One morning there was a unusual smell in the air, and The HMSS Harmony was moving differently in the water. Instead of the plunging and soaring Hermione had become used to on the open ocean, there was an altogether more subdued sort of rocking motion, a bobbing and dipping as gentle tides swept under the large vessel.

Hermione changed quickly and was on deck before either Lyra or Malcolm were awake. She stared hungrily at the land, which was a very strange sight after so many days at sea. She looked around at the harbour of Trollesund, with it's sloped-roofed houses, the boats and cranes loading fish (which accounted for the pungent smell on the air), and the gulls swooping and circling around the tall dome of the oratory spire near the jetty.

And after just acquiring her sea legs, Hermione found she was quite keen to become a land-loper again.

Just then Papageno broke out of the water as a leaping salmon, only to transform into a tern in mid-air and fly right up to Hermione's shoulder. He had been enjoying exploring various fish forms on their journey North, and he would miss the swimming now they were land-bound again.

"How's the water?" Hermione asked, stroking Pap's breast plume as he shook himself dry on her arm.

"Freezing," Pap replied with a chattering beak. "Be sure to wrap up as warm as possible when you leave the ship. Dont want you to catch a chill and die, not when your master of fire is still a whole world away and unable to warm you up."

Hermione blushed at that, as the girlish thrill ran through her. She stoically believed she was still too young to consider herself in love, especially as she'd not yet met the boy who would be the object of this undying affection. But every time she flicked her mind to him, even to the idea of him, her heart did funny little flips, and her belly joined in, too.

It was as though a swarm of multi-coloured moths had taken flight all through her.

But she pushed that away for now, as she thought Pap would laugh at her for it. So she made her way back to the cabin and helped Lyra to pack up her few things and a short time later Malcolm led them off the ship.

The first port of call - after the port itself, of course - was the Quartermaster's stores on the Quayside. This ramshackle trading post was stocked full of all the thick, cold-weather clothing Hermione would need. So while Malcolm went off to make contact with the Witch-Consul, Lyra took Hermione for a fitting, emerging an hour later with her apprentice clad from head-to-toe in seal skin boots, fluffy fox-hide undergarments, wolf pelt jumpers and coats, and a cute hat and scarf combo that felt distinctly ermine in it's softness.

"Thank you," Hermione mumbled humbly. "I'm sorry you had to pay so much. I promise I'll give it back."

"Nonsense," Lyra beamed. "It was worth it to see how cute you look in everything. How does it feel? Are you warm enough?"

She reached over and tenderly tucked Hermione's scarf closer to her neck.

"Well, I feel rounder than I've ever been," Hermione mused, patting her new bulky padding. "You'll have to keep a close eye on me, Miss Lyra, because if I fall over I'm quite sure I wont be able to get back up again without help!"

Lyra laughed and pulled Hermione in for a one-armed hug. "Oh don't worry, Hermione, I wont let you out of my sight now we're in the North."

"Where will we go first?" Hermione asked eagerly, as they began walking through the harbour.

"Malcolm is trying to make contact with the Witches of the Northern Clans," Lyra explained. "I have an old friend, Serafina Pekkala, who will help us I'm sure. And if know her as I do, I would bet my London apartment that she already knows we are here."

Hermione frowned at that. "But, Miss Lyra, why are we going to see the Witches?"

"Because, sweetheart, they have magic and know better than anyone how to cross the barriers between worlds."

"I thought you said that Dr Polstead had built a portal up here?" Hermione queried. "Aren't we using that to cross the worlds?"

"No, Mal didn't build it, he was just an advisor on the project," Lyra explained. "You see, in order to open a doorway between worlds, you need a tremendous release of energy, one that is enough to shatter the barrier between them. The method the bastards at the Magisterium use to get that energy is known as intercision. It is the most efficient ... and also the most heinously unpleasant."

"Why?" Hermione pressed. "What is intercision?"

Lyra and Pantalaimon shared a dark look, inspired by an even darker memory. It caused an icy prickle along Hermione's skin as she watched that flare of understanding pass between them. Then Lyra turned her haunted expression back to her apprentice.

"Intercision is a cut ... one that separates human from dæmon."

Hermione cried out in horror at the very notion. Papageno wormed his way down Hermione's top, to press himself as a vole tight against the warm flesh over her rapidly beating heart. She clung to him firmly there, as if hoping to exorcise the very idea of separating from their collective memory.

"How ... how can they do that?" Hermione whispered fearfully. "That's just the most awful thing!"

"It is," Lyra nodded in agreement. "It is the most terrifying thing to face, Hermione. I truly hope you never have to."

Hermione snapped her head to Lyra in marrow-deep pity and shock, as she suddenly interpreted that look between her Mistress and Pantalaimon.

"You! They did it to you?!"

"Nearly," Lyra clarified. "We were even in one of their infernal cutting machines. Divided, kept apart by an anbaric cage ... that blade coming down at us ..."

Pan may have been on the larger side as dæmons went, but this didn't stop him leaping up into Lyra's embrace, as they relived this most hated of memories. Hermione felt her heart bleed for them, with them, just as powerfully as it was hammering in resistance to the idea of Intercision.

For what a chilling idea it was! To be split from her Pap, her heart, her love! ... it was like cutting off half of herself. She couldn't even imagine it. Of course, like all children, she and Pap had tried it out, seen just how far he could go away from her before that soul-deep ache became too much, and he came racing back as a baby gazelle and dived into her waiting arms ... arms shaky with the heart soreness of the attempt.

But to think of him just being sliced away ... it made them both whimper as the thought crossed their minds at the same time.

"W-what happens to the people? After the intercision?" Hermione breathed lowly.

"They live for a little while, but they are shells more than people, really," Lyra explained. "Most die within a few years. Some don't last more than a few hours, especially if they are young."

Hermione clutched at Pap again, pressing him as close to her aching breast as she could. The concept was almost too much to bear.

"So, was someone ... intercised ... to open this portal with Dr Polstead?" Hermione mumbled.

"No, Oakley Street aren't in the business of ritual sacrifice," Lyra breezed back. "But ... there is another way. And that's where the Witches come in."

"How?"

"Well, you see, it is possible for a human and dæmon to separate without intercision," Lyra elaborated. "And the Witches do it by choice."

Hermione sucked in another shocked breath. "But why? Why would anyone want to do that?"

"There are benefits to splitting in this way," Lyra went on. "It can give you a great advantage to be able to send your dæmon far away. It is the most god-awful, painful and miserable thing, but you don't die, and it can be useful."

Hermione blinked as she looked at Lyra, and tried to bring her ragged breathing under her control.

"You ... and Pan ... you can Separate!" Hermione hushed.

Lyra nodded her confirmation, and Pan turned his eyes up to Hermione, as Pap poked his head out from Hermione's coat and whispered into her ear. It sparked a memory that made Hermione's eyes go very round indeed.

"Oh ... now I remember ... we've seen you before, Pan! Pap and I, I mean!" Hermione cried. "We used to see you in the trees around the gardens of Jericho! Were you ... were you watching us?"

"Yes, I used to ask him to do that," Lyra confirmed. "We had heard a lot about this brilliant young girl from the town, you see. All the teachers and tutors at Jericho Prep were talking about her. And Magdalen Girls College was very interested in offering her a scholarship, to study atomcraft or anbarology. But we wanted to have the brightest girl in Oxford working with us, so we just wanted to see what you were like, that's all."

"Then ... did you come to see me on purpose ... that day we read the alethiometer?"

Lyra nodded. "I did. I thought it was finally time to meet you. And as you were having a look around Jordan College on the Open Day, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss."

"And how lucky it was that you found me!" Hermione beamed. "For if you hadn't, I'd have never known about this boy I have to save and we wouldn't be here in the North!"

"It was very lucky, indeed!" Lyra laughed.

"But, Miss Lyra?" Hermione frowned suddenly. "You said the Witches can split from their dæmons, too? How?"

"There is an initiation they must undergo," Lyra explained. "A test. The Witch must enter a special place and endure the separation from her dæmon. Only by experiencing that pain can they earn the true heart-felt love when it comes back to her, and she is granted her witch-powers."

Then Hermione swallowed deeply. "And the voluntary separation is enough to break the barriers between worlds?"

"Yes," Lyra nodded. "It fact, it was a witch who helped Malcolm to break the barrier with his little machine."

"What was her name?"

"Unusually for a witch, this one was a he," Lyra replied dramatically. "Not only that, but he arrived here from another world in the first place."

"He did!" Hermione gasped. "How?"

"He was studying a very interesting ancient archway in his world, with a sort of curtain separating it from somewhere else," Lyra explained. "It was very old, and no-one in that world knew how to work it any more. So, because he was very courageous and brave - and a little bit of a stupid adventurer - he decided he would step through it just to see what would happen."

"And he arrived here!" Hermione exclaimed in wonder. "What happened to him?"

"Well, after he had a bit of an explore of our world, he decided he missed his friends and family too much, and wanted to go back home," Lyra explained. "So we decided to help him get there."

"How do you know this? Did ... did you meet him?"

"Yes, I did," Lyra blushed. "You see, he was wanted for a serious crime in his world, one that he had to make look real, but didn't actually commit. And, luckily, our friends at Oakley Street found him before the Magisterium did. And, after a few years, they decided to help him get back and didn't tell me about it.

"I was very cross about that. For he was dashing and brave and adventurous. And very handsome, too."

"You were lovers!" Hermione giggled.

"We were," Lyra confirmed with a blush. "And very passionate ones, too. I missed him acutely when he went away. And his dæmon, too, for she was the shaggiest, fluffiest black dog I'd ever seen. I don't think we have anything like that in our world. I didn't know he'd been used to open Mal's portal until just a few months ago, when my friend, Charlotte, told me all about it.

"She was confessing to me, you see, for she had also been lovers with this exotic man, while he was with me. I stopped being sad about him going as soon as I knew that. He was quite the womaniser, apparently."

Hermione giggled girlishly again. "What was his name?"

"Sirius," Lyra huffed. "Sirius Orion Black!"

"That sounds like the name of a sort of man who enjoys a lot of ladies!" Hermione twittered again. "So, he had to Separate from his dæmon to get home?"

"He did," Lyra confirmed. "For you see, in his world, his dæmon was inside him, not external like Pan and Pap and everyone else's we know. My very first lover - the boy I still love to this day - was called Will, and his dæmon was like that. For a while I wasn't sure that he even had one, but then we had to go to the World of the Dead to save my friend, Roger. That's when I separated from Pan - and it was the worst thing ever - but Will was just as upset, even though he couldn't see or talk to his dæmon.

"But then, we went to another world again, one where he could see her. And I met her. She was called Kirjava. I do miss them so very terribly."

"Even now? After all this time?"

"Always," Lyra sighed sadly.

Hermione could only listen open-mouthed to the tale, trying to process the drama and heartbreak of it. It was incredible to even conceive of such adventures, let alone to be with the woman who went on them, as Hermione embarked on one of her own. But there was a seed blooming in the back of her mind, and a leaden coil writhing in her tummy, as a prospect she didn't want to face was becoming clearer in her mind.

She knew she had a big challenge ahead of her ... she just hoped - with all she could hope with - that it wouldn't be what she feared.

"So, this Sirius person separated from his dæmon and created the portal?" Hermione muttered. "Then used it to get to his world?"

"Correct."

"But how did he know that was where he would go?"

"Because he was a witch or - as they are called in his world - a wizard," Lyra explained. "And he knew lots of magic, the kind of magic Witches in this world didn't know how to do, or had forgotten. But he knew how to disappear in one place, then reappear somewhere else, just by thinking about it. So he tried to do that to get home. It must have worked, because the portal opened and people have been back and forth a few times."

"They have?"

"Oh yes," Lyra replied simply. "In fact, the current Witch-Consul is from that other world. He's helping the Witches here get more of that old power. If you ask very nicely, maybe he'll tell you all about it."

"Oh I do hope so!" Hermione shrieked excitedly. "That sounds so interesting!"

"Just remember to address him very politely when you speak to him," Lyra reminded her, as they stopped outside the Witch-Consul's hut. "He is very touchy about things like that."

"What's his name?"

"Why don't you tell me?" Lyra grinned. "The plaque with his name on it is just over this door."

Lyra wiped the snow from a heavy, rather weather-blackened green plaque with silver lettering. Hermione stood on tip-toe, squinted her eyes and read:

"Dr Thomas Marvolo Riddle ... Consul to the Witch-Clans of the North."