They found Harry in the Gryffindor common room. Blaise had been amused to see Hermione approach the portrait of the Fat Lady, ask if Harry was inside, and then give the password of 'wattlebird' without so much as fluttering an eyelash.

"You just go into everyone's common rooms, don't you?" Blaise said, admiring. "I know you've been up in Ravenclaw."

"Haven't found Hufflepuff yet," Hermione told him. "Haven't had a reason to try."

Harry was looking over a sketch of some sort of animated Quidditch maneuver when Hermione and Blaise approached him, and his eyes grew wide.

"Hermione?" he said, surprised. "Zabini?"

"Harry," Hermione said, giving him a smile. "Can we talk to you for a moment? Outside?"

Harry glanced around, realizing that they were gathering several suspicious stares. Hermione imagined it pleased the Gryffindors none too much to realize that a Slytherin had been able to give the Fat Lady their password, though the Weasley Twins looked amused.

"Right," he said, shoving the book aside. "Sure. Where to?"

Hermione led them to a vacant corridor on the fifth floor, one that had some forgotten furniture in it.

"Do you know what a coven is, Harry?" she began, and Harry blinked, then wrenched his face up, thinking.

"Is that what Muggles call a group of witches?" he guessed. "That's all that 'bubble, bubble, toil and trouble', isn't it?"

"All the what?" Blaise said, puzzled.

"That's correct," Hermione said, ignoring Blaise – now was not the time to go over Macbeth. "However, it's also a real thing in the wizarding world. A coven is a group of witches and wizards who cast ritual magic together."

"Ritual magic?" Harry asked. "Not potions and chanting spells?"

"Rituals," Hermione said with a smile. "No weird sisters here."

"The Weird Sisters?" Blaise was openly confused now. "They're a rock group, not a coven."

Hermione rolled her eyes and ignored him.

"I want to form one," she told him. "Blaise is in it. I want you to be in it, too."

"And this is… to cast magic?" Harry asked. He frowned. "Why isn't this covered in classes?"

"Ritual magic is a forgotten art, Potter," Blaise told him. "After we developed wands, we didn't need rituals to control our magic anymore."

"Then why…?"

"Because there's not a spell for everything," Hermione told him. "But rituals work with your magic and will. In theory, you should be able to design a ritual to do anything."

Harry's eyes widened. "Anything…?"

"Well, within reason," Hermione amended. "Probably not manipulate time or history, for example, or cause mass destruction-"

"You could if your coven was big enough," Blaise muttered.

"-but with most things, sure," she said. She smiled. "It'll be a way to explore what all magic has to offer us, and we can do it together."

Harry looked uneasy.

"Why are you asking me?" he asked. "Why aren't Neville and Ron here too?"

Blaise snorted, muttering something unflattering about Weasley under his breath, and Hermione paused, thinking how best to phrase her thoughts.

"Ron and I frequently don't get along, and he has problems with Slytherins," she told Harry. "He wouldn't want to join a group run by me."

"That's fair," Harry admitted. "But what about Neville?"

Hermione bit her lip.

"Ritual magic is old," Hermione told him. "It's handed down through families, and not many people do it much anymore."

"So?"

"It's largely considered Dark magic by the Ministry," Blaise said, stepping in. His eyes held Potter's. "Even though it's not."

"Dark magic?" Harry recoiled. "I'm not doing Dark magic."

"I didn't ask you to," Hermione said, annoyed. "I asked you to join my coven."

"Yeah, but if you have a coven to cast-"

"They classify it as Dark because you can do anything with it," Hermione snapped. "It's easy to classify specific spells as 'Dark' because a spell only does one specific thing. But with ritual magic, you could get the same ending effect a dozen different ways, so it's easier to just call the whole thing 'Dark' and let it fade away."

Harry looked at her, his green eyes sharp.

"And it's not?" he asked her. "Not Dark?"

"Ritual magic is not innately Dark," Hermione said patiently, "just as using a wand isn't either. I will admit that some rituals are Dark, but so are some spells, Harry. We just won't do ones that are Dark."

Harry looked unsure.

"Many of the rituals call for you to spill your blood," Hermione told him honestly, "which is a large reason the Ministry is unfriendly to ritual magic – blood magic tends to have negative connotations. But Harry – blood magic is what your mother used to save your life. It's what keeps you safe at the Dursleys'. I was able to use a blood magic ritual to protect my parents this summer, so they'll be safe even when I'm not there."

Harry looked surprised at this.

"With your parents?" he repeated. "Really?"

Hermione nodded. "They put their blood in and everything. The house is safer for it, now."

Blaise's eyes gleamed behind her, but he remained silent. Harry looked thoughtful.

"So you think Neville would reject this outright because the Ministry says ritual magic can be Dark," Harry summed up. "But you think I won't?"

"I know you won't, Harry," Hermione told him. "You're too smart to believe the 'only good' or 'only bad' false dichotomy. You come from the Muggle world, like me – you know that magic is just a tool, and like any tool, what it does depends on how it is used."

"And if nothing else, ritual magic is what saved your life," Blaise added. "You'd want to learn more about that, wouldn't you?"

Hermione held her breath as Harry considered. Harry was a good friend, loyal, and a good wizard, and she wanted him to join her. Not to mention that getting Harry to join her coven would tie him to her tighter as a friend, regardless of Dumbledore's desires for the special Harry Potter and his Slytherin acquaintance...

"…okay," he said finally. "I'm curious. And I'm interested. Count me in." His eyes gleamed. "Think we could do a ritual to make me faster on a broom?"

Blaise laughed.

"You're doomed, Potter," he told him. "You can't outrace a Nimbus 2001 on a Nimbus 2000."

Harry stuck his tongue out at Blaise, while Hermione laughed.

"It's possible that we could make a ritual to make your reflexes faster," Hermione told him, "but that seems an awful lot like cheating to me."

Harry sighed a long, over-dramatic sigh.

"What is the point of joining a dodgy ritual group," he wanted to know, "if you can't even use it to help you catch the snitch?"

Hermione giggled while Blaise snickered, and Harry grinned back at both of them.

"So I'm good?" Blaise asked again. "I don't want to burn out my magical core on this."

Hermione and Harry lingered nearby outside in the courtyard. Hermione wanted to hear Luna's answer, as she considered Blaise's aura carefully. Finally, Luna nodded, looking him up and down again.

"Your aura is spinning as it grows," she confirmed. "You've reached the maturation point necessary for your core to generate lots more magic. You'll be fine."

"And I already hit it?" Harry wanted to know.

"You did," Luna nodded. "So you two are fine. But the rest of us aren't. So we'll have to wait until closer to the end of the year to formally bind together."

"That's fine," Hermione said, dismissive. "We'll wait for you, Luna. There's plenty of other things we can begin exploring in the meantime. Plus, there's one more member to recruit still."

"Any ideas?" Blaise asked.

"A couple," Hermione admitted. "But with the person I want to ask, I'll have to time it just right…"

Luna's eyes gleamed.

"Wait for us, Hermione," she chided, her voice teasing. "Your magic isn't ready either."

Hermione's mind screeched to a halt.

"…What?"

Luna blinked up at her innocently.

"It's perfectly normal, Hermione," Luna told her. "It's a point of maturity that every witch or wizard reaches at a different time-"

"But I did," Hermione objected strongly. "I did. Last spring!"

"I thought this magic point was mysterious and unknown," Harry muttered to Blaise, who shrugged and watched on.

Luna tilted her head at Hermione.

"Did you really?" she asked, her voice musical. "Or did you only think that you did?"

"I did!" Hermione stomped her foot. "I did, I made sure of it! And it hurt, and I got the result I wanted, and my magic started growing afterward!"

"You 'made sure of it'?" Luna questioned.

"Yes," Hermione said, nodding. "That's what I'm saying. So there's no way that-"

"Was your body ready for it?" Luna cut her off.

Hermione paused.

"…define 'ready'."

Luna looked amused. "I think you know what I mean."

Hermione faltered.

"Okay, so no, it wasn't, but that was the whole point, was to make my body ready at the optimal time-"

"And has your body 'been ready' since then?" Luna challenged.

"Well, no-"

"Then how," Luna said, "can you possibly think you're ready?"

Hermione stopped.

Luna's points were valid.

It made sense, once she thought about it — of course her body was tied to her magic, and if it needed her to be having her cycle to exponentially grow her magic capacity, then of course her plan wouldn't have worked — not unless she did the terrible ovulation ritual every single month since then. Which she hadn't – she'd nearly regretted doing it once.

But if she hadn't managed to make her magic capacity begin growing exponentially…

"But I did it," Hermione said weakly. She leaned back against the castle wall, sliding to the ground. "I did it. It worked."

"You tried to cheat nature, Hermione," Luna said. She bent down to look at Hermione, her watery blue eyes kind. "You can't cheat that."

Hermione fell silent, dwelling on what this truly meant.

If her magic wasn't growing exponentially, now... if all this time, she'd still been growing linearly...

All that potential, then, just gone...

Quietly, Hermione began to cry.

Luna gave her a sad smile, before gathering her in her arms and giving her a hug, silent tears spilling down Hermione's cheeks.

Harry looked from Hermione and Luna to Blaise and back again, his eyes wide and panicked. Blaise gave him a nod, and the two boys silently slid away, leaving Hermione crying quietly in Luna's comforting embrace.

"It'll be okay," Luna murmured.

Hermione sniffled for a while longer, Luna offering hugs and comfort by her side. Hermione's tears eventually began to dry up, and she wiped the tear tracks off her face.

"I just... I wanted to be the best." Hermione rubbed at her eyes. She hiccuped. "And now... all that power... all that potential..."

"Hermione," Luna said, her tone gently chiding. She tilted Hermione jaw up slightly forcing her to meet her eyes and gave her a smile. "Do you really think this means you can't still be the best?"

Hermione sniffed. "...no."

"Then go be the best," Luna said, as if it was as simple as that.

Hermione considered for a long moment, before standing. She offered Luna a hand to help pull her up.

"All right," she said, sighing. "I will."

Luna clapped. "Good!" She beamed. "Now you can put this whole failed ritual business behind you and move forward-"

"Ah... I can't. Not quite yet," Hermione admitted.

Luna tilted her head. "But you'll need to let go if you want-"

"I will, but not just yet."

"Why not?" Luna wanted to know.

Hermione winced.

"I need to figure out just what I've done to myself first."