Practicing hopping the ley lines was only slightly less horrible than the first time she'd tried.

The experience was different today, Hermione noted. The journey was smoother and less violent, more natural-feeling, like being carried away in a wave instead of crushed under it. She attributed it to the holiday, Ostara – the flow of the ley lines was different today, it seemed, and it felt similar to how they had felt on Mabon, when she'd celebrated the autumn equinox with the hedgewitches. Each time she went through a nexus, though, there was still a banging sensation, as if she hit a wall, and each bang she hit made her want to throw up.

Which she did. Several times.

After the third, she purchased a bottle of water to keep in her pocket as she practiced so she could rinse out her mouth. Muffins weren't nearly as good the second time around.

Several hours later, Hermione had managed to figure out how to handle it. It wasn't that she needed to learn to endure the banging; it was to avoid the crashing feeling as she changed directions in the nexus in the first place.

This was a trick of perception and visualization. Hermione had started out with just being focused on her destination as she reached out to draw the magical curtain of cool mist aside. This resulted in her being compressed into a tight little ball and swallowed up by the line, before being spit out on the other side. This worked well enough for direct journeys, though it left her on shaky legs, but she couldn't endure a trip through a nexus without being left with the urge to vomit.

Instead, Hermione focused on not just her destination, but on getting to her destination.

Visualizing herself as being bundled up tightly but held in a bubble of her own magic seemed to help. By visualizing herself as a light, airy object floating in the ley line, it was easier to float around the bends in the lines instead slamming into them. It was alarming at first, when she ended up somewhere in the middle of the British countryside instead of Hogsmeade the second time she tried it, but she realized that her determination on her destination had wavered – even a split-second of misfocus, it seemed, could allow her magical airy bubble-self to be carried away on the ley lines much more easily than her swallowed-up bolus self.

That was okay, though, she reassured herself. That's why she was being sure to practice.

Tolly had been right, though – it was exhausting. Hermione made sure to give herself breaks as she practiced, giving herself time to allow her magic to regenerate. It was easier to see why this method of travel took so much energy now – your magic was literally shielding you from being washed away and broken apart in the ley line. And the force of the raw ley line magic was not insignificant.

Would a normal wizard be able to travel reliably via the ley line? It took a lot of raw power to shield oneself with magic, and most wizards didn't have such a rapid regeneration rate as Hermione did. Adult wizards with a fully-grown magical reserve could probably travel via ley line, but Hermione didn't know if they'd necessarily have the energy to get home. There wasn't a standard unit of magical energy, even, to measure how much magic it took to travel a distance.

Hermione wondered if the hedgewitches would ever be able to travel by ley line. If their natural magic was defective and they'd adapted to using the ley line energy right from the earth, would they not need to worry about their personal magic breaking and being stripped away? Or would their own 'bubbles' have the same resonance as the magic of the ley line, and they'd effectively be entirely unshielded inside?

She had no idea, but it was an interesting thing to theorize and wonder about as she ate a sandwich she'd pilfered from the Kitchens earlier.

It was also interesting to wonder about the Fae Realm, which lay just on the other side of the lines.

Hermione had started with only the vaguest notion that there was something else out there. Myths and legends from the hedgewitches hadn't been sufficient to prove the existence of a Fae realm by themselves, but once she'd heard the legends, she seemed to see or hear mention or reference of the Fae everywhere. The House Elves, for example – she'd never once considered where they'd come from, until there had been a new House Elf, one exiled from the courts of the Fae. And she'd never considered that some witches and wizards might have direct Fae ancestry – not until Lockhart had covered Circe's recorded time magic in History class, and Hermione remembered the muggle myths of how time moved differently in the Fae realm.

And now, with 'popping', or ley line jumping. Visualizing veins of magic that ran throughout the earth, simultaneously in her 'realm' and the Fae realm, which existed side by side… there was enough 'evidence', now, that Hermione found that she really did believe there were legitimate Fae. There were too many little things that added up to a sum she could not ignore.

That being said… she had no interest in finding out anything more.

The Fae were dangerous and trickster-y, she knew, with an entirely different scale of morality and right and wrong. Killing here was considered evil, whereas there it might be done for a laugh. But there… who knew what the rules were? What was 'good' and what was 'bad'?

Hermione had no desire to ever need to know.


Hermione returned from her adventure from hopping the lines very, very tired, but very pleased with herself. Her change in visualization had helped enormously, and she was confident that after one more day of practice on Beltane, she'd have honed her skill enough to get to where she needed to go. So it was with a pleased smile that she slid into her seat at Slytherin table at dinner next to Tracey, glancing around.

"Where's Blaise?" she asked. "Where's Millie?"

"No idea for Blaise. But Millie's apparently consulting with Professor Babbling and Madame Pomfrey," Tracey said absently, glancing around. "No idea about what – something about a jar? – but Millie thinks it will help."

"What's going on?" Hermione asked, seeing Tracey's distraction.

Tracey shot her an exasperated look.

"Get your head out of the clouds, Granger," she told her. "There's no food."

Hermione blinked. "Oh."

Now that Hermione was looking around, she realized there was no food. Students were murmuring, looking around the tables in confusion, and the professors at the Head Table were also exchanging puzzled looks – all except Professor Dumbledore.

Professor Dumbledore looked furious.

Dumbledore was generally an amicable person, existing in sort of an eternal wise benevolence and eccentricity. Hermione had wondered if it was an affect, or if was genuinely just his default state. He seemed to get more serious and stressed for the Wizengamot, but even then, the twinkle in his eye never seemed to leave. Now, though...

Now, the twinkle in his eyes had turned to smoldering fire, his anger etched in his wrinkles across his face. It was scary, looking at Dumbledore like this - there was an ominous sense about him, like a palpable cloud of magical power and anger manifesting around him, and the students nearest the staff table seemed to shift constantly in unease.

Hermione watched the Headmaster, wondering, as the murmuring grew louder and louder. Finally, just as Dumbledore stood up from his seat, food finally appeared on the tables. With happy exclamations, the students settled down and immediately tucked in, and Dumbledore slowly sat back down, his eyes on the tables suspiciously.

"What is all this?" Draco complained from across the table. "Is there any meat anywhere?"

"There's a pork shoulder over here, mate," Theo said. "It's pretty much buried in the beans and peas, though, so you can hardly tell."

Hermione blinked, and she slowly looked around.

Food was present on the tables now, sure. But it was unusual fare, for Hogwarts: garden pea soup with morel cream, a spring-vegetable paella, roasted radishes with radish greens, a spring vegetable stew. There was penne with asparagus, sage, and peas; what seemed to be a garlic-rubbed pork shoulder with fava beans, carrots, and peas; and deep-dish strawberry-rhubarb pies.

There was no bread, and there was very little meat.

A growing suspicion lurking in her mind, Hermione looked up at the Head Table.

To her immense surprise, the head table had the exact same fare as the students had – vegetable stew, paella, pea soup, radishes, pork shoulder, penne. The professors all had the same food in reach of them that the students did – all save one.

On Professor Dumbledore's plate sat a large pile of eggs.

All with the shells, so one couldn't even tell if they were cooked or raw.

Dumbledore closed his eyes and visibly took a deep breath, steadying himself, before he cracked an egg and began to shell it, popping it into his mouth as if nothing at all was amiss. Hermione wondered what he would have done if it had been raw – would he have drunk it from the shell just to pretend nothing was wrong?

She watched as he peeled a second egg, replying to Professor McGonagall's worried queries with something generic, Hermione imagined, to match his placating expression, but she knew she wasn't imagining the steely glint in his blue eyes behind his glasses as he tore the shell off of his third egg, his true emotions betraying him in the smallest of ways.