After breakfast was done, Hermione and Blaise took the Floo to Diagon Alley. Hermione was leading them towards Gringotts when they were abruptly interrupted by Tolly and Neemey appearing from nowhere, catching Hermione off-guard and making her wonder if they'd set up some kind of detection magic or if they'd just been hiding in an alleyway.

"Tolly is to take Missy Hermione to the Learning Place," Tolly told her, nodding solemnly. She looked at Blaise. "Neemey is to be taking Missy Hermione's friend, too."

Hermione relaxed. "Thank you, Tolly."

Tolly grabbed ahold of Hermione and popped. Ley line travel with a House Elf was much faster than when Hermione did it alone, and much smoother – probably because House Elf magic was more compatible with the magic of the ley lines. A moment later, they reappeared, now in a clearing in the middle a forest.

"We is in Ireland now," Tolly told her. Her enormous eyes looked at Hermione seriously. "Is Missy Hermione being ready?"

"I don't know if I'll ever be fully ready," Hermione admitted, as Blaise and Neemey popped into existence nearby. "But I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

"Excellent." Neemey's eyes gleamed. "I shall get your teacher."

Neemey disappeared, and Blaise drifted closer to Hermione.

"What do I do?" he hissed. "What do I say?"

"Hopefully, nothing," Hermione said, biting her lip. "This entire thing is dangerous enough. But don't make any deals."

"Like you did?" Blaise said, his voice cynical, and Hermione grinned in spite of herself.

"Exactly." Her lips quirked. "Do as I say, not as I do."

Neemey returned shortly, leading a Fae, and Blaise's mouth hung open in astonishment. Gently, Hermione nudged it close, and Blaise shot her a grateful look through his embarrassment.

Hermione couldn't blame him – the Fae was a visual marvel for the eyes. It was very tall, probably nearing seven feet, with cheekbones that could cut glass. Its eyes were entirely black, including the sclera, and as it drew nearer, Hermione could see that its skin was a deep blue. It had curved black horns, like those of a ram, only the horns appeared to be made of many small braids. It was wearing very fine clothes, edged in gold and silver, but the clothes themselves had veins, and there was an odd flow to the large panels. It looked like they were made of large leaves, somehow preserved and tanned into leather. It wore two swords as well, one on each hip.

As it drew nearer, its black lips split into a wide smile – too wide for a human face, with rows of pointy, dark-blue teeth.

"Hermione Granger," the faerie purred. "We meet again."

Hermione was caught off guard; she thought she'd never met a Fae that looked quite like this, but she remembered from books that they could change their appearance nearly effortlessly. It seemed the Fae she'd bargained with had made some personal improvements in the interim.

"It is good to see you again," she said cautiously. "I'm afraid I never got your name."

The Fae laughed. Its laugh was high and cold, and the leaves on the trees seemed to shiver at the sound.

"Of course not," it dismissed, sitting down on the ground in front of Hermione and Blaise. "I am not a fool."

"We need something to call you," Blaise spoke up from next to her. Hermione looked at him quickly, but Blaise's face was open, though curious. "If not your name, what?"

The Fae cocked its head. "What would you choose?"

"Teacher, maybe. Professor. Master. Mistress?" Hermione's imagination caught flight. "Sensei, guru, guide, coach, tutor—"

"I was thinking Bob," Blaise said flatly. "Like a name name."

"Oh," Hermione said, faltering. "Err—"

"I have never been given a human name," the Fae said. Its eyes seemed to change in the light, the black of the sclera shrinking to irises, making the Fae seem a little more human now that you could see the whites of its eyes. "You shall have to give me one."

Hermione bit her lip. She didn't want to give the Fae a name that might be someone else's name. That seemed like the kind of thing a faerie might be able to take advantage of somehow.

"Cherry?" she ventured. "Banana, cookie, Paddington…"

"We're in Ireland," Blaise said. "You need Irish names – like Siobhan, Oisin, Caoimhe, Aoife—"

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, cutting him off in astonishment. "What noise just came out of your mouth?"

The Fae laughed.

"Let's just pick 'Ireland' as a name, then," Hermione said. "I can at least pronounce and spell that Irish—"

"'Ireland' isn't in Irish, though," Blaise argued. "It's in English."

Hermione threw her hands up in frustration.

"Then what is 'Ireland' in Irish?" she demanded.

"Eire," the Fae said.

Hermione turned to look at it, surprised.

"Ay-juh?" she repeated. "Ae-zjuh?"

"It sounded like 'Asia'," Blaise said, "only with like an 'uh' sound at the end instead of an 'ah'."

"Is that okay with you?" Hermione asked, turning back to the Fae. "Being called Eire?"

The Fae's eyes gleamed.

"I should like a title as well," the Fae said. "Which is most appropriate? Guru? Master?"

"Coach," Blaise said firmly. "You're going to be coaching Hermione through this."

"Coach Eire," the Fae said, musing over it. It looked up. "It is satisfactory. I will respond to this name for you."

That matter settled, they all settled down onto the plush, moss-covered ground, and Hermione looked to Eire for direction.

"What do you know of the creation of ley lines?" Eire asked abruptly.

"Err—not much," Hermione confessed. "That they were made by the Fae when they left this realm and went to their own. The story made it sound like they were tears through reality, almost, not that I understand that at all."

Eire tilted their head. It was an odd human mannerism to see on the Fae, especially because it was so over exaggerated, with Eire now looking at Hermione from a 90° angle, their head entirely sideways.

"That's a very pretty way to put it," Eire said. "Poetic. Especially compared to what actually occurred."

"What actually occurred?" Hermione asked. "How were the ley lines made?"

Eire considered.

"Fae are different than humans in many ways," they said finally. "One such way is your body."

"My body?" Hermione looked down at herself, touching it. "What about it?"

"It is entirely matter-based," the Fae said simply. "The Fae are not."

Hermione blinked.

"I'm sorry," she said. "What?"

Eire snarled suddenly, showing off many teeth, and Hermione flinched violently while Neemey cowered.

"High Fae exist partially in the material world," Neemey said, translating, "and partially in a spectrum of energy that humans cannot see."

Hermione forced herself to remain calm. "Okay…"

"This gives Fae more control over energy than humans can manage," Neemey said. "They can interact with it directly, meld with it."

"And by 'energy'," Hermione said slowly, "you mean 'magic'?"

"Yes." Eire smiled. It wasn't pretty.

Hermione nodded, trying to make sense of this. She didn't really know what that quite meant, that they existed in two different realms, but it sounded like they were entirely made of energy in another realm. She wondered if that was why they traditionally didn't like iron. If you were entirely made of magic and electrons, she imagined, experiencing ferromagnetism of any kind would probably mess that up.

"When we fled this realm," Eire said, "our matter-based bodies scarred the world. To try and take something matter-based into a realm that was only energy-based… our momentum and push to the new Fae realm dragged our bodies behind us, forming the ley lines that connect our realm to yours."

Hermione bit her lip.

"Did they survive?" she asked. "Your bodies, I mean?"

Eire fixed her with a look.

"No," they said. "They did not."

Hermione swallowed hard. Eire shrugged and continued.

"It mattered naught – we could always make another," they continued. "What you need to know is that it was the desire to escape matter and become one with the energy realm and magic that we chased."

Blaise shot Hermione a wary look, but Hermione didn't look away from the Fae.

"This is what you will need to do to create a ley line of your own," Eire said. "Your physical body is more firm – the scar you will create will be much bigger than the ones the Fae created." They paused. "It will be correspondingly more painful, of course."

"And – I can do this?" Hermione questioned. "Even if I don't want to escape my matter-based body? Or even go to – err – the Energy Realm?"

Eire smiled at her. It seemed like an attempt at reassurance, made threatening by the blue teeth and eyes widening far too much.

"It is possible," Eire allowed. "I am confident you can succeed. Though – it will hurt."

"So what do I need to do?" Hermione asked. She managed to keep her tone neutral, not betraying her nervousness.

"First, you need to match your magical resonance to the existing ley lines," the Fae instructed her. "Once that is done, fix your heart on a point where there is no ley line currently, and move yourself through magic to get there. You will blaze a new ley line through reality in the process and come out on the other side."

Hermione was surprised. She remembered worrying what would happen if someone who ever matched their magical resonance to a ley line tried to jump a ley line – she'd worried they would get lost. With what Eire was saying, though, it seemed like humans could not abandon their matter-based bodies so easily and would drag them along accordingly. She imagined her body being dragged through the ground – as if she had been buried alive 6 feet under, and a force was yanking her through the packed dirt, leaving a tunnel behind her despite her screams. It wasn't going to be quite like that, Hermione knew, but the visualization helped her understand the concept of 'blaze a scar in reality'.

"The difficult parts will be attuning your resonance to magic, and the determination necessary to drive yourself forward to your new point," Eire said. "The pain you will experience on the journey will attempt to drive you back to your body's original starting point. Your determination must hold fast in order for you to succeed through the agony."

Hermione bit her lip. "And if my determination is not strong enough?"

Eire laughed loudly.

"Yours is," they said, certain. "For others…" They shrugged. "They will be thrown back into their matter-based body, in an ocean of great agony."

"Okay." Hermione took a deep breath. "So now we practice, I guess?"

"You do for the initial attunement," Eire corrected. "When you are ready to try, there will be no 'practice' – you will either succeed or you will not."

Hermione sighed. "Of course."

She took another deep breath and closed her eyes. She reached for her core, full of magic and spinning happily, elementals brushing up against her awareness as she did. She pushed out her magic to feel for the ley line, and upon finding it, tried to attune herself to its resonance. She remembered watching the hedgewitches' cores slowly reverse, going counterclockwise, but when she tried to stop her own, there was firm, angry resistance from her magic.

"What are you doing?" Eire demanded, suddenly furious, breaking Hermione's concentration. "You're to be harmonizing your magic, not killing it."

"Oh," Hermione said, faltering. "I—umm—"

She didn't know how to harmonize her magic. Her own magic was a melodic purple sort of visualization, while the ley line magic was a higher-pitched red. She didn't know how to make her magic match the other magic's resonance. Was there a way to change its color or hum?

She asked this last question aloud, and Eire scoffed.

"Of course you need a sensory equivalent to understand anything," they dismissed. "Yes, you can change your magic. You can change what note you hum after all, yes? You can do the same with your magic."

"How?" Hermione asked helplessly.

"You just do!" Eire's temper flared, their eyes going bright orange. "How do I teach you what should be instinctual for any creature with magic? You don't teach your babes how to make sounds – they know it intuitively, and they learn by instinct how to vary their tone. This should be the same – you know how to produce and channel your magic intuitively, and you should know how to change your magic's resonance to match that of another."

Hermione hastily closed her eyes, returning to focusing on the ley line in the ground.

Eire's explanation hadn't exactly helped, though. 'It should be instinctual' wasn't a great piece of advice when it clearly wasn't instinctual for her. Hermione tried her best to imagine her magic slowly changing color, but that didn't work – it stubbornly stayed violet, and Hermione gave that up with a sigh. She tried humming, only without using her throat, but that proved difficult as well, sound escaping her unintentionally.

"This is not the time for singing," Neemey urged Hermione. "Match your magic."

Hermione bit her lip. Okay – humming without humming didn't seem to work either.

She reached her awareness out a bit more, trying to grasp the magnitude of the magic in the ley line. It wasn't a large ley line they were by, it seemed, but in the process, she could feel her magic brush up against Blaise's. Blaise's magic was familiar, often shared with her and running through her during coven rituals. Hermione remembered the harmonious chorus her coven's magic seemed to make whenever they were sharing power, and her eyes flew open to look at her instructor.

"I need to match the resonance of the ley line," Hermione said carefully, "or I need to harmonize with it?"

Eire abruptly looked entirely too amused.

"You are not made of energy," they said. "Does your physical form anchor your magic's tone?"

Hermione shrugged helplessly, looking up at the faerie. How was she supposed to know? Eire gave her a suspicious look, considering carefully.

"Try to harmonize first," they said abruptly. "Can you do that?"

"I'll try..." Hermione closed her eyes once more.

Again, she reached out for the ley line, letting its power run through her. The sound the ley line made was a sort of high-pitched hum, more like a frequency than a musical tone, and Hermione bit her lip. Her own magic was more of a musical note, significantly lower in pitch.

What made things higher pitched? Hermione wracked her brain, trying to remember elementary school science lessons. Sound waves had different parts, she remembered. They had amplitude, which was the height of the sound wave, if she recalled correctly, which changed the loudness of the sound. The other part was frequency, which was the length of the wave from crest to crest. Long wavelengths had lower frequencies and produced lower-pitched sounds, she remembered, while short wavelengths produced much higher frequencies and higher-pitched sounds.

How was she supposed to change the wavelength of her magic? She visualized her magic as a liquid, not as a wave. She'd never thought she'd ever end up wishing she'd gone through with her magical double-slit experiment nonsense, but here she was, puzzling over magic's nature once more. Had her magic ever made a different sound in her mind than it did now? Had she ever unintentionally changed its note?

A memory floated up, and Hermione paused, considering, before reaching forward to her core and giving it a push.

Her magic had been at a different frequency before, she recalled – when her core was unstable, before she'd had a coven and earth elemental to help stabilize her. It'd just been spinning like crazy, generating more and more magic, and it'd had a much higher pitch at the time. As Hermione nudged her core forwards, trying to set it to spinning faster, she remembered how it had felt when it was going crazy – how unhinged she had felt.

Her core began to speed up somewhat under her focus, and the resonance of her magic changed.

"I did it!" Hermione exclaimed excitedly.

"You did not," Eire countered immediately, disgusted. "You're not even close—"

"I found how to change the resonance," Hermione corrected herself. "Now that I've figured out how, I can change it to the right note, hopefully. Hang on—"

It was difficult to set her core spinning faster. The earth elemental in her magic seemed to be trying to sit on top of her core to steady it, while other ropes of colors seemed to be trying to slow it down and tie it up. Mulling this over in her mind, Hermione carefully slipped her coven ring off her finger, setting it down at her side.

"Hermione? What are you doing?" Blaise's voice was alarmed. "I can't feel you—"

"I'm giving something a try," Hermione said, eyes still closed, feeling her magic spinning around. "It's fine. I'll put it back on."

Without her coven ring on, her core was suddenly and abruptly free, almost staggering within her, as if about to fall off a stand, and Hermione felt like she was off kilter herself, something changed inside her. She'd forgotten how much her coven stabilized her – though it was easy to forget, when she never took her ring off.

Without her covenmates' magic as subtle stabilizers, it was much easier to set her core spinning faster. Though the color of her magic didn't change, its frequency certainly did, becoming higher and higher in pitch. Hermione watched as her core began spinning faster and faster, using her own magic to hold back her earth elemental, and there was a vague feeling of growing dizziness in her head.

"Much better," Eire crooned from her side, suddenly close. "You're almost there—"

"Hermione?" Blaise's voice was strangled. "You look – you're glowing, Hermione – it's like you're about to explode—"

There was a sudden feeling of being crushed in a hug, and it took Hermione a moment to realize she'd done it – her own magic was the same note as the ley line's magic. The ley line magic had swamped her and was holding her and her magic, cradling her in its arms. Her concentration nearly broke at the new awareness, and she bit her lip hard, determined to stay focused.

"There," Eire said, in satisfied tones.

"Hermione?" Blaise's voice was uncertain. "Are you okay?"

Eire ignored him. "Your next step is to fix your heart on a point where there is no ley line currently," the Fae instructed. "Once you have a destination, you must move yourself through magic to get there."

"This is the part that will be very painful?" Hermione managed to get out, gritting her teeth to keep herself grounded.

"Yes." Eire sounded amused. "Are you ready?"

"Hermione?" There was outright alarm in Blaise's voice. "Hermione, what happens if you fail or get lost—"

"Blaise, take my coven ring, will you?" Hermione asked. Her eyes were clenched shut as she maintained tight focus over her magic. With her core spinning this fast, generating so much unstable magic, one slip of attention would end up with her overwhelmed. "I'll see you on the other side."

"Where are you going to go?" Neemey asked. "We will follow you there."

Hermione didn't know off the top of her head where there were or were not ley lines in Ireland; it wasn't like she'd memorized Luna's map. Her first thought was to try and get to the tree house, but that far a trip from Ireland seemed foolish for a first try.

"Where are we now?" she asked, her voice strained. "And more specific than just 'Ireland', please."

Neemey laughed.

"Leitrim," they said. "In the forest, near Cormongan Pier."

Hermione hadn't the slightest idea where that was.

"What's nearby that's a landmark that's not connected?" she asked. "Any significant faerie circles, historical places…"

"Poll an Easa Waterfall," Eire said lazily. "Though that may be a bit far. There's Sliabh an Iarainn – that certainly doesn't have a ley line near it."

"Fine. There," Hermione said, trying to keep her breathing calm. It was hard when her magic was spinning so fast – she wanted to take short, quick breaths naturally, but she didn't want to do this the first time while hyperventilating.

"Hold your destination firmly in your mind," Eire crooned. "Magic will guide you, if you hold your desire firmly enough. And when you're ready… step into the magic, Hermione."

Eyes tightly closed, her magic and the ley line magic mingling and mixing freely, Hermione reached out with her magic and drew the veil of mist aside.