The stone brick halls of Hogwarts surround her, the walls raising high above her head. The ceiling is missing, and in its place, a black night sky. The moon is large above, but only barely illuminates her path. She follows it, using it to guide her forward.
The hallways twist and branch off, twisting her senses and she starts to notice the walls change as she gets deeper and deeper into the maze. The alcoves become ornately designed with snakes and images of skulls, chains hanging where banners once were.
Panicked, she glances up at her moon, only to find that the white orb is no longer there, in its place hangs the floating head of her best friend. His face takes on a pallid colour, still reflecting enough light for her to change her direction and let it guide her through the maze of hallways. The look on his face is what she can't get out of her mind, his fear-filled eyes bore into hers. Closing her eyes and covering her face with her hands does nothing to stop his unending gaze, piercing into her soul.
The stone of the hallways gets lighter, phoenixes now entwine themselves up the alcoves and lions are inlaid into the stone around the curtained windows. She stumbles her way through the maze before her, the path she takes getting increasingly difficult to navigate without looking back up at his shining face every few seconds to centre her.
There are too many branching directions for her to keep track of now. Every few metres, the hallways present another double or triple choice of direction, and each time she uses his guiding light, she never runs into a dead end.
Suddenly, she sees another light, rising from behind her and illuminating the darker corners of her maze. She is entranced in watching the first glimmer of the sun rise above the horizon from a window in the hallway.
A scream tears her away from the light and she lifts her eyes to her moon; to his face. Sweat rolls off his brow and his eyes hold a new fear as they are transfixed to hers. Then, like a switch, he is gone.
She stills instantly, unable to shift her gaze away from the spot in the sky that his face occupied only moments ago. Or maybe hours ago.
She runs now, tearing down the hallways, interrupted more often than not by dead ends and long stretches of hallway that end only with a window or alcove. The light from the sun behind her provides enough light for her to see with, but she no longer has her guide.
She gets turned around, not knowing if she recognizes any of the recurring details in the hallways. She tries not to blink, each time her eyes close for the briefest of moments, she sees his face. Her shoes don't make a sound as they hit the floor, unable to drown out her mind repeating his scream over and over. Bile mixes with the taste of iron in the back of her mouth as she struggles to catch her breath.
She doesn't know how long she's been running, the sun has stopped its rise, giving no sense of time. Her heart beats an unsteady beat, thumping inside of her chest. Her breath has no rhythm, coming erratically and short. She opens her mouth to scream his name.
Hermione heard something loud interrupting her mind. Detachedly, she recognised her own screaming voice and bolted up in bed, the covers all bunched up at her feet. Sweat dripped off of her and the tank top she was wearing stuck to her skin uncomfortably.
Stumbling into the bathroom, she splashed her face with water and looked up into the mirror. She could see the haunted look in her eyes, a lost girl stared back at her. She squeezed them shut and turned her face to the side, her fingers gripped the edges of the sink until they hurt.
When she opened her eyes, she noticed the hint of the morning sunlight seeping up to her bathroom window. She had to shake herself to rid her memory of the now vague nightmare before she could get her body to move, and stepped to the window to open it. The cool morning air drifted into the bathroom, which caused small goosebumps to rise over her exposed arms. Hermione shivered and hugged her upper arms before deciding that she needed to get a start to her day.
Moving around her room, she took in the early time that her clock read and pulled on a sweater and some jeans. Crookshanks had jumped onto her bed and stretched out, his paws kneading the sheets as he looked at her with obvious disapproval of being woken up so early. She sighed with a smile and scratched his chin before sticking her wand into her jeans pocket and lifting her sweater over to cover it. She knew Anna would be up already so she didn't bother fussing with breakfast to kill time. Instead, she grabbed her handbag and stepped outside to apparate across London.
For over a year now, Hermione had reserved one day out of her week for personal use. The use, of course, being to find Harry. Interning at the Ministry and quickly rising up to her current position as Head of Muggle Sanctions, meant that her plate was often full and left little room for a social life. And so, part of her contract to accept her initial internship had been her ultimatum of one day out of her week permanently and without compromise, off limits. She had chosen Wednesday for what she thought was simple logic, it being in the middle of the week meant she wouldn't have to miss the occasional weekend outing with her old school friends or coworkers and be hounded for it later. However, as her search slowly became less and less about magical means and more and more about her approaching it with Muggle tools and strategies, it was helpful to have businesses and companies open during the weekday when she didn't have the sway and pull over them like she did on witches and wizards with her reputation.
Hermione had tried just about every magical method of tracking she could find, her personal library overflowing with tomes about ancient techniques and complicated incantations. She had even gone so far as to have illegally modified the Trace charm that was placed upon wizarding children, attuning it as closely as possible to what she could piece together of Harry's magical signature, combining parts of her memories retrieved from a pensieve and the remnants of his broken wand that he had left behind. If she was honest, she figured she probably knew his magic almost as well as she knew her own, even before starting her experiments to find him. The problem of course with magic, was that with every expert and unfailable spell to find someone, there would always be a charm or enchantment of some kind to hide someone just as well.
At one point about a year ago, Ron had made an offhand comment to her that Harry probably didn't want to be found.
"Yes Ronald, of course he doesn't want to be found," she had said, "but that's exactly why I need to find him don't you see? You know how he gets when he feels guilty, and I need to help him."
Ron's face had scrunched up in confusion but he had let it go, "Well I guess we just hope that he doesn't have his hands on the same books that you do."
She had huffed at him in response and refused to say anything else.
Hermione didn't know when exactly she had lost her hope in magical means to find Harry, but she did know that some hope entered her life when she had met Anna, who was a private investigator it turned out, a reference kindly given to her by her parents. She had of course told them about her search for Harry during one of her seldom visits to their home in Australia. They had stayed distant from her after she restored their memories, choosing to remain there and harbouring some healthy fear for magic and some justified hurt from their daughter. This in turn only made Hermione dive further into her manic search for her best friend, concreting in the loneliness she felt without him.
Anna had been a steady rock in the emotional storm that her life had become, never criticising her for her unending passion to find Harry and providing her with a much needed arm into the Muggle world and its inner workings. The two quickly became good friends and often met up outside of their regular Wednesday meetings.
During one such event, Hermione had invited Anna over to her flat for dinner and given her quite the shock when the silvery form of a shaggy Terrier appeared next to the couch they were sitting on to eat and watch the telly. Ron's voice had spoken through the Patronus only enough to tell Hermione to open her Floo connection and, fearing the worst, she quickly waved away the blocking charm she had put up when Anna arrived. When Ron's floating, flushed face showed in the flames, Anna screamed. After a minute of Hermione chewing Ron out for calling so urgently only to need help with his girl problems, she had finally turned back to Anna who was looking at her like she had turned into an elephant. Suffice it to say, Hermione spent the rest of the night answering every question Anna had, leading to a very long night.
Fortunately for Hermione though, helping Anna learn about the hidden magical world around her only served to ease the process of giving information about Harry to her. And as for Anna, though she couldn't do magic, with Hermione's help she was able to get several international wizarding papers delivered to her to provide a larger pool of information where she could apply her trade.
Anna had given Hermione her first lead when a black haired man with green eyes was reported by some hikers in Tibet to have sheltered them from an unexpected snow storm, saving their lives. Hermione soon discovered that the hikers had in fact failed to disclose to the reporter that the man was easily past 80 years of age, had more grey than black in his hair, and was missing his teeth entirely, but not before taking an entire week off of work for the trip to Tibet and, against all her logic, getting her hopes terribly high up only to have them come crashing right back down. It had taken Anna multiple days of comforting and a bucket of ice cream to get Hermione to snap out of her gloom after that first trip.
The leads that came after that went much like the first, with the notable exception that Hermione had gotten better at tamping down her hopes for the lead turning into something more. The most recent trip she had taken had been to South America where a man had gotten a tattoo of a lightning bolt on his face to symbolise the man that had saved his life in the ocean. Of course it had turned out that the saviour in question was confirmed by witnesses on the beach to have blonde hair and a striking resemblance to a recently popular American music artist.
Walking down the path to Anna's townhouse from the alley, Hermione battled the dejected feeling that today wouldn't amount to anything. She was so caught up in her thoughts that when Anna's voice broke through, she realised she had gone two doors too far down the sidewalk.
"Hermione! Silly, did you forget where I lived in your ripe old age of 20?" Anna greeted her with a warm hug before suddenly holding her out at arms length and studying her sharply. "You haven't been eating girl," she almost growled and pulled Hermione inside by her sweater.
"Hey! Careful or you'll stretch it," Hermione complained and pulled out of Anna's grasp. She yelped when Anna turned suddenly and pointed her finger right between Hermione's eyes, almost close enough to feel it.
"You be careful or you'll stretch yourself," she warned, "and then what help will you be in finding your man?" Anna turned away and stomped off toward the kitchen, her short blonde hair swaying at her shoulders.
He's not my man, Hermione almost said out loud for what feels like the millionth time to Anna but kept her mouth shut. She knew that she had to pick her fights carefully, especially at the start of the day or she might end up on her own for the rest of it.
Joining Anna, Hermione seated herself on a swivel stool at the kitchen island and let out a frustrated sigh, taking the offered banana from her hands. "I know, I'm sorry Anna. You know how I get," she said softly, "It would be hard enough to look after myself with my job and reputation being so demanding but adding this on top makes me feel like I can never justify doing anything for myself."
"Doesn't help either that you blame yourself for him leaving, does it?" Anna said around a mouthful of toast, her eyes holding a knowing light.
Hermione dodged the barbed question by scrunching her face in disgust at Anna's mouth, "Eww, you know you remind me of Ron when you do that."
"Hey!" Anna put a mocking hand to her chest in a flamboyant gesture, "I have way more class than Ron."
Hermione liked this, it felt good to have someone that she could banter and talk with in such a knowing way. She thought back to her breakdown with Ron the previous night and supposed it was unfair of her to say she had no one at all in her life. She knew he was wrong as well though in his yelled comments, she had let someone in, and it had been one of the hardest things for her to do. Hermione Granger wasn't a fool, she knew when she needed help, but that didn't make it any easier to ask for it. Anna had made it easier, her straightforward personality didn't let Hermione beat around the bush and dragged the simple question out of her right away. She hadn't intended to become her friend though, at least not right away. One Wednesday, Anna's office was closed due to a power outage and they had moved to her townhouse for the day. The more laid back environment did a number on Hermione's hard exterior and by the end of the day they both had drank slightly too much wine, shared slightly too much for a professional relationship, and she had woken up the next day remembering just slightly too little to be comfortable moving on without changing their relationship.
Despite having arrived early in the morning, the day felt short spending it with Anna, moving by in a blur as they studied newspapers from the past week, made calls to various international contacts that Anna had, and plotted possible sightings on maps.
Hermione had been drinking tea while she pored over a newspaper that only just arrived later that afternoon when she jumped out of her chair, nearly scalding herself when her hot drink spilled over her fingers. "Anna! Look!" she slammed the paper down onto the table in front of her friend and pointed to a paragraph halfway down.
Anna mumbled along as she read, "...talented wizard… brought peace… native tribe of– fish people… Fish people?" she said again, raising her eyebrow at Hermione, who just shrugged and shook her head to say she didn't know either. "Fish people… bloody Americans," Anna muttered as she shook her head, "I don't get it Hermione, it doesn't say anything here about a description of this wizard."
"I know, but look down here, it says he performed some binding spell for the peace treaty without a wand." Hermione stated, looking to Anna as if that was all the answer that was needed. "Ugh okay listen," she continued seeing her friend's confused face, "Harry left without his wand, taking only the Elder wand, which I know he either got rid of or broke somehow. Ignore that, just trust that I know that without a doubt."
"Couldn't he have bought another wand?" Anna asked, still looking confused.
Hermione huffed at the interruption, "Yes of course, but buying a wand isn't so simple, it has to choose you too. I know I'm reaching with this but it's at least a possibility. Harry is the strongest wizard that I know and the report includes wandless magic, which is extremely difficult. Those two factors together are something, right?" she finished with a hopeful tone.
Anna frowned and drummed her fingers on her chin for a moment before saying slowly, "You might be right… or you might be wrong, but it's the best we've got right now, are you going to plan a trip?"
Just as Hermione opened her mouth to give an answer, a silvery winged horse stepped through the wall and Andromeda Tonks' voice rang out, "At your flat with Teddy. No rush but don't be long."
"Shit!" Hermione swore, causing Anna to break her transfixed gaze on the pegasus and look at her with surprise. Hermione began hurriedly packing her things back into her beaded handbag, "Sorry that slipped out, I promised Andromeda that I would look after Teddy today because she has an appointment at Gringotts and couldn't find another sitter that Teddy liked."
Anna helped Hermione pack and only spoke again when they were at the door, "You know," she smiled, "if I had one of those, I think mine would be a swan." A wistful look settled on her face before Hermione loudly snorted.
"You? A swan?" Hermione said between giggles, "more like a bulldog, or maybe a hippo." Hermione had to cover her mouth when she saw Anna's indignant face.
"Hippo!? Get out of here missy, you still have to show me your patronus sometime," Anna said with a smile returning to her face.
"I will," Hermione winked to her friend and waved goodbye before rushing to the alley where she could safely apparate back to her flat.