Bidum and Tolly had made sure Hermione had the hang of 'popping' before they'd let her leave the kitchens. Holding a firm sense of who she was, who they were, and the feeling of magic tying them all together, Hermione closed her eyes and reached out with her magic for the thin veil of mist she'd learned to feel for, and she drew it aside, keeping her destination firmly in mind.
There was a feeling of being twisted down tightly and being compressed, and a cold chill wind cut into her skin for a sharp moment before she pulled them out through another thin sheen of cold, closing the other veil of mist at their exit, all of them reborn into existence again on the other side.
The room they'd appeared in was completely dark, save for the faint colored glow their bodies cast on the stone walls. Hermione staggered for a moment even though she was sitting, her mind spinning and dizzy.
Even still, she was flush with success – she had done it. She had 'popped' them there.
"I cannot believe you just did that," Luna breathed. "I cannot believe that you just did that. Hermione, do you have any idea what you just did? What that means?"
"That we can do the next part of our ritual, for one," Hermione said, smiling faintly. "'Popping' is the only way to get here."
"Incendio."
The chamber lit up with fire as Blaise set a torch he'd found alight. He moved around the chamber, lighting all four torches he found, all of them placed in the corners of the room. The chamber was a stone room with four walls of solid stone, no doors or windows to be seen. The floor was made of stone, with normal stone bricks surrounding one massive round stone in the center of the room, big enough for all five of them to sit on in a circle around the edge. The stone had complicated-looking markings and runes on it, charred lines and symbols burned into it, and it was intimidating to behold.
"Where are we?" Susan wondered.
Hermione grinned. "We're at the Hogwarts ward stone."
Susan and Blaise gasped aloud, Blaise whirling around to stare at her while Susan whistled.
"The ward stone of the school itself," Susan said admiringly, shaking her head. "When you go for something, Hermione, you certainly don't mess around."
"You're mad," Blaise declared, plopping back down beside her. "You're absolutely mad. Do you have any idea what all could happen if this goes wrong?"
"Then we'll make sure it doesn't go wrong," Hermione said. She felt bolstered, alive and flush with the magic of the others, and her confidence was full. "This is a Light ritual, Blaise. It won't cause any harm, and it might help a lot."
Blaise gave her a slow grin.
"You might be mad, but we all love you for it," he said. He laughed. "So: what do we need to do?"
The first thing they needed was to each put on their coven ring, which were piled in a small heap inside the chalice. Each was glowing faintly with a color, and Hermione secured the violet one and slipped it onto her finger.
"We're using this finger?" Harry said skeptically, putting on his ring. "I thought that's the finger you used if you're married."
"It's the finger for bonds, Potter," Blaise corrected. "A coven bond is just as valid as a marriage bond. Though much less common, I'll grant you."
"Hermione, as we're an established coven now," Susan said, still trembling slightly with excitement and elation, "does that mean you'll teach us how to construct the rituals now?"
Hermione paused.
"Yeah, I could do that," she said slowly. "I can at least teach you the principles I've figured out? I mean, when I create a ritual, I mostly alter existing ones or mess around with the principles until it works."
"So what are we doing here?" Susan asked.
"First, we need to put down two circles, one inside the other," Hermione instructed. "If you move slightly, I brought my geometry set."
"You're just going to draw on the ward stone?" Blaise was amused.
Hermione shot him a look. "It's not like it's going to hurt it."
With the kit Harry had gotten her, Hermione quickly constructed two chalk circles, one set inside the other a small ways. She then constructed an even smaller one in the center of the very center of the circle, maybe two feet in diameter. She drew with the white chalk over top of the black lines of the wardstone itself, ignoring the symbols underneath her own circles.
"This outer circle is generally just called 'the circle', and this inner one is called 'the ring'," she said, pointing. "Though, strictly speaking, I think 'the ring' is the space between the two circles. You use a ring when you want a layer of protection between you and the ritual you're casting. Sometimes people put protective runes inside the ring, though we shouldn't need that today."
"We need extra protection for this one?" Harry's eyes went wide, and Hermione rolled her own.
"Consider what we're doing, Potter," Blaise drawled. "Do you want to accidentally get sucked in?"
"Oh," Harry faltered. He paused. "So, not really protection from 'things going wrong' but protection from the ritual itself?"
"Either or," Hermione said, smiling. She pointed again. "This inner circle is called 'the heart'. This is where the effect of the ritual will occur. Sometimes the heart of a ritual is just the middle space inside of a pentagram or triangle, but we'll want it clearly defined tonight."
"How many candles, Hermione?" Luna asked, rummaging through a bag.
"Five new, white ones," she said, "and the five colored ones we made as well."
"Where will those go?" Susan asked, and Hermione made a face.
"I didn't set that part up yet," she admitted. "Hang on…"
Hermione took out a colored transparent piece of plastic in the shape of a pentagon from her the geometry set. She put it in the center of the circle and enlarged it until the corners were just touching the inner circle of the ring.
"Help me trace this, will you?" she asked, and Susan and Harry began tracing the outside of it diligently.
After that, she shrunk the pentagon again and turned it upside-down, making sure the corners this time touched the middle of the sides of the previous one, and they traced it again. She shrunk the plastic template and put it back into her kit before withdrawing a few plastic circles and a ruler.
"This is massively more complicated than we've done before," Blaise said, his eyes a little wide.
"We're doing a massively more complicated ritual then we've ever done before," Luna pointed out. "We're a coven, now – fully bonded, fully formed. We can do harder things, now."
From each outermost point on the biggest pentagon, Hermione traced a line aiming towards one of the other points, as if constructing a star. She stopped partway in each one, though, after she had passed the heart but before she'd left the inner pentagon.
"Trace a circle on the end of each of those, please," she said, giving Blaise the circle template. "It needs to be big enough for the white candles to fit inside without touching the edges."
Once she'd finished, she'd created another pentagon that closely surrounded the heart without touching it, with little bits continuing off of it with candles inside.
"Last step," she said. "We need circles at the points on the ring for our own colored candles. Be careful to fully erase all the chalk in the middle of each circle once you've traced it."
Harry and Blaise set about finishing, and Hermione looked to Susan.
"As far as I can tell, these are just called 'points'," she said, "where the lines meet on the outer circles. These designate locations where casters will be during the ritual. These points are where our power enters the circle and the ritual."
"Like the points of the pentacle," Susan said, nodding.
"Exactly," Hermione said. "This bigger pentagon – these lines are called the 'channels'. They're the outer lines of power that channel the ritual. The smaller one – these lines are called 'veins'. They're the inner lines of the circle that channel the ritual's power. The more powerful the ritual, the more lines you need."
"What's with the candles, then?" Harry asked.
"Well, these veins are meant to mark our intent," Hermione said, pointing. "Each one will come from one of our candles, the colored ones, to channel the power into the circle to a white candle, which will focus our power and intent to where it needs to be. This empty area between the pentagon and the circle is called 'the core'. It's where the magic will concentrate the most."
"Okay, we definitely didn't have all of this for the spiders," Blaise said.
"We didn't need to," Hermione said patiently. "The more complex your ritual, the more complicated your circle will be."
"You're saying learning spider language was a simple ritual?" Harry said.
"If you can even call it a 'language'," Blaise muttered, smirking.
"Well, comparatively small," Hermione admitted. "I've done rituals with just a circle and a triangle inside of it. But this – do you realize nothing like this has ever been done before?"
"I think it was attempted before," Luna said. "Radolphus Pittiman tried to contact Uric the Oddball to verify details of his biography."
"That's not the same," Blaise said, annoyed. "Trying to talk to the dead – that's just flat-out necromancy. The dead should be let to rest."
Luna tilted her head. "Are we not going to talk to the dead?"
"Not the ones that have already gone beyond—"
Hermione let them bicker as she put her tools away. Harry shot her a commiserating grin as he went over some of the chalk lines again, making sure there were no breaks or smears.
"We're ready," Hermione interrupted loudly, cutting off Susan from making a point about grave-robbing. "Everybody, take your places."
They all sat down just outside the circle at the points where each of them had a colored candle. Hermione took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and felt for her power.
As soon as she did, she was overwhelmed with a rush of unseen sensation, and the others gasped.
She'd forgotten how this felt, with their power all still humming. She'd mentally tuned out the vibrating potential inside of her core while making the circle, but now that she touched it, she could feel everyone, just waiting to work together.
Her own core was calm, though. Any unstable power it was making was going through and cycling through everyone else, being filtered and channeled along the way.
Hermione felt a rush of success. She only hoped the stability would hold when they weren't actively doing rituals together.
She opened her eyes and looked at them all, and they all looked to her, the chamber silent except for the crackling of torches on the walls.
"We are gathered here to attempt something that has never been attempted before," Hermione said. "We are here to use a Light magic ritual to reopen a pathway into the beyond."
"We are not attempting to banish anyone," she said strenuously, making eye contact with each of them in turn. "We are simply reopening the pathway for those already passed on, but who once made the choice to linger and might now wish they'd chosen otherwise."
"Light necromancy," Blaise said, shaking his head with a smile. "Well I never…"
"So we are giving ghosts the chance to pass on again," Harry summarized. "Do we need to summon them?"
Hermione hesitated.
"I think that we don't," she said. "Any ghost in the castle should be able to feel the pathway opening, I think, and come if they'd like." She paused. "…though, we might want to call anyway, given who we're talking about."
Harry nodded, withdrawing a pair of old, wire-framed glasses. He held them up, and Hermione nodded to him.
"Go ahead and put them in the center," she said. "Why don't you say a few words?"
Harry looked caught on the spot, his eyes wide.
"Err—Professor Binns—" he started.
"Cuthbert," Luna chimed in. "His name was Cuthbert."
"Professor Cuthbert Binns was a teacher here," Harry started again. "He taught History of Magic until he was really, really old, and then one day when he woke up from a nap in the staff room, he was dead, and he just went to the classroom to teach anyway. And he's never left."
"Do you know when he died, Harry?" Hermione pressed. "Or if he realized he was dead?"
Harry shrugged helplessly, and Hermione withheld a sigh.
"That should be enough," she said. She looked at the others. "We are gathered to open a pathway to the beyond, then, so Professor Binns might peacefully pass on. His responsibility to the school tethered him here, but if we free him of that, he might now be able to go to his rest."
Hermione smiled. "Ready?"
There were nods all around; this ritual, they had practiced their parts for, and they were ready. As they each laid their hands on the outer circle, Hermione could already feel their joined power thrumming inside of them, waiting to be unleashed.
"A choice once offered, a choice once made," Blaise said, leaning forward to light his colored candle by pinching the wick. A spark of magic flared it to life. "A direction chosen, the place you stayed."
The circle surrounding Blaise's candle lit up, glowing green, and Hermione watched as the green traveled through the chalk channel, lighting it up, before it reached the small circle around the connected white candle. The candle's wick caught fire with a flicker of flame from nowhere, trembling slightly before the flame steadied.
"An ill-fitting place, for the shade of your soul," Luna said from Blaise's left. She leaned forward to light her candle. "Compared to the other, where you might be made whole."
Her circle lit up with blue, the channel glowing blue with power and traveling through the center, lighting her white candle as well. Her channel intersected Blaise's, and at the point of intersection, the light was bright white.
"A choice once offered, a choice revoked," Susan intoned, lighting her candle. "A pathway existing, but the way is cloaked."
Gold power lit up the circle, another white candle bursting into flame.
"A soul left behind, a spirit bitter," Harry said, lighting the red candle before him with a pinch. "A choice once offered, reconsidered."
Red power traveled through the circle, lighting another white candle, leaving one left.
"A choice once made, now amended," Hermione said. She pinched the wick of her purple candle, setting it aflame. "The choice again, re-extended."
As violet light entered the circle and the last white candle lit, the entire circle began to glow with magic.
Gold light melded with purple melded with blue. Green and red molded around each other and went through the channels and veins. It wasn't what Hermione had expected at all – she'd been expecting their power to all meld together flawlessly, not ooze around each others' like floating blobs in a lava lamp.
She bit her lip, pushing down her doubts. She'd researched and gone over this a million times.
It would work.
She looked at the others, and they took each other's hands.
"Our will is firm, our intent is right," they chanted together, and a feeling of power began to swell in the air. "We restore the star in the darkness of night."
As the magic in the air and the circle intensified, Hermione saw the colors of light in the circle begin to blend, intensifying themselves, and she smiled in satisfaction.
"We tear open a pathway, our magic bright!" they all continued chanting. "We offer you passage into the light!"
The circle was lit up with white now, bright and nearly blinding. The candle flames were flickering in the air, and it felt like sheets of wind were cutting into the air above each channel and vein, tightly swirling power spinning inside.
"With our will we hold the shadows at bay—" Hermione intoned.
"With our power we restore the way!" the others answered in harmony.
The swirling intensified even more, and Hermione thought she could fairly see a tornado of power circling more and more tightly in the air.
"Through the strength of our will and the strength of our bond," they chanted loudly, clinging to each other's hands, "we invite you forward, to step into the beyond!"
There was a sound like lightning cracking, and the center of their circle lit up, a thick column of light splitting the shadows of the room and through the ceiling. As Hermione peered up into it, it was as if the column of light was going directly through the stone ceiling of the chamber and into the stars, the light going up further still.
They each looked at each other, still clutching each other's hands.
"Is that it?" Blaise breathed. "That's the pathway to… whatever's next?"
"It should be," Hermione said, trying to catch her breath. "One way to find out…"
She looked to Harry, who looked nervous.
"I call upon the ghost of Cuthbert Binns, to attend to us this night," he said loudly. His voice sounded like it was echoing against itself, power intoned in every word. "May he reconsider his way and bear witness to the light."
There was a feeling of a swell of magic, and a familiar ghost popped into existence – one of an old, wrinkled man with wrinkle-pressed robes.
"Oh!" Professor Binns exclaimed. He looked around. "What's all this, then?"
He floated forward, examining the path of light beaming up through the center of the circle, and his eyes went wide.
"This feels—" he breathed. "It feels like—"
He broke off, overwhelmed, and Hermione felt her heart twist with sympathy.
"Professor Binns, we've reopened the pathway to the beyond," she told him. "When you first died, you chose to remain here on earth. We wanted to offer that choice to you again."
Professor Binns' eyes were huge.
"I've felt this once before," he said, his reedy voice wavering with uncertainty. "This call… I know this… but I ignored it, I had a class to teach…"
"You've done well, teaching the students of Hogwarts for many years," Blaise said, his voice gentle. "But you've fulfilled your obligation to the school. You can go on, now."
Professor Binns' looked frightened and uncertain.
"What if I don't like it?" he said. "Who will teach the students History if not for me?"
"You'll like it," Susan said firmly. "All your friends are waiting for you there."
"And someone else will teach the students History," Harry said. "You don't need to anymore."
Professor Binns still looked uncertain, floating around the column of light, circling it.
"Do you want to teach History for all eternity to ungrateful students who fall asleep in your class?" Luna asked. "To students who all drop your class as soon as they can? Who never respect your craft?"
Abruptly, Professor Binns scowled.
"That's never changed," he said. "There's always ungrateful students in every age…"
He reconsidered the beam of light, thoughtful.
"I… I should say goodbye," he hesitated, equivocating. "I should say goodbye before I go…"
"With all due respect, Professor," Hermione said gently, "you already said goodbye long ago."
Professor Binns looked struck by that for a moment, before a small, melancholy smile lingered on his wizened mouth.
"I did, didn't I?" he sighed. He reconsidered the pillar of light. "Well, then…"
Hermione wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, or if she'd been expecting anything. Maybe a sound effect, or a flash of light, or something visually dramatic to let them know it'd worked.
What she got when Professor Binns stepped into the light was a deep, overwhelming sense of joy and awe, foreign emotion coursing through the magic of the circle and nearly overwhelming her. Steadying herself by clutching Blaise's and Harry's hands, she could feel the coven's collected power helping push the sense of joy and awe up through the column, as it got further and further away. Right before she lost touch with the foreign emotion, there was an echo down the column of light of surprise, happiness, and pure bliss, before the feeling cut off, and only the strength of the column of light remained.
Hermione couldn't help it. She beamed.
"We just did that," Blaise said, laughing incredulously. "We just helped a ghost go home! After becoming a ghost!"
"The dead must be let to rest," Luna said, smiling softly. "We just helped him find rest again."
"That was insane," Harry breathed. "Absolutely mad."
Susan was looking at Hermione with a keen eye, as if sensing something in her. "…are we done, Hermione?"
Hermione took a deep breath. "Not quite."
With skill borne only of levitating things constantly every night before bed, Hermione reached out with her power, wordlessly and wandlessly levitating a pair of broken, horn-rimmed glasses into the column of light, settling them onto the stone ground with a wobble.
They were glasses that had been found on the ground, on the tile of a bathroom long ago. They had gone unclaimed for a long time, abandoned in Filch's cabinets, the owner's parents never able to reach the castle to take them home.
"I call upon the ghost of Myrtle Warren, to attend to us this night," she said quietly, though her voice resonated with power. "May she reconsider her way and bear witness to this light."
There was another brief swell and a pop! of power in the air, and a familiar girl materialized before them.
"What…?" Myrtle's eyes were huge as she circled the column of light, floating in astonishment. "What is this…?"
"A choice," Hermione told her. "If you wanted to."
Myrtle looked at her suspiciously, giving her a dark look over her rimmed glasses.
"Explain," she demanded.
Hermione took a deep breath.
"You died fifty years ago," she said, steadily meeting the eyes of the ghostly girl. "You returned to haunt the girl who teased you to tears and made you hide in the bathroom, which you once told me you did very successfully."
"I did." Myrtle drew herself up, proud. "Olive Hornby regretted ever saying a word about my glasses. She had to go to the Ministry for help…"
"You did well," Hermione said quietly. "You fulfilled the reason you desired to return to earth as a ghost. And now, with the creature that killed you caught and killed, you have nothing else holding you here."
Myrtle looked down at Hermione. Hermione looked back up at Myrtle.
"It's okay, Myrtle," Hermione said gently. "You don't need to haunt a bathroom anymore."
Myrtle looked like she wanted to say something, but cut herself off, turning back to the column of light and ignoring Hermione. She floated around it, examining it, before abruptly plunging her hand into it.
A brief feeling of overwhelming panic and regret overtook Hermione, one that was quickly replaced by elation and happiness and awe, and Hermione's heart slowed and finally relaxed as she felt Myrtle go up through the light, the echo of her surprise and bliss as she reached whatever destination she had found echoing down through the column for a moment before it was cut off, leaving just the swirl of power behind.
Myrtle had been suffering, she knew, her misery present in every moment Hermione had spent with the girl. And now she'd gone to her rest, to be happy and finally at peace.
Hermione smiled.
She'd done a good thing.
"Anyone else?" Blaise said with good humor. "I don't know how much longer we can hold this…"
"I wish we could leave it open," Susan sighed. "Even if no one else is ready now, that doesn't mean they'll never be ready to move on."
The longing in her voice was poignant, and Hermione's eyes went wide.
"We could try," she said, mind thinking rapidly. "If we wanted to."
"To keep it open forever?" Blaise said, incredulous. "Hermione, it used nearly all of our extra power from the coven bonding for this to work. We'd burn out our cores in a day if we kept it open."
"Not us," she said, thinking quickly. "We could tie it to Hogwarts and the wards."
"What?" Harry said. "No, I don't think messing with the wards is a good idea…"
"Not to pull power from them; just to give intent and direction." Hermione's mind was whizzing over everything she'd read, putting a picture together. "We could, I think. It'd be a bit of a risk, but worst case is it doesn't work, we all pass out, and the House Elves come and rescue us. Best case is Hogwarts ghosts get the choice to move on every Beltane."
The others were staring at her.
"You're coming up with how to do this just now?" Harry demanded. "With no forethought?"
"It's not like I prepared for this!" Hermione defended hotly. "We never considered the possibility!"
"I think we should do it," Susan said abruptly. She looked around at the others. "We wanted this ritual to leave a lasting impact on the world, right? What's more lasting than our coven creating a bridge to the other side?"
Harry groaned, and Luna smiled a bit.
"I'm okay if we try," she said simply. She looked to her right. "Blaise?"
Blaise was examining Hermione's face.
"You say you think we can do this?" he asked.
Hermione considered. "Yes. With an… 85% chance of success, maybe? I think it'll work."
His eyes held hers for a long moment.
"I trust you," he said finally. "If you believe we can do it, then I believe we can do it too."
All eyes turned to Harry, who groaned.
"Fine! Fine," he said, looking like he very much wanted to throw his hands up in the air (though he couldn't, still holding Hermione's and Susan's hands as he was). "We'll do it. If we end up passed out and expelled, though, I'm fully blaming you, Hermione."
Hermione grinned. "Fair enough."
Closing her eyes and taking several deep breaths to center herself, she felt the others around her do the same, sinking into their magic and becoming aware of their cores.
"I want you to feel for your magic," she said, keeping her eyes closed. "Immerse yourself in your core and then reach out for one of the walls of this place. Find the thread of magic that feels closest to your own, and convince it of why helping to provide the direction and the will to reopen this pathway once a year would be a good thing."
"The Four Founders?" Susan questioned. "Who're you reaching for, Hermione?"
Hermione smiled slightly, unseen. "I'll go after Hogwarts itself."
There was a swell in the magic in the circle as they all focused intently, before a brief moment of all the power rushing outwards away from the circle, leaving Hermione gasping for a moment. She could feel the others reaching out into the walls with their magic, searching for their House's founder, and she could feel as they each connected with theirs. Harry seemed to be daring the thread of Gryffindor into doing it, how it would establish him as a hero, where Luna was reasoning with hers. Blaise seemed to be arguing, and Susan seemed to be hugging the one she had found, but the walls weren't Hermione's destination.
Instead, Hermione reached down.
She wasn't really sure what she was looking for. The spirit and sentience of Hogwarts itself, perhaps – whatever part of Hogwarts had absorbed enough magic over the years to become a magical presence itself, one that had interfered to keep students safe from the basilisk whenever possible.
It felt like she was tunneling down through darkness, her eyes closed as she reached out, searching, searching, searching. She had no idea how far down her power had gone or if she'd actually gone anywhere when a large, forbidding presence began surrounding her, and Hermione stopped reaching, still.
As the presence reached her and touched her magic, Hermione felt like she was being electrocuted.
Raw, powerful magical power crackled through her magic and back into her body like electricity, burning and scorching her nerves. She could feel the hands of the others tingle and get shocked as well, clenching her body's hands even tighter, but Hermione's mind was far away, along for the ride with her magic, listening to the Spirit of Hogwarts.
And the Spirit of Hogwarts had a lot to say.
Hermione couldn't really make it all out – it was a jumble of garbled images and strong emotions. She grasped the protectiveness that Hogwarts felt, a flare of anger, and the indignation of its ward stone being used. Hermione seized on this last one, offering her memories of the ritual they did, of how two Hogwarts ghosts had been able to choose to move on. Hogwarts seemed to calm slightly at that, and Hermione offered her intent and sincere desire for the ritual to come to life once a year again, on Beltane, the time for new beginnings.
She offered the thought of what it would require, and there was a long pause, before she could feel Hogwarts agree, resolute.
The journey back to her body was hard, carrying an oppressive, painful, and powerful magic back with her. When she returned and opened her eyes, the others were already back with their associated strand of magic, but many of them yelping and staring at her in horror, and Hermione realized her hands were shaking, peals of smoke emitting from her hands as her fingers burned.
"Connect your strand to your candle," she yelled. "It'll take your place in the ritual as soon as it hits the white candle. On three! Ready? One, two, three!"
She snapped the strong crackle of Hogwarts' magic to her purple candle and felt it roar through the channel, setting it glowing even brighter before the flame on the white candle flared up, leaping into the air. A quick glance saw the others' candles glowing brightly as well.
"Blow out your colored candle," she directed them. "All together. Ready, set—"
They all leaned down and in, blowing out their candle, and immediately their hands broke apart as they all were thrown backwards against the sides of the room, crashing into the stone walls with loud and painful thuds.
"Oww…" Harry moaned. "What was that?"
"Magical backlash?" Luna suggested. "We didn't exactly end the ritual – we just pulled our power from it."
"It's still going," Susan said with awe. "Look."
The beam of light was, indeed, still there, and the circle was still lit with white. Each white candle was burning a different color of flame, now, though, to Hermione's fascination.
"Do… do we need to tell it to stop?" she asked aloud. "To tell it that it only needs to go once a year?"
Luna tilted her head. "I think it's going to go until sunrise." She glanced at Hermione. "Do you want to wait that long to make sure?"
Blaise's and Harry's eyes were on her, and she bit her lip.
"To be responsible, I really think we should," she admitted. "Tomorrow is Saturday, anyway, so we can all nap and sleep in, right?"
"Today, really," Harry said. "It's long after midnight."
"We could take turns keeping watch?" Susan suggested. "If the sun rises and it's still going, we can come up with a Plan B then of how to help shut it down?"
"How are we supposed to know if it's after sunrise?" Blaise asked plainly. "We're deep underground in a secret chamber, with no watches. We have no way to tell."
Hermione winced.
"I… I might be able to tell, if we have to?" she said. "It would be really hard, though, and it might use a lot of magic. Let's just wait a while and see if it stops itself, okay?"
"I think we should leave now and get you to Madame Pomfrey," Harry said, looking at Hermione. "That… doesn't look good."
Hermione looked down at her hands, which had blackened burns on her fingers and palms, with blackened stains running up her arms like tiny lightning veins.
"Umm," she said, suddenly realizing she should still be in immense pain. "Agreed."
"How are you not screaming?" Blaise wanted to know. "You were before."
Hermione bit her lip. "Let me see."
It took only a minute, but the answer wasn't a good one.
"Part of my magic has blocked the nerve signals," she said. "It's ensuring that I can't feel the pain right now, protecting me."
"Your magic can do that instinctively?" Susan said. "That's incredible."
It'd been more the earth elemental inside of her core, determined and protective, that had leapt into action seemingly of its own will, than it had been Hermione's own magic, which had been busy reaching out to Hogwarts.
"Err—something like that," Hermione equivocated.
"If it's not going to last forever, you might want to sleep now," Blaise suggested, looking torn. "You're not going to be able to once you're too drained and the pain comes alive once more."
"That's—that's a good idea," Hermione admitted, realizing just how exhausted she was. "I'll need to rest up to get us back out of here, anyway—"
"No." Luna's voice was forceful. "You are not 'popping' us out of here in any sort of injured state." She looked at Hermione sharply. "There's too much risk. The House Elves can help us."
Hermione blinked at her. "Alright…"
She was leaning back against the stone wall, looking at the pillar of light absently, fatigue fully hitting her, when Blaise tugged on her arm.
"That can't be comfortable," he said gently. "Here, c'mon…"
Blaise helped her adjust so she was lying on the ground, partially curled up with her head resting in his lap. She looked up at him with a sleepy smile, and his eyes were soft as he looked back down at her.
"We'll keep watch," he reassured her. "You've done a lot. Rest, now."
"Okay…" Hermione said, yawning. She closed her eyes and burrowed slightly into him, allowing herself to relax, only bits of quiet conversations catching her ears.
"—no idea how we're going to explain electrical burns to Madame Pomfrey," Harry was saying. "There isn't even electricity here at Hogwarts."
"Well, there clearly is—"
"—heal her ourselves?" someone else was saying. "—could research it—"
"Not enough time—Snape would notice first—"
Assured her friends had things fully in hand, Hermione let herself drift off into a sorely needed sleep.