Chapter Three
Eleven Years Late

Harry opened his eyes.

There they were, both of them, standing—was that the right word?—not twenty feet from him. The meager sunlight drifting in through the windows streamed right through them. Unlike true ghosts, which were shaded pearly or gray, the apparitions before him possessed their true color while maintaining semitransparency.

No one spoke. All was quiet for a long minute as Harry studied them, and they studied Harry in turn. It was like each were a headlamp-entranced deer, frozen in the moment, about to bolt.

Ron looked apprehensive, like he was waiting for Harry to lunge at him, snapping and snarling like a rabid animal. He was clad in bright-orange robes that clashed garishly with his hair. On the fabric of his chest, two black C's were stamped across a rocketing cannonball. In his hand he held a wicked broomstick, perfectly pristine save for the twigs, which were gorgeously windswept to match his hair. He might've just landed after winning the World Cup final.

Hermione wore something more comparable to the clothes she'd died in: a knitted gray cardigan over a flattering purple silk shirt. Harry couldn't remember seeing the outfit before, but it somehow reminded him of fourth-period Charms. Her hair was perhaps even more unmanageable than he remembered, or had he simply forgotten? She was watching him with a wide-eyed, watery expression. Her lip trembled once.

"Mate!" exploded Ron, fragmenting the silence. "What the ruddy hell d'you think you're doing?"

"Ronald!"

Harry jumped so violently that the Stone fell from his palm and clattered on the floor—its pitiful echo magnified by the sudden silence—and the apparitions of his friends vanished.

And he was alone.

He collapsed into a chair, head in his hands, breathing hard.

It had happened so fast. If Harry wanted to, he could chuck the Stone back into the forest and pretend it had all been some hallucination brought about by fatigue and lack of sleep. In fact, perhaps it had been an illusion, and he'd never even found the Stone in the first place; he'd only imagined he had. All at once he felt just how tired he was. If he just laid his head back, he'd pass out. Maybe in the morning he'd believe it was all a dream.

But no. The Stone was on the floor; Harry was looking right at it. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't fantasy. It was really, truly there. And so too had been his friends. Ron had just blown up at him, as Ron sometimes did, and Hermione had chastised him for it, as she usually did. And it had all been so very normal that Harry couldn't help the grin that split his face. Scrambling for the Stone, he turned it over three times more.

It was as if someone had flipped a switch and made them visible.

Ron looked sheepish. "Sorry," he said. "But really, Harry, what're you doing with that bloody thing?"

"Sorry I'm late," said Harry as if it hadn't been eleven years since they parted.

Hermione whispered, "Oh, Harry. We wanted to see you too." She spared him a genuine smile—he'd almost forgotten what they looked like. "But the dead don't belong here: you do. You should throw that Stone in the lake and be done with it—and us."

Harry recoiled. "How can you say that?" he asked them, blinking away tears. His heart threatened to crack in two. "I… I…"

He twisted his jaw. He'd never been adept at expressing himself. Anger was the easiest emotion he knew how to do. So he did.

"Eleven years," he said, voice low. "Eleven years I've been waiting to see you again. You think I don't know that this isn't natural? This Stone shouldn't even exist—it's a foul, evil thing made to torment weak people like me! But it does exist, and I am so goddamn lonely!

"Can you even imagine? Eleven bloody years without anyone but that sodding portrait to talk to? She doesn't even talk back, for Merlin's sake! Just scowls and makes toasts with that fucking cup! I hate that bloody thing!

"Do you have any idea how many times I wished I'd just die in my sleep so I wouldn't have to face this empty, shitty world again? I'm wishing right now that I'd died with you instead of having to live in this farce of a reality! I almost did when that Felix Felicis blew up, but I guess I just wasn't lucky enough—fucking ironic, isn't it?"

Harry took a deep breath. He was shouting now. Ron was staring at him, obviously dumbstruck. Hermione was flinching at every exclamation; she'd stepped backwards and was now standing in the middle of the table.

"And then I find this stupid Book and think that maybe—just maybe—there might be a way to make things right again, to save you and Ginny and the Weasleys and Neville and Luna and Sirius and Dumbledore and everyone else, and for just once in eleven years I'm excited, can you believe it? Right excited because there might be hope yet, that there might be an end to all this that doesn't include a graveyard's worth of corpses littering my front yard! And I must try. I can't just ignore the possibilities now that they're here.

"But I need help. Because, frankly, I don't understand half the shit in this thing. I need Dumbledore—or fucking Merlin at this point! That's the reason I went after this bloody rock in the first place: to beg Dumbledore to help me make sense of the magic inside this Book! To help you—to help everyone. I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but I'm tired of being alone, so I'm going to do it… Because I bloody well miss the two of you!"

Harry huffed, having said much more than he'd intended.

Ron was still gobsmacked, but Hermione recovered quickly enough. She stepped closer to Harry, out of the table and into available space. A few tears had fallen; where they fell to, Harry couldn't say, but they left shining tracks down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she said. "I didn't mean to sound so insensitive. I just meant…" She wrung her hands in frustration.

"She meant that you need to stop beating yourself up about what happened," supplied Ron.

Harry stared at him. "But… you died."

Ron scoffed. "Yeah, so? Look, mate, that's life; shit happens. There's nothing you can do about it."

"It wasn't your fault!" added Hermione fervently.

"Of course it was!"

"No, mate. You didn't kill us: You-Know-Who and his freaks did. They're the ones—"

"No! It's my fault! If I had—"

"We forgive you, Harry," they said together.

Harry collapsed again into the chair, his head in his hands. He'd wanted this for so long, their forgiveness, for Ron and Hermione to tell him that their deaths weren't his fault, but now that they were telling him, he couldn't accept it. It was his fault. Whether he killed them or not, he was responsible—for all their deaths.

"Harry."

The voice was closer than he'd expected; he flinched.

Hermione was somehow sitting on the arm of his chair, her hand mere inches from his shoulder. She might have attempted to comfort him; in her quasi-intangible state, he'd likely never have noticed if she had.

"Harry," she said again, soft and soothing. "None of this is your fault. Everything that's happened is a direct result of Voldemort and his actions." She paused, and when she resumed, she spoke with exaggerated slowness. "You are not to blame."

A cry escaped Harry's lips, and for a moment, the room was silent. Then he finally allowed himself to absorb their sentiments, though he wasn't sure in that moment if he had the heart to believe them. He began to weep in earnest. He brought his hands to his face, more to keep himself from seeing their faces than to keep them from seeing his.

The Stone was pressing uncomfortably into his forehead.

He felt a force touch his shoulder. It wasn't physical, but rather metaphysical. Perhaps it would have felt similar if his shoulder were magnetic and someone placed the opposing force of a tiny magnet just within range of him. It was gentle and not quite solid. It wasn't cold, but the contact made the hairs on his neck stand on end. He was surprised, when he looked up, to find Hermione rubbing soothing circles across his back.

"How are you doing that?" he asked with a sob.

Hermione replied with an uncharacteristic shrug. "We're not ghosts, Harry," she told him gently.

"But you're not—hic!—alive either."

"No… We're somewhere in between like this."

Harry reached out to her like an infant wanting its mother, and Hermione leaned down to hold him. Harry's arms felt resistance when they met her back, and he sobbed again when he realized he could actually embrace her, in a fashion. Ron joined them after a time, and the three of them had a moment—a moment of relief and happiness and a little sadness. The tears flowed once more. He was starting to get rather angry with himself for all his whimpering. He wanted to have a real conversation with his two best friends while he had them, not yell and cry and generally be depressing.

When they parted, Harry wiped his eyes on his sleeve and readjusted his glasses. He was determined not to shed another tear for the remainder of their visit. He was done with crying.

Hermione, fighting her own tears, smiled at him. "We love you too, Harry," she said as if to test his emotional resolve.

It very nearly broke again.

Ron made a gesture somewhere between a reluctant nod and a shrug. It was Ron-speak for Me too, but I'm too embarrassed to say it. It was rather touching.

"Stop," Harry said with a watery chuckle, "or I'll start blubbering again."

Because he couldn't conjure anything as comfortable as Hufflepuff's squashy armchairs with any wand, let alone the hawthorn one, Harry pulled up another pair of seats for them—Ron promptly plopped into his seat, whereas Hermione's stayed vacant as she remained affixed to the arm of Harry's chair—and for a time, they simply talked.

As they spoke, Harry was overcome with nostalgia, and he couldn't keep the grin from his face. If not for their translucence and Ron's utterly ridiculous Chudley Cannons uniform, Harry might've forgotten their fate, at least for a little while. But the fact never left his mind, and it was better that way, truly, for Harry was able to fully appreciate the time he was able to spend with them, even if stray doubts took root in the corners of his mind. He silently berated himself for not thinking of the Resurrection Stone sooner; perhaps Ron and Hermione might've given him the insight he'd needed to finish off Voldemort long ago.

However, as everyone knew, Harry had questions. He'd managed to get a few in as they visited.

"What's it like over there?" he'd asked after a brief lull.

Ron and Hermione had glanced at one another and told him they couldn't say—"literally," they'd said. It was evidently one of the many laws of the universe: apples fell from trees; Voldemort was a sick, twisted bastard; and the dead couldn't tell the living about whatever lay beyond, if anything did.

All Hermione would say—or perhaps could say—of the place was rather vague: "There is no physical pain. Guilt, sadness, anger—it all still exists, but so does love and happiness. And there's this calm, this peace, that is"—she closed her eyes and paused as if she could feel it—"interwoven in the fabric of it all: It's a place to simply be."

And eventually, they shifted from jovial reminiscence to determined Q . That's when Harry got down to business.

"So… what do you guys make of the Book?" He held up the Grimoire, and it was subjected to two ghostly gazes.

"Bloody useful, that is," said Ron without hesitation.

Harry's eyes widened. "You know what this is?"

"Nah. But I saw what you did with that skeleton—wicked, by the way!"

"Ron!" admonished Hermione. "It's an Inferius! It shouldn't exist at all!"

"Yeah," said Ron, his lips twitching, "but they're dead useful."

Harry coughed.

When Hermione opened her mouth to counter, he quickly added, "Look, Hermione, it's not as if Harry's using the thing for anything bad. You could keep him as a sentry, Harry."

"What if it's one of our friends?" rebutted Hermione. "How would you feel if Harry had reanimated your bones?"

"Well, I mean, s'long as he didn't make me do anything too off—"

"Ronald!"

"I mean, er, bad Harry."

Harry grinned until Hermione turned her scowl unto him. He sobered quicker than if he'd been tossed in the lake. To divert her ire, he brought the conversation back on point.

"What about you, Hermione? What do you think of the Book?"

"I think it's dangerous," she stated outright. "I think that whatever book gives you instructions on creating Inferi should be burned."

Ron gasped theatrically. "That's heresy, coming from you. Burning books…"

She spared him an exasperated look.

"I agree that creating Inferi isn't in good taste," Harry said to placate her, "but there's so much more in the Book than dark magic. Here, take a look…" Harry offered the object of their debate to her, but when she gave him a meaningful look, he blushed. "Right, er… I'll just read it aloud then."

He read to them for a time, sparing them the lengthy lectures and complicated formulae. Instead, he gave them an overview of a few spells and rites and their potential applications. He spent nearly half an hour just on the Rite of Returning, as well as reading an important sentence here and there. Ron took it in turns to look awed, afraid and solemn; Hermione simply looked downright skeptical.

"So you think Voldemort popped on over to another universe then?" she asked dubiously. The raised eyebrow was a little overkill, Harry thought. "Did you perhaps consider that you simply took him by surprise, and he Apparated away on instinct?"

Harry waved her reasoning away. "Hermione, Voldemort's instinct is to kill anything that threatens him, not bolt like a startled rabbit. Besides, the same diagram on the floor of that warehouse I found right here in this Book." He showed them the hand-drawn shapes and lines that formed the basis for the Otherworldly Ordinance, the spell for traveling to other worlds.

Hermione remained unconvinced. "All that proves is that Voldemort believes the stuff in this Book. I think you're grasping at straws here, Harry, and that you'll believe just about anything if it promises you the chance to fix things: the ability to go to a universe where Voldemort doesn't exist, time travel to change the past—"

"What about Time-Turners?" Harry countered.

"Time-Turners can only take a person up to five hours backward in time—it's temporally local—no one's ever found a way to go back further than that."

Harry persevered. "But clearly time travel exists, so could it really be so impossible that someone did find a way to go days or even years into the past?"

"Time travel doesn't work the way you think it does, Harry. You can't change the past and thereby change the future. If you go back in time, you'll simply be taking part in the events of the past to bring about the future you already know—all you'd really be doing is wasting time and effort!"

"But you and I saved Buckbeak and Sirius in third year, Hermione! We changed time, we—"

Hermione was shaking her head. "We didn't change anything, Harry: We only followed the course of time."

Harry frowned in confusion. "But before we used your Time-Turner, Buckbeak and Sirius had—"

"Already been rescued—by us."

"But then why would Dumbledore have told us to go back and rescue them if we already had?"

"Because we had to rewind time for us to have rescued them in the first place. If we hadn't, then our future selves wouldn't have rescued them and Dumbledore wouldn't have reminded our present selves to use the Time-Turner at all."

Ron shook his head as if to free his ears of water; Luna likely would have said he had a bad case of Wrackspurts.

"So," said Harry, "what would have happened if you and I never used the Time-Turner?"

Hermione sighed. "It would have been impossible for us not to use it, as we already had. You see, Harry, there was a single finite loop in the timeline, and you and I had to follow that loop in order for— Oh, just trust me, Harry! I can't explain it any better to you than I already have!"

"Just go with it, mate," said Ron. "How often did things work out for us whenever we didn't listen to her?"

"Point made," said Harry. "But just because Time-Turners are incapable of changing the past or the future, that doesn't mean the Author got it wrong! What if he's right? What if this spell really can do what it says? Humor me, Hermione."

She rolled her eyes. "Even if you could change the past with that spell, the fact that we are even having this discussion right now in this present means that, in the future, you don't go back in time to change anything because otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation! You'd have changed things already! Ergo, that spell is a dud that's bound to blow up in your face the moment you try it!"

"So what?" demanded Harry. "You're saying that the future can't be changed, that free will is just an illusion?"

"No, that isn't what I'm saying! What I am saying is that time is like a river: It flows in one direction, and if you try to divert its course, you're liable to drown in it."

"Then I'll hire some beavers to help me dam it up—it doesn't matter! Look, it's like I said: If there's a chance it'll work, I need to take it!"

Hermione groaned.

"Not alone you won't." It was Ron. He was lounging in his chair; he might've just dropped into it after a gruesome Potions lesson. "I don't know if you're right about this ritual"—he spoke the word with mistrust—"but you'll need a hand. And anyway, I don't intend to let my best mate blow himself up without my help."

Harry grinned at him.

Hermione heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Open the book to the rite and leave it on the table. I'll go through it." It was like she was giving in to checking their homework for them.

Harry beamed at her. "Thank you, Hermione!"

She waved a hand. "Mhmm. Wait on thanking me until I've read the theory behind this time travel spell. It's probably drivel."

Harry opened the book to the correct page and waited as Hermione began to read.

After a moment, she looked up at him. "You don't plan to sit and stare at me while I read, do you?"

"Oh, er, sorry. Ron and I will—"

"Don't go anywhere," she told him. "I need someone to turn these pages for me. It's like I'm wearing dragon-hide gloves."

"What are we supposed to do, then?" asked Ron. "Just sit and be quiet for an hour?"

"More like three or four," supplied Harry. "These pages are dense… Wait, I have an idea! Hey, Skully, come here!"

The Inferius trotted eagerly into the common room from the dormitories, its feet noiseless on the thick rug.

"It can't see or hear me," Hermione chided him. "Only you can. Now just—" She made a disgusted shooing motion. "Make it go."

"Never mind, Skully."

The Inferius trotted away.

Then Hermione's words struck him. Only you can see me. Those doubts returned in full force, springing from the dark corners of his rational mind to wage war on his boyish hopefulness.

"Ron, Hermione," he said, fearing the worst, "are you really here, or are you just illusions?"

"It's us, mate," said Ron, attempting to clap Harry on the back. Harry felt only a gentle, blunt force smacking his shoulder. "We're here."

"But is it really you? I mean, what if you're just figments of my memory, conjured by the Stone?"

Harry was beginning to panic. If the Stone only showed him an illusion of the people he wanted to see, then there wasn't any point to any of this. Caught between anger and anguish, Harry picked up the nearest throw-able thing he could reach—a mug he'd taken from the kitchen—and hurled it into the fireplace; it shattered.

"How can I be certain you're real?" He hadn't meant to shout it.

Hermione's expression softened. "It's simple, Harry: You just ask us each a question you couldn't possibly know the answer to."

Harry considered her solution. "What kind of question?"

"It can be anything so long as the answer if verifiable."

Harry wracked his brain. A question he didn't know the answer to but could easily be proven… It wasn't something he could just come up with on the spot. How could he ask a question if he didn't know what he was asking about?

Luckily Hermione saved him again. She smiled and said, "It isn't a life-changing decision, Harry. Look, you've never been to my house, right? I don't think I've ever told you where I lived."

Lived—the word stung him like a slap to the face, but she hadn't even meant the literal definition; called home would have been a safer phrase.

She snapped her fingers in his face. "Harry? Aren't you going to write this down?"

"Huh? Oh, er, yeah. Gimme a moment." Harry grabbed his pencil and scribbled down the address she gave him.

"Okay, pay attention," Hermione continued briskly. "There are bushes beneath the windows, and the door is painted yellow, and the garage is annexed from the house and… Why aren't you writing this down? You'll want to, as there's a lot I can tell you about the place I grew up…"

When she was finished, Harry had four pages of facts to check out. Hermione had described the exterior and the interior, the color of the walls of each room, the names of books on her shelves, and the various photographs around the house, and so many other things. When Harry insisted she give him something personal, something she'd never told anyone about—"just to be sure"—Hermione, after a bit of back and forth, gave him the location of a secret compartment located in her room. "Just a few odd trinkets and pictures, really," she'd said without looking at him.

Harry insisted they not accompany him; this was something he had to do alone.

It was still morning, but only barely; noon was rapidly approaching. He stood in the middle of a lane, decrepit houses lined up on either side. All of them, save one, were in shambles. Harry suspected Hermione had placed spells around her house before the Horcrux hunt. If Harry had to guess, he'd be the first person to step foot on the quaint, cozy property since the Grangers left.

It was true: Harry had never been here in his life. He now wished he'd had the opportunity to spend at least a weekend at the Granger household in his youth, but he'd never been invited. Harry suspected it was because he was so quick to accept an invitation to the Burrow or Grimmauld Place when it came.

Come to think of it, Harry thought, Hermione was often there with us as well. We were rarely without her during the summers after third year… Why hadn't she stayed with her parents? If Harry could have spent the summer with his parents, he would have.

Its lawn could have definitely used a cutting, but otherwise Hermione's childhood home looked none the worse for wear; its yellow door was downright cheerful. Its garage was annexed, just as she'd said, and Harry noted the tree that grew in the backyard; he marked the items off the list. Perhaps things were starting to go his way after all.

A female deer paused in its grazing to look up at him. It was in the yard next door. A moment passed, and the doe resumed its eating. Natural lawn mowers, deer were.

He ambled up the cobbled path to the yellow front door. The grass was nearly as tall as he was. It made him feel paranoid, as if something were waiting to leap out at him. He made it to the doorstep unscathed and found the door locked. A whispered "Alohomora" gained him entrance, and he stepped inside.

The place was dusty. It was to be expected: No one had lived in the house for twelve years. The electricity, naturally, had been shut off, which made the kitchen smell like a week-old battlefield. Harry had to find his way via the Wand-Lighting Charm. Despite the dust, the place looked lived-in, almost as if the Grangers had left only a few hours ago.

But Harry wasn't there to admire the home. He was on a mission. He'd decided that if everything on Hermione's list was accurate, every single one, he'd finally let himself believe that they were really, truly, undoubtedly Ron and Hermione, not magical mimics.

Harry made his way from room to room, crossing items off his list, determined to find that each item matched up with reality. The lounge did indeed have flowery curtains. The corner by the stairs did have etchings where Hermione's height was measured—26 July, 1997 was the topmost inscription. The upstairs hallway had four rooms, just as she'd said: two bedrooms, a home office and a bathroom. Harry laughed as he check marked his way through pages two and three: Even if the Stone had conjured his memory of Hermione for him to converse with, his memory couldn't have foretold what he'd find in a house he'd never seen.

Then he reached the final item: Hidden compartment inside Magical Me? He'd underlined the book title twice and circled it.

Hermione's bedroom was rather simple. The bookcase was to be expected, and the bed was neatly made with the bedclothes pulled over the pillows and a stuffed toy of some kind—a weasel or a ferret?—propped against the headboard. But there was also a desk, tidy and uncluttered and perfect for doing homework, with a lamp, and an assortment of pencils and pens methodically aligned at one side. A cozy chair sat beside the window, and Harry could imagine a younger Hermione curled up with a book in her lap.

Harry approached the bookcase. Most of the books were of Muggle origin, and there was a wide range of subjects: fiction, history, biography, and even a romance, which Harry thought was wildly out of place.

The only wizarding book was the very same one Harry sought: Magical Me by Gilderoy Lockhart; all the others must have gone with her on the hunt. Harry pulled the book from the shelf and examined it. From the outside, it looked no different than it should have: just an ordinary hard-cover book. But when Harry tried to open it, its pages wouldn't budge. They were firmly fixed in place, though by spell or glue Harry couldn't determine. The front cover, meanwhile, swung open freely, revealing a hollowed-out center filled with bits and bobs. Perhaps Harry would've been more amazed at Hermione's butchering of a book if it hadn't been one of Lockhart's—his fancifully inflated autobiography, to be exact. Indeed, had Lockhart been truthful when he wrote it, the book likely wouldn't have achieved twenty pages.

But Harry's attention was drawn to the book's material contents. He knew he ought not snoop through Hermione's things; it'd be an invasion of whatever privacy she had left. Still, Harry's curiosity was hungry, and he couldn't help but feed it. He recognized a few items just by looking at them, others he scooped up and examined. His eyes were drawn first to a ticket stub to the four hundred twenty-second Quidditch World Cup championship match on the twenty-fifth of August of nineteen ninety-four, otherwise memorialized as the day the Dark Mark was seen for the first time in over a decade. Also in the diversion safe was foreign currency in the form of a single reddish banknote with the number one printed on it. The words were also alien—Russian, perhaps? And a rather large splinter of wood left Harry stumped; he couldn't imagine why Hermione might have squirrelled it away. Other trinkets included a pair of understated earrings, a half-empty bottle of horrible perfume, a broken watch, and—an old engagement ring.

How intriguing, thought Harry with a grin. Had some poor sap given it to her? Had it been Krum? His grin widened as he imagined the ribbing she'd receive.

Harry then picked through the small stack of photos at the bottom of the stash. Hermione only appeared in half of them. There was a professional family photo of her and her parents, and another one, a simpler one, of just her parents, young and in love. Then there was a wizarding photograph, taken by Harry's old friend Colin, of Harry and Ron, engaged in a fierce wizard chess match; Ron was fiercely winning while Harry was fiercely losing. The final was a lovely photo of the three of them together—Harry, Ron and Hermione. They stood in the streets of Hogsmeade as snow drifted from the clouds. They smiled and laughed, and occasionally Hermione would throw out her arms and spin in the falling snow; presently, Harry wondered if it had really happened that way or if it was an embellishment added for the viewer's enjoyment. The children looked about thirteen: still innocent and naïve, and wonderfully ignorant of Death Eaters and Horcruxes and scheming wizards. The most pressing concern they had was the amount of pocket space available for Honeydukes candy.

Then Harry snapped back to himself, a decade and a half older and significantly less innocent than his photographic counterpart. He hadn't the time for standing about, not when he had finally dispelled all his doubts regarding Ron's and Hermione's reality. He returned Magical Me to its place on the shelf and strode out of the house with a smile on his face, locking the front door as he went.

"It's really you!" said Harry, Stone in hand and smile on face.

Ron grinned back. "We told you, mate."

"I couldn't believe it—I couldn't let myself believe it—but now I finally can!" Harry was practically vibrating with excitement. "Without a doubt—for certain—absolutely—!"

"Breath, Harry," advised Hermione. Then she said, rather casually, "I trust you found everything exactly as I described?"

"And then some," replied Harry, a mischievous grin tugging at his lips. He desperately wanted to tease her about the engagement ring, but he knew Krum was a sore subject with Ron; the news that Krum had proposed to her at one point wasn't likely to go down very well with dear old Ronald.

Ron missed Hermione's blush as he thumped his hand on the arm of his chair. "Now that that's all cleared up, let's get back to this time travel business."

And to business they went, starting with the Otherworldly Ordinance—Hermione had scoffed at the name. She retook her earlier spot at the table and began to read, her hands planted on either side of the musty pages. She had Harry sit in the chair across from her and made frantic motions at him whenever she demanded he turn the page for her. It was boring work, but Harry persevered, savoring the comfortable silence between him and another person—a luxury he'd gone without for so long. Nary a word was spoken between them for hours on end. In the lengthy silence and the absence of a chess set, Ron promptly fell asleep; Hermione shot him a glare for his snoring, which Harry thought sounded quite like what he imagined a battle during the Napoleonic Wars might.

After going over the first rite, which required doubling back quite frequently, Hermione proceeded to the next, the one the Author claimed had the power to send a person through time. Interestingly, from what little Harry had read, the first rite seemed to have an extraordinarily complex set of theories behind a rather simple recipe, whereas the second had a convoluted recipe but more straightforward principles—or as straightforward as time travel could be. There were fewer pages dedicated to explaining the theorized mechanics of the latter, in any case.

Harry idly rolled the Stone between his fingers, taking care not to drop it and interrupt Hermione's reading. The longer he waited, the more often his thoughts turned to food; he hadn't eaten in nearly a day. He found himself imagining a large, succulent roast he once had the immense pleasure of eating while staying at a Weasley-occupied Grimmauld Place. There had been fat carrots and juicy onions and sprigs of rosemary—he turned the page—and the tender meat was salted to perfection and drizzled with hot, steaming broth… Harry hadn't had a meal like that in years: He could only knock up simpler recipes himself.

Merlin, what I wouldn't give for one of Mrs. Weasley's magnificent dinners.

It occurred to Harry, as he turned to the final page of the spell's theory, which included the recipe, that he might have conjured duplicates of the pages and set them out along the table for Hermione to peruse at her leisure. He rolled his eyes at his belated inspiration and waited for Hermione to finish.

She really was quite a sight, characteristically cool and calm in the face of such advanced magical theory. Only her creased brow betrayed her concentration. Ron definitely would've gone cross-eyed long before reaching the end. Harry did wonder how her back felt after hours of leaning over the Book; she hadn't moved at all except to wave at him to turn the pages.

At last, her eyes lifted from the page and gazed, without focus, at the wall above and behind Harry's head. Her lips twitched wordlessly, moving without her awareness as they framed the thoughts in her head. Then her gaze refocused on the pages beneath her.

Harry's eyes darted from Hermione's to the recipe she was rescanning. Was he allowed to speak now? He wanted to ask her opinion. Her eyebrows weren't quirked in skepticism, so perhaps her conclusion was a positive one.

"Hermione?"

His tone was soft and tentative, but she looked surprised to see him. She met his inquiring expression with a blank one of her own.

There was a pause as Harry waited for her to speak.

"Well?" he prompted. "What do you think?"

Her mouth opened, but no words came. Then finally she found her vocabulary. "I don't know yet… It was rather complicated, and I need time to mull everything over… We should sleep on it."

Harry chuckled. "I didn't know you needed sleep anymore."

"Everybody needs to sleep, Harry. Even the dead."

They looked at Ron, who was still snoring away, oblivious to all.

Hermione was smiling fondly. "Though some are more graceful than others, it seems."

Harry let the tender moment persist for another five seconds before ending it. "How's your back?"

"My back?"

"You were bent over for a long time… Doesn't it hurt?"

"Oh… No. We don't really feel… physical discomfort anymore."

"Must be nice."

Hermione hummed. "For some things."

Harry grinned.

She blushed. "I didn't mean that, Harry! You're incorrigible!" She swatted him on the arm for emphasis, but Harry barely felt it, semi-corporeal as she was.

He just laughed. Even Hermione, still pink in the face, smiled despite herself.

"Let us go for the day, Harry. You can call us again tomorrow. Get some sleep—you look knackered… And eat something too, will you? You're peaky."

"I am hungry." Harry debated about waking Ron up to say goodbye, but he decided to let sleeping Rons lie. He'd see them again the next day.

He sighed deeply. "Alright. Goodnight, Hermione."

She waved cheerily at him as he slipped the Stone back into his pocket. She spared the Grimoire a final look of unease before she and Ron vanished entirely.

He could scarcely believe they were back in his life. He didn't think it had quite struck him yet—not fully, anyway. He closed the Book and carried it to his room, smiling in bittersweetness at his friends' departure. His optimistic attitude persisted through a hearty—if not particularly complicated—vegetarian dinner. Even as he readied himself for bed, he could not help but feel hopeful for a better future. Though Hermione didn't approve of the methods he would use, he knew she would support him regardless—her inability to physically intervene was a nonissue to Harry—and he would follow through with the rites whether she provided assistance or not.

In any case, it was good to have them back, even in the morbid way it was.

As Harry's eyes fluttered in the winds of sleep, his gaze lingered on his bedside table, where a photograph, close enough for him to admire as he fell asleep, displayed a heartwarming scene of three children laughing in the snow.

Author's Note

I think the worst is behind us. The tone of the story will remain... not quite dark, but bleak or maybe wistful. It isn't all doom and gloom, I assure you. There are some fun bright spots on the horizon. Stay tuned!