By the time Luna's owl reached Rita, letting her know what had happened had happened, Rita already had a draft of an article, and she'd set up midnight interviews with two Arithmancy experts and an expert in magical law.
"I don't think I'll be able to get you out of this tournament," Rita told Harry, "but I'll make damn sure they regret you ever getting involved."
Harry grinned. "I can live with that."
"We will also be cheating ruthlessly," Hermione told Rita, tossing her hair. "Any lead you get, any hints of what's to come, let us know. The goal is to get Harry through this alive, honor and glory be damned."
Rita grinned, her eyes glinting with malice. "Understood."
Timing their arrival back to Hogwarts was a bit tricky, but Harry was happy once they'd returned to the evening, glad to go up to Gryffindor.
"I know it's messed up, but a party is a party," Harry said, almost apologetically. "And I still have to convince Ron and Neville still that I didn't submit my name."
"If they don't believe you, they're fools," Hermione said vehemently, and Harry shrugged, likely aware, but he headed up the stairs anyway.
The rest of the coven was waiting for Hermione in the Entrance Hall, all wearing their ritual robes. Susan stepped forward to hand Hermione hers.
"Harry not coming?" she asked.
"Not this time," Hermione said, putting hers on. "It's fine. I don't think it'll take all of us to do this. Not tonight."
Together, they crept through the darkness to the shore of the Black Lake, where bonfires burned. Durmstrang students in red robes and fur cloaks stood around, talking and throwing things into the fire.
"This is so simple, comparatively," Susan murmured. "They're not even sacrificing mice."
"It's not their land," Luna pointed out. "What benefit for them is there if they do?"
"It still helps Magic—"
Hermione recognized Viktor's profile by his hooked nose and his brooding in the shadows of a tree, and she made her way to him, nudging him in the side. He looked up in surprise, before his expression lightened.
"You came," he said, pleased. "Even with your friend's mess."
"I did," Hermione said. She gestured to her friends. "I even brought my coven. Introduce me around?"
Viktor considered, before shrugging, pushing himself off of the tree he was leaning on. "Why not?"
Viktor began to lead them through the small clumps of students, pausing to make introductions. The older Durmstrang students nodded at her curiously, sometimes those with better English speaking out.
"Why you come here?" one boy asked. "Karkaoff told us Hogwarts not celebrate Samhain."
"Not all of Hogwarts ignores the old holidays," Susan said.
Blaise's eyes were dark in the firelight. "We wanted to welcome you as well."
It took a while for Hermione to realize, but as they went around, meeting people, Luna was subtly casting charms to make little ghostly balls of light float around the area, illuminating the glade a bit better. By the time everyone had met Hermione, there was an air of expectation as she approached the biggest fire, Viktor at her side.
"You want to perform ritual?" Viktor asked her. He gestured at a table they'd conjured, which held various foods and offerings.
"Yes..." Hermione bit her lip. "Just… not quite this one."
Blaise wordlessly handed Hermione a chair, which Hermione stood on, craning her neck to see everyone around the fires.
"Durmstrang! Hello! We come to formally welcome you. My coven comes to celebrate Samhain with you and honor your dead," she called out over the crowd, making sure her voice would carry. "If you would see your departed loved ones tonight, come forth one by one, and we will call them forth through the veil."
The crowd murmured, and Hermione climbed back down.
"We need a new fire," she murmured. "Not one with ashes of food in it. A small one."
It took a bit of wood and a snap from Hermione, but a small fire soon stood in front of her, close to the larger one. Luna, Susan, and Blaise stood behind her in a loose circle, and together they closed their eyes, sinking into their magic, breathing and centering themselves. Once Hermione could feel their magic syncing and running freely between them all, she slipped the Gaunt ring on.
Immediately, there was a sense of a spiderweb floating in the air, an odd, ghostly veil – one easily pierced and moved through. It felt different than the coldness Hermione had felt earlier with the ring, and she wondered if it was her coven grounding her that helped.
"Who wants to go first?" Blaise said. "Or does Durmstrang not truly believe in the power of Samhain?"
The Durmstrang students looked amongst each other, skeptical, before finally one boy came forward.
"I vould see my brother," he said. "He died two years ago."
Hermione handed him a silver ritual knife.
"Offer your blood to magic; cut your hand over the flame," she recited. "And I will guide him through the veil as you call out his name."
The boy took the knife, evaluating it, before he dragged it across his palm, clenching it over the fire, blood dripping down.
"Igor Sokolov."
His words resonated in the air, intoned somehow in magic, and Hermione flipped the Resurrection Stone, channeling her coven's magic through it as she did. There was the faintest ripple in the spiderweb-fine veil she could sense, and suddenly, Igor was there, and the Durmstrang boy exclaimed loudly and fell back, the crowd immediately breaking into a buzz.
Igor Sokolov, however he had died, had gone gruesomely – there was a huge, gaping wound across his chest and middle that still looked wet, though it did not drip with blood or gore. Igor looked at the boy who had called him.
"Ilya, you still wear your hair like that?" he said. The dead Igor glared at his brother. "You look like mad chicken."
There was a sharp intake of breath, and suddenly the Durmstrang students were laughing in amazement, Ilya stepping forward to embrace his brother, only to step right through him instead.
"Ah, cannot touch," Igor said regretfully. "But can talk. How are you now?"
Ilya moved aside with his brother, his eyes still wide in astonishment, and as soon as he was out of the way, a Durmstrang girl smartly stepped up.
"Katarina," she said, nodding. "I would call my sister, Katya."
Hermione held out the knife. "Offer your blood to magic; cut your hand over the flame."
With the coven's magic grounding her, Hermione was able to find and guide shades through the veil as each student came forward, one by one. She could feel a faint connection to all of them as each appeared, the coven's magic sustaining them as they lingered, until the glade was filled with the shades of the dead.
Viktor approached her last, his eyes wide.
"How?" he breathed. "I am not stupid. This power… necromancy, but this… this is not Dark…"
Hermione looked at him, before taking a deep breath.
"Have you heard of New Blood?"
Viktor shook his head slowly, looking at her.
"Well, let me tell you, then," Hermione said, smiling faintly. "I'm destined to change the world."
Hours later at midnight, the coven left the glade, cloaked against the cold in their ritual robes as they went back up the slopes.
"I think that went well," Luna said cheerfully. "And it was good to see everyone so happy to see their loved ones again."
"Yeah." Susan's words were thick, and she wiped at her eyes. "It was—my mum—"
Hermione moved next to Susan, hugging her from the side. "She was so proud of you, Susan."
"She really was." Susan smiled through her tears. "She was older when she made a coven, I think. I'm glad she got to see mine. And to talk to her, really talk to her, instead of just through an old painting…"
"Do you think Dumbledore knows what we were up to?" Blaise asked, pulling his cloak around him tighter. "Or Filch? It's definitely after hours – if we go through this door, are we going to immediately get caught out of bed?"
"That's a fair point," Luna admitted. "I could try to fly up to Ravenclaw tower, but there's no guarantee anyone would be awake enough to open the window and let me in."
"We could try to use the ley line," Hermione said, glancing around. "It's after Samhain, but we've all earned the right to travel them as we wish. We should still be able to step into them and step out where we want."
"Even if we're not following you?" Susan asked. "Last time, I just 'jumped' to reach you. My pendant's connected to you."
Hermione bit her lip. "I mean, theoretically. The House Elves do."
Luna and Susan exchanged a glance, before they shrugged.
"Worth a try," Luna said cheerfully, and then abruptly, she was gone.
Susan was gone a moment later, and Blaise smirked at Hermione.
"Want me to go first?" he asked. "Or you?"
Hermione blinked. "Does it matter?"
"It might." Blaise grinned. "You might end up misdirected and fall into my bed again."
Hermione laughed. "You wish."
Blaise sighed overdramatically. "Yeah, I do."
He was gone a moment later, and Hermione stepped into the ley line herself, popping out in the Slytherin dorm, where the other girls were already fast asleep. She undressed as quietly as she could, before putting the Resurrection Stone ring next to Tom Riddle's diary, locking and warding it firmly in her strongest chest.
That had all gone rather well, she thought, reflecting as she slowly succumbed to sleep. Another few high holidays, and maybe all the Durmstrang students believe and want to become Shadows by the end of the school year.
