CW: Disturbing content, teenage sexuality


"My father's gone," Theo confirmed, glancing around. "Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Hermione sighed. "Hold on – I'm coming through."

Hermione clambered through the Floo with her Adventurer's Kit slung over her back, wearing denims and a T-shirt with an open black robe over it all. She coughed upon arrival, hacking up dust while Theo looked her over, wide-eyed. Hermione gave him a look, but he said nothing, shaking his head.

"Come on," he said, his voice low. "The crypt is this way."

The crypt was certainly a well-kept secret of the Notts – Theo had to lead Hermione through a secret door in the kitchen, down a staircase to the servants' kitchen, into a large walk-in pantry, and through another secret door that led to a dark stone staircase. There were several landings as they descended the staircase, each with matching ominous stone doors with different beasts carved onto them. Theo seemed to know the way down this maze, though, picking the bear, owl, and dragon doors without pause.

"How far down does this go?" Hermione hissed to him.

"No idea," Theo said darkly. "Far enough."

After what seemed like forever, they arrived at the end of the staircase onto a bottom landing. There was a large stone door in front of them with warding glyphs carved into it.

"This is the crypt proper," Theo told her quietly. "Once we're in… well, it's a crypt. It's not pretty. My mother's in a room of her own at the far end."

Theo cut his hand on a sharp rock and wiped his thumb over the glyph on the door, and the large stone door made a dull thunk sound, shifting on its magical hinges before swinging open soundlessly. Wordless, Theo led the way into the darkness, both of them lighting up their wands.

The room was entirely made of stone with a low ceiling, and only the faintest blue light from old torches provided any natural illumination to the room. It was cold this far underground, and decidedly eerie, Hermione decided. There were urns and tombs around, each with a dusty, faded label, and further in, there were just bones – lots and lots of unlabeled bones.

There was a sudden screeching noise, a horrible wail and scream, and the crypt seemed to shudder at the sound, shaking slightly and dust falling from the ceiling. Theo and Hermione froze, crouched and wide-eyed, before slowly continuing on.

"There's not a banshee down here, is there?" Hermione whispered.

"Not unless my mother's somehow turned into one," Theo murmured back. "Though I'll admit – I'm not sure how banshees form."

At the end of the crypt, there was another stone door – this one with a large ward circle hastily drawn on it in blood, not carved into the stone at all.

"This just keeps her in," Theo said quietly, as another faint scream echoed through the area. "It shouldn't keep us out. Are you ready?"

Pulling her Adventurer's Kit to herself more firmly and readying her wand, Hermione took a deep breath and nodded.

Silently, Theo pushed open the door.

It was immediately clear this room was visited more often - there were still-lit magical torches inside the room that illuminated the area with a ghostly blue light that Hermione immediately found intensely creepy. The walls here too were made of stone, with lines of runes written in blood covering them, going in multiple directions and every which way like red ribbons wrapping the walls. The tomb itself was the size of a small bedroom, with a dais in the middle, but instead of a coffin or casket lying on the dais, there was a body – perfectly preserved in death, covered with cobwebs and a thin layer of dust, visible to anyone who might come inside.

Over by the far wall was a ghost. As Theo closed the door behind them, the ghost turned to look at them, and Hermione tried not to scream.

Ghosts in Hogwarts were fully composed and complete figures, albeit floating and somewhat transparent in the air. Theo's mother looked nothing like that type of ghost, instead glowing with her own unearthly blue light. She was in torn, ragged robes that trailed off under her, and there was no indication she still had legs at all. When she fixed her eyes on them, Hermione was horrified to realize she had no pupils, just haunting, brilliant white orbs.

She screamed, and Theo and Hermione both clapped their hands over their ears, wincing as the unearthly screech echoed in the room.

"He anchored the magic itself to her body," Theo said afterward, while Hermione clapped her ears, trying to stop the ringing. His voice had an anguish to it, though he seemed to be doing his best to hide it. "Go. Look."

Hesitantly, Hermione approached the body and stepped up onto the dais. An absent-minded thought sent a quick burst of wind to blow the cobwebs and dust from the corpse, and suddenly, there she was.

Anthea Nott looked like she had once been very striking, Hermione mused. She had high cheekbones with a wide face that somehow balanced, and very full, dark brown hair. Her body and face had a slightly sunken look to it, and Hermione wondered if it was caused by being dead or if she'd simply walked the line between high fashion model and malnourished in life. She was clad in a black silk slip and nothing else, with runes in dried blood covering her body – up her legs and arms, around her neck and down to her heart, where they circled one large drawing over her heart.

"I've never seen a rune circle like that," Theo said quietly. "It's not in any of our textbooks, either."

"That's because it's not a rune circle," Hermione said faintly, moving closer. "It's a sealing sigil. A Dark one."

The circle on Anthea's breast looked almost Christian in origin, mixed with elements of ritual magic and paganism. Hermione could pick some of the symbols out, recognizing them from other things in different contexts, and she bit her lip.

"I'm fairly sure this is a Dark magic seal for her soul," Hermione told Theo. "It's—" she broke off for a moment, she and Theo both clapping their hands over their ears as Anthea's ghost wailed again "—it's active, still, too. Your father must be coming down here regularly to restore it."

Theo muttered something unflattering under his breath, before looking back up at Hermione.

"Can you break it? Can you free her?" He sounded lost. "If you did what you did with the dementors – if her body was consumed, surely she'd go free…?"

"I don't know." Hermione admitted. She bit her lip. "The last thing I want to do is lose control and have the fire accidentally consume your mother's soul. But I have another idea that might work. Let me try something."

Rearranging the body's heavy limbs was incredibly awkward, but Hermione determinedly managed it, scooching Anthea's arms and legs off the dais far enough that Hermione could sit cross-legged in front of her body. As Hermione settled herself down, she saw Anthea's ghost pleading with Theo across the room, begging to go free. Theo stood stonily still, like a wall himself, though tears silently tracked their way down his cheeks.

Hermione took a deep breath and closed her eyes, reaching out for her magic as she settled into her core. Her core was spinning normally, with her elementals inside seeming to watch silently, waiting. There was an odd sense of pressure on her magic, though – an increasing sense of doom and despair.

Taking a breath and holding it, Hermione reached out with her magic towards Anthea's body.

The binding seal was like a chillingly cold wall of air, a freezing rope of frozen breath and pain. The magic felt like ice, darkness dripping over it like a ganache, and as Hermione grasped the sheer complexity and strength of the spell laid upon the body, the thickness of the spell-rope binding Anthea, she began to wonder if this was hopeless after all.

Poking around a bit revealed nothing – no obvious counter-curses, clearly, as it was a multi-tiered sigil – and there were no evident weaknesses to exploit either. That left overloading it, which Hermione wasn't fond of. She'd have to overload it with Dark magic, and she wasn't exactly sure how to make her own raw magic Dark to start with.

That idea gave her a thought, though, and Hermione reached out again.

The magic on Anthea's body was clearly lasting magic – holding her body and soul trapped in time and space – and as Hermione felt it more closely, there was a slight resonance to it, a silent musical note so low on the scale it nearly escaped her hearing. As she felt it, Hermione wondered if she could match the note and try to manipulate the existing spell, instead of forcing it apart. She'd had to speed up her core to match the ley line, though; would she have to slow her core to match this spell? The Fae had seemed to think stopping her core was fatal, but she'd witnessed the hedgewitches do it fine.

"Theo," she said aloud, not opening her eyes. "Come here. I need you."

She could practically feel Theo's surprise, but he came over obediently, following her direction to sit up on the dais with her.

"I'm going to reach out and touch your magic," she warned him, taking his hands. "If you've never done this before, it's a very startling feeling. It can feel very invasive or very intimate. But I need your magic to work with mine to break this seal."

"Why?" Theo asked, as his mother wailed in the background.

"For one, your father's blood is in the sigil," Hermione told him. "You share a bloodline – your blood and magic will help us gain access to that sigil. Second, I need Darker magic to infiltrate this spell, and I'm going to need you for that."

Theo paused, before he squeezed her hands tightly.

"Okay," he said hoarsely. "Whatever you need."

Hermione took a deep breath, centering herself, and reached out through her hands to Theo.

Theo's magic felt like cold moss to her, thick and dense, and as her own magic embraced his, Theo shuddered a sort of whole-body shudder before relaxing into it, and suddenly his magic was softer, more malleable, and Hermione was able to send trickles of her own magic into him.

Theo's core was spinning normally, she observed – the normal rate of spin that her peers seemed to have, as compared to her own. As she immersed herself in his magic, she became aware of a color – a deep, burnt orange, like an autumn tree – as well as a quiet note of resonance, much deeper than her own. Compared to the note the Dark Magic gave off, they weren't very different in pitch. The Dark Seal had a sort of echo to it, though, with a hollow, artificial reverberating sound, and Hermione had to hope they didn't need to match that as well.

"Here's what we are going to do," Hermione said. "I am going to feed my magic into you with one hand. I need you to mix that magic with your own and feed it back to me through the other hand once it's homogeneous. That's the magic I'll use to access the seal."

"I'm going to give you my magic?" Theo's voice was strangled. "Hermione, this is…"

"More like you're going to convert my magic into yours. Your core has a closer resonance to the spell," Hermione explained. "I can't reach that note myself easily, but yours is close."

"I don't even know what that means," Theo protested, as his mother wailed in the other side of the crypt again. "Hermione, exchanging magic like this—I don't want us to end up bound together by accident or something—"

"Exchanging magic is an extremely intimate thing, but it does not inherently create lasting bonds," Hermione reassured him. "Those take careful preparation and ritual work. There will be some lingering sensations, but we're not going to end up magically tied to each other."

"Fine." Theo exhaled heavily. "How do I feed you my magic?"

"Reach out with your magic through your right hand to my left," Hermione encouraged. "Visualize your magic – it helps. Follow the pathways you find until you find my core as well. Once you find it, just send your magic along that pathway – it'll be much easier after you make first contact."

"Okay." Theo took a deep breath. "Here we go…"

Hermione's eyes still closed, she found she was somewhat aware of Theo's magic slowly moving through him, up his wand arm and out. When it transferred over to her body, she shivered – it tingled, like someone running their fingernails lightly up and down her arm – and as it moved through her, reaching her core, there was a tense pause before his magic abruptly flooded her, and Hermione gasped aloud and moaned.

"Don't do that," Theo snapped, his voice strained. "This is challenging enough as it is—"

"Sorry," Hermione said, trying to catch her breath and refocus. "I just—I didn't—"

The truth was, she hadn't expected the sensory feedback that had flooded her system. The last time she'd done this, it'd been with the hedgewitches, who'd barely had enough personal magic to register her magic's presence at all. Theo's magic was nothing like that. It was like dark velvet whispering against her, being rubbed against her body with sensual whispers and promises, and Hermione found her breathing growing heavier as her body heated up. Hermione found herself hazily wondering if she'd ever actually done this before, or if it'd only been when her coven had made its bond.

"The seal," she said, as much for her own reminder as for Theo's. "Alright…"

Reaching out to the seal again, the icy-cold awfulness of the magic there did a lot to help tamp down on Hermione's awareness of sensations going on back in her body. The seal felt almost sticky with a sort of residue, and as Hermione sent the magic over and around each glyph of the seal, there was a sense of cold, corroding metal, held together by sticky spider webs and strands. When she came to a particular rune, she paused, before pulling some of the darker magic Theo had been sending her, determinedly ignoring how it felt to manipulate his magic with hers.

Thoros Nott had used 'Eiwaz' as one of the runes sealing his wife's soul. It was a rune for death, but also for the tree of life, dreaming, and magic. It wasn't a bad choice, but it allowed Hermione a little wiggle room as she sent a small trickle of magic into the rune.

The feedback was immediate and decidedly odd.

Death, pulsed the rune. Death.

Hermione sent a little more magic into the rune.

Tree of Life? she sent into the rune. Magic?

Death, the rune pulsed back. Other paths of magic to and from the rune pulsed as well, lighting up in Hermione's mind. Death – Protection – Bloodline – Seal.

Hermione followed the magic paths indicated to find Thurisaz, a rune for protection, and Othala, a rune usually used to indicate ancestry or inherited things.

Thurisaz, Protection, she sent back to the rune, allowing the magic to overflow these passages too. Thurisaz, Regeneration, she followed up with. Tree of Life – Regeneration.

Death – Bloodline, the rune pulsed back at her, denying her interpretation. Death – Bloodline – Seal.

She sent her magic along the rune path to Othala, and she could feel Othala pulse to her before she even reached out.

Bloodline, Othala pulsed with magic, softer than Eiwaz had done. Bloodline – Seal.

Bloodline, Hermione agreed, pushing magic into Othala. Bloodline – Bloodline – Bloodline.

Theo's magic seemed to be circling the rune as Othala pulsed slowly, evaluating. Hermione held her breath, hoping Theo's magic and bloodline would be close enough to get her a way in.

Othala, it pulsed. Othala – Bloodline. Bloodline – Othala.

Theo's magic slowly sank into the rune, circulating inside of it instead of outside, which was an odd, chilling feeling for Hermione to experience. She didn't know what to expect when she gained access to the magic, but it was as if she'd just walked into a dense, cold mist.

She sent the magic through one of the seal's paths, back up to Eiwaz.

Death, pulsed Eiwaz. Death.

Hermione skipped over Eiwaz and went to the other side, to Thurisaz.

Protection, Thurisaz pulsed, almost boastfully. Protection. Protection.

Thurisaz, Protection, Hermione sent back, agreeing. Thurisaz, Regeneration, Polarity.

The rune seemed to pause.

Protection, it insisted.

Hermione poured more magic into the seal, through Othala and down the pathways of the circle to Thurisaz.

Bloodline, she chimed. Bloodline, Protection, Regeneration.

The rune seemed almost confused as magic circled it. Hermione could see it start to glow red in her mind.

Bloodline? it seemed to pulse.

In answer, Hermione sent a trickle of Theo's magic toward the rune, careful.

Thurisaz accepted the trickle of magic, seeming to mull over it, before suddenly pulsing with agreement.

Bloodline, it agreed, and there was a feeling of a door opening. Bloodline – Protection.

Theo's magic flowed into the rune effortlessly. This rune wasn't as cold – it felt more determined and alive, like it was crackling with electricity.

Bloodline – Regeneration, Hermione sent as Theo's magic permeated the rune. Regeneration. Polarity. Regeneration.

Bloodline – Regeneration, Thurisaz agreed. There was a shift in the rune, and suddenly the feeling of lightning around the magic lightened, still crackling with energy but somehow less aggressive. Refocusing on her end goal, Hermione sent the magic back up the path to Eiwaz.

Death, it pulsed. Death.

Death, Hermione agreed. Death. Tree of Life.

Death, the rune denied. Death – Protection.

Death – Regeneration, Hermione countered, and Eiwaz paused. Magic from Thurisaz flowed up through the pathway to Eiwaz, seeming to confuse the rune.

Regeneration, Eiwaz pulsed. Regeneration – Death?

Death – Regeneration – Tree of Life, Hermione sent. Tree of Life – Magic – Polarity.

Death – Regeneration – Tree of Life, the rune seemed to pulse slowly. Magic?

Hermione paused, at a loss for how to explain a complex idea to a rune.

Death – Regeneration – Tree of Life, she pulsed back. Magic, she sent, pushing magic into the rune, a mix of both her and Theo's. Magic – Magic – Magic. Death – Regeneration – Tree of Life – Magic – Death – Regeneration – Tree of Life – Magic.

Jera, the rune pulsed back at her knowingly, and Hermione was at a loss until she felt the magic inside the seal start to swirl. Death – Regeneration – Tree of Life, it pulsed at her. MAGIC – Polarity.

Jera was the rune for cycles, if Hermione recalled correctly. As she pushed more and more magic into the seal, there was a sense of the seal changing somehow. She sent a part of herself along with the magic, curious.

Death, pulsed Eiwaz.

Death – Regeneration, agreed Thurisaz, and the magic shifted. Regeneration.

The magic flowed through the seal to Othala, the other more active rune.

Regeneration, Othala agreed, softer than the others. Regeneration, Ancestors.

Othala seemed to send part of the magic out of itself into the body it was drawn upon, sending the little bit left down the line to Eiwaz.

Regeneration – Tree of Life, it declared. Tree of Life. Tree of Life.

"Hermione," gasped Theo, and Hermione became abruptly aware of Theo tightly squeezing her hands. "What is going on?"

It took Hermione a moment to refocus, to return to her body and remember how to move her mouth and lips.

"We're changing the seal," she said, still pushing more magic into the runes. "The seal's now changing from determination to keep your mother's soul bound here on earth to focusing on regenerating it and sending it back into the Tree of Life."

"What are you talking about?" Theo's voice sounded strangled. "Hermione, I feel—my core's spinning faster and faster—I feel like I'm about to fly apart—"

"We need to overload the seal," Hermione said, feeling the magic circulate through the seal as she pushed it in. "Once we overload the seal and overload your mother's body, I'll swap the meaning of Thurisaz to Polarity, and it should break the seal and send your mother's soul free."

"I—what?" Theo's voice was incredulous, struggling to follow the train of thought.

"We need more magic," Hermione said impatiently, sending more into the seal. "If we feed enough into the seal, we'll be able to break it."

"I don't have more magic," Theo protested. "I mean, I'm trying – but you've already taken pretty much all I had—"

Hermione huffed.

"Here," she said, pushing more of her own magic into him. "Use mine. You're supposed to have been cycling mine. Just pull on it."

There was an odd, shifting feeling inside her as Theo's magic made its own cycle into her and back out, taking her magic with it. Hermione suddenly felt like her throat was very tight, but not in a bad way, and her body shivered. It was like a caress inside of her, soft and subtle, sensual.

"How are you doing this?" Theo wanted to know. "You have so much magic…"

"Ah—I regenerate faster," Hermione said, her voice flustered. "New Blood thing. Just – take it, Theo. Pull as much as you need. I'll feed it to the seal."

"Okay." Theo's voice had lowered, become hoarser. "I'll take it…"

Each time Theo pulled on her magic, Hermione felt dizzy, but not like she was going to pass out. It was a sort of thoughtless, mindless rush of dizziness, a pleasurable haze of nothing, and it was only because the connection was already established that Hermione was able to keep acting as a conduit funneling the magic into the seal, which had begun to circulate the magic faster and faster.

"Hermione," Theo groaned, his voice strangled. "I—I feel like a vampire, taking your magic like this. Are you sure—"

"Take it," Hermione insisted, her own voice hoarse. "When you take it into your core and give it your signature – that's what's helping overload the seal. I'm fine – keep going."

Theo made a tortured sound, and there was another wave of euphoria and dizziness as he pulled more and more of her magic from her, Hermione gasping.

"Those sounds don't help," he ground out.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, gasping again as there was another pull on her magic. "It's just so—sorry, I'll try not to. Keep going – it's working—"

It took all of Hermione's determination and presence of mind to drag herself away from her awareness of her body and core and back to focusing on the seal. The magic in the seal was changing, much less of a cold fog and more a feeling of warm humidity, of growing pressure and imminent rain in the air.

Death – Regeneration, hummed the runes. Regeneration – Ancestors – Tree of Life. Magic. Magic.

Ancestors, pulsed Othala, pushing magic into Anthea Nott's body with each cycle of the magic. Ancestors.

As Hermione focused, there was a sense of a glass of water being slowly filled up, the magic reaching the brim.

Ancestor, Othala finally pulsed, satisfied. Ancestor, Magic.

Hermione could feel the shift as Othala began pushing all of the magic back through the circle to Eiwaz, not needing any more to fill Anthea's body.

Regeneration – Tree of Life, Eiwaz pulsed.

Tree of Life – Regeneration, Thurisaz agreed.

As the first big wave of magic returned, Eiwaz almost seemed to falter.

Tree of Life? It pulsed. Tree of Life – Regeneration – Tree of Life—

The magic began to circle faster now, Hermione determinedly pushing more and more magic into. It was taking forever, she thought. How much magic could a Dark seal hold?

MAGIC, Eiwaz seemed to suddenly pulse in alarm. MAGIC – MAGIC – MAGIC –

There was a sudden sense of instability in the seal, a weird wobbling like an earthquake, and Hermione threw her magic into Thurisaz.

Tree of Life – Protection, Thurisaz told her, pulsing worriedly.

Tree of Life – Magic, Hermione sent back. Magic – Polarity. POLARITY.

There was a sense of shuddering inside the rune, a sort of gathering of itself.

POLARITY, Thurisaz screamed into the ether, and suddenly the rune burst open.

There was a sudden, loud rush of sound and wind, and Hermione and Theo both screamed, only held together by their clamped hands. Both sets of eyes flew open to see a wild rush of yellow wind and air form a column out of Anthea's body, and Hermione was horrified to see Anthea's body's eyes had snapped open, her decaying throat screaming an unearthly, ungodly sound as well.

"Mum!" Theo yelled. "Mum, come on!"

Her ghost turned, being drawn slowly toward the vortex, enraptured. Hermione grit her teeth, continuing to feed magic into the shattering seal as best she could. They were only going to get one shot at this – and she couldn't let the spell fail until it had worked.

Anthea's ghost reached out soundlessly, caressing Theo's face with her transparent hand, utterly oblivious to the wild winds and horrible screaming of her body. She looked at him with mournful eyes, cupping his cheek, before she took a step back into the column of wind and light and disappeared.

There was a loud CRACK and a powerful BOOM of what sounded like an explosion, and the entire crypt around them seemed to groan and creak as the magic of the seal shattered. Anthea's body was blown off of the dais, landing haphazardly on the floor, and it was only from desperately hanging onto each other while being blown in different directions that Theo and Hermione managed to not be hurled into the walls as the air column blew itself out wildly in tornado gales that stopped just as soon as they had started.

The sounds of the crypt gradually diminished, reduced to an odd crackling. Hermione looked around to see the long strings of blood runes that had wrapped around the crypt were burning – tiny runes of fire as the blood burned away into ash, Hermione staring in astonishment.

"That's why it took so long," Hermione realized. "We weren't just overloading the seal on her body – the seal was connected to the seal of this whole—mmph!"

Hermione was caught entirely off guard by Theo launching himself at her, his lips on hers in a moment, devouring her. He groaned against her mouth, pulling her body tighter against his, and Hermione felt herself gasp, suddenly back in herself, her body still entirely swept up in the heat and the power and intimacy of the magic exchange, Theo kissing her frantically.

"I can't—" he got out. "Hermione – all that magic – feeling my magic inside you—"

His kiss brought Hermione's academic wondering sharply back to earth, where her body was already humming brightly, a coil of tension in her center already hot and alight. Instinctively, Hermione kissed him back, sudden desperation and neediness seeming to take over, her mind swimming and dizzy.

Her response seemed to spur Theo on, and he groaned, rolling them over on the dais so he was above her, pressing kisses down into her as she arched her body up into his. His tongue tangled with hers, and Hermione moaned into his mouth. Theo let out a low sound of satisfaction as he latched his mouth onto her neck, sucking as he ground down into her, and Hermione gasped, moaning and keening against his body.

"No fair," she gasped.

"Do you not like it?" Theo's breath was warm against her neck, pressing open-mouthed kisses to it as he ground down into her.

"I didn't say that," Hermione managed to get out. "It's—ohh—"

Heat coiled in her center as he captured her lips once more, his mouth desperate and hungry on hers. Determined to affect him just as much as he was affecting her, Hermione reached for her core (which was still happily regenerating magic as fast as ever) and pushed her magic into Theo through the connection they'd already forged, and Theo broke away from her, gasping.

"Hermione!" His voice was strangled. "Hermione—I—I—ah—!"

There was a strangled groan and long moan as Theo shuddered, and abruptly he rolled off of the dais, landing hard on the floor, still clutching Hermione's hand. Hermione sat up hurriedly, looking down at him in alarm, but Theo was breathing heavily, covering his face with his other arm, still letting out small groans as his breathing steadied, his face a bright red.

"Merlin and Morgana," he swore, panting. "Hermione…"

Hermione abruptly realized what must have happened.

Her face flaming with embarrassment, Hermione pushed herself back further onto the dais, not looking at Theo, instead carefully and determinedly pulling her magic back from him. She heard him groan and shudder again on the floor next to her as she did so, carefully making sure her core wasn't still feeding into his anymore. She felt hot, flustered, and at a loss. She'd gotten so carried away in the heat and magic and power in the moment of it all. She didn't really know what she'd expected to happen – didn't really know if she'd thought anything at all, actually – but the realization Theo had reached his peak made her blush brilliantly.

Theo groaned as he pushed himself up, clambering back up onto the dais to sit across from her. He glanced around, registering his mother's dead body crumpled against a wall, before looking at Hermione, his eyes molten.

"I—I didn't expect that," he said. His voice was low, rough. "Not that I'm complaining, mind. That felt—"

He broke off, groaning slightly again, and Hermione shivered, watching him.

"Do—" he faltered. "You didn't – do you want—"

He made a gesture with his hand, and Hermione blinked.

"I—what?" she asked, and Theo's face flushed.

"I—you didn't – that – like I did," he clarified, breaking eye contact and looking away. "I—do you want help to—"

He made the gesture with his hand again, his pointer and middle fingers making a 'come-here' motion a few times towards his body, and Hermione's eyes widened in realization.

"I—"

There was a wild moment where Hermione considered it – what would it feel like, to have Theo's hands on her, inside her, driving her toward that peak – before her mind forcefully shoved her libido aside.

"Not right now," she managed to say. "I—we both got a bit carried away with it all, mm? It was… a lot, in the moment. Now that we can both stop and think and breathe a bit, that's easier to see. So we don't have to keep getting carried away."

Theo's eyes were molten on hers, leaving trails of fire behind his heated gaze as he looked over her body, and it was clear to Hermione that he decidedly would not mind getting carried away with her again. Determinedly ignoring his gaze and the heated feeling in her own body, Hermione climbed off the dais, going over to the crumpled body of his mother. She rolled her over to see Anthea's eyes were closed once more, a small smile on her lips, and the seal of blood was gone from her breast.

"She's got faint burn marks on her arms from where the blood bindings burned off," Hermione said, examining her, "but otherwise, her body seems entirely intact."

The rest of the crypt was a disaster, of course, but Hermione wasn't sure she could tell how different of a disaster it was. Sure, the breaking of the seal had sent wild winds and fire through the room, but his mother's ghost had thrown rocks around before, hadn't she? It wasn't like it'd been neat before they came. And it would be undeniable that something had happened here – it'd be an act in futility to try and put it all back to normal.

Hermione kept her mind and eyes determinedly focused on her surroundings, allowing time for Theo's ardor to cool. When he finally came over and knelt beside her, his breathing was steady, and he wasn't looking at her. He lifted one of his mother's arms, examining it with her limp hand in his.

"I've never seen her looking so at peace," Theo said, after a long moment. He took a deep breath, letting his mother's arm drop back down. "At least she's free, now. Finally."

Hermione smiled faintly. She leaned over, pressing her shoulder against Theo reassuringly.

"That she is, Theo," she murmured. "That she is."