Hermione was almost relieved when Tuesday rolled around and she was able to take a break from her own plans and relax in her chair at the Wizengamot. Politics was at least semi-predictable – people would argue, people would vote – and she'd be able to stay sitting the whole time, which she was looking forward to. She'd woken several times during the night with weird muscle spasms and twitching, ghosts of the agony she'd undergone haunting her nerves, and her whole body felt sore when she got up that morning, as if she'd run a marathon.

As per usual, however, the Wizengamot session was hardly relaxed.

"Construction is on track, with the facility opening scheduled for the 13th," Royce Fiddlewood said, reporting to the group. "A fortnight is the fastest possible construction rate, which will leave only one week for werewolves to get registered before the next full moon. It's unrealistic to expect the entire werewolf population to manage to suddenly make time to stop by the Ministry—"

"How many werewolves do we have?" Minister Fudge asked, aghast. "Surely it can't be that many—"

"We could have Bones schedule her Aurors to guard the World Cup campsites against werewolves?" Ludo Bagman suggested. "Best way to avoid a potential international incident—"

"It's your event – your people can guard it," Amelia Bones snapped. "Mine are busy investigating real issues and handling the transition of the prison."

"You want a bunch of ex-Quidditch players guarding people? With what, Beaters' bats?" Ludo laughed, shaking his head. "Besides, my people are busy too – everyone not preoccupied with the World Cup is working on the Triwizard Tournament, which is coming up fast."

"On that note – is there a reason we haven't heard of any significant updates regarding the tournament, Bagman?" Barty Crouch's eyes narrowed.

"Am I supposed to provide updates?" Bagman asked mildly. "I mean, the whole thing pretty clearly falls under the purview of my department and Hogwarts, so we've been working together directly—"

"Then the Department of International Magical Cooperation would like involved in these discussions as well," Crouch snapped. "The sporting part your department can handle, but surely my department is far more equipped to handle the careful diplomacy the event requires."

"Can we return to the issue at hand?" Muse Booth demanded. "Does the Department of Magical Transportation need all of the Portkeys to New Zealand ready by the 13th or not?"

As the argument continued, Hermione leaned over to Era Hornbeam.

"What's a Triwizard Tournament?" she asked quietly.

"Not sure," Era admitted. "It involves the school, though. I think it's a competition as well as a potential student exchange event? Dumbledore would have the details."

Hermione made a face. She didn't need an Arithmancy table to know the chances of the headmaster telling her anything significant about a cagey, secretive initiative were abysmally low.

The second favor Theo wanted was considerably more difficult than the first. Hermione ransacked all of the magic books she had, researching furiously, but she still came up blank. After much thought and deliberation, she finally decided to ask for help.

"So he's bound her soul to her own dead body?" Tom Riddle asked. "Or the soul is just trapped in a warded chamber?"

Hermione equivocated to herself that this was technically okay, as Tom wasn't really a person, just a soul shard. Hermione knew she'd broken her promise to Theo in spirit, even if not in letter, but if Tom managed to help her free Theo's mother, Hermione suspected it would be enough plausible deniability that Theo would forgive her if he ever found out.

"He made it sound like the soul was bound to the body," Hermione clarified. "Like his father had tried to force the soul back into her body to bring her back to life, only it didn't work."

Tom tapped his lips thoughtfully.

"Binding a soul is easier than you'd think," he said. "People do it themselves all the time, almost accidentally – that's where all the ghosts come from."

"Really?" Hermione said, astonished. "I thought it sounded horrible, like he tried to make a horcrux for his wife out of her dead body."

"I mean, he did, kind of," Tom said. "But the worst part of the horcrux ritual is the splitting of the soul and putting it into a vessel. Her body already was a vessel for that exact same soul – hardly any preparation needed."

"How do I free her, then?" Hermione asked. "I thought I could just destroy her body, but with the way Fiendfyre destroys horcruxes, it didn't seem wise to use around somebody's soul…"

"I see. Quite the dilemma on your hands, isn't it?" he mused. "How to free her without endangering anyone else…"

They sat on Hermione's bed in silence for a while, both pondering.

"All I've got is dragging her body to Hogwarts for the next Beltane and hoping that the Light magic there will be enough to set her free," Hermione said glumly. "I doubt Theo would be willing to wait another year for this, now that he's finally called in his favor."

Tom shrugged.

"Nothing for it, then," he said. "You'll just have to break the magic Thoros put on her."

Hermione blinked.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Break his magic?"

Tom rolled his eyes, exasperated.

"I forget how little of magic they truly teach you at Hogwarts," he said, scowling. He looked furious for a moment, eyes flashing, before his muscles relaxed and he sighed.

"I can't teach you all by myself," he said. "Not when I'm borrowing your own magic. Get your coven together – it's time for a lesson in magic you would all do well to learn."

Getting the coven to assemble for a lesson in magic from the once-future Dark Lord wasn't difficult. Summer days were long and lazy, and anything novel that broke the boredom was attractive entertainment for the afternoon. It was kind of surreal to have Tom Riddle lecturing them all in the living room of their clubhouse, but he seemed to have a knack for teaching and explaining complicated things in ways Hermione could understand.

"First – all magic cast on an object can be classified as either be temporary or lasting," Tom said, writing Temporary and Lasting on a floating whiteboard. "The difference, though, can be tricky to grasp. For example, if I cast Colloportus, is it lasting or temporary?"

The coven members glanced at each other.

"Temporary, right?" Harry ventured. "Once the door is locked, the spell is over, isn't it?"

Tom shrugged ambivalently. "Is it?"

"It's not," Susan said, thinking. "You still can't open the door physically when it's been magically locked with that spell. You have to use Alohomora. So… lasting, then?"

"It is lasting," Tom said, nodding. "If I transfigure a stick into a pipe – temporary or lasting?"

"If you're sustaining it—" Harry began.

"Once you've transfigured it, it's done," Hermione cut in. "It's temporary – it just changes the resting state of the object."

"Correct," Tom said. "If I hover an object—"

"That has to be temporary," Harry said firmly. "It's only floating as long as you're holding the spell."

"Good. If I use Reparo?"

"Temporary," Blaise said. "Once the spell is done, the thing is repaired, and the magic ends, right?

"Indeed," Tom nodded. "Now – what if I curse something?"

There was a pause.

"There are a lot of different curses," Luna said slowly, blinking. "Can you give us an example?"

"Let's say I curse a necklace to strangle anyone who wears it," Tom said congenially. "Temporary or lasting?"

Hermione bit her lip, unsure.

"The magic is what's going to strangle someone, not the physical necklace, right?" Blaise said. "So it's got to be lasting."

"Exactly," Tom said, pleased. "Now – if I enchant an object to be a Portkey – lasting or temporary?"

"Does it depend on whether or not it's a one-time-use Portkey?" Harry wanted to know.

"Lasting," said Luna. "The spell is what make the Portkey work, not the object itself. So even if it's one time use, until that use, there's still the spell waiting to be used inside the object."

Harry looked frustrated. Tom seemed to take pity on him.

"A Quidditch broom's charm work," he said. "Temporary or lasting?"

"Lasting," Harry said immediately. "It still flies for ages after the charm work is done."

"A Quaffle," Tom suggested. Harry paused.

"…I didn't know there was any magic involved with the Quaffle, to be honest," Harry said, blinking. "Err – so 'temporary', then, I guess? Whatever magic they used to make it is gone by the time the players get it."

"Good," Tom praised. "Now – your wand."

Everyone looked down at their wands.

"I'd say wand creation is temporary magic that activates lasting magic," Hermione said slowly, stroking the handle of her wand thoughtfully. "Ollivander probably casts something that activates the runes inside, but once they're active, the magical core of the wand is what keeps the runes active and sustains them – not Ollivander's original spell."

"Very good," Tom praised, pleased. "So you see, temporary magic is when magic influences something for a brief period of time – while the magic is being cast – and then dissipates. Lasting magic is when a magical effect lingers long after the time of the casting."

He finished writing these characteristics on the whiteboard. Next, he drew a necklace with a different color marker.

"When you are dealing with lasting magic, the caster's magic is left behind from their original intent and spell," he said, taking a red marker and drawing red hashes over the blue beads of the necklace. "Another person with sufficient skill and will can disable or dissipate this magic."

"Is that what Cursebreakers do?" Harry asked suddenly. "Ron's brother – he's a curse-breaker for Gringotts in Egypt—"

"Exactly," Tom said, nodding. "It would be his job to undo any lasting magic left on artifacts."

"So how do you undo the magic?" Luna asked curiously.

"There are a few ways," Tom said. "Let's visualize a curse like a net with a lock, trapping the cursed object." He drew a lock in red nearby the hashes. "The first way is a counter-curse. Think of a counter-curse like a key for the lock."

Tom drew a key on the board, helpfully labeling it counter-curse.

"Counter-curses are spells developed from the same base as the original curse," Tom explained. "They are often created together, so a wizard might be able to undo his own curses should he desire."

"Does every curse have a counter?" Susan asked.

Tom paused.

"While every lasting curse may not have a counter, it could have a counter," Tom said carefully. "Dark wizards have been known to develop Dark curses without coming up with a counter-curse purposefully. Then, when a curse-breaker tries to come in and counter the original curse, the victim is often dead before the counter-curse can be found."

That was grim but rather practical, Hermione thought, feeling a bit sickened. If you wanted to curse someone, you probably didn't want them getting better.

"Another way is to overpower the original magic," Tom said, drawing a broken lock on the board. "Think of this method as brute force. You rip apart the original magic, but you're likely to damage the object that's been spelled as well."

"Why do that, then?" Harry asked, quizzical. "If it breaks the thing you need…"

"Imagine this one as Dumbledore trying to get through a warded door in a hurry," Tom advised Harry. "He's not going to bother figure out how to undo the ward – he's just going to overload the original magic until it blows the door off its hinges."

"What else?" Susan asked. "I know there aren't counter-curses to wards, but people can break them somehow."

"The last way is called 'deconstruction'," Tom said, writing on the board, "though it's more commonly known as 'unraveling'. This is where instead of targeting the original spell with your own magic, you attempt to find the vulnerabilities in the magic or effects the spell cast and then weaken those points until you can break the object free. In our visualization here, this would be ignoring the lock entirely and picking the net apart. Maybe you target the fibers and gradually unravel those, or maybe you gradually stretch one of the holes of the net until it breaks and you can 'slip' the object free."

"This is all magic, though," Blaise objected. "It's not like we can actually touch or interact with curses like this."

"You can," Tom countered. "It's just difficult. A lot of it is learning to feel and recognize different types of magic. After that, it's using your own magic to carefully interact with the magic that's there."

"Learning to recognize types of magic?" Harry groaned in despair. "I'm pants enough at my own charms – how am I supposed to recognize old ones that other people did?"

"If you had your eyes closed, and I handed you two brooms," Tom said impatiently, "would you be able to tell from feel alone which was your broom and which was not?"

Harry paused, his eyes slowly widening as he seriously considered the question.

"…I think I would," he said, wonderingly. "I—I dunno how to explain it, but there's a sort of feel to my Firebolt that other brooms don't have—"

"That's your broom's charm work," Tom said. "That magical field is what you would be recognizing. Even between Firebolts, each one's charm work will have a slightly different feel."

Harry seemed stunned at this idea.

"This takes a lot of practice," Tom reiterated, giving them all a pointed look. "You all have a head start – you're more attuned to feeling different types of magic and magical signatures than most because of your coven. But if you want to learn to undo spells others have cast, you'd be better off starting to practice now."

Tom's idea of how to practice was for them each to enchant two objects – one with something harmless, and one with something slightly malicious, like a stinging jinx. They'd then take turns feeling for the differences in the magic. This kind of made sense to Hermione, but it seemed to raise more questions than it answered.

"If the lingering magic left in an object is the magic from the person who cast it, isn't it that person's magical signature?" she asked Tom. "The Ministry insists that you can't track magical signatures."

"The Ministry," Tom said, his lip curling, "is more concerned with immediate, temporary spells. If I cast a Blasting Curse and blow up a building, the Ministry wants to be able to trace who cast the spell. The fact they cannot is endlessly frustrating to them. Cursed objects, however, have been known to sometimes be traced back to the person who cursed it."

Now that Tom was clarifying the distinctions, that sounded familiar to Hermione. She thought she remembered Fudge going on a rant about it at some point.

"Depending how you unravel the curse, you can sometimes tell who cursed it, but it's more influenced by luck than anything else," Tom said. "Think of muggle fingerprinting – even if you find fingerprints on an object, you still have to match them to a person, don't you?" He shrugged carelessly. "Much easier to just break the curse and not give a damn about who cursed it."

So magical signatures couldn't be tracked, but they could possibly be recognized, Hermione thought to herself, making the distinction clear in her mind. She'd have to pay attention to what her own signature felt like when she cast lasting magic. Maybe there was a way to change it somehow to cover her tracks.

The practice activity was entertaining as well as educational. They each cursed and charmed knick-knacks from around the covenhouse, put them on the coffee table, and took turns trying to figure out which was which. After they'd all guessed, they'd take turns trying to break the lasting spells on the objects – to precisely zero success.

"How long does it take you to be able to feel the magic on something in detail?" Susan asked, her voice frustrated as she tried to extract a cursed fork from her hair, ignoring Luna's giggles. "I can barely tell which one feels more malicious, let alone any kind of detail."

"That's up to you," Tom said, raising an eyebrow. "Up to how often you practice, how aware you are, how powerful your own magic is. It varies."

Susan growled in frustration. "Fine."

"It's advanced N.E.W.T. level magic," Luna reassured her. "It's going to be hard for us. Don't worry."

While Blaise was attempting to determine which object Susan had cursed – the bookend or the decorative paper weight – Hermione stepped aside with Tom.

"Don't get me wrong – I'm grateful for the lesson," she said. "But how will any of this help me with Theo's request? I don't have years to study this to break his mother free."

Tom smirked.

"Very Dark magic has a more obvious residue and feel than most magic does," he told her quietly. "After your experience with Fiendfyre, I would be surprised if you can't feel Thoros' spell."

"And then what?" Hermione wanted to know. "Develop a counter-curse with my heretofore undiscovered curse-breaking skills?"

Tom raised an eyebrow, but his eyes gleamed with amusement.

"Why, Hermione," he purred. "You're a New Blood – with more magical potential than anyone else of the age. I just presumed you'd overload the spell until you snap the woman free."