Quality Quidditch Supplies was nearly empty when Hermione entered, bells on the door ringing as she pushed it open, and she was glad of it – the shop boy made a fuss immediately upon seeing her.

"Welcome to—oh, my! You're a little young to be in here this time of year!" the shopkeeper exclaimed. He frowned down at her. "Are you skipping school?"

"I am not," Hermione said patiently. "Is Mr. Callimachus available?"

"The owner?" The shopkeeper looked surprised. "He is. Do you know him?"

"Of a sort." Hermione waited patiently, smile affixed to her face. "Would you go and get him, please?"

Startled and confused, the shop boy went into the back, glancing back at her with suspicion while she smiled blandly back. She hadn't known Marcel Callimachus was the owner, really – she'd thought he was just a manager.

The shop boy returned shortly, a somewhat-portly but friendly-looking man following after him.

"Hello," the man greeted her with a smile. "I'm afraid I don't know you, or I don't remember you."

"We haven't met before," Hermione assured him. "You sent me a letter a year ago, telling me whose lost Bludger I had found."

"Oh!" Marcel looked startled, then pensive. "I vaguely remember that." He smiled down at her. "How can I help you today?"

Hermione pulled the Invisibility Cloak off of Harry's Firebolt, and both Marcel and the shop boy gasped.

"This Firebolt was given as a gift to Harry Potter," Hermione said firmly, discreetly keeping the Invisibility Cloak out of sight behind her body. "I would like to know who purchased it for him."

"Someone gave a Firebolt as a gift anonymously?" Marcel looked shocked. He nodded to the shop boy. "Hugo, get the records."

The shop boy, Hugo, went behind the counter and began digging through parchments as Marcel stepped closer, examining the Firebolt, while Hermione stuffed the cloak into one of her pockets.

"Beautiful broom. Just look at that craftsmanship! Merlin, I sell them, but even I don't have one myself." He sighed wistfully. "Maybe someday, if I manage to move more of them a bit quicker."

Hugo reemerged from underneath the counter, bearing what looked like a blue binder full of parchments and lists.

"May I?" Marcel gestured to the broom, and Hermione handed it over. He turned it over in his hands, murmuring a charm as he passed his wand over the broom. "Okay, we've got a serial number," he told Hugo. "Ready?"

"Ready," the shop boy said, nodding.

Marcel read off a series of numbers, and Hugo looked down his lists, finger trailing down the parchment.

"Okay, I've got it," he said, frowning. "Only there's no information here, really."

"No information?" Marcel was startled. He went over to the desk, clearly puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"The Firebolt was paid for in cash," Hugo said, pointing. "All it says for the purchaser is 'Dog'."

"What? Who sold it?" Marcel wanted to know. "Lionel? Lionel knows better than to not get all the details of a client! Especially one spending as much gold as this!"

Hugo shrugged helplessly. "Sorry, sir."

Hermione took a deep breath, speaking up.

"While Harry's very excited to have a Firebolt, sir, he's a bit anxious about it," she said. "There's rumors of Sirius Black meaning to kill him, and with a broomstick from an unknown source, we're worried that someone may have jinxed it to throw him off."

Both men looked alarmed by this.

"Nonsense!" Marcel declared. "Firebolts resist all outside charmwork. The Firebolt's charms are proprietary and cannot be fiddled with."

"Does it resist all known Dark magic as well?" Hermione asked knowingly. "Or just basic charms?"

Marcel glanced at Hugo, both looking worried.

"Err—" Marcel began. "I mean, that is—"

"I'm sure it's very unlikely and we're being unnecessarily paranoid," Hermione said, her tone reassuring. "But just in case – would you be willing to swap this broom with another one? One you can guarantee has been untouched? You could examine this broom at your leisure, then, making sure nothing has been done to it before reselling it to another."

"Oh!" Marcel looked relieved. "What an excellent suggestion! Hugo, go get a Firebolt from the back room. The back back room."

"Yes, sir." Hugo took a small key from Marcel and hurried to the back of the shop, while Marcel looked down on Hermione with a weak smile. The smile faded as they waited, and he began looking thoughtful.

"Forgive me," he said. "Do I know you? You look familiar."

Hermione held back a sigh.

"You might have seen me in the papers," she admitted. "The Daily Prophet interviewed me when I defeated the basilisk last year."

"Oh! The Heroine of Hogwarts!" He brightened, then grinned at her. "You're a kind witch, to be helping Harry Potter like this with his broom."

Hermione didn't get a chance to respond – Hugo emerged just then with a brand new gleaming Firebolt, identical to the one in Marcel's hands. "Got it!"

"Write down the serial number," Marcel urged. "And Harry Potter is getting it. Put 'exchange' in the payment field. We'll sort out the records for this one later. Picked up by Miss Hermione Granger."

Soon, Hermione had a new Firebolt in hand, the owner assuring her that he was absolutely, positively, completely certain that there were no jinxes on this one. It was direct from the manufacturer, and it hadn't even yet seen the shop floor. His earnestness was genuine, and Hermione was pleased with the trade.

"Thank you so much!" she said, smiling widely. "I really appreciate this. This will help ensure Harry's safety."

"Nonsense! I'm glad you came to us," Marcel told her, nodding. "Take care, young lady!"

"You as well," Hermione bid, turning to go. She draped the Invisibility Cloak over the new Firebolt as she made her way to the exit. She could hear the two men having a conversation as she left, and she turned to glance back as she reached the door, seeing the original gifted broomstick still in Marcel's hands as he looked it over carefully.

"We'll have to send it back to the manufacturer," he told Hugo, shaking his head. "Nothing else for it; they're the only ones who will be able to tell if it's truly been cursed. And we need to get Lionel in here – what the hell's he thinking, putting down 'Dog' as the purchaser?"


Urgent errands successfully completed, Hermione stopped by Gryffindor Tower to give Harry his Invisibility Cloak back before dinner, along with his shiny new Firebolt.

"The owner vowed on his life that this one isn't cursed," she assured him. "You should be good to go."

Harry grinned widely. "Excellent!"

"They put you down as the owner in their records," Hermione added. "So if someone asks where you got it from, just say 'Quality Quidditch Supplies'. Let them think you bought it yourself."

After that, Hermione went back outside to busy herself with her new activity – practicing jumping the ley lines.

Luna's map of the ley lines across the UK, Ireland, and the surrounding area was priceless, and Hermione carefully examined it each time before she tried a jump. She started with Hogsmeade, and area she knew fairly well and was certain had a ley line running through it.

Each time she closed her eyes to focus on her magic and the ley lines, Hermione became more aware of the veil of mist she could sense somehow, and she took care to process every part of what she was doing thoroughly, carefully. When she focused her magic on the ley line, that was putting her magic in the ley line, really. But that wasn't enough – the magic in the ley line wasn't able to carry her away to her destination unless she was fully immersed in the entire ley line, including the part in the Faerie Realm, and that was the part the veil of mist shielded from her.

As she drew back the veil of mist, the ley line carried her away immediately – twisting her up and compressing her as it carried her away in itself, before roughly spitting her out through the veil of mist and onto the main street of Hogsmeade, her legs shaking and weak. Hermione felt dizzy this time, but she'd done it again – that made three successful jumps so far today.

Jumping the lines was oddly exhausting, Hermione thought. It wasn't as if she was using any of her personal magic to fuel her journey, so why was she so tired, then?

Maybe this method of travel was just magically demanding, like how sprinting was physically demanding. She had to focus her magic while she did this, and maybe it was her magic holding herself together in the ley line as she 'popped'. That might explain her fatigue, she thought. It wasn't as if she could test it to be sure, though.

Hermione paused to get a pack of sugar quills from Hogsmeade, just because she could, before going back out to the main road, finding a more deserted area of it, and focusing on the ley line again, aiming to return to Diagon Alley.

This time, after she passed through the veil of mist, there was a sharp sense of momentarily hitting something as the line bent and took a sharp turn, as if she was a ring that accidentally got washed down the drain and clanged into the wall of a pipe. When she emerged and popped out of the line, Hermione felt horribly sick, and she barely managed to hobble into an alleyway before losing her lunch.

What was different that time? She hadn't gotten sick coming to Diagon Alley earlier.

Luna's map held the answer: there was a ley line directly connecting Diagon Alley to Hogwarts, and from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade was a straight shot as well. But Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley weren't on the same line – Hermione had had to go through a nexus to get from one to the other, which must have accounted for the odd nauseous turn she'd taken somewhere in there.

Well.

That had the potential to be a problem.

She frowned, looking over Luna's map again. Going from Hogwarts to Azkaban would take her through a minimum of four nexuses, and she groaned. She'd have to practice going through nexuses and nodes, then – the last thing she needed was showing up to the dementors' house while actively ill and throwing up.

She sighed, and got to practicing.

By the time the afternoon turned into evening, Hermione had gotten the hang of going through one nexus without vomiting, but not two. She eventually quit for the day, knowing she'd need her energy and her wits about her that night, when they would be doing the first fertility ritual for Jade and Milan. She couldn't afford to make herself too sick. Not today.

As Hermione approached the Slytherin table to sit down for dinner, Tracey turned at her approach, only to have her jaw drop.

"Hermione!" Tracey exclaimed, horrified. Her eyes were wide. "What happened?"

Hermione paused. "…err. Nothing?"

"Your face practically looks green," Tracey said, aghast. "You look like you might fall over any moment?"

"You look awful," Millie said, blunt. "Are you ill?"

"Oh." Hermione hadn't looked in the mirror. "I—I'm not ill. But thank you for asking. I—err—I was vomiting earlier a bit, but it's fine, it was from magic I was messing with. But I think dinner would do me some good."

"From magic?" Tracey repeated, incredulous. "What, high-level spells now make you vomit if you're not powerful enough to properly cast them?"

"Do they not?" Millie asked, surprised. "I've never tried ultra-high level spells myself. I know my limits, thanks. But that seems like what would happen if you tried."

Conversation shifted away from her and to high level spells, the type N.E.W.T. students were learning in their classes. Hermione was relieved and served herself dinner, careful to keep to things she was sure she could keep down. From next to her, Blaise looked at her sideways.

"Magic you were messing with?" he asked, his voice quiet. "Anything you'd like to share?"

Hermione paused.

"I'd… rather you had plausible deniability for this one, really," she admitted.

Blaise raised an eyebrow.

"We've all got Occlumency barriers now, you realize," he commented.

Hermione winced. "…even still."

Blaise whistled lowly.

"You're not going after another basilisk, are you?" he asked. "If you are, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on going along with you."

Hermione managed a faint smile.

"No basilisks," she promised him. "But if I ever go up against another one, I'll be sure to let you know."