"I won't be afraid of my magic—of myself. I refuse." I deflated with a sigh before reluctantly conceding the point. "But I guess I could at least warn you about the risks beforehand."

"That's…" Harry trailed off. "I guess that works."

"I'll be careful, I promise."

"I know you will, just…" He stood up. "Good night, Hermione."

"Good night," I echoed, and watched him disappear up the stairs. The embers in the fireplace gave little light to the room, casting everything behind the chairs in shadow. Crookshanks rounded the corner suddenly, making a beeline to me and planting himself in my lap. I scratched him dutifully, but it did little for my mood.

Had the castle always felt this lonely?

Traditional Ritual

Professor Babbling's office was sparser than I might have expected. It was almost entirely undecorated save for the bookshelf filled with tomes, many of which had titles in languages that I didn't even recognize. The desk was neat and tidy, the chair behind it of a make that I could have sworn I'd seen a thousand of in one of Hogwarts' many storerooms. The only real point of disorder was the coffee table off to the side, which was covered in nearly a dozen scrolls of parchment.

She had brought me back into the office when I came to turn in my notes on the less damning of the rituals I'd created or modified already. 'Notes' was a bit of a misnomer, though. My actual working notes were a chaotic mess written across whatever bit of paper or parchment happened to be nearest to me at the time I had an idea, and that would hardly do for my first assignment for a professor who actually seemed to care. So, I'd drawn out the rituals again on a bit of parchment and scrawled out a copy of the runes straightened out for legibility with translations underneath, the rationale behind my decisions with the rituals, and a description of what materials, incantations, or motions were necessary to accompany them. The shortest of them—a small modification that I'd made to the Incendio spell which made the resultant flame cast more light—was over a foot and a half long.

It had taken me some effort to decide which of the things I'd worked on to present to Professor Babbling. I wanted to show my level of expertise, yes, but I also refused to show my hand on some of the things that I knew would raise eyebrows. The ritual for my blood-mask, for example, was not something I could show. Despite that, it was something vastly different from the things I'd worked on before. I'd wondered for some time on how to show that skill without raising any eyebrows. The compromise turned out to be enchanting something entirely different using similar—if less bloody—methods: a hairpin in the shape of a quill which I'd enchanted to shed more light the darker the area got, and whose light could only be seen by the wearer. I'd hemmed and hawed about how to let other people see the light too, but wasn't able to come up with an answer. Frankly, that only proved how right I was to go through the effort of making the thing to show to Professor Babbling. Her expertise would no doubt be helpful.

For the past fifteen minutes, she had been looking at each ritual in turn and making notes in a book of her own, only speaking up with soft 'Oh's and the occasional 'I see what you did there'. She stopped about halfway through the stack of parchment before suddenly going to leaf through everything I'd given her, seemingly in search of something.

"Professor?" I asked.

"Babbling," she corrected absentmindedly.

"Er, right. Babbling. What are you looking for?"

She stopped, looked up to me, and blinked, as if she had forgotten I was even there. "Oh, yes. You've got a few warding rituals here. One you said you put around your bed, this one based off the muggle-repelling charm—brilliant work on that one, by the way, you said you made that one yourself?—but thing is, I'm not seeing their anchors. I'm not expecting you to put a full runestone array under your bed, that'd be paranoid. Not that anyone can blame you for that, mind. There's a murderer on the loose, after all. But I'm not seeing anything that resembles an anchor anywhere. What's keeping the magic from running out? Or changing?"

Anchors, of course, were something necessary for any spell that needed to stick around for a while. They were the difference between a long term enchantment and a short term paling. In order to keep a spell going, you needed to keep it fed with magic, which meant that you needed to designate a way for it to do so. Additionally, enchantments had a tendency to be shaped by their surroundings if not kept in check by something. Generally speaking, both of these functions were filled by one single part: the anchor. Magic had a tendency to misbehave without one.

A hover charm cast on a ball, for example, would fade over time. If the ball was kept in a lively area after the spell was cast, then it might start bobbing and weaving instead of floating in one place. A few runes carved into the ball before casting the charm could fix both problems easily. For wards, these anchors typically took the form of runic circles—which were very different from ritual circles both in design and intent—carved in stone or wooden totems. Magic was unreality, so the idea went, and benefited greatly from an anchor in the real.

But I knew that magic wasn't unreality. It informed reality. It was the ink with which our story was written. In many ways, the primal forces of magic itself were more real than anything mundane.

"The anchors are in the magic," I said.

Babbling frowned. "Well, yes, that's what runic anchors do—"

"No," I interrupted. "The ambient magic itself serves as an anchor."

"I'm… afraid that that's not how that works. Magic, see, it tends to change. If you want to keep it static, you need something rooting it." She smiled at me. "That's alright. Just means I get to teach you about it."

I sighed. "You're still not seeing it. Look here." I pointed to a part of the ritual breakdown she was holding. "Magic tends to change, yes, I know that, but only if a sufficient magical force comes by to change it. Arkshaw's law. If you take a sufficient amount of power and use part of the spell to hold it in shape though, then the ambient magic will follow the path you've set out even after the casting's done, see? You don't need an anchor, because magic itself becomes the anchor."

Babbling took another look at where I was pointing. I saw her read through once with furrowed brow, then another time with widened eyes. "That's, oh, I mean, if that's what… that's genius!" she finally said, visibly excited. "Did you come up with that?"

I winced, glad that she was focused on the parchment and not on my face. "No, I didn't," I said truthfully. "I… My old mentor taught me that. I was still using a wand then, but the principles are the same. It wasn't hard to translate it over to ritual." She didn't need to know that it was the Diary who had taught me that. Nobody did.

She was silent for a few moments, flipping over to the next sheet. "If someone put enough power into it, it wouldn't be hard to erase these wards. I can only imagine they'd be much harder to modify after the fact, too."

"They are susceptible to that sort of thing, yes, but see there how I call on Time and Legacy in that section?"

She glanced down to where I was pointing. "Yes, I see… Oh! Oh that's clever! These get stronger over time, don't they? They'd be weak at first, but if you put in enough power to start, it wouldn't matter, would it?" Babbling put down the parchment. "Though, in order to set the pattern, so to speak, it seems like you're relying on overpowering the local ambient magic with your own. Now there's an exercise for you. How would you go about using this method to cast a ward in a place layered in enough magic that you can't overwhelm it?"

She seemed honestly curious what my answer would be, and I didn't have to think long at all before I had my answer. It was one I had asked myself, after all. "I'd ask nicely," I said. "Any place with that much ambient magic is likely to have started to think, which means that you just have to convince it to go along. The specifics of how to convince it would depend on the place itself, I think."

"Oh!" Babbling said, clearly a bit taken aback. "You're a traditionalist! Truth told, I wasn't expecting that. You'll have to let me know if that approach works."

"Traditionalist, Pro—Babbling? I think I've seen the word used in magic theory books, but I don't think I've seen a definition. Not aside from the normal one, I mean."

"Really?" she asked, but didn't wait for a response. "Right, well, traditionalism in magic just means you take a bit of a more abstract stance about the question of what magic actually is. Traditionalists typically say that magic is alive, that it has emotions that can be felt, and that the Powers are divine figures that can be spoken and bargained with. They're called that because it's, well, traditional. For a long time, everyone thought of magic like that. Back in the… late 1800s, I think? People started to think of magic and its Powers as an unthinking force, like gravity. Rationalism, it's called. Think of it, like…" She trailed off, looking around the room briefly. "Mandy Enoch! You're reading Enoch, right? Right. Best primer around, but she's a traditionalist through and through. I hear she goes to academic events and talks down to anyone who doesn't think you should chat with your wand over tea. In contrast, Hogwarts teaches a rationalist approach to magic."

Babbling shrugged. "I'm a rationalist, myself. I've never heard magic speak to me, save for things enchanted to. I'm not going to take any sort of hardline stance, though. If the magic works, it works. Personally, I don't think that traditionalism is fully wrong, per se, and I'm not going to criticise your religious beliefs—"

"Religious what?" I protested, but she kept talking.

"—But I prefer to keep things rooted in logic, you know? It's easy to work with, and the magic stays lighter that way. Reading Faust's account was enough for me, thanks." She paused for a moment. "That's not to say that all traditionalists are dark mages, or even that dark magic's necessarily bad, but you really can't deny that things trend that direction. Gotta wonder where you picked it up, though. That philosophy's the sort of stuff you normally only find in the old families. Who'd you say your mentor was, again?"

"I didn't," I said, feeling thoroughly off balance. "You wouldn't know him. He's um, he's dead anyway."

"Condolences, then."

"No, um. It's fine. I didn't really like him all that much," I lied.

"Er, right." She looked almost as floored as I was. "Moving on, then. So, full disclosure. You taking a traditionalist approach is a slight snag. Combine that with me not actually being much of a ritualist at all… I can still give you the extra tutoring I promised, and we'll be speaking the same language, but we're always going to have a slightly different dialect. There's different to-dos and not to-dos for us both. Not insurmountable, but annoying. No chance I can convince you that magic doesn't think, is there?"

"I've felt it," I said. Hadn't she? The meditation exercises were annoying, but not so much as to be insurmountable. I may have been sceptical once, but the immensity of Hogwarts' pride and joy and Black Manor's anger was proof. Besides that, the Diary had never once lied to me about magic. Every other word was suspect, but I knew that inaccurate theories didn't work in practice, and every magical concept it had taught me about had proved to be true. "I didn't use to think of magic as having emotions, but I've felt how much Hogwarts loves its students. You just have to open yourself up and feel it."

She gave me a wry smile. "That's what I thought. No offence, but I'll keep away from the religion, thanks." I opened my mouth to protest once more, but she just kept going. "So, homework! Go ahead and draft up a simple enchantment meant to be cast on a part of Hogwarts using the principles we talked about today. We'll talk about it, maybe test it out when you turn it in, got it? Good. Run along, then. I think you're missing dinner by now."

I wanted to correct her, but I wasn't quite sure how to even begin to broach the topic of what she clearly thought would become a religious debate. My parents had never paid much mind to religion, so I hadn't either. It wasn't a conversation I even slightly know how to have. So I snapped my mouth shut, resolved to check the library for old magical religions, and left.

A few weeks passed, and so did my assignment with Babbling. It turned out that convincing Hogwarts that all the chairs in one of the abandoned classrooms should float an inch off the ground was not terribly hard. In fact, I was reasonably sure that the castle had found it funny. I supposed that I shouldn't have been shocked, given the continuing presence of Peeves. Regardless, the enchantment was holding even weeks later, and I had my proof of concept.

My fourteenth birthday came around too. I almost forgot it in the wake of everything, and was only reminded when Harry and Ron had cornered me in the common room with their presents. I got From the Mouth of Magic from Harry, which described the different sorts of incantations people used around the world, and a set of talking bookmarks from Ron. An unfamiliar owl delivered a present from my parents at breakfast: A care package of muggle textbooks. One on maths, another on physics, and two on history. I appreciated it immensely.

The thing that surprised me, though, was Luna approaching me as the boys and I were headed to lunch that day. "Happy birthday, Hermione!" she said as she held up a gift wrapped in what looked to be pages from the Daily Prophet.

It wasn't necessarily the fact that she was thoughtful enough to get a gift that surprised me, but… "I didn't think I ever told you my birthday," I said with a confused sort of delight.

"You didn't," she chirped. Ron and Harry snickered. Really, I should have learned by now to be more specific with her.

"Did the derk sprites tell you about this, too?" I asked with a smile.

She cocked her head to the side. "I don't think Professor McGonagall is a derk sprite. Maybe I should ask her."

"Maybe not," I said, though I couldn't help but smile at imagining the stern woman's reaction to the question. Suddenly, I remembered that Luna took Potions too, and the thought of Professor Snape attempting to deal with Luna forced me to stifle a laugh. "Well thank you for thinking to ask. Is that for me?"

Luna hefted up the present again. "If you like. I suppose it could also be for someone else, though I think I'd prefer if it were for you."

"Thank you." I took it from her and began to unwrap it. When the people in one of the pictures began to shake their fists angrily as their photo was torn, I winced and started unwrapping much more carefully. It took a few minutes—it seemed that Luna had folded the papers into stars and used sticking charms to hold them together—but finally I unveiled what seemed to be a primer on reading Cumbric. My mind went to the journal we'd found in Black Manor instantly. Of course she wouldn't want to translate for me, and of course she'd still want to help.

I gave Luna a genuine smile. "Thank you, really. This means a lot."

"It's part dictionary. Those always have a lot of meanings." She ignored Harry's snort. "I hope it helps."

"I'm sure it will." I put the book away in my bag and gave Harry and Ron a look. Both of them seemed fine with her, so… "Hey, Luna. Are you doing anything after dinner?"

She hummed. "I'll be doing something, I think, even if I don't know what yet."

"Once you're done eating, could you meet us outside the Great Hall? I wanted to show you something." I looked again at the boys. Harry seemed fine, and Ron looked resigned. I could talk to him later. "There's a spell I think I'm ready to cast, and I want all three of you to be a part of it."

Ron perked up. "So you're ready to put up the—"

"Yes," I interrupted, giving a significant look to the other people walking through the hall. "I'll be writing out instructions for your parts in it in our free period today, then I'll be ready."

"If it helps," Luna said, "I'm happy to do it. I'll see you after dinner!" With that, she skipped off down the hall.

"I told you she was nice," I said as we started walking again.

"She's always been nice," Ron said. "Bit mad though."

I huffed. "We're in a magic castle that thinks for itself. You two play sports on flying broomsticks and cast spells with your magic wands. I draw circles that turn pinecones into pincushions, and everyone's scared silly by a man who rearranged his name to call himself 'flight of death'. We're all a bit mad, I think. She's just a bit more honest about it."

Harry laughed. "Dumbledore's pretty honest about it too. What do you reckon it's like to look in his closet?"

"Don't know what you two are talking about. All that makes perfect sense," Ron said.

"Ron, your garden has a gnome infection." I shifted my bag with a grin. "And didn't your flying car go feral?"

He snorted. "You told me about how muggles put chairs on top of big metal cylinders full of explosives to try to go to space, and you're saying it's us who're crazy?"

We bickered and laughed all the way to lunch.

"Ah, so this is where you disappear to!" Luna called as Harry opened up the door to our ritual room.

Ron snorted. "Funny, that's what I said when I found out."

"Honestly." I rolled my eyes. "I said I was sorry."

Luna wandered around the room, setting her hand on things gently as she did. "I've been all over the castle hunting down plimpies, and I never found this place. How'd you come across it?"

I winced, knowing there would be pain for even discussing my taboo. "I—"

"She can't talk about it." I shot Harry a thankful look as he came to my rescue. "Hermione got spelled sometime last year, can't talk about certain things. We call it her taboo."

There was a brief quiver in my belly before it settled. "Promise you won't tell anyone?" I asked. "It's important."

"I won't," she said absentmindedly, still looking around the room. "Nobody believes me about things anyway, but I promise I won't tell."

Harry and Ron shuffled slightly. I shot her a relieved smile. "Thank you. Step one is drawing out the circle. Luna, mind helping out?"

"Of course!"

"Great. Harry, Ron… just make yourselves comfortable, okay? This will take a few hours." With that, I began taking out my notes and supplies. I offered two scraps of parchment out to the boys. "I wrote down your parts if you want to go ahead and study ahead of time." Both boys took the parchment. There weren't a lot of instructions on each. Their parts were really rather simple by design.

"So, what all is actually gonna happen?" Ron asked as I ushered both boys out of the ritual space in the centre of the room.

I took out a paperweight I'd bought in Diagon Alley and fastened a bit of twine around the top. "I'm going to try to convince the castle to ward this place for us. We can do all the spoken parts in English, thankfully. The magic doesn't care, and it would take forever to translate. Then all three of you are going to say a short line—wrote that down for you. Sticking charm, please, Luna?" I held out the weight, Luna obliged, and I pressed it down in the centre of the space. "Then there'll be a slight… call and response, I guess you'd say?"

I fastened a bit of chalk to the other end of the string, measured it out, and slouched my way around the ritual area. The paperweight and string made sure I drew a perfect circle all around. "I'll say something, then you'll all say something together in response, and we'll do that a few times." I took out some measuring tape, measured out the diameter of the big circle, and sat down with some parchment. I'd already prepared the formulas I needed, I just needed to run the result through them. "It's a bit 'double double toil and trouble' I'll admit. It would be easier if I could use blood as a focus, but since that's restricted—"

"—and dangerous," Ron added.

"—and dangerous," I allowed, "I don't want to use it where a professor could potentially stumble upon it. We'll be using me as the focus for the magic instead."

"Bet that would make Snape's day," Harry said. "Finding out we'd been using restricted magic on school grounds."

"My point exactly. Getting killed and getting expelled really are about the same thing for me, now." I gave a rueful little smile. "Though between the two, I think I'd like to go with a clean academic record."

Ron laughed. "Least you haven't changed too much." He stopped a moment as something occurred to him. "Er, Luna. You weren't there with us for that, were you?"

The question was obviously rhetorical, so obviously Luna answered it. "I don't think so, unless it happened today. It may have. Sometimes I get to thinking and lose whole conversations. I never know where they run off to."

I giggled some at Ron's confused look. He shook his head and schooled his expression. "Right. So, it started back in our first year, after Malfoy challenged Harry to a duel…"

Ron began to tell the story of how we saved the Philosopher's Stone with the occasional comment from Harry. It was a bit exaggerated, but Luna listened intently and asked odd little clarifying questions. I let it fade into the background.

First came the sigil lines. I cut a few bits of twine to the lengths I'd calculated out and used them as guides for my chalk. The paperweights and Luna's sticking charms proved their usefulness yet again. After a misstep where I used the wrong piece of twine at first, I erased my mistake and managed to circumscribe a triangle in the circle. A new piece of twine, and a square was circumscribed too, with one of its corners meeting one of the triangle's. That would be the origin; the runes on every shape would start there. A smaller circle (1/7th the size of the original; I'd read ahead in my arithmancy) was drawn around each point of the triangle, and finally the would-be wand movement was scrawled down. It was a sort of long zig-zag lightning bolt motion with a curve and a swirl at the end.

Scrawling that last shape brought on a bit of annoyance. It was a reminder that this ward could very easily be done if we all just cast a few spells in unison, but my wand was little more than a potion-stirrer as far as I was concerned. A small, prideful part of me noted that it would probably take Harry and Ron even longer to learn said spells than it had to draft and cast the ritual anyway, which relieved a bit of the edge.

That finished up the easy part. Getting that sigil blueprint down took me maybe twenty minutes, all told. All that remained was to mark down the runes. The many, many runes. I was already tired just looking at it. I eyed the boys. Ron was wrapping up his story, and Harry was listening in. Neither were doing anything important. I briefly entertained putting them to work, but quickly dismissed the notion. I'd looked over far too much of their homework not to know better.

I sighed. "Luna, could you…"

"Of course," she chirped.

Runes describing the ward's oneness with my own magic and the magic of Hogwarts were scrawled along the outside of the primary circle. That would fuel the thing and ensure I was built in as a fundamental part of the spell—as the focus all the magic coursed through. A description of what all the ward needed to affect was written along the inside of the square. The triangle and the smaller circles were erased bit by bit and replaced with runes entirely. The former told a short tale meant to convince the castle's magic to let the ritual work and force the magic to hold itself as an anchor, while the latter described a story about how the beings within them would come and go unhindered.

The wand motion—the description of the actual effect—was replaced with runes too. There, I told a rather flowery tale about what someone not keyed into the ward would experience. Sound from beyond the illusory wall would not project outward to them, and the illusory wall itself would become solid. The suits of armour downstairs had a similar sound dampening effect around them as well, and they (hopefully) wouldn't allow anyone but us entrance. The open window was to appear and act as a solid wall. I also managed to fit in a sort of attention diversion around the exits. Attention was a fairly minor issue for the two interior doors, but Harry was a bird in all but blood. There was no doubt in my mind that he'd be taking full advantage of the wide open window in the side of the castle. There was an alarm to notify us if anybody got in too, since the paling I'd set up last year had long since faded. Finally, I described how any of us could speak a password to allow others in for a time. Just in case.

The ritual as a whole was incredibly Light aligned. All three Dark Powers were invoked, but only very lightly. There was a small plea to Death and Chaos respectively in the attention diversion—Chaos to muddle things, Death to remove the memories—and a slightly more extensive request to Time where I told the story of how the ward would anchor itself in magic. In contrast, every single Light Power was invoked heavily all throughout the rest of the ritual. I told the tale of how this ward would be one with my Life and the Life of the castle's magic, and how it would anchor itself in Legacy among other scattered mentions. Order, of course, was woven into every part of the stories that the ritual told. It was a very rigid thing I was attempting to build. It had to cement itself in Hogwarts' magic and stay unchanged. On top of that, a lot of the actual effect was to make things more rigid and real. That was all Order.

The benefit of the spell being so very Light was the lack of cost. It did make the whole thing a bit more complicated, though. While a good Dark ritual would have no complaints with a rough outline of what you wanted to do, a few slurred incantations, and an appropriate sacrifice (which could really be anything), that wouldn't do here. This was the most Light aligned thing I'd ever done. Every line needed to be in precisely the right place, the runes could leave no room for ambiguity, and the execution itself would need to be nearly perfect. I didn't have a whole lot of margin for error.

It was around six-thirty when we'd left dinner. By the time I'd gotten everything chalked out, triple checked it, done a quick spell to check everyone's innate polarities, and put the candles in place, it was getting close to ten. When I finally stood up and stretched out after so long on my knees, Ron jumped to his feet.

"Finally!" he said. "Are we ready to start?" I shook my head and had to suppress a laugh at the crestfallen looks on the boys' faces.

"One more thing left to do, and then we can start. Due to the thaumic polarity of…" I gave Harry and Ron another look, and I could tell they were already not interested. And they wondered why I liked Luna? "If we don't do this exactly right, then it won't work. Or worse, it will work wrong. We need to practise."

"Curfew is in ten minutes," Luna chimed in. I scowled.

"So we can do it tomorrow," Ron said. "Circle will still be here then, won't it?"

"Probably," I allowed. "But someone like Peeves or Mrs. Norris might stumble in and mess it up."

"You need to talk to the statues to get in. Can Mrs. Norris talk?" Harry asked.

"No, but Peeves could still—"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Doubt they'd let him in. You need to ask nicely, remember?"

"He's a poltergeist, he can just go through the walls."

Ron sighed, sharing a look with Harry. "Got an idea for that. One mo'." He scrawled something on a piece of parchment, jabbed his wand, muttered an incantation, and stuck the parchment on the ground by the ritual circle. The note on it read: 'Mischief in progress. Please wait.'

"There," Ron said. "Sorted. Luna agrees, right Luna?"

"It might help keep the nargles away," she hummed.

"See? It'll be fine."

I scowled at him once more before a thought came to me. I wasn't quite sure if the wards as stated would keep out a poltergeist. Poltergeists came about as a facet of their home's native magic, after all, and… "I just want to check one more—"

Ron shared a look with Harry before they both grabbed one of my arms each and started dragging me backwards.

"Goodbye!" Luna waved.

"Put an Impervius charm on the chalk!" I called back, and resigned myself to my fate.

The next day rolled around and proved itself to pass by impossibly slowly. For the first time (outside of Lockhart's lessons), I found that I couldn't wait to be done with classes. It was a strange feeling, and not one I particularly liked. I'm sure that any other time I would have found Professor Lupin's lecture on remedies absolutely fascinating, and no doubt I would normally have adored Professor McGonagall's lesson on the complexities of animal transfiguration. Being impatient during History of Magic was less odd, though I'd never admit it to the boys. Sure, the content was fascinating, but the presentation really wasn't. The worst part was, we had a packed schedule for the day. There was no free period for me to sneak up to Hogswatch and check on the sigils.

Harry and Ron, of course, found my frustration absolutely hilarious, even as everyone else seemed to keep a wide berth. They took my annoyed jabs in stride, snickering when I snapped at them to make sure they had their parts memorised. Professor Lupin seemed to have noticed my mood, because he held me after class to awkwardly ask how I was doing. I told him that I was fine, of course, and he accepted it. I left that classroom to see that the boys were incredibly amused at my comments about 'nosy teachers'. They cracked jokes all the way to our next class. Even Malfoy—who had seemingly been keeping his distance from me since the start of term—stopped dead from making some smarmy comment or other when he saw my expression.

"Maybe we should get Hermione like this more often," Harry had commented. "Did you see the look on Malfoy's face?"

Ron laughed at that. "Git looked scared! Maybe I should break his nose too. Might actually leave us alone then."

"His father would make things difficult for yours," I grumbled. "My parents are muggles. He can't touch them."

An oddly sly smile spread across Ron's face, a nearly alien thing to see. "Harry, mate, I think you've got a golden opportunity here."

Harry snorted. "I figure he's wisened up more than anything. Being scared of Hermione's just smart."

"I'm not scary," I bit at him.

"Says the blood mage," he muttered under his breath with a glance at the empty hallway. "Besides, you know more hexes than anyone I know."

I sighed. "Can't exactly use them, though, can I?"

"Hasn't stopped you from teaching them to us, though," Ron said.

Eventually, finally, dinner arrived, and badly muted annoyance turned to nervous excitement. Such was my rush that a stray bit of ham almost cut my remaining year a whole lot shorter. Ron had to pound on my back until I coughed it up. It wasn't the first time I'd seen him do it, either, even if it was my first time being on the receiving end. Eating too fast was not a horribly uncommon problem in the Weasley household, I'd learned. I slowed down after that, diverting my attention as best as I could. There was no doubt in my mind that there was a spell to clear the airways; I just couldn't see someone like Professor Snape hitting someone's back until they coughed. Not that the spell would be any use to an obligate ritualist, mind. It was yet another door closed, and each one stung slightly less than the last.

When we finally finished eating, I dragged two thoroughly amused boys up out of the Great Hall and up five flights of stairs. "So we need to practise first," I said once the illusory wall was in sight. "Did you two actually read your parts like I asked?"

"Er, yeah," Ron said. "Mostly."

I shot a glare at him. "Mostly?"

"It's why we're practising, right?" He shrugged. I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped myself short.

"Right." I turned back ahead. "Sir Fabeon, it's nice to see you again."

The knight in the portrait bowed with a flourish. "And a pleasure to see you again, Lady Granger. Sirs Potter and Weasley. Good luck today!" His piece said, he swung open.

"So, Harry?" I asked as I stepped through.

"I read it, but, er…" He trailed off. "It's a bit much. I think it'll make more sense once we're doing it?"

"Right. Good. Like Ron said: It's why we're practising." The nerves almost clenched my fists tight, but I diverted to tapping fingers on my thigh.

The door to the ritual room itself was sitting open, and we stepped inside to see Luna sitting on the windowsill and rocking from side to side.

"You got up here quick," Harry noted.

She pointed to a picnic basket sitting on the coffee table in the corner. "I brought my food up with me."

"You're a genius, you are," Ron said.

She cocked her head to the side. "I am?"

He gave me a look, as if I could understand her strangeness any better than he could. "Er, yeah. Ruddy brilliant."

"Right then. Sit down somewhere." I waved vaguely at the couches, my attention already on the ritual circle. "I just need to double check some things."

"Watch," Ron muttered. "Gonna be an hour, and nothing will have changed." Harry laughed. I ignored them and set to work.

The checking only took half an hour, I noted smugly, and a few things had in fact needed changing. One of the runes, for example, had been slightly misshapen, and one of the candles had been almost half an inch off position. For some reason, Harry and Ron collapse into a fit of giggles when I pointed it out. Their relief when I declared the ritual circle to be in perfect order died a quick death when I started actually running them through what we'd be doing. Harry in particular seemed distinctly uncomfortable.

"I trust you and all," he said when I asked. "Only, it's a bit cult-y, isn't it?"

I rolled my eyes. "I told you it would be."

"I don't remember that, actually."

"Double double toil and trouble?" I asked. "Fillet of a fenny snake and all that? No man of woman born, you know, Macbeth?" The only person who didn't look confused was Luna, but she didn't count. I palmed my face. "Right. Of course the Dursleys wouldn't have you read Shakespeare. Point is, yes. It's a complicated magic ritual. This style of casting predates Rome. It's going to look a bit… cult-y, yes, but it's fine. I promise."

That settled his worries well enough, though he still seemed a bit sceptical all the way through. After a couple hours, I was finally convinced that all four of us knew our parts. At the very least, we knew them well enough. There was nothing saying we couldn't be holding our scripts while casting, after all. Thus decided, I got us all up from the couches, had Harry light the candles, and started herding the three of them like cats.

"Right, Ron. You're the Lightest one here—"

"What? Luna's way smaller!"

"I meant magically Light, now—"

"I have plenty of magic!"

"Yes, you do, but I meant your thaumic centre's native polarity. Don't argue. Just stand in the origin circle. Yes, that one. We need you as the first lens to set the tone. Luna, you're in the one to his right. The other right. There we go. Harry, you're the Darkest aligned, so—"

"I'm no dark wizard."

"For the last time, 'Dark' doesn't mean bad. It mostly just means you're moody."

"I'm not moody, either!"

"Kind of proving her point there, mate."

"Quiet, Ron. Harry, stand in the circle. Right. Good. Everyone face me—"

"Why don't you have a circle?"

"Because, Harry, I'm standing in the centre. I'm the focus. If the ritual is the spell, then I'm the wand, which means the big circle is my circle. Now, is everyone ready?"

"Er, right. Ready."

"Ready!"

"Good to go."

I gave the room one final once-over, making sure everything was perfect. None of the chalk was smudged, all the candles were lit in exactly the right spots, and everyone looked as ready as they said. Luna gave me an encouraging smile when I looked to her, and Harry gave me a focused nod. I closed my eyes, taking a long few moments to feel the magic around us. It got easier every time. It only took a few moments before I could quite literally feel the anticipation in the air. Turning back to Ron, I bent into a kneel. There was the shuffling of clothes, and I looked round to see that everyone else had followed suit. Good. I caught Ron's eye and nodded. It was time to begin.

Ron closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and I felt a trickle of power begin to thrum from his direction. After a short moment, I felt Luna follow suit. I had to look at Harry and nod—he couldn't feel it like Luna and I—but it took only a moment after that for me to feel him do his part too. The feeling of my friends' magic surrounded me on all sides. It was heady. It felt solid, like you could lean on the air, put your weight on it. It was pressure, and anticipation, and nervousness, and excitement, and awe. I could feel the emotions of each of them melding together, blending and rising as they met. For a few fleeting, eternal moments, we were one.

And then it was gone, replaced by a muted pulse from all around. I caught Ron's wide eyes once more—even he could feel something now—and urged him to continue with a pointed look. He stood up slowly just like I told him, and spoke up.

"Hogwarts, who gives us home," he read out in a weak voice which quickly grew strong. The sigils and runes around his feet suddenly began to glow brightly, and he looked down at them in shock. I wasn't too sure why. 'Light' magic wasn't just a fancy name. It was called that for good reason. Surely, he'd have figured that out.

"Hogwarts, who gives us knowledge," Luna said from off to my left, without a hint of uncertainty. I heard her move, and saw the light from the runes out of the corner of my eye.

"Hogwarts, who gives us family," Harry said. He said it softly, but it was better than how he had stuttered in our practise. The spell accepted his offering, and he stood amidst light.

"Hogwarts, who gives us home," I said, before standing and turning on my heel to face Luna. "And knowledge." The arc of the primary circle between Ron and Luna lit up. I turned to Harry. "And family." The arc between Luna and Harry lit too. I turned once more to Ron. "And life." The final arc lit, and I felt an otherworldly something plant a hook somewhere deep inside me.

"Hear us now," I said. The hairs on the back of my neck almost seemed to stand on end as I felt the line to the hook snap taut. Luna's words on her roof suddenly made sense.

"They're watching," she had said, and the words gained new life.

I became clearly and intimately aware of something else, something beyond, something other, and I could feel its attention settle around my shoulders like a cloak. Hogwarts could feel, and it had weight, but it wasn't anything like this. This was something beyond me, and I had managed to earn its gaze. My mind reeled at the revelation. There was no proof. No evidence. Nothing that I could see, or hear, or touch. And yet…

I could. I could feel it, evidenced as clearly as if reaching out with my hands. There was something massive that I couldn't explain, it was watching, and I could feel it. Not with my physical body, no, even for all that my hands were sweating, my mouth was dry, and my eyes were wide. It was a sense that only existed in magic. The one that the Diary had taught me to feel, like being born blind only to learn I had simply never opened my eyes. And wasn't it true that the more a thaumic centre inverted, the more sensitive it was to outside influence? I was a ball of yarn unravelled by a passing tomcat, catching on everything which passed me by. Wouldn't it be that I would see more clearly? As I closed my eyes—closed my life—sounds I might never have heard made themselves known.

What revelations awaited me, before the end?

The attention grew impatient as I grasped for reason, and I swallowed dryly. Whatever the thing was, I sensed that I wanted nothing less than to disappoint it after I'd worked so hard to capture its attention. There was no stopping now.

"We who wander your halls, soak your knowledge, and delve into your secrets ask a boon: A secret of our own," I said once I found my voice, a few eternities later.

"A secret of our own," Harry, Ron, and Luna echoed. By the tone of their voices, I knew they couldn't feel the magnitude of what I could. Not even Luna. They were awed, but it was awe like seeing a whale in person for the first time; I was looking into its wide mouth and stepping in. No ritual had struck me like this before. And the parts of me not suffused in screaming terror knew regret at what could only be a mistake.

"In times of strife, we would make a place of safety." The weight of its gaze gave me little choice but to continue. Had I subjected myself to this? This… monolithic attention?

"A place of safety," they echoed again. The square and its runes began to glow brightest white, too. The pressure from all around only seemed to grow.

"Amidst discord, we would bid you hold to Order." And was that a concept, or a name?

"Hold to Order." I closed my eyes as the final piece began to glow blindingly bright. The pressure grew almost solid, and I realised that it wasn't physical. It wasn't in the air, was it? It never had been. If I collapsed, my body would fall, but I wouldn't. For the very first time, I realised the difference.

"From within, we would tell a tale to those without. One of security, of silence—" The pressure grew unbearable for a moment before easing back. "—of forgetfulness, of awareness, and of trust."

"Security, silence, forgetfulness, awareness, and trust," they echoed once more.

After three seconds passed, each of us spoke in unison like we'd practised. "Grant us this peace amidst conflict."

The weight of attention grew once more, on and on and on until it ached somewhere I'd never felt before. It pushed me up and out and in and beyond myself as I left my body somewhere behind. Somewhere else. Somewhere both more and less, as I became both more and less. I was floating, and falling, and expanding out and out and out. For a lifetime I drifted, or perhaps a second, until finally finally finally—I felt it. I felt it with senses both new and old, but none of the flesh. I did not see nor hear nor touch nor taste it, but felt it like meaning is felt; like love and hate and joy and despair sat in the soul and writhed their way to focus.

It gave me a sad, proud smile with a mouth that couldn't be seen, and spoke in a voice that wasn't.

PEACE IS AN IDEAL; IT KILLS MORE SURELY THAN ANY WEAPON.
SAFETY IS AN ILLUSION; IT LIVES TO BE UNDONE.
A BASTION IS GRANTED; SHOULD IT HARBOUR DULLED SWORDS?

Then I was my body once more. The light blinked out, my knees buckled, and everything faded to black.