AN - New chapter! Would love to hear your thoughts.
For a time they sat in relative silence, on the other side of a square meal and a solid laugh. Hermione broke the silence, her eyes set on Harry.
"What are you thinking?"
He'd been lost in into awareness, he turned to her. "I'm sorry?"
"You were gazing into the distance." She set her attention full on him. A moment later, "What's taken you there."
At this, Luna's eyes shifted to Hermione's curious gaze, and she smiled.
"Right. Sorry." Harry paused, and his emerald green eyes traced the contours of the room. "It just - I don't know - it just feels as if everything has changed."
She didn't answer, merely tilting her head in fascination.
"Defeat." He looked down, and then slowly raised his eyes to meet Hermione's directly. "That's what this summer felt like. Voldemort is back; Cedric is dead. I was alone. And I felt alone. And lost, and powerless."
Something about the room shifted as he spoke, and Hermione began to suspect that Harry's connection to his home was innately magical.
"And then suddenly everything changed." He stole a glance at Luna, full of meaning. "I mean, look at us." He gestured to the potions lab. "Imagine the possibilities."
He turned his attention to Ron. "Not three days ago, Ron, you've have vomited at the notion of devoting your full attention to an obscure text."
Just then he halted, struck by an idea. "And I despised the very suggestion of potions work."
A pause, and then he whispered. "Everything's changed."
He leveled his gaze, narrowed his eyes, and met each of them with a determined expression, capturing the room altogether.
"A war is coming." He paused, his brow furrowed, until a long breath left his lips. "A war; with violence and darkness and death in its wake."
They sat before him, struck by the notion, so clearly expressed, that had haunted them in abstract impressions for months, perhaps years.
"For a while it was all I could think about. I'd failed, and Tom Riddle returned, and before him lay a clear path. I couldn't shake the thought that it was over - that this was the beginning of the end."
The gravity of his words, born upon confessions of fear uncomfortably anchored in very real possibility, sobered them altogether. For a moment, not a breath was heard.
"I'll tell you something I've never told anyone." He was looking down again, determined. "Since my first year at Hogwarts, I've been convinced that I was going to die. From the moment Quirrell turned to dust in my hands."
Something about him trembled at the thought.
"I saw him that night. Some disembodied shape, all rage and violence. Yet he was there, slipped through death's fingers. And he was after me. He was after all of us, really. And the darkness behind him was there too, ready to stifle all that I love. All that was good." He took a breath. "I knew I'd die at his hand."
A tear slipped from Luna's left eye, and her chin trembled. She laced her fingers through his hand.
"I felt that moment's inevitability." He halted at this, shaking his head. "Inevitability. The notion itself is a working of the darkness. I see now what I couldn't dare to hope for, then."
At this, he shifted his gaze, looked up, an expression of unflinching courage behind his eyes.
"We can fight him."
Something about the room stirred at this. Ron, leaning forward, set his jaw in noble determination. Fred shifted his gaze to George, and they shared a meaningful glance. When their eyes turned back to Harry, they nodded with unwavering support. Hermione and Luna merely watched him, full of affection, leaning into the expression of that future to which they'd given themselves without hesitation.
"I mean," he hesitated for a moment, tripping over the notion, "of course we aren't yet ready. There's been few - hardly anyone - who could openly challenge Voldemort at the height of his power."
He took another breath, and then shook himself as if from a stupor. "Yet even that notion is bollocks. Few ever attempted. And what have we discovered in the past weeks, if not that what many deemed impossible is only a solid effort away."
He stood. This was unexpected, and they all started.
"Hermione, what do you know of the limits of magical extension charms?"
She paused for a moment, clearly indexing everything she'd read for the last 48 hours. "In theory, there are no limits; supposing of course the effort is made to offset natural forces like gravity, to reduce natural strain on materials. Failed extension charms are actually indicative of failure to consider and account for the variables of stress, wear, and natural limitations. Each of these are, of course, themselves offset by clever spellcraft. But when they aren't considered, things can go bad."
Harry grinned. "If I were to ask you to assist in an extension of the library?"
Hermione practically burst with enthusiasm. "We can get started this afternoon."
Harry laughed. "And in the loft?" He turned a mischievous grin toward Ron. "We need a training room - a sparring room, really. Is it possible, Hermione?"
She furrowed her brow. "A bit trickier, as this isn't an extension of a preexisting room. But there are at least..." she paused, thinking. "...four avenues - we'd just have to account for the charms Dumbledore has set along the near wall."
Ron smirked. "Excellent."
Harry turned his attention to the glass door beyond the table behind them. "That leaves the garden. Hermione, if we could extend the back yard, out and up, we'd have loads of room for cultivation of potions ingredients."
She nodded, beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed.
He caught her expression, and nodded gratefully. "We've got loads of time, Hermione. Thank you, you're brilliant."
She blushed, and he turned back to the garden.
"I think it's about time we reach out to Neville."
--
They spent the bulk of the afternoon listening to Hermione explain the magical theory of extension charms as she prepared to expand the library.
It became apparent after a few minutes of explanation that the execution of magical extension charms - especially those charms associated permanently with magical structures - was extraordinarily complex. It was entirely imagination driven - yet supported by an active and working comprehension not only of physics but also of the interactions of charms and active workings already cast on the premises. The failure of magical extensions had to do with a failure to understand what forces worked against one another, and which spells required additional accounting for in the unique series of casts related to the final incantation.
Harry was blown away by Hermione's mind. She had not only a full comprehension of the basic casts required for magical extension - each of which Harry was overwhelmed by, and all of which must be precisely uttered in sequence without an interruption of intent or focus - but she also seemed to intuit the spellcraft of Albus Dumbledore himself, in the various additions and magical adjustments he made to No. 4 1/2.
Within a few hours, they were standing in the midst of a large expanse, above which loomed four stories of dark stained shelving, a complex and occasionally shifting series of spiral staircases, nooks strategically placed in the corners of each floor, lit warmly by steady lamps and comfortably seated with leather wingbacks and round rugs.
They were struck silent by the working, and as they slowly took in the majesty of the magic, a silent awe settled upon the room.
"Hermione, I've never seen such beauty." The silence had been broken by Fred, and as she shifted her gaze in his direction, she blushed. For he'd been looking at her directly.
She tucked a stray chestnut curl behind her right ear, averting her eyes. "It's really nothing."
Harry was beaming. "Dobby?"
A sharp whip-crack shattered the silence.
"Harry Potter, sir! What a pleasure it is for Dobby to serve." In their midst Dobby appeared, wearing a smart three-piece in lemon yellow, with baby-blue oxfords and a deep purple beret.
Harry knelt beside Dobby, facing him directly. "Thank you for all the help you've offered lately, Dobby. Hermione has just assisted in expanding the library, and I'd like to see whether the remaining contents of the Potter libary might be relocated to No. 4 1/2."
Dobby, trembling with excitement, suddenly looked up. "Oh, how exciting! Dobby is never been seeing such remarkable magic. Dobby is struck by the beauty and brilliance of young Ms. Granger. Dobby is happy to serve the noble House of Potter, and Dobby is bringing the books immediately."
A moment later, he snapped his fingers, and in less than five minutes, the shelving before them was filled with an impossible number of ancient leather tomes.