A/N: Happy Sunday, my loves. I sincerely hope you have had a wonderful weekend and if you haven't, please use this to brighten your day. We have more intrigue, more secrets, more fluff. This weekend they are sharing has just gone on and on but I figure that we're due a bit of progression for our two lovely ladies.

-0-

"Where the hell did you go? What took you so long?" Minerva's hands grabbed her as soon as she landed. It was raining here as well and Hermione squeaked as she was inspected for damage. As soon as she saw how sopping wet Minerva was as well, she couldn't help but laugh.

"If I look anything like you, we can safely say we both look pathetic," Hermione cackled.

"Well," Minerva sniffed. "What do you expect? We were rather caught out." She glared at the sky. "And it is no better here."

"Mhmm," Hermione laughed. "I just had a moment at the top, and then discovered something that might help in the future." Minerva stared at her expectantly but Hermione could see the woman's lips turning blue. "Come on, we need a shower, you're freezing. There's no point in a drying spell with all this lot still going. Let's warm up and then we'll finish our discussion, yeah?"

"Fine," Minerva sighed.

"Unless you want me to go?"

"No," Minerva groaned. "No, I don't like being soggy and my brain hurts with all this nonsense."

"I understand," Hermione whispered. She reached out and brushed away a drop of water that meandered its way down Minerva's forehead and then cupped her cheek. As Minerva opened the gates, Hermione shoved her hands in her pockets as they walked back up to the Castle so that she did not reach out again. As they came around the corner and she saw their Castle in a new light, she couldn't help but stop and stare. This place had once belonged to beings like her; a community of beings like her. It floored her that she should now be here to see it both as her haven and her birthright.

That thought made her gasp as she stared up at it but she waved off Minerva's look. They continued up to the castle and miraculously saw next to no one of importance until Micheal roared with laughter at their appearance.

"Will yeh look at what the cat dragged in."

"I hope I drip on you," Hermione teased as she made to shake her hair.

"NO!" Michael squealed. They stood and stared at each other until Hermione broke first and giggled. Minerva followed, despite her feelings, but it was Micheal that held out the longest. "Bloody nuisance women," he grumbled as he swung open. If a portrait could blush, he would have looked positively Weasley. "Get inside wi' yeh."

Hermione was still chuckling as Minerva pulled off her coat and hung it up. Hermione hung her own up beside Minerva's as the woman lit the fire with a lazy wave of her wand. Hermione leaned against Minerva's visitor's chair while she took in the tense shoulders and Minerva's bowed head as she stared into the flames while she warmed her hands.

"Shall I go?"

"Hmm?" Minerva asked. She looked a little shocked that Hermione was still there. "Oh, no, it's fine. There's -"

She waved awkwardly behind her desk and Hermione remembered that there was a spare room when she'd carried Minerva home on the night that now felt like a million years ago.

"Min," Hermione asked softly. "Are you alright?"

"No," she sighed. "No, I am not." She rubbed at her head but Hermione did not interrupt this time. "I'm sure I will be in time, however. Please," she nodded. "Follow me."

Hermione was still sopping as she was shown into the guest bedroom but Minerva left her to it and disappeared into her own room. Hermione let the noise of the running water soothe her while she undressed. She stood in front of the mirror and studied herself.

She did that more often these days. Before, she had barely spared it a thought. The occasional bout of self-consciousness where she would bemoan her hair or perhaps her teeth before she had tricked Poppy into shrinking them a little. These days though, she could see the changes her heritage had brought her. She was toned. Not skinny, and not particularly muscular, but she could see the mystery under her skin. She could see the shadows promising definition across her arms, belly and thighs. Her chest was scarred, but as she had come to learn this new body, she had found she quite liked them. They reminded her often of how much she had been through and what a miracle her whole existence was. The scars flexed as she breathed in and she thought back to Minerva mentioning that they moved a little when she was angry. She sighed as she leaned against the sink and stared at the little silver dragon on her wrist.

Some things were definitely still a mystery.

She shook her head as the rainwater dripped down her arms. It made the goosebumps prickle over her body so she rubbed her arms and got into the shower. Arguably, one of the best perks to being in the Wizarding world was the unending supply of hot water and it wasn't until she was under it that Hermione realised how cool her body had been. She certainly was much warmer than most other people, but the hot water stung her hands, feet and her backside and she sighed into the steam. Minerva must have been positively freezing.

That single concern brought forth all the other thoughts she had been putting off. She berated herself and resolutely refused to think about Minerva in the shower, but she did allow herself a moment to go through what had happened. The whole interaction with the dragon had bothered Minerva, and so it should have. Even now, she felt Minerva's sadness permeate her thoughts. She wondered at their bond and how much she could feel now. Initially, she had needed to practise finding them but now, it was as easy to call up Minerva's emotions and location as it was breathing. Even the others weren't as difficult to find as they'd once been.

Perhaps she was getting better at whatever it was that she had.

Minerva's sadness meant that Hermione desperately wanted to barge in there and comfort her. She resisted, of course. She allowed herself a moment of frivolity as she imagined the look on Minerva's face before she sobered and finished rinsing her hair. Minerva was allowed to be upset and overwhelmed by what had just happened. Any sane person would be. And, she was allowed to feel those things without Hermione's interference. Hermione realised she was gaining a better understanding of that too. Initially, she had sought to stop any thoughts that weren't positive, but now with some added experience, and of course the dragon's sadness, she had slowly understood that even though she was very aware of it, it wasn't on her to prevent or control.

Even if it hurt her that her love was hurting.

The knowledge that Hermione had gained from the dragon, however Minerva felt about it, made the whole thing feel like a calculated risk that had paid dividends rather than a mistake or something to regret. The fact that it had scared Minerva badly enough to make her withdraw, bothered Hermione more than she could say. Even though, on the surface, she could understand the fear of what they had been through, this withdrawal felt bigger than that. There seemed to be something else underneath the fear from the cave and Hermione desperately wanted to get to the bottom of it so it didn't fester. They had done so much to clear the air between them; she did not want this to sully it again.

She finished up in the water and changed into a spare set of clothes she'd brought with her for such an occasion before she tied her hair up in a bun so it wouldn't get in the way. Minerva was still in her room when she finished so she called for some tea while she waited. Michael, as usual, watched over her silently as she paced quietly until he cleared his throat.

"Woe Betide me from commenting," he joked, making her snort. "But she left here as happy as a clam and you've both come home with darkness in your eyes."

"I'll explain in full later," she promised. "But maybe you can listen in and see what you think."

"I will make sure you are not disturbed," he promised, disappearing for a moment and returning not long after to get comfortable.

As comfortable as a portrait could be.

"Oh," Minerva stopped at the doorway when she saw Hermione dressed with tea on the table. "I'm sorry, I -"

"Min," Hermione almost begged. "Please don't, this is your home you can take as long as you like. I only ordered tea, it's not like I cooked dinner."

"I'm not even that hungry, to be honest," Minerva muttered as she came over and sat down opposite Hermione. It stung a little but Hermione made sure it did not show while she made Minerva some tea.

"Here," she whispered as she passed it over.

Minerva took it, but before she settled, she clicked her tongue and got up. Hermione held her breath as Minerva walked around the table and sat down beside her with a huff.

"I'm sorry," Minerva muttered. "I am all of a to-do."

"I know," Hermione whispered. "It's okay. We can just drink some tea and relax for a while and then get into it?"

Minerva nodded and sat back against the sofa. Hermione followed and they sipped slowly while they listened to the sounds of Minerva's rooms. A clock ticking quietly behind her and the fire crackling in the grate. If Hermione really concentrated, she could hear Minerva's heartbeat and she wondered absently if she could for everyone or just the woman who held her heart.

A quiet sniffle made her realise that she was lost in her head and she looked over at Minerva.

"Min, come here, it's okay."

"I honestly thought we were going to -"

"I know," she whispered. She concentrated on her tea cup and wordlessly sent it hovering to the table before she took Minerva's and did the same. As soon as she was sure they'd settled on the table, she pulled Minerva into her arms.

"I'm fine. It was okay and we're both fine."

"It was hardly okay. It was so big, I couldn't even find the edges of it once it was dark and then you were just gone and I -"

"I'm so sorry," Hermione sighed. "I'm so, so, sorry."

She held Minerva as tightly as she dared until the woman calmed and her body stopped shaking. Just as she had needed a moment after her interaction, Minerva had kept her safe in the end and made sure she was protected. It filled Hermione with so much guilt.

"You kept me safe. All that blustering about me protecting you," Hermione whispered against her hair. "You were the one that protected me."

"I realised as I felt your hand leave mine that I would have fought that dragon with my bare hands," Minerva breathed. "And that terrified me. For so many reasons."

"I know," Hermione whispered.

They sat for a long time until the shadows in the room lengthened as the sun hung low in the sky. Eventually, Minerva took a deep breath and sat up. She squeezed Hermione's hands and nodded like she had finally decided something.

"Now," she said as if nothing had happened. "Tell me again what you saw. I don't think I understood what you meant before."

Hermione took Minerva's hand back and felt a good portion of the panic and sadness that was warring inside her. She kissed the woman's palms one after another and rubbed her thumbs along them, pressing gently into the flesh.

"Listen to me," Hermione interrupted. "We're okay. If anything, that was an amazing experience that nobody would have lived through, except us."

Minerva started for a long time before she sighed.

"I wonder if that's not why I feel like this," Minerva managed. "There is not anything much starker than having a dragon interact with your -" She paused but Hermione genuinely had no idea what she was going to say. "With someone you care about and you both live to tell the tale."

"True," Hermione nodded. "But in doing so I have so many more answers."

"Tell me then," Minerva asked. "Please. From the beginning."

Hermione settled into a more comfortable position where she explained the smell she'd followed and the sense that something was terribly wrong. She tried to explain that she had not had the knowledge of what to do, but rather, her mind simply went blank and did everything it needed to, for the interaction to occur.

"I felt you on my back," Hermione whispered. "I had a conscious thought that you were there but it was also an assumed one. I was happy to know exactly where you were but at the same time I had known where you were all along."

"I was so glad to have found you," Minerva whispered. "When you let go, you disappeared into his silhouette and I couldn't," she swallowed. "I have some eyesight in the dark; a byproduct of my animagus, I think."

"Oh," Hermione blinked. "Of course."

"It is not good, not anymore," Minerva clarified. "And I lost you against his outline and I honestly for a moment," she hesitated then seemed to power through it. "I thought I was alone."

Hermione suddenly realised why that hurt her so much.

"You haven't been alone for a little while now, have you."

Minerva's chin wobbled and she shook her head.

"I had no idea." She stared at her hands. "I had no magic, but I knew you were there. Different, perhaps, like the fire?" Hermione nodded as Minerva turned Hermione's hand over in hers and absently pressed her fingers to the palm. Hermione waited until she had moved her fingers and let the fire ignite for a while. Minerva smiled but let Hermione put it out. "In that split second when I lost you, perhaps when you say you connected to it?" Hermione nodded. "I realised that I no longer had any awareness of you." She looked up into Hermione's eyes and Hermione was not pleased to see them full of tears. "That terrified me."

"I'm here now, though, right?" Hermione needed to reinforce, and check, that in communicating with the dragon she hadn't damaged anything.

Minerva nodded.

"As soon as I had enough sense to shift forward a little, I felt you with my foot and managed to reach out to you and it all came flooding back." Her hands shook again and Hermione squeezed them gently as she continued. "That brought a different set of feelings."

"I'm sorry that I let go." Minerva nodded but didn't say more, so Hermione continued. "I'm sorry that my actions hurt you, Min. It," she shuddered. "It hurts me to know that I did that."

"It was a moment we were not in total control of," Minerva shrugged. "I am not seeking to blame you." She looked up into Hermione's eyes. "I am attempting to simply be truthful."

Hermione reached forward and rubbed Minerva's cheek with her thumb.

"I understand."

Minerva nodded and Hermione pulled her hand away, even as she wanted to tug Minerva closer. She was glad to have cleared the air and she was glad to know why Minerva was feeling like she was, but she had to try very hard not to simply fix it so that they were no longer sad.

"It must have been hundreds of years old," Minerva muttered, interrupting Hermione's thoughts.

"At a minimum." Hermione rallied. "It remembered seeing humans at sea and being surprised that they could do that. That must be, what -"

"Nearly 500 years," Minerva breathed.

"Wow."

They let that sit before Hermione shifted and gave in. She carefully drew Minerva with her as she lay back. She didn't force her, but she didn't need to as Minerva followed willingly and pressed back into Hermione's front. As ever, when Minerva's head was tucked under her chin, Hermione ran her fingers through Minerva's hair and smiled at the sigh it brought to her love.

"I didn't want it to go to death feeling like we were as bad as it had seen us being," Hermione explained softly. "I wanted it to know that we are so capable of great love and kindness. I showed it the way my parents loved me, and the way I loved them. And Harry and Ron and Ginny. And our little family together, laughing or arguing good-naturedly over why anyone would ever buy a Blood Pop unless they were an actual vampire and how it's all an elaborate plot by the Ministry to track them."

Minerva snorted and reached up to cup Hermione's cheek. It had been a silly discussion they'd had the other night after looking at Slughorn's memory in the Pensieve, just to spend some time doing something other than saving the world. It broke the sadness in Minerva for just a moment as she remembered it.

"I think I reached for you?"

"You did," Minerva nodded. "You pressed my hand onto its head."

"I needed it to feel us, us specifically," Hermione explained. "It had a mate, I think. Long before but I think she?" Hermione shrugged. "Had been killed and I just needed him, I suppose, to remember what that was like."

Minerva nodded and a burst of regret washed over her but Hermione didn't call attention to it. She had an idea about why Minerva felt that way but Minerva didn't need to know that because she clearly wasn't interested in sharing.

"Not many people would have done what you did. Do you understand that?"

"Well, I'm the only -"

"No, love," Minerva said earnestly as she rolled over and leaned up on her elbow so they were eye to eye. "I mean giving him that. Showing him some hope at the door of death."

"I would want someone to do that for me," Hermione whispered. "I think that's why. I needed him to know that even though he had been hurt so often by us, we aren't all the same and perhaps, in time, we could use what he had been through to help to fix that."

"You let go again after but then he moved again and I was much closer and could see you at that point. Despite the dark."

"I wonder if my giving him those thoughts helped unlock what he showed me."

"Which was?"

"Hogwarts," she said quietly. The thought flew in the face of everything they knew about their castle and she wasn't sure how much to make of it.

"I don't understand."

"The Founders didn't build this place, Min," Hermione explained. "My people did."

"That's preposterous."

"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus?" Hermione shrugged. "The Founders were just quizzical enough to do everything else in this castle." She paused as she considered how true that statement was. "Well, possibly." She shrugged. "Why not that?"

Minerva stared at her and then, as if she could not stand to anymore, turned back over to watch the fire.

"That -"

"I know," Hermione nodded as she traced Minerva's small ear. "But it felt right when I saw it and it feels right when I think about it. This has always been my home. My home and I have never understood that properly until this moment. There are things here that even magic can not explain. The room of requirement? The almost sentient nature of it? If you disregard hundreds of years of history - has Magic become so poor that we could no longer build this again?"

Minerva was very still as she pondered that thought and Hermione felt the moment she began to believe.

"I do not know what this means," Minerva muttered. "I do not know what this means for anything."

"It certainly explains a whole lot," Hermione nodded. She glanced up at Michael who was listening in and his smirk told her that he'd understood too.

Being able to discuss things outside her purview with the entry guardians made all the sense in the world now.

"This is my castle," she whispered.

"Aye," Micheal said. "I did say tha' lass."

Minerva jumped and looked up at him in horror as she sat up.

"How long have you been there?"

"Since yeh woman asked me to stay."

"Bloody hell," Minerva muttered. Her face turned beet red. Hermione chuckled and traced her cheek.

"In the interest of being honest," Hermione said cheekily. "He calls you that too."

Minerva glared up at his portrait and then realised what Hermione had said. She turned and stared at her incredulously.

"I know. I need to tell you," Hermione said carefully after looking up at him in warning. "I need to tell you why this castle has been mine this whole time. I can speak to Michael, like he is here with us, beyond what anyone else can, save you. I would never," she cupped Minerva's cheek. "Never use him to betray your trust. My relationship with him is not like yours. But I do want you to know that he and I talk sometimes. About you but also the castle, about what he hears elsewhere."

"What do you mean, about me?" Minerva almost roared. "Have you been -"

"Min," Hermione said, stopping her before she could leave. "Minerva? No, please, listen to me."

Minerva, to her credit, stopped and glared between them until Hermione cupped her chin again.

"Listen," Hermione instructed. "He and I talk; we are friends, I guess. He protects you, so sometimes when I feel the need to protect you, I make sure he is because I cannot." She glanced up at him goodnaturedly. "Even though that is his singular job and he is undoubtedly the best at it," Michael smirked at her. "That is the extent of our conversations about you. I make sure you are alright, make sure that you are well. I have never and would never ask him anything that was said between you and he would never tell me."

There was a pregnant pause between them and Minerva glanced up at Michael who, as best as he could, looked beseechingly down at his Mistress.

"I wouldna do it, lass. Not fer anythin'." Michael glanced at Hermione and she nodded. "Not even f'r 'er."

Minerva sighed and pulled away but she didn't leave. Hermione counted it as a win and let her pace before the fire.

"There's more," Hermione said softly. "I can also converse with Albus' guardian and have several times. I cannot say that I've tried to talk to anyone, anything, else, including the Gryffindor portrait, but," she shrugged. "I have spoken with Albus' guardian many times. Though again, and you would be more than fine to ask it, I do not ask things that would break its trust to its master."

"Cantankerous thing," Minerva grumbled. "I do not understand this and that is frustrating me."

"I know," Hermione nodded. "I know it more than anyone."

Minerva stopped and pulled a face.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Hermione waved her off. "You have every right to panic and be confused. But trust me," she glanced up at Michael. "Trust us. Surely you know I would never betray you like that?"

Minerva stared at them for a while and looked between them before she seemed to sag.

"I do," Minerva sighed, rubbing her head in earnest.

"Hey," Hermione chuckled. "That doesn't help, remember."

Minerva snorted and hugged Hermione hard. She clung to her and pressed her face against the skin of Hermione's neck. They stood for a long time with the heat of the fire doing Hermione's normal job of keeping them warm and they held each other until Minerva stood and wiped her eyes.

"Right," she said quickly. "Tea?"

"Yes please," Hermione nodded.