To Hermione's surprise, there was no article about Azkaban being closed in the Daily Prophet. And as there was no more Wizengamot until the beginning of December, there was no way for Hermione Granger to know anything had happened. She pushed the matter out of her mind as best she could, which ended up being easy – even with Harry and Draco's confident prediction tree, the unknown First Task loomed ever closer, and the tournament took up all of Hermione's stress.

It didn't help that the Durmstrang students were obviously running drills of some sort with Viktor regularly. They complained about them at meals, about how brutal Karkaoff was, but underneath their groans, Hermione knew they were still practicing. Still improving, somehow. Viktor was honing his magic and his skills, while Harry sat in Lockhart's class, learning about the history of Ancient Babylon.

By the time the full moon finally rolled around again and they met at Exmoor, Hermione felt almost desperate to connect with her coven again.

"Whoa, Hermione," Harry said, caught off-guard as she glommed onto him in an forceful hug. "Everything alright?"

"I—everything's fine," Hermione said automatically. "I just missed you—"

"Hermione's stressing over the tournament," Blaise cut in, giving Hermione a look. "I imagine she's scared you're going to die."

"That's not it," Hermione said, annoyed. "I just—the stress is causing my magic to go all haywire, and when I'm with you all, my magic seems to calm—"

"Aww, we're always here for you, Hermione," Luna said, coming over to hug Hermione's side. "We can always just sit together quietly at a table in the library, you know. It doesn't need to be a ritual. We can share and sync our magic whenever we want."

"Is this a group hug?" Susan wanted to know, grinning as she leapt onto them. "Group hug!"

"Why am I last?" Blaise complained, before plowing into the group and knocking everybody to the ground with shouts and squeals of laughter. "Coven pile!"

Once all the rolling around and tickling and squealing had stopped, they all got to their feet and set about preparing the ritual, Hermione feeling a little better about things.

"Is this going to be the default, now?" Harry asked, scraping a circle into the ground. "Anytime we want to do a dodgy ritual, we all just come hide on Hermione's empty land?"

"It's certainly easier," Blaise commented. "For really powerful rituals, though, I imagine we'd all go to the covenhouse, right? That has a proper ritual chamber that'd be a shame not to use."

"Not this time," Susan said cheerily. "Has to be under the light of the full moon, so doing it outside on a moor is the best."

Hermione wasn't sure it did need to be done under the light of the full moon – she certainly hadn't done the elemental ritual under the full moon for any of hers – but if the others believed it did, it would benefit no one to break from tradition.

"A trigram, right?" Luna asked, filling in the circle in the mud with moonstones. "Don't make it too big…"

"I'm going last this time," Harry reminded them all, grinning. "I get the stronger fire one."

"Are we expecting salamanders?" Susan asked.

"That's what I got," Hermione said, remembering back to the winter solstice. "I'm not sure what a stronger fire elemental will be."

"That's right, you did this before." Harry looked over at her, while the others finished making the circle. "What was it like?"

Hermione shuddered involuntarily.

"It was very bad," she admitted. "It felt like I was burning alive from the inside. I had to use the earth magic inside me to snuff out the fire, and my hair caught fire during the fight. It only went out because I fell into the snow."

Luna's eyes had gone wide.

"I don't want to lose my hair," she said softly, running her fingers through her long blonde waves. "I would be sad…"

"If everyone is amenable," Blaise said, stepping forward, "I believe I have a solution."

He produced from his pocket a handful of sparkling blue sapphires, which puzzled the others, but Hermione's eyes went wide with understanding.

"You want me—as a precaution—" Hermione sputtered. "Do you think—?"

"You'd need to come up with a ritual on the fly," Blaise cautioned, holding her gaze. "But I think it's the safest option for everyone."

"Can someone please explain what's going on?" Harry said plainly.

"Blaise is saying we should do the ritual with Hermione first, but for water," Luna said, looking at the sapphires. "He's saying if we do that, then Hermione will be able to use water to put out any fires that start."

"It's not a bad idea," Susan said, agreeing. "Definitely safer. We don't have snow to count on here."

"Should we all just do water, then?" Harry said, frowning.

"No," Luna said firmly. "Fire, tonight. We'll all finish up with water next."

"On a different day," Blaise said firmly. "One elemental a night, please and thank you."

Hermione laughed.

"Okay," she said. She looked at the others. "If it's okay with you all."

"Yes," Susan said immediately. "I would love for my hair not to all burn up."

"Ditto," Luna said, amused.

Both Blaise and Harry nodded, and Hermione grinned.

"Okay, then," she said. She nodded to Blaise. "Do you want a scrap of paper to read off of, or do you think you can memorize a quatrain on the fly?"

Blaise grinned. "As long as it rhymes, I think I'll be fine."

There was a brief shuffle as everybody arranged themselves around the small circle, centering their magic, and Blaise placed the handful of sapphires in the center of the trigram. Hermione had given Luna the fire opals to keep safely outside of the circle – she didn't want any confusion about what they were summoning going into the ritual. Blaise stood, straddling two of the trigram's points, while Hermione stood at the third one.

"You ready?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hermione took a deep breath, centering herself and pulling her magic to her. "I'm ready."

It was odd for Hermione not to be leading the ritual, but Blaise did a masterful job, pulling on his magic and pushing it into the circle, making the moonstones start to glow.

"We summon and call upon the element of water," Blaise intoned. "There is a body to battle for, for you to be squatter."

'Squatter' hadn't been maybe the best rhyme with 'water', but the only other word Hermione could think of that might work was 'daughter', but then that wouldn't have worked later when they did the same ritual for Harry and Blaise.

"We challenge your waves, your ice, your tide," Blaise said, tracing the sigil for undine in the air with his hands, "come fight for Hermione's body as yours to reside!"

A blobby, amorphous thing began to form above the sapphires, and Hermione's eyes widened. As Blaise made the second recitation, its form became more distinct, more solid – though solid wasn't quite the right word, Hermione realized – what was appearing in front of her was a liquid – a being made of water—

The third repetition of the incantation began, moonstones glowing brightly and water-being solidifying, and Hermione braced herself, taking a deep breath.

A moment later, the water creature disappeared inside of her, and Hermione collapsed, drowning.

Water gurgled in her airway, in her lungs, burning – taking a deep breath hadn't mattered, not with the determination of the water elemental to flood her very body and being. Hermione's magic kicked into high gear, her air elemental fighting back and flooding Hermione's lungs and airways with air to open them once again, and Hermione gasped, coughing and choking as she writhed on the ground.

The water elemental changed directions, flooding her bloodstream and organs, and there was agony, awful agony as her abdomen bloated and distended, her head going light from hypoxia — only the fire elemental was there a moment later, chasing the water elemental and burning out its power, and then was earth there to crush it into submission as well, trapping it with magic that felt of solid rock—

Resigned, something inside of her shifted, and something slotted neatly into place.

Hermione came to her senses a moment later, gasping and coughing hard. Blaise was at her side a moment later, pounding her back to help her cough. Hermione's eyes were wide and bugged-out, though she felt like she could barely see.

"That—that was awful," she managed to get out. Her throat and airways still burned, though the water had been pushed out of her lungs. "I was drowning—drowning—thank Morgana we're doing water last – I don't think I'd have survived any other way—"

Hermione managed to get herself together enough to stand, and Blaise cleared away the pile of sapphires and replaced them with the fire opals Hermione had bought a year ago. The feeling of water inside of her was odd, and not quite what Hermione expected – she'd expected something calming and serene, but this elemental didn't seem to want to stay still or placid at all. It felt much more like a rough ocean with a dramatic tide than it did a peaceful pond or lake.

"Who's first?" Hermione asked, taking her place on the trigram.

"Me," Blaise said. He grinned. "I'm willing to risk being first while you figure out your water elemental. If my hair burns, it's not as big of a deal."

The others laughed, and they all prepared themselves, centering their magic, and with a nod to Blaise, Hermione pushed her magic into the circle, the moonstones beginning to glow.

"We summon and call upon the element of fire," Hermione chanted, the fire opals also beginning to give off bright orange light. "There is a body to battle for, if you so aspire."

She traced the sigil for salamander in the air, and the circle seemed to begin to heat up.

"We challenge your sparks, your heat, your flame," she continued. "Come and fight for Blaise's body as yours to claim."

Flickers of flame began to flare up and disappear in the center of the circle, crackling into being out of nowhere, and as Hermione went through the second recitation, they began to linger, forming a creature made of fire. By the third, the form of a wingless dragon had formed out of fire, crackling with heat.

Hermione met Blaise's eyes across the circle, and he readied himself as she finished the incantation.

"—come and fight for Blaise's body as yours to claim!"

The fire elemental disappeared, the salamander vanishing into Blaise's body, and Blaise collapsed, his eyes bugging out as he screamed.

"Merlin alive," Susan breathed, her own eyes large as she looked at Blaise. "Were the others this bad?"

"They get progressively worse, I think," Hermione admitted. She had her magic at the ready, filtered through the water elemental with her hand outstretched, and the moment Blaise's hair caught flame, she was ready.

Her water magic wasn't like she'd hoped – she'd rather envisioned water flying out of her hand like a fire hose – but water coalesced in midair, pulled from the ambient humidity, and then with a plop, fell on Blaise's head. It immediately put the fire out, and making him rather look like a drowned cat, but Hermione nearly panicked, convinced she'd made everything worse and now Blaise would have to contend with being drowned as well as fighting the fire elemental, but a moment later Blaise had stopped screaming and was gasping instead, slowly gathering himself up and getting to his knees.

"That hurt," Blaise said, looking up at them all plaintively, before promptly face-planting into the dirt.

Harry and Susan hurried forward to help, dragging him off to the side, and Hermione was reminded of the first time they'd all done this as a coven – of her exhausted covenmates collapsing afterward, despite their success. In a weird way, the similarity reassured Hermione – they'd gotten through this ritual before, and they'd all make it through again.

Luna went next. When her salamander disappeared into her, she crumpled to the ground. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she did not scream. Hermione found that she could sense the shift in magic when the fire elemental was changing strategies, and she was ready with water the moment the fire elemental acted, dousing Luna's hair and skin with much more grace than she'd used with Blaise.

Luna took a while to stop shuddering on the ground, but she eventually went still.

"Is she okay?" Harry asked. He moved closer. "She's breathing…"

"If she's breathing and not on fire, I daresay she won," Blaise said, from off to the side. His dry delivery was ruined by how weak his voice sounded. "She'll come around."

Luna stirred as they moved her next to Blaise, her eyes flickering open before shutting again. Susan apprehensive as she took up her spot on the circle, but she nodded, and she stood there bravely as Hermione sent her magic through the circle and chanted.

Susan seemed to handle the fire elemental better than anyone else so far – though she fell to her knees, gasping and screaming, there was a ferocity in her eyes that the others hadn't had, and Hermione wondered what strategy Susan had held in her mind before this fight to help her win so quickly. Susan barely needed any help, either – her hair flashed with flickers of flame that went out before Hermione could react, and then Susan was groaning, coughing up smoke as her eyes opened, her battle won.

"That was awful," she said plaintively. "I'm going to go collapse now, 'kay?"

Harry snorted and helped Susan over to the rest of them. When he returned, there was an unmistakable glint of adventure and excitement in Harry's eyes.

"Mine I will need to bargain with, yeah?" Harry said. "It will be different than just fighting it into submission."

"Correct," Hermione said. "From what Luna and Susan went through, you'll need to make some sort of deal. You'll need to focus on minimizing the damage it does to your body in the meantime. Use your air elemental to pull air magic away from the fire, and the earth to smother the fire into submission."

Harry nodded. "I'm ready."

The ritual and chant were much the same, with one exception – Hermione didn't trace the sigil for salamander in the air, letting in whatever fire elemental wanted to come and answer the call. The power in the moonstones surged, glowing brighter than ever, and the heat that began to form over the fire opals made her forehead break out in sweat. The next iteration of the incantation saw flickers of flame begin to coalesce into a figure, and its body only grew and solidified as Hermione finished the second go-round of the chant.

"Oh, wow," Susan murmured, watching from the side. "It's like a little person…"

It was an imp, Hermione realized with dismay, even as she started the incantation the third time. She'd seen them in books – imps had personality, and with personality, they had will, probably stronger than most elementals did—

As she finished the chant and the imp vanished, Harry fell to the ground, his agonized screams echoing off the rolling hills of the empty moors. Hermione, this time, was proactive, and she pulled water from the air to douse Harry's hair before it caught fire. She didn't expect Harry's robes to catch fire as he flailed around, shouting and shrieking on the ground, but she reacted quickly enough, drenching him and putting the fire out immediately, his robes hissing slightly with steam.

"I felt like my throat was on fire," Luna said, awake now and watching Harry. "Hopefully he won't damage his voice too badly."

"There are treatments for that," Hermione said absently, still at the ready with her water magic. "Madame Pomfrey helped me after I injured my voice in Defense last year, with the boggart."

Blaise snorted. "I'd nearly forgotten about that."

There was a horrible noise, and Harry was suddenly breathing fire, like a dragon, and Hermione yelped and jumped back, panicking.

"How do I put this out?" she yelled to the others. "I can't just send water down his mouth – he'll drown!"

Her worries took too long – Harry stopped breathing fire before she could react, and he suddenly stilled with a gasping breath.

"Oh my god," Harry moaned, his voice hoarse. "That sucked. I did it, though."

"It worked?" Hermione hurried over, helping Harry sit up. "What happened?"

Harry coughed hard for a minute, gathering himself and catching his breath.

"It's—hard to explain," Harry said, glancing over at Luna and Susan, who were nodding, commiserating. "But I did kind of have to bargain with it for it to calm down. It did not want to make a deal, let me tell you. It felt cheated, wanting to take over my body entirely. I finally beat it back enough for it to agree, though." He smiled weakly. "So all's well that ends well."

There was weak, relieved laughter amongst the coven, everybody finally relaxing for the first time that night.

"How are you all feeling?" Hermione asked, concerned. "I was thinking we could practice with the fire elementals, but you all look exhausted."

"Practice?" Blaise asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hermione blushed. "Well, I practiced by throwing fireballs, but we could try walking through fire too…"

Susan laughed.

"Perhaps another night. I feel like I've barely got energy in me to get back," she admitted, "let alone use magic to throw fireballs."

That alarmed Hermione, who insisted they all sit in a circle and share magic for a while until they all felt safe to jump the line. Their breathing synced up as their heart beats slowed, and Hermione's fast-spinning core was only too happy to send magic through the coven bond to her coven mates, helping to refill their own magic reserves.