The twins' room was up in the attic, practically, and as they led her through the house, somewhere along the way, Bill joined them. Hermione shot him a look, and he grinned cheekily.

"What?" he said innocently. "I'm not in town often. I'd love to spend more time with my favorite brothers."

Hermione gave Bill a wary look. The last thing she wanted to do was answer questions about why she thought she'd been memory charmed.

The memory charm and knowledge of the incomplete bond still nagged at Hermione. When she took off her coven ring late at night, just experimenting, she could feel Blaise. She still had no idea what the bond meant or what it could do, but she could feel him. She was beginning to think it was this incomplete bond that had anchored her to reality when she'd gotten stuck on the wrong side of the ley lines, the only reason she'd been able to jump home at all. So the bond was good, and powerful - but what did it mean? And why had someone interrupted and erased her memory?

She considered asking Bill about the incomplete bond for approximately half a second, before dismissing it immediately. There was no way asking that sort of question wouldn't spiral into an interrogation and all her secrets spilling out all over the floor before a bunch of Gryffindors.

They reached the top of the stairs and took a turn through a door that'd been left ajar. The twins' room was a disaster area, with clothes and books and things strewn all over. Fred went to one of their trunks, digging through it, before he finally pulled out a familiar-looking book.

"Got it," he said, smug. "See? We've been using it."

Judging from the pages they'd marked, they were using their copies of the adventuring books her dad had given her for her birthday the previous year – to make things like fake wands and jinxed rings, by the looks of it. Hermione sighed and flipped through it, pulling up the page her father had shown her.

"Protection from Evil," she said, pointing. "Can you enchant an object with this?"

Fred, George, and even Bill crowded around the book, reading.

"This is to ward a person from mental control?" George murmured, eyes wide. "Is there even a real-life spell that's equivalent to that, Gred?"

"I doubt it, Forge," Fred said, still reading. "If there was a shield spell that could do this, we'd have heard of it by now."

"You guys make your own spells though, right?" Hermione asked. "So you could make something like this?"

They glanced at each other.

"We don't really make our own spells," Fred admitted. "We just—"

"—we combine different spells in innovative ways," George finished. He gave her a serious look. "Spell creation is very advanced."

Hermione heaved a sigh. "So I've heard."

Bill had picked up the discarded book and was scanning over the spell description curiously.

"The first and third part of this can be accomplished with a normal shielding spell," he said. He glanced up at Hermione. "I take it you're only concerned with the mental part?"

Hermione nodded. "There's no way I know of to protect from a memory charm. I want to make sure I protect myself from them in the future."

Bill drummed his fingernails over the book.

"You'd have a hell of a time coming up with a spell like this," he told her. "'Good' and 'evil' aren't universally-agreed upon absolutes."

"I know that," Hermione snapped.

"Well, then, what if you have a creature who doesn't think it's evil to mentally control you?" Bill asked amicably. "This wouldn't necessarily trigger then, would it?"

"It would if I—wait." Hermione stopped short, her eyes wide. An idea was starting to form.

"An idea, Gred," said Fred loudly. "She had one of those for us before, didn't she?"

"She did indeed, Forge," George agreed. "She said she could fix our Ton-Tongue Toffees, but she seems to have forgotten us in her new quest."

"Weren't you Gred before?" Hermione asked, not really paying attention as she scanned over the book's explanation. "And you need to enchant the sugar before you make it into toffees. The spell will end up integrated throughout the entire candy then."

"Enchant the sugar?" Fred was incredulous.

"Sugar's a crystalline substance," Hermione said absently, glancing up at the older brother. "It should hold spells fairly well. Right, Bill?"

Bill was startled, but then he chuckled and grinned.

"She is right," Bill told the twins. "Gemstones are very good for holding spells. Crystals, too. Sugar is much smaller, of course, but…"

She let their voices fade out as her mind dwelt on her own issue.

Bill's point had been a fair one; it was when he'd mentioned a creature who wouldn't think it was evil to mentally control a person that Hermione's mind had taken off. She did know of creatures who wouldn't have any such compunction – the Fae.

From what she recalled from myth and legend, the Fae were excellent at putting such spells on humans, as well as on themselves. There were tales of their glamours and illusions, to make themselves look as good as possible for the Queen's court, and there were tales of people being controlled by magical items given to them by the Fae, only to have someone else break the spell at the last possible moment.

If the Fae were that good at exercising mental control over another, they'd surely mastered a way of resisting it on themselves, Hermione thought. If they hadn't, they'd have destroyed each other and torn themselves apart by now. She could ask the House Elves, maybe. She wasn't eager to meet another full Fae, but Neemey probably had some idea of how it all worked—

"Wait. Hermione broke your spell?"

The sound of her name roused her from her thoughts, and Hermione turned to see Bill looking at her in astonishment.

"Right?" George said plaintively. "Not fair, that's what that is."

"Definitely not," Fred agreed. "Not for all the time we spent on jinxing those candies."

But Bill wasn't listening to them. He was looking at Hermione curiously.

"Give me one," he told the twins, holding out a hand. "I want to see."

Fred obligingly held out one of the toffees, and Bill opened it, examining it and poking it with his wand. He muttered something under his breath, and a reddish net began glowing over the surface of the candy.

"Well, if she'd done that, we'd have known she was up to something," George said, folding his arms. "But she unwrapped it, looked at it a moment, and popped it into her mouth."

"Is that so?" Bill was poking the candy with his wand a bit, before he seemed to find a weak spot. A moment later, the net was unwinding, Bill's own magic overpowering it. He looked down at the tiny candy and then over at Hermione, curious. "Do you do much counter-cursing in Slytherin House?"

"Not really," Hermione said. "I only learned the basics this summer."

"The basics?" Bill was flabbergasted.

"Yes?" Hermione was surprised. "I overloaded it. You just did the same thing. On a spell that weak, it's not hard, right?"

"I've been a professional cursebreaker for years," Bill pointed out, giving her an odd look. "You're going into your fourth year."

"And?" Hermione asked, her patience waning. "I just overloaded it. I didn't counter-curse it, and I definitely didn't deconstruct and unravel it. That still seems pretty basic to me."

Bill's eyes widened, and Hermione felt a sinking feeling that she'd just made things worse.

"You know about unraveling?" Suspicious, he dug in a pocket and tossed her a bracelet. "Here. Unjinx this."

Hermione instinctively wanted to protest and resist – she hadn't come over here to be put on spectacle like a show pony, and she really should be on her way – but Bill's eyes glinted with challenge, and Hermione scowled. She'd always been bad at resisting the urge to show off.

Hermione examined the item visually for a moment, seeing a couple runes scored into the inside of the metal, before she let her magic flow over the bracelet. After a moment, she paused.

"This isn't jinxed," she said with certainty. "It's charmed, sure, but it's not cursed."

"Cursed, charmed, same difference," Bill said, waving off her protest.

"It's not," Hermione said, surprised. "Dark magic feels different. It's a lot easier to feel out and find than normal magic."

"Wait, are you accusing us of using Dark magic on our toffees?" Fred said, his jaw dropping open. "We would never!"

"You did whether you meant to or not," Hermione shot back. "You were tricking someone and enforcing your will over them with magic without their agreement. That's Dark magic."

"You agreed to eat the candy!" George protested.

"I agreed to eat a candy, not be cursed by a candy," Hermione retorted, folding her arms. "Dark. Magic."

Fred and George both looked astonished at this. Their eyes darted to Bill, who hesitated.

"Technically, she's sort of right," Bill admitted. "It's super minor, and the Ministry of Magic certainly wouldn't classify any of this as 'Dark', but—"

"We're Gryffindors!" Fred wailed. "We can't be doing Dark magic!"

"That's for Slytherins to do!" George agreed, moaning. "We're going to have to start all over…"

"Or," Hermione said pointedly, "you could grow up, admit to yourselves that 'pranking people' is inherently kind of Dark, own it, and get over yourselves."

Fred gave her a nasty look. "Look, little Miss Slytherin, some of us have morals—"

"And you're saying I don't?" Hermione said, incredulous. "I'm the one who pointed out you were doing Dark magic!"

"You suggested we keep at it," George snapped. "Nothing good comes from Dark magic. That's a slippery slope to hell—"

"The dementors were killed with Dark magic," Hermione said flatly. "So forgive me if I don't think your argument holds water."

There was a silence.

"No they weren't," Fred said.

Hermione heaved a sigh. "Yes, they were."

"They were not," George said. "That doesn't make any sense."

"They were. Honestly, you two," Hermione snapped, "I'm on the Wizengamot. I daresay I have a bit more insight into the matter than you two do!"

The twins exchanged a look, and Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Look," she said patiently. "Judging how you weren't able to help me, I'll take my leave now, alright? And since I was able to help you, you can collect that tip as payment for your time." She nodded to Bill. "I'll see you all at the World Cup."

"We're arriving that day," George said reflexively.

"And we're in the Top Box," Fred said. "So you probably won't see us—"

"Oh, but I will," Hermione said, giving them an evil smirk. "I will."