Early Halloween morning found Harry, Hermione, Susan, Theo, and a very sleepy Pansy sitting in a circle in the middle of the Room of Requirement, which had obligingly shifted to a round room with padded walls and little else. It was 1am.

"Why am I here?" Pansy asked, yawning. "I mean, I'm happy to help, but I don't think I'll be much help here."

"You're here because you were here when the rest of us arrived," Susan informed her as she handed Harry a potion. "None of us expected you to be sleeping in the Room of Requirement – we were just expecting Hermione."

"We need to discuss that later," Theo warned Pansy. "If something is tearing apart Slytherin House—"

"Snape's aware of the issue," Hermione said curtly. "If we could focus now?"

At Susan's bidding, Harry drank a muscle relaxant potion.

"This will help you not get hurt if you start seizing," she told him. "I don't think any of us knows how to fix muscle tears."

Harry, for his part, shrugged and grinned. "Thanks, Susan."

Hermione took out the diary, handing it to Harry as she rummaged around in her bag for another bag. Harry opened the diary on his lap and put his hand onto the open pages, breathing out his magic into it.

"Oh, weird," Harry said, his eyes widening. "I can kind of feel Tom. Is it supposed to be like that?"

"Given none of this is supposed to be happening anyway," Theo said dryly, "I sincerely doubt there's a 'right' way for any of this to feel."

Finally coming up victorious, Hermione dumped out the small bag she'd retrieved, revealing a putrefied hand with a gold ring still on the finger. There was an immediate clamor of protests and revulsion as people began gagging, but a moment later, the necrotic hand started dissolving into sparkles of magic, vanishing into the air.

"You kept his hand?" Harry demanded, looking ill. "What's wrong with you?"

"I haven't touched it since Susan lopped it off and Luna threw it in the bag!" Hermione said defensively, her own stomach roiling. "It's a magically inert bag! It's supposed to block magic from going in or coming out."

Once the rot was gone, the heavy gold ring lay ominously on the mat, glinting.

"Nobody touch it," Susan said immediately. "It might have the same necrotic curse on it still."

"It doesn't," Hermione said firmly.

"How can you tell?" Susan shot back.

"Do you feel compelled to put it on?" Hermione challenged. "Or do you feel a strong sense of dread and desire to get away from it?"

There was a pause.

"…desire to get away," Susan admitted after a moment. She seemed spooked. "Why is that? It was so alluring before."

"It's a horcrux," Theo said, his tone dark. "It's Dark magic. It's trying to protect itself. The necrosis curse was offensive defense. Now that its curse is gone, it's being more defensive – trying to keep you away."

"Is this thing conscious?" Pansy wanted to know. "It's just a ring."

Hermione opened her mouth to snap at Pansy, but she stopped herself just in time.

"Remember everyone," she said, her voice a bit shaky, "that the ring affects us just from us being around it. Take deep breaths and control your temper."

Susan's eyes widened. "Right."

After a long moment of focus, Harry sat up a bit straighter.

"I can feel Tom," he said. "He's ready – he can battle in my body, I think." He glanced at Susan. "Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Susan said grimly. Her eyes were set with determination behind tinted lenses, and she nodded to Hermione. "Ready?"

Hermione pulled her sword from the sheath at her hip. "Ready."

"Whenever you're ready, Potter," Theo instructed, "put on the ring."

Theo had scarcely finished speaking before Harry was reaching forward with a daring grin, plucking the ring from the floor and slipping it onto his finger.

Immediately, Harry's eyes rolled back into his head and he fell to the floor. He began shaking violently, as if wracked with fever, and Susan and Hermione both yelped and leapt backwards in a panic.

"This is what happened to you, roughly," Theo reassured Hermione, though he looked concerned. "You were screaming the whole time, though."

Harry wasn't screaming, but Hermione was horrified as his body convulsed and seized, awful gagging sounds coming from his mouth. She cast a diagnostic to make sure he could breathe (he could) and another to make sure his heart was still beating (it was, but very quickly), but the most she could do right now was watch in fear as Harry's body endured.

"I can't feel anything," Susan despaired. "I thought—I thought maybe I'd be able to help—"

"It didn't help Millie," Pansy said, her tone gentle. "This is possession, not legilimency."

It was like watching her coven members battle for dominance over an elemental, Hermione thought, watching Harry thrash about on the floor, but this was way, way worse. With elementals, she could cheer them on. She had certainty in their skill to know that they'd succeed. But with this… Harry wasn't even fighting. He was just the battleground.

It seemed to go on forever, but when Harry finally lay still, Hermione found only a few minutes had passed.

"Is it done?" Susan asked worriedly. "Is he alive?"

"He's alive," Theo reassured them, rolling Harry onto his back. "You can see him breathing. Ready? Ennervate."

Harry came awake with a great gasp of air, his eyes shooting open and scanning all around him, before he began laughing and coughing in relief.

"Harry?" Susan asked, tentatively.

"I feel like I've been wrung out by a machine," Harry said cheerily, his voice somewhat hoarse. "My head is pounding. But it's me. At least, I think it's only me."

"Is there a way to tell…?"

As Susan gave Harry a Pain Relief potion and helped him sit up, Hermione took the diary from Harry. She bit her lip, considering writing to Tom first, before reaching into the diary with her magic instead.

Immediately, she was falling into a land of fire and lava, winds whirling around her harshly. A broken stone bridge over the river of lava lay nearby, and Tom was across the river, staring at his hands. At her arrival, he looked up at her, horrified.

"Hermione," he said brokenly. "Hermione, what have I done?"

"Tom?" she said cautiously, approaching.

Tom sank to his knees on the edge of the river of lava, eyes large and unseeing. Hermione sat on the opposite bank, breathing slowly, and the fierce winds settled down.

"What happened?" she ventured. "Did it work?"

"I did it," Tom breathed. "I merged with the other horcrux. But Hermione… I have done such horrible things."

And Hermione watched as Tom began to wail.

He wailed, he keened, and he sobbed with such violence that Hermione didn't know what to do. Any words she offered were drowned out in the torrent of his grief, in the outpouring of his sorrow. Bits of stories were sobbed out, memories he now had – working at a Dark artifacts shop, practicing cursing people in Knockturn Alley, deciding it was time for another horcrux, and severing his soul again into the shard that had gone into the ring.

"Another soul, gone," Tom gasped. "Gone. For what? What have I done?"

"It wasn't you," Hermione said strongly. "Tom, listen: it wasn't you. You can't blame yourself for everything the other you did."

"But that part is me, too, now." Tom's voice was a wail. "Hermione, what have I done?"

Eventually, Hermione left him there weeping, pulling herself back out of her mind to find the others staring at her, looking afraid.

"It worked," Hermione said, nodding to Harry, who gratefully slipped the ring off and handed it to Hermione. "It worked, but Tom is in a lot of pain."

"Pain?" Theo looked confused. "He doesn't even have a body right now."

"Reintegrating with a torn soul piece is said to be the most excruciating thing in existence," Hermione said, biting her lip. "The regret and anguish can destroy you."

"Lucky he's not really alive, then, aren't we?" Susan remarked. "Can't die of regret if you're not alive to begin with."

Though it was a bit heartless, Hermione thought, it was a rather apt point.

When Hermione awoke for the second time, this time at a civilized hour, she dressed carefully, pinning a small butterfly clip in her hair as she considered the Gaunt ring, lost in thought.

"That one's a lot simpler than the other one," Pansy said, curling her own hair. "Other one too fancy?"

Hermione glanced over at Pansy, considered, and decided she had nothing to hide.

"Both butterflies were gifts from Fleur," she told her. "The big fancy one was a deliberate courtship gift – a promise of sorts – but this one was a gift as well. I don't want her to feel pressured by me wearing the big fancy one again. But if she sees me in the little one…" She shrugged, trailing off. "I just want her to know I think about her, and I remember."

Pansy stared at her.

"You made her a crown," Pansy said, her tone flat. "A crown. From some impossible metal and gems. And you think she's going to forget you?"

Hermione flushed. "I mean, I didn't think she was going to forget forget me, just—"

"That she'd forget you wanted to date her?" Pansy scoffed. "Hermione, a crown might not be typical jewelry, but ask any pureblood – I bet everyone would say that giving a girl a jeweled tiara for her seventeenth birthday counts as a courting gift."

"I didn't make it for that!" Hermione protested. "I made it to be functional – her issues with her allure—"

"Functional or not, these things have meaning," Pansy said sharply. She nodded down at Hermione's hand. "There's a reason Blaise had Tracey sneak that ring onto your finger, instead of giving it to you directly."

"Yeah, so he wouldn't have to court me," Hermione said, suddenly tired. "I know, Pansy. I know."

"That's not what I meant." Pansy's face scrunched up in frustration for a moment, before abruptly letting all the tension go. "Forget it. It doesn't matter. But – you're really going to date Fleur if she's not Triwizard champion? Even with everything that's already happened?"

"You mean Tracey deciding she's a bigot?" Hermione could tell her tone was snappish, but she couldn't suppress her anger. "Yes. Forget them. Forget everyone. I will drag wizard society into the modern age if I have to."

Pansy folded her arms, considering Hermione for a moment, before she grinned – a sinister look on her face.

"If you need backup for this one," Pansy said, eyes glinting, "consider me at your command."

Breakfast was an unmitigated disaster.

Someone had told the Slytherins that it was respectful to refer to the Durmstrang students as 'comrade'. Hermione had no idea who had started this idea or where it originated. Part of her suspected Fred and George Weasley had seeded the idea somehow as a prank, but she doubted they were politically aware enough to do something so deliberately. However the rumor had started, several of the Slytherins had taken to it immediately as a way to become more friendly with Durmstrang.

Before Hermione had even gotten to the table, Draco had apparently referred to 'Comrade Krum' one too many times, and a loud argument had broken out, nearly devolving into a physical fight. Hermione had entered to Viktor calling Draco a 'dirty capitalist pig', venom in his voice, and it had taken Hermione a while to mediate and try and figure out what was going on to settle things down.

Once it was understood that Draco had genuinely thought calling the Durmstrang students 'comrade' was respectful and hadn't intended it as any sort of implied communist insult, Viktor tightly apologized for the misunderstanding before storming off, his classmates not far behind him. Hermione glared at Draco, but Draco was already mortified enough, hiding his bright red face behind his goblet as he sank low in his seat. All the while, Tracey was trying to catch Hermione's eye and start a conversation with her, which Hermione did not have the energy to handle right now.

Hermione ended up leaving breakfast having scarcely even finished her toast, and she retrieved an apple from the Kitchens before setting out to wander over the grounds, idly twisting the ugly gold ring she now wore on her thumb and examining the dark square stone in the middle.

The Resurrection Stone. One of three Deathly Hallows, and likely one of the only non-Dark necromancy artifacts in existence. Hermione liked the idea of believing that Death actually was a being that could be interacted with, and she'd been around the magical world long enough to know that a frightening amount of what they said wasn't metaphorical – and could be frighteningly literal at times.

The legend didn't even make sense, though, if she really thought about it, just from a logistical standpoint. If Death had picked up a rock from the river to enchant, surely it would have been just a normal rock, right? Something large and rock-shaped, perhaps? Not this dark jet gem. And even if there had been a gemstone, or if enchanting the stone had made it into a gemstone, that still didn't explain the shape and facets of the stone. Was she supposed to believe that someone had taken a priceless artifact from Death himself and thought, 'Oh, let's just cut pieces of this off so it looks prettier'?

Hermione was feeling moody as she sat under a tree by the lake, watching the Durmstrang students walk around on the top deck of their anchored ship while she toyed with the ring.

It was a weird thing to think about, really. Death. Dying.

Something she didn't really want stuck in her brain.

"Alright, Hermione?"

Hermione looked up to see Luna there, tilting her head. Hermione hadn't even noticed Luna coming over and sitting down. Hermione gave Luna a strained smile, and Luna nodded, peaceful.

"Afraid?" she asked gently.

"I don't know what I'm thinking or feeling," Hermione said, toying with the ring. "I just… I don't know, Luna. I don't know."

Luna hummed to herself, considering.

"My mum died years ago," she said. "I miss her even now. I'd want to see her again, if you want to test the stone."

"Would you really?" Hermione asked, looking down at the small dark stone. "Cadmus was said to have killed himself out of grief after using it."

Luna looked amused.

"I think," she said, "that if the story of The Three Brothers was true, that Cadmus was probably already suicidal from losing his lady love." She smiled. "I think if someone uses it with understanding, not wanting to try to bring somebody fully back from the dead, that it could be used positively."

"You think?" Hermione asked. "The legend said he still felt like a veil separated him from the girl he loved."

"Well," Luna said, shrugging. "It's said that the veils between worlds are thinner today." She held out her hand. "Surely it's worth a try?"

Hermione bit her lip, before nodding, pulling the ring from her finger and handing it to Luna.

"I'm going to stay right here," she warned her. "We have no real idea what this might do."

"If it makes you feel better to stay to make sure I don't kill myself, that's fine," Luna said easily. "As far as what it might do, that's what testing it is for."

Luna looked down at the ring in her hand, growing quiet. Hermione watched her as Luna toyed with the ring, but she didn't turn the stone.

"It feels different, doesn't it?" Hermione murmured. "It's… heavier, somehow. Realer, once it's in your hand."

Luna slowly nodded, eyes staying on the stone.

"I think," she said, "that maybe humans are not meant to linger outside the veil like this for too long."

Before Hermione could ask her what she meant by that, Luna turned the stone three times, and suddenly there was a ghost in front of them – not a ghost, perhaps, but a shade, a shadow of a person, standing there where there had been no one a moment before.

Pandora Lovegood had long, platinum blonde hair – a color so icy and white Hermione would have normally thought she'd paid a fortune for it in a salon. With Pandora's Fae ancestry, though, and the fact she was dead… well. Hermione didn't really know what to think.

She had odd features, when taken separately – a cute little button nose that didn't look like it fit on a grown woman's face, along with very full cheeks, and bright green eyes and dark eyelashes that were set just a bit too far apart. With all of it together, though, it somehow seemed to work – if not attractive, she was, at the least, a very striking and interesting-looking woman to behold.

Luna's voice was quiet. "Mum…"

Hermione watched as Pandora moved over to Luna, crouching down by her. Silent tears dripped from wide eyes, and Luna reached for her, only for her hand to move through Pandora's like it was a trick of the light.

"Look at you, Luna," Pandora said, her voice soft, warm. Her voice was solid, which caught Hermione by surprise – she'd expected an airy quality to it, a ghostly quality, but her voice was as solid as any live person's was. "You've made friends. A coven, even. I'm so proud."

Tentatively, Luna smiled. "You are?"

"Oh, Luna." Her mother sighed, smiling at her daughter. "All I ever wanted for you was to be happy, you know."

Hermione felt like she was intruding on something deeply personal, watching as Pandora tried (and failed) to brush her daughter's hair back from her face.

"You've done so well, Luna," Pandora said. "You're only thirteen, and already you've got your treehouse to help build the bridge."

"It has lots of bridges," Luna agreed, smiling a little. "It's more like a dozen little tree houses all connected together rather than just one treehouse."

Pandora sighed. "You know that's not what I mean."

Luna seemed content just to drink in the sight of her mother, her eyes watery, while her mother looked at her with soft eyes.

"I should go," her mother said finally. "It is not good for me to linger too long."

Luna sighed deeply, a reluctant acknowledgement.

"What spell was it?" Luna asked finally. "What spell were you experimenting with when it backfired and took you from me?"

"A cross between an Undetectable Extension Charm and a transfiguration," Pandora said, smiling a bit wryly. "As it turns out, there was a good reason for it to be regulated by the Ministry."

Luna laughed. "I love you so much, mum."

"And I love you, my little moon. I always will."

It was sudden – there was no gradual fading away of the shade; just abruptly, she was gone. Hermione looked to Luna, who smiled and handed Hermione back the ring.

"It feels… not difficult," Luna said. "I think if I knew true Occlumency a little better, I'd have been able to not feel the veil quite so much."

Hermione nodded slowly and pocketed the ring, opting not to put it back onto her thumb this time.

Halloween tended to be a cheerful affair for Hogwarts, coinciding with No-More-Voldemort day as it did. It was celebrated in largely muggle tradition, and Hermione caught glimpses of foreign students pointing at decorations and whispering together repeatedly throughout the day. The other schools probably didn't celebrate Halloween, as it was, but they all seemed to have briefed on it by their teachers – no one said a word against it that Hermione heard.

Harry was having a rather miserable day. He tended to brood on Halloween as it was, but this year, people were coming up to him and asking for autographs. Harry had tried denying the first student, who only spoke broken English, before he'd just scribbled his name in hopes the Durmstrang boy would just go away. That had broken open the doors, unfortunately, and many others had asked him throughout the day, including some of the younger students from Hogwarts as well. Hermione could see him sulking outside the Great Hall as they crowded at the doors to go into the Halloween feast, scowling at the wall while Ron and Neville talked nearby.

"Just to confirm," Pansy asked Hermione, redirecting her attention, "we are not sneaking out to do a ritual with the hedges later, correct?"

"Correct," Hermione said. "They've all got their own massive ritual planned that they do every year, and I don't want to interrupt that or try to host them all. And the Blackwell students…"

Hermione and Pansy both shuddered. The Blackwell kids had their own traumatic reasons for not wanting anything to do with Samhain.

There was an odd feeling of tension in the air as they filed into the candlelit Great Hall. The Goblet of Fire had been moved to stand in front of Dumbledore's chair at the head of the room. Everyone seemed to feel it – throughout dinner, there were impatient expressions, craning necks, and standing up to see whether Dumbledore had finished eating yet. Hermione herself didn't seem to fancy the extravagant food as much as she would otherwise, shoving it around her plate with her fork without eating it, absorbed in her thoughts.

It wasn't just tension, she realized as she saw Professor Trelawney eyeing the goblet fearfully; there was a feeling of Destiny in the air. For a moment, Hermione felt like she was standing on the precipice of realizing something, of seeing something, some moment of temporal weight of Fate – but she saw nothing but her out-of-focus classmates, and she blinked, returning to the present once more, somehow a little disappointed.

Well. She wasn't Luna, Hermione thought to herself wryly; prophecies about points of fate weren't really her domain anyway.

At long last, the golden plates were cleared, and there was a sharp upswing in the level of noise within the hall, which died away almost instantly as Dumbledore got to his feet. On either side of him, Madame Maxime and Professor Karkaroff looked as tense and expectant as anyone. Ludo Bagman looked excited and eager, while Mr. Crouch seemed bored save for a sharp eye on the goblet as Dumbledore approached.

"Who do you think it's going to be?" Draco whispered. "Do you think any of the Slytherins have a chance?"

"Cassius Warrington entered," Daphne said immediately, blushing. "I think he stands a chance."

Dumbledore was speaking to them all, issuing instructions.

"When the champions' names are called, I would ask them please to come up to the top of the Hall, walk along the staff table, and go through into the next chamber—" he indicated the door behind the staff table "—where they will be receiving their first instructions."

Dumbledore took out his wand and gave a great sweeping wave with it; at once, all the candles except those inside the carved pumpkins were extinguished, plunging them into a state of semi-darkness. The Goblet of Fire now shone more brightly than anything else in the hall, the sparkling bright, blue-white of the flames almost painful on the eyes. Everyone watched, waiting… waiting…

"Any bets?" Blaise whispered to her. "Last second ideas?"

The flames inside the goblet suddenly turned red, and sparks began to fly from it. The next moment, a tongue of flame shot into the air, a charred piece of parchment fluttered out of it – and the whole room gasped. Dumbledore caught the piece of parchment and held it at arm's length to read it by the light of the flames, which had turned back to blue-white.

"The champion for Durmstrang," he read, in a strong clear voice, "will be Viktor Krum."

A storm of applause and cheering swept the hall, and Hermione shot Viktor a happy grin as she clapped along. Viktor gave her a small, crooked grin as he stood from the Slytherin table. He went up to the staff table, turned and walked along it, and vanished through the door into the next chamber, the Hall cheering and clapping all the while.

The clapping and cheering died down, and everyone looked at the goblet again, waiting.

"I don't know," Hermione said to Blaise quietly. "I feel like if I were Luna, I'd be able to tell. I can practically feel Fate pressing down against me. Can't you?"

"I'm not New Blood," Blaise said, amused. "I can't feel Magic directly like you do."

"That's not what I meant—" Hermione argued, but the flames within the goblet had turned red once more, and a piece of parchment shot out of it, propelled by the flames.

"The champion for Beauxbatons," said Dumbledore, "is Fleur Delacour!"

There was applause – not nearly as much as for Viktor, but a substantial amount – as Fleur got gracefully to her feet and swept up between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. The boys seemed to be clapping rather louder than the girls – two other girls from Beauxbatons had dissolved into tears and were sobbing with their head in their arms.

"Damn," Blaise sighed. "Rotten luck, Hermione."

"No, I'm happy for her," Hermione insisted, keeping her voice low as they all watched the goblet once more. "She deserves it, this chance to prove herself. She's always had to prove she's more than just a pretty face, and she is – she's brilliant, and powerful… this will help establish her. That's more important than courting is by a mile."

With only the Hogwarts champion next, the silence was so stiff with excitement you could almost taste it. The Goblet of Fire turned red once more; sparks showered out of it, and the tongue of flame shot high into the air, and from its tip, Dumbledore pulled the third piece of parchment.

"The Hogwarts Champion," he called, "is Cedric Diggory!"

Their noise was immediate – every single Hufflepuff had jumped to their feet, screaming and stamping, and Cedric made his way past them, grinning broadly as everyone applauded.

"Oh, look at that!" Daphne said, clapping and cheering. She grinned at Hermione, animosity seemingly forgotten. "They're all people you're close with, Hermione. How will you decide who to cheer for when you're connected to them all?"

"Pick none of them?" Draco quipped, but Hermione's ears were ringing; she barely heard him, her vision blurring as Daphne's words hit her, bringing other, familiar words to echo in her mind.

A bond with the fourth, connections to three
Embroiled and entangled will she be
worried all, she will cheer for none
But one will be lost before the game is done…

'

"No," Hermione breathed, her eyes widening in horror. "No…"

"Professor, if I'm not mistaken, there are four results from that nexus point."

"You're correct. And?"

"And it's the Tri-wizard tournament, not the Quad-wizard tournament."

"Like I said, Miss Granger, a lot of drama…"

'

Dumbledore was speaking, but Hermione's eyes went to the Goblet of Fire with a horrified sort of knowing. The temporal weight was building up, she could sense it, but of course she couldn't get a prophecy – there'd already been one made—

"The prophecy," she told Blaise desperately, grabbing at his hand. "Blaise, connections to three—"

Blaise's eyes went wide, but at that moment, the fire in the goblet turned red again, and the Great Hall hushed as a long flame shot suddenly into the air, bearing another piece of parchment.

Automatically, it seemed, Dumbledore reached out a long hand and seized the parchment. He held it out and stared at the name written upon it. There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slip in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out—

"Harry Potter."