"You're bleeding," were Harry's first words when they made it inside.

She felt something sticky on her face, on her head, but she hadn't put too much thought into it. She instinctively reached with her hand towards her head, the pain pulsating somewhere in the back of it, and she winced as she felt a fresh cut. She whispered Episkey and the cut mended itself, though there wasn't anything she could do to fix her broken ribs right now. She was just glad broken ribs and a few bruises were all the injuries she had sustained.

"Are you okay?" she asked, looking over at Harry, feeling for any hidden wounds she couldn't spot.

"I'm fine. Better than you. You should rest," he offered, but she shook her head.

"We need to get to work. We don't have much time."

She stepped back, ignoring the ache, and finally glanced around the room, taking in the sight. There were, in her assessment, hundreds, if not more, tomes. They sat in bookcases that stretched on the entirety of each wall, neatly tucked in and arranged in alphabetical order. She would have been able to appreciate the vast knowledge spread out before her if it weren't for the pain coursing through her entire body.

Both her and Harry chose a book off the shelf and began skimming through. She tried to pour all of her focus into this task, waiting for the moment they would stumble upon the text that answered all their questions.

"That's pretty," Harry said, putting one book back on the shelf and taking another one with him.

She glanced at him in confusion and he pointed towards her neck.

"Oh," she said, feeling her cheeks grow warm. "Thank you."

"Who is it from?"

Her hopes of avoiding the matter were dashed as he posed his question, leaving her with no choice but to address it.

"It's—"

She fell silent. She considered Theo a friend, but she also longed for him to be more. She wanted him, all of him, the soft touches of his lips, his warm embrace, the worrying lines that creased his forehead when he was concerned about her. She longed to get through all of his walls, to see his soul bare for her, help him see he was a better man than he thought he could be. She wasn't ready to say all those things aloud, not even to Harry, when she didn't know herself if it would ever be a possibility. If Theo would ever open up to her fully, let her into his life, offer his heart to her, the way she had offered hers.

"—from a friend."

"That's some friend," Harry said, knitting his brows together. "It's Alexandrite."

"Oh," she said again, at a loss for a more coherent response.

She had noticed the gem turning into a green-bluish color in the natural light, making her remember that Theo was a Slytherin, and she was a Gryffindor, and that they didn't belong together.

"It's indeed pretty."

A sudden voice sounded behind her, and she jumped in her seat on the cold stone floor. Both she and Harry looked around, startled, gripping onto their wands. There was nothing, no one in sight. They exchanged wary stares and Harry shuffled closer to her, putting his hand on her arm.

"Who's the lucky man?"

A figure appeared right in front of their faces. No, Hermione thought. A ghost floated mere inches from the two of them, cackling.

"Who is it? Huh, huh?"

He was—used to be—a slim man with long hair, pointy nose and, weirdly, a kind smile when he wasn't laughing maniacally.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, moving in even closer to her, being the protective friend he always was.

"Me?" the ghost replied. "Who are you?"

"I'm Hermione," she said, certain that there wasn't any harm in revealing their names to a ghost stuck in a library in the middle of nowhere, guarded by a ferocious statue with killing intent. "And this is Harry."

Harry gave her an offended side-glance, but she ignored him. "What's your name?"

"Pretty. Pretty girl, pretty boy. Pretty shiny necklace. I'm Albert."

The ghost, Albert, swished in the air, circling around the room.

"Are you a Black?"

"A Black?" he laughed hysterically. "Yes! But if you asked anyone from my family, they would deny my existence."

"Why is that?" Harry questioned, keeping his gaze on the ghost.

Albert disappeared behind the bookshelf and they both could hear weeping sounds coming from there. They looked at each other uncomfortably as the ghost "cried".

"He's really weird," Harry whispered to her. "His name never appeared on the Black's family tree."

They waited for Albert to reappear, or hoped he would, at least, in silence. With their books in hands, they went back to their reading, waiting a couple of minutes for the ghost to come back. Hermione hadn't expected a live statue to try to kill them, and she had definitely not anticipated a ghost living inside the library. It had been an unusual day, but strange occurrences were something one got accustomed to when living in the Wizarding World

"My family was embarrassed," she heard the ghost say, emerging from the wall. "They thought of me as the black sheep of the family. Ashamed of me. One day—"

He disappeared again, coming back minutes later and it really started to grate on her nerves.

"—some of my cousins wanted to make a ritual. Blood magicks," he said. "They found a mudblood, they hated them. I never cared. They said they're bad, but my family was bad. They didn't see it, but they were bad."

Hermione didn't detect any malice, any disgust when Albert said mudblood. She thought he didn't know any better. She couldn't tell how long he had been stuck here, how long had he been dead, how long he had carried on as a ghost.

"I didn't like it. They wanted me to participate. I didn't want to. They wanted to make me. I said no. They didn't like it," he continued. "They made her their slave. She was a puppet. She had no free will. It was sad to see. And then came another mudblood, and then another. I couldn't even keep count. So many of them."

Harry made a strange sound in his throat, and she looked at him quizzically. He just shot her a sheepish smile. "Knowing Sirius, it's hard to listen to that and think that such behavior is going back decades."

She grabbed his hand in understanding. He nodded at her.

"I came here. I wanted to find a way to set them free. To help them," Albert said. "My brother found me here. He immediately knew what I was trying to do. Never been a good liar, you see."

Albert glanced around wistfully, as if reliving the story he was telling them. She dared a gloom thought that he probably was.

"I'll spare you the gruesome details, but I can assure you my death wasn't pleasant. At the hands of my own brother, no less."

"I'm sorry," she said instinctively, feeling the sadness at the idea of what he must have gone through, especially if it was in defense of people like her, the people with dirty blood in his family's opinion.

"Ah," he waved his hand dismissively. "I still can't seem to find the reason why I chose to come back as a ghost. Maybe my death came too suddenly, and I just needed a little bit more time? It's not so bad. It just gets boring. I never have any visitors."

"Do you—" she started, unsure of how to form her question. "Have you read many books on dark magic in your life? Or how much knowledge do you have of it?"

"Pleeeenty," Albert laughed at her, as if she was asking something obvious. "My family was dark magic. I had to know it all. I had to."

"Do you know anything about a curse called 'The Soulwarp curse'?"

"The Soulwarp curse you say?" he inquired. He hummed under his breath, swirling around the room. "The Soulwarp curse. The Soulwarp curse."

"Aha!" Albert exlaimed.

"Yes?" both her and Harry perked up at this. Her heart skipped a beat, growing hopeful.

"No, no, no," Albert said, disappearing into the bookshelf.

Hermione had to stop herself from growling in frustration. Harry just shot her a pointed stare. "He's not going to help."

"Give him time," she told him.

She couldn't help but feel a glimmer of hope in her chest. If Albert actually knew anything about the curse they were trying to battle, she could finally find her answers. She could finally free her friends and the rest of the students from its influence, fix this problem. She was growing so tired from the constant chase after something she had no idea how to find. The silence stretched, the anticipation was mounting, thickening the air around her.

"Yes!" Albert emerged once again, his expression a mixture of a forced smile and a frown. "My father used it. Just one time. There was this family. I invited their son to spend some time with me. I was bored and lonely. He was nice. We were playing, duelling, just boys' things. There was this book he had shown me. It wasn't dark magic, or dark at all. It was good to finally have something positive to read. He let me borrow it."

Albert's forced smile grew weaker as he continued. "My father found the book. He said it was a disgrace. That I was a disgrace. He said mudblood wrote this book. I didn't know. He was angry. He beat me half to dead. He said he knew where I got the book from. He wanted the family dead. All of them. He said they are blood traitors, reading mudblood books. He—"

His smile was completely gone, replaced by a snarl forming on his face. "He wanted me to kill them. I said no, of course. I am no killer. Henry was my friend. I did it anyway. That's Soulwarp curse."

The silence fell over the library and Hermione could hear her own breathing. She heard the ghost's words. Harry heard them. Albert had been under the influence of the same curse that was now raging within Hogwarts walls. Cast by his own father, forced to kill an innocent family. She wondered how deeply ingrained the cycle of death and abuse ran in pure-blooded families like that—the ones for whom blood status was the sole measure of worth in life. So many questions were spinning inside her head, but she didn't want Albert to close off and leave his story at that; she needed answers.

"Do you know exactly how it works?" she asked tentatively.

"I did research," Albert admitted. "But from experience. I was angry. I didn't know why. I just had this rage burning inside me. Then it hit me. I wanted them dead. All of them. That's what all my anger was about. I couldn't stop myself. I had to."

Harry was looking at her with a horrified expression. Hermione understood what an inevitable end would meet her and other muggle-borns if they weren't able to break this curse in time. She pushed the running thoughts of condolences and words of understanding the grief in favor of more important things to say.

"Do you know any way to break the curse?"

Albert chuckled darkly. "You don't want to do that."

"What is it?"

"Do you really want to know, young girl?"

"Tell me," she said sternly.

"Of course, if the caster dies, the curse will be broken. If not, then…" he trailed off and all that came after was a whooshing sound of him vanishing behind the bookcase.

"Come back here!" she yelled after him to no avail.

Hermione knew that killing the caster could be a way out of this mess. This idea had briefly entered her mind. However, it was Theo's father. She wouldn't dare to bring it up to his own son—no matter how strained their relationship was. He was his own blood, how could she even spend a passing thought on this? Theo had never voiced such a thing, and neither would she. His father was locked up in Azkaban. There was no way for them to make it happen anyhow. Not only any visits with Death Eaters were banned—how could she take away his life? Even if they managed to get through to him—what then? She had never met Thoros Nott, but hearing the stories about him, she already harbored as much hate as she could bear inside her body for him. He was a despicable man. Still, she couldn't imagine herself standing in front of that man and ending his life.

She felt Harry's touch on her shoulder, squeezing it in comfort. She sent him a small smile.

"Fine, fine," Albert reappeared, sighing heavily into the room. "If you want to know it so much, I will tell you."

Hermione perked up, listening intently. "Yes?"

"Only if you leave that pretty necklace of yours in here."

She was taken aback by the strange request. She hadn't expected that the ghost, who seemed nice and kind at first, would feel the need to take away something from them, just because he could. Just because they needed his knowledge and he had nothing to lose from giving it away.

"No," she said right away. "No, please."

The idea of leaving the necklace Theo had given her, the same one that belonged to his mother, made her stomach turn. In that rare moment when Theo spoke of his mother, she could immediately tell how much love he harbored for her—his feelings showed in the shake of his voice and the lingering emotion of affection that coated his tone.

"You're a ghost," Harry interjected, raising a brow. "Why do you need it?"

"I like it. It's nice. All I have here are some old books. It will be nice to have something shiny to look at."

"And what makes you think we won't just take it back with us, once you tell us what we want to know?" Harry asked.

Albert cackled and Hermione cringed at the sound. Any positive emotions she had felt towards the ghost started to fade away.

"If you ignore my request, I will haunt the dreams of both of you. I will be there, when you close your eyes, making you remember the promise you broke. You will never rest easy for the rest of your lives."

She paled at that. She watched the ghost, who had a smug smirk on his face, look at her expectantly. She saw Harry shake his head no at her while she was battling inwardly with herself. What was she supposed to do? Theo had given her his mother's necklace—her, a muggle-born girl who he was supposed to detest—and now she would have to leave it behind her, as if it was nothing, as if he was nothing to her.

Unclasping it from around her neck, she suddenly found it hard to catch her breath and she knew it had nothing to do with her broken ribs. If she didn't agree to the ghost's request, she wouldn't get her answers. Of course, she had to take into the account that whatever Albert was going to tell them could turn out to be a complete lie—she had to take those chances. No matter what she chose to do, Theo would hate her anyway. Either with the curse taking over him, or when he realized she had given away the only memento he had of his mother.

She didn't care about her own dreams being haunted—she already had plenty of her own demons to battle with when she fell asleep. Harry was helping her willingly and she wouldn't bring it upon him to pay consequences of her actions. With a heavy heart, she placed the necklace on the floor, pushing it away from her.

"Don't do it, Hermione," Harry pleaded. "We still have plenty of books to go through here. We might not need his help. You don't even know if he's telling the truth."

"I know," she agreed. "But there are hundreds of books here. We don't have the luxury of time."

She had to make a decision even if that decision was breaking her heart.

"Tell us," she said to Albert.

Albert laughed cheerfully. She hated the sound of it.

"Very well, then."