also the reason why her home was ransacked? No one ever bothered her until the day he went to Knockturn Alley to ask about the ring.

Pasha made his excuses to leave to return to his own home. Not that either of them could blame him. The atmosphere was positively chilly. When they were alone again, Hermione didn't have the energy to have the argument she was sure was going to come. Without offering him any explanation, she returned to her bedroom and firmly closed the door.

Seconds after she climbed on top of her bed, she fell asleep. Her nap was long and necessary. Sometimes using sleep as an escape was the only way she could keep from losing control. When she woke, she was surprised to find a warm blanket covering her up. It was a kind gesture. Why couldn't he be more like that when she was awake?

Hiding in her bedroom was an option, but not a good one. And certainly not one that a mature adult would resort to. She found Igor sitting at the kitchen table covered with books. He was so engrossed in his reading he didn't notice her until she was seated across the table from him.

"Anything interesting?"

Igor was startled out of his own thoughts by the sound of her voice. When he looked up and met her eyes, he didn't answer her question at first. Just scribbled something down on a piece of parchment and handed it to her to read. She couldn't even focus on the first word he'd written down before he started to explain.

"These books are actually personal journals of my great-great-great, oh bugger, I don't know how many greats, grandfather. He created the ring with some help from a very powerful goblin he'd somehow managed to befriend."

"A goblin? But I've never heard of them creating anything with gold before. I thought they only used silver."

"I guess they did at one time or this was a special case. Regardless, the ring is very powerful, saturated with power that likely no one alive today truly understands. Our ancestors were a little more experimental in their magic."

That was a bit of an understatement in her opinion. She knew that it was true that there were entire branches of magic that no one could perform in modern days. The secrets were lost as witches and wizards grew more careful and even a little bit afraid of what previous generations were willing to try. History books were full of experiments in dangerous magic that went terribly wrong.

"I think that's obvious just by the fact I was able to bring you back from the dead with it."

Igor cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to the books spread out on the table. Living with him taught Hermione that he acted like that when he was uncomfortable and didn't want to keep talking. If he thought he was going to be able to drop the discussion before she had her questions answered to her satisfaction, he hadn't been paying attention.

"That's because of the soul magic that was used in its creation."

If it was even possible, he was more uncomfortable than before he spoke. Why? There was something he wasn't telling her. It was beginning to get on her nerves.

"What are you trying to say?"

His dramatic sigh irritated her just a little bit more. Just when she thought she was at the height of her frustration, he somehow was able to surprise her with an entirely new level she never knew existed.

"My ancestor liked to conduct very dangerous experiments. His wife was an extraordinarily powerful witch in her own right. She worked with him to create a spell, using the ring as a vessel, that she could use to bring him back from the dead if he ever did something foolish enough to get him killed."

That was serious magic indeed. Few people would ever be brave enough or strong enough to complete the creation of spell like that. Magic involving the dead was mistrusted by all but the darkest practitioners in their current society. If the truth about her bringing Igor back from the dead was ever widely known, the likelihood she would be shunned by the vast majority of people in the magical world was high. Some might even demand she be locked up in Azkaban for committing a serious crime.

"I found my grandfather's personal journal too. Pasha told me what he told you, that my grandfather told my grandmother to give me the ring as soon as he died and to never read the inscription because he didn't want to be brought back. That wasn't entirely true."

"It wasn't?"

"Pasha didn't lie. Nor did my grandmother, I'm sure. I don't doubt that is what Grandfather told her even if he didn't mean it."

He held out a small leather book across the table to point out a handwritten passage. The print was too small for Hermione to read without holding it herself, so he explained what he was referring to.

"My grandfather cared for my grandmother, but they weren't soulmates. Not in the traditional sense."

"Are there traditional soulmates? I'm not even sure they exist at all."

Either he didn't hear her or he chose to ignore what she said. Hermione strongly suspected it was the latter.

"The great love of his life died when they were teenagers. He didn't want my grandmother to try to bring him back, fail, and then feel like he never loved her."

"That's sweet but also very sad."

He set the journal down on top of the table in front of him and pushed it away. It must have been strange reading words his own grandfather wrote decades earlier. Each time he spoke about his mother's father it was obvious how much he loved and admired the man. Learning so many private secrets couldn't have been very easy.

"She likely knows. Probably knew even before he died that they weren't soulmates."

Hermione wasn't ready to have the real discussion about soul magic that they probably needed to have at some point. It was all overwhelming. Never before in her life did she imagine that soulmates and the magic that bound them was more than just a fantasy in silly novels written for silly witches who were lonely and longed for a great romance that just wasn't realistic. Challenging her own long-held beliefs wasn't a prospect she was all that encouraged to accept. The more she learned about soul magic, the more she was afraid there might be some truth in the whole theory.

Too much added up to be discounted if she allowed herself to admit it. She didn't want to think so, but they did have phenomenal chemistry. Never before had she experienced anything quite like it with someone else. That was something, wasn't it? She knew that he affected her emotions, mostly negatively, but on occasion positively, more than anyone else she'd ever known. Sometimes being around him when he wasn't being obnoxious made her feel a pleasant sort of calm. That was new, definitely not something she was used to experiencing. Was that all related to the theory that they were connected by their souls? She was scared to look too much into it.

Needing something else to occupy her thoughts and keep her from saying something she worried she might come to regret later, she picked up the list that he had handed to her when she first entered the kitchen. Anything that she could latch onto that would allow her to move the discussion into a different direction away from soul magic was welcome. To her relief, she didn't have to look long.

"What is this about the ring also being a key? To what?"

"I'm not sure. I haven't found out yet. Maybe I won't. It could all be lost to time."

Some of his petulance that usually drove her up a wall came seeping out of his voice. He rubbed at his eyes. Had he looked that exhausted when she saw him after leaving his grandmother's manor? Where she might have been annoyed with him only a day or two before, she suddenly felt the urge to drag him away from the kitchen table and tuck him into his bed for a nice long nap. What was wrong with her? She was feeling sympathy for the man, not frustration.

"I can't look at these for another minute."

Igor abruptly rose from the table and exited the kitchen. That blasted urge to follow him and make certain he was all right was nearly overpowering. Hermione wasn't going to start that. Just because there was a theory about how she should feel for the man didn't mean she was going to allow that to happen. Did she not have free will, after all? Magic wasn't everything. It didn't solve every problem and it wasn't unlimited in its power.

She picked up the leather book that had been his ancestor's journal. Delicate and ancient, she worried that every time she turned a page it would crumble into dust. The writing wasn't easy to read. How could they expect to learn anything useful with those volumes to work with?

Research was something that often calmed her down. While many would rush to claim she was simply a bookworm who liked to read, they didn't really know what her relationship with books was. Yes, she enjoyed to read, but it wasn't simply because she was a swot with nothing better to do. Knowledge gave her comfort while ignorance made her unbearably anxious. She couldn't stand when she didn't understand something. Books were often a way she could learn enough to slow the racing of her heart when she was afraid and felt lost. Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest way to look at books, but often they were all that stood between her and a complete breakdown. If she could read a book and find an answer, the world would right itself in her mind.

Desperately she clung to those journals on her kitchen table hoping that she could find something that Igor might have missed.