Chapter 9 - Condemnation

Tracey Davis stared down at the letter in her hand, her fingers almost tearing the parchment from the strength of her grip. Who the hell did that walking contraceptive spell misfire think he was? After what he pulled last semester, he suddenly sent a letter like this and expected everything to just be okay? If it was just up to her, she'd send it back to him with a note telling him exactly where he could shove it.

But she also knew that Iris would probably agree, if his arguments were sound. As much as she regularly made emotional snap decisions that more often than not caused everything to go to shit, with stuff like this she was sometimes scarily calculating.

Tracey knew it probably wasn't a good sign that her best friend got like this when other people were concerned, despite wearing her heart on her sleeve with most of everything else. But that was just Iris. And Tracey wouldn't have her any other way.

She was more worried about what she'd be up to. Tracey still hadn't gotten a reply from her. And she still hadn't heard anything from Harry either.

Tracey had been kind of looking forward to the summer, even. You wouldn't expect it, since she'd be stuck at home, instead of being able to see him directly. But just the thought of exchanging long, sappy letters like that had gotten butterflies going in her stomach. The mental image of a bright blush wiping that mischievous smirk off his face had made her feel giddy all on its own.

That had lasted for all of a week.

And then Harry had gotten hurt in his attempt to trap the heir, and before she could even visit him in the hospital wing, Tracey had found herself petrified instead.

And now he was missing. And nobody seemed to care. And even worse, apparently someone was invested in making sure that nobody would, either.

She already had three whole letters all written out, each of them too long to fit on any less than three pieces of parchment. Yet she hadn't sent a single one of them.

Every morning Tracey would get up, out the door, down the stairs, find her mum's owl Scoobert, and check if there were any letters. If he wasn't there, she'd sit by the window until he'd return. Only after she was sure there weren't any letters once more, she'd make her way back upstairs to brush her teeth and get dressed.

This time, there had been a letter. But it had been far from the one she'd hoped. A part of her was still happy to hear from Theo. The three of them had been pretty much inseparable for an entire year. But the way he had just cut them off had hurt. And even more so that he hadn't even deemed her important enough to try and tell her in person. Instead he had just told Iris—as if she was the only one who mattered—and then pissed off without a single word to Tracey.

And now he thought he could fix it all with one stupid letter?

But Iris wasn't doing a much better job of being a friend either. Sure, she was probably busy looking for Harry, but despite the many many times Tracey had tried to drive the message home that she could tell her things, Iris had gone off by herself again and hadn't replied to a single one of her letters so far.

It still hurt, thinking back to the time where Iris had all but accused her of being the heir, thanks to her once again keeping everything to herself. Looking back on it, yeah, Tracey could have probably been less stubborn about telling her what she had been doing in the library, but at the time, the kiss was still fresh in her mind, and she had had no idea how Iris would have reacted to that.

She had all but told her a week later, after Lockhart defeated the heir, but Iris had gotten hung up on something else again and had not even properly processed her words. What else was new.

And now, after the Compulsion Charm had been removed and she had fully grasped the fact that Harry was missing, she couldn't bring herself to try and actually tell her either. Whatever was going on, Iris was probably having at least as rough a time as Tracey, likely much worse. And a little detail like that would only cause her unnecessary additional worries.

Still. No replies from Iris, no idea what was happening with Harry, and Theo was being a complete asshat. It would be nice if at least some of her friends still talked to her. A glance towards the far wall caused yet another stab of forgotten grief. There hung a picture of a very young Tracey, sitting under a tree next to a black-haired young girl, both with flowers in their hair, both smiling brightly.

A soft hoot from the window alerted her to the fact that Scoobert had returned from his trip, and this time, bearing no new mail. Tracey sighed, fed the owl an extra treat, and began to trudge her way back up to her room. She should probably get dressed; it was already getting close to lunchtime.

Tracey pulled the door to her room shut, turned towards her bed, and froze. She was not alone.

~V~

Okay, this was awkward.

"Uhm... sorry. I can come back?" Iris began hesitantly, as she beheld Tracey's half-dressed state.

The brunette just stood there, hand still on the door handle, her eyes as wide as saucers. Maybe she should have written a letter beforehand after all?

Slowly, Tracey lowered her hand to face her completely, not saying anything. She took a step, another step, until she was standing right before her, with Iris still awkwardly standing next to her bed. Iris couldn't read Tracey's face, it was an onslaught of emotions all at once, and she wasn't sure if her Mindlight might improve the situation any at this point.

Iris' gaze got caught in the shimmering hazel staring up at her, which made her oddly conscious of the fact that she was now quite a bit taller than her Hogwarts roommate. After a very long and uncomfortable second, Iris opened her mouth to say—

Iris stiffened as she felt herself being forcefully pulled into a hug. She really should be used to this from Tracey by now, but the events of the past week really hadn't done her mental state any favors. Slowly and hesitantly, she raised her hands and returned the hug, squeezing the shivering mop of brown hair against her chest.

"Hey, Tracey..." Iris said, unsure what to do.

The girl, in turn, kept squeezing her tightly, holding on for dear life.

"You okay?" Iris asked softly.

At first there was no reply. Then, after several long seconds, the brown hair slowly shook left to right.

"You didn't write," whispered Tracey in a paper-thin voice.

Yeah. As if she didn't already feel guilty enough. First, she had been in no headspace to reply, still looking for Harry. Then, once she had found him, she had had even less of an idea of what she could actually write, and it wasn't like she could just put something like this in a letter, anyway.

"Sorry," Iris replied.

Tracey squeezed her once more, then slowly lifted her head to meet her eyes.

"What about you? You don't write, Harry is missing, and... I..." Tracey broke off, then slowly gathered herself and asked, "Are you... doing okay?"

No, she really wasn't.

She couldn't be in much worse of a Mindspace if she tried. Or at least, she definitely had been there. And part of her really just wanted to let go, to break down on the bed and let it all spill forth, to cling onto that one shred of normalcy left in her life. Just like she had after Malfoy had accidentally turned himself into a magical Nazi, using the ritual she had inadvertently pointed him at, and torn apart their friendship and her innocent soul along with it.

But despite what her heart wanted, she couldn't; she wouldn't. She needed to endure. Iris would bring him back, and then it would be alright. Only then could she allow herself to give in.

"Please," Tracey whispered. "Tell me what's going on? Did you find him?"

"Tracey, I..." Iris said, unsure how to even begin.

"Do you know something? Something happened, didn't it? He's not just missing; someone doesn't want him to be found! Someone doesn't want people to look into what happened, someone confounded me right after— Wait, are you telling me it was Lockhart? Did it have something to do with the chamber after all? Did you manage to talk to him before he... He... Morgana! That was you, wasn't it? You... you..."

Tracey choked in her ramblings, staring at Iris wide eyed, slowly backing away until she collapsed onto the bed. Iris stared back helplessly, still no words forthcoming. There was no point denying it, Tracey knew everything about the shadows, she could figure it out for herself.

"It was an accident," Iris admitted quietly.

Tracey goggled at her, as Iris slowly sat down on the bed next to her. "You... accidentally... ate him?"

"What?" Iris choked; her mind unable to compute. "No! I took him to the shadow realm!" she exclaimed, then cut off, realizing what she had admitted.

Tracey perked back up, then frowned. "But then where is he now?"

Iris gave her a helpless look. "He kept running away... And then we got caught in a Patronus charm from an Auror and..."

Iris broke off, unsure what else to say. She sure as hell wasn't going to tell her about Hermione's theory of what was happening to her when she was stuck there and had slowly lost her mind, and Iris' own extension of that suggesting that all Lethifolds were in fact just people that had been trapped in the shadow realm.

"I can't find him anymore. I wouldn't even know where to look," Iris said.

Tracey just stared back at her, and Iris wasn't sure if she was trying to be comforting or judging.

"I didn't have a choice, okay? I had to stop him from donating the revenue of his book!"

Tracey's expression had now definitely turned incredulous. "Come again?"

"Have you read his latest book?" Iris instead asked.

Tracey shot her another dubious look, but then hesitantly replied, "Well, yeah. The ending was amazing, but half of the things that happened in-between weren't even true!"

"Neither was the ending," Iris said.

Tracey gave her a confused look. "But then what—"

"What he was doing," Iris said slowly, "Was a massive ritual. The books were his symbol, they perfectly represented what he wanted to happen, or rather what he wanted to have happened, after the fact. And that's why he kept donating all the revenue of his books as well. It was a sacrifice."

"Wait, hold on," Tracey cut in. "You are saying he... made up his books after all? And that he used them as a ritual to somehow make them true? And that's why you ate him before he could donate all his money? Do you know how insane you sound?"

"I didn't eat him!" Iris groaned. "Also, yeah, that's basically what I'm saying," she said awkwardly. "If I hadn't, the ritual would have twisted the past to make the books become true, which would mean none of us would remember what actually happened, and this time, there'd be no way to restore the memories. Nobody would even remember anything that would help with... finding Harry."

Tracey kept staring, then staring some more, until she finally groaned and let her head drop into her hands. "Could you for once not have an explanation for everything? How the hell did you make this make sense in my mind?" Tracey ranted, then sighed and mumbled into her hands. "This is my life now. It's a mad fever dream, and I'm actually locked in the mental health ward of St. Mungos. At least, that would sound more plausible than half the stuff that comes out of your mouth."

After some more time spent ranting, Tracey gathered herself again, and turned to look back up at Iris once more, this time looking concerned. "Are you doing okay though? Really? After... well... whatever that was?"

Iris just looked back, only barely managing to hold her gaze.

Tracey swallowed.

"I... well, I haven't really... thought about it much," said Iris. "I kinda had... more important things on my mind back then..."

Tracey averted her gaze. "Right..."

She was wringing her hands in her lap, until she suddenly froze, and her gaze snapped back towards Iris. "Back then?"

Oh no.

Slowly, Tracey's eyes widened, and her mouth opened a sliver. Iris felt her insides tear as a palpable expression of hope and longing began to spread over the girl's features, as if all the worries of the past week were blown away by a radiant sun, piercing the fog of tension and despair and lighting up her brown eyes.

"You... you found him?" a hopeful whisper in a paper-thin voice, from the girl who was holding her breath.

A particularly strong gust of wind tore through the neighborhood, causing the wooden home to groan.

Iris had never hated herself as much as she did right now. The way Tracey was looking at her—as if her entire life had been falling apart and Iris had just pulled out that one roll of spell-o-tape that would glue it all back together—tore apart the shattered remains of her heart in the knowledge that she would now have to do the same to her.

Worse, Iris couldn't even soothe her friend with the one piece of knowledge that was somehow holding together her own mind; that she was still working on bringing him back.

"...Iris?"

Coming here had been a mistake. With every second of the stretching silence, Iris could see Tracey's expression waver.

"Talk to me, Iris. Please..."

"Tracey, I..." Iris began weakly, but couldn't find the words.

Iris wanted to tell her everything, that it would all be alright, that she had a plan, that she shouldn't give up. But doing so would jeopardize that very plan.

Nobody could ever know.

It was bad enough that Greengrass knew, but there wasn't anything she could do about that. And even without considering all the other issues with telling her, as she had found out for herself, Tracey had no way to protect that knowledge in her mind. Iris herself wasn't much better, but at least her Mindlight seemed to be doing... something. If anything, Greengrass seemed to have only been able to read her surface thoughts, and even that she could stop by giving herself a migraine.

"Iris, you're scaring me..." Tracey whispered, her voice teetering on the edge of breaking down.

She was still trying to deny it, desperately trying to look for a way out, but no matter how much her eyes darted across every feature of Iris' visage, they couldn't find the salvation they sought. The truth was written all across her face.

"Please..." the brunette croaked, but Iris just shook her head, still unwilling to strike that final nail and make it real. "Tell me what happened..."

"Tracey—"

"No! Tell me!" Tracey demanded. "You're not doing this again! Tell me what happened! Tell me you know where he is! Tell me... tell me he's alright—"

Iris held her gaze. Her vision lingering on the hazel eyes burned her stomach with the searing fire of guilt and self-hatred, but she endured, knowing that looking away would make it magnitudes worse.

"I wish I could, Tracey..." Iris spoke, her voice completely devoid of color. "I wish nothing more."

Tracey's expression now looked like she had checked again, and the roll of spell-o-tape had turned out to be a dagger.

"Iris," she half-demanded, half-pleaded, her voice cracking under the weight of dread. She grabbed Iris by the shirt, pulling her close, her hazel eyes searching desperately for any scrap of hope, any hint of a lie that could save her from the truth that was battering down the walls of her sanity. "Tell me what happened!"

"Basilisk venom," Iris spat, her voice dripping with loathing—loathing at the world, at herself, at the truth that she wished she could erase. "He was already dying, Tracey. And with his last breath… he saved my life."

Iris could all but feel the dagger she was plunging into her best friend's heart, but her self-hatred won out and she found herself twisting it.

"And if he hadn't saved me, he might have lived."

Tears soaked Iris' shirt, but they weren't her own. Frozen in place, she didn't dare to even try and soothe her best friend. Iris didn't deserve the comfort that she herself would leech from the contact.

"It should have been me," she whispered. "It was my fault. I was the heir; I was the one attacking people."

She didn't know why she was confessing this, why she was tearing apart their friendship with the truth. It wouldn't bring Harry back, and it would only make Dumbledore more suspicious. But in that moment, Iris needed Tracey to hate her. She deserved it.

"W-what?" Tracey's eyes were wide with shock, her mind struggling to process the confession.

"All the things I asked you about," Iris said, the words just spilling forth. "Someone entering your life, trying to get you to open your emotions to them, and losing track of time around the attacks... All of those things were happening to me. You remember Myrtle? And the diary I was apparently carrying everywhere?"

"You... you..." Tracey was a whirlwind of emotions, none of which Iris could decipher.

"I kept asking her for more. More knowledge, more power, all in order to protect Harry," Iris chuckled darkly. "And it worked. I grew stronger, and I kept coming back. I gained so much knowledge that in the end, he died from it."

"But he couldn't even properly hate me for it," Iris whispered, clutching the bedsheets so tightly that her hands were turning blue.

"Instead, he sacrificed himself for me. He paid the price for my mistakes, and he did so with a fucking smile on his face."

Tracey didn't respond; there were no words that could touch the depth of their shared grief. Instead, she broke down completely, her tears spilling onto Iris's shirt as her body shook with sobs.

Tracey had told her for years; she had warned her of this, had begged her to tell her things. Iris stared at her best friend desperately, drowning, longing. Longing for condemnation.

She knew this was all her fault, knew it was her reckless decisions that led to this tragedy. But she also knew she had to keep going, to push further down the dark path ahead, to willingly continue to make the same mistakes, if she wanted to set things right.

That was why she craved Tracey's hatred. To continue this path after what happened felt so wrong, she wasn't sure she could do it if her friends wouldn't despise her for it. It was one thing to throw it all away, but it was another to have her friends do the same for her sake, when she really didn't deserve it. When they didn't deserve it. This was her burden to bear. And hers alone.

Tracey was still crying, desperately clinging to the front of her shirt, barely able to breathe between heart-wrenching sobs.

"I- I was... I thought..."

Iris had never heard Tracey sound this... helpless. Not after Malfoy's ritual, not even after her fallout with Greengrass. Yet she needed more. She needed her condemnation.

"Harry is dead, Tracey. He is dead, and it's my fault," Iris said coldly.

"No!" Tracey cried.

"I saw it."

"NO!" Tracey exclaimed. "You're not saying that! Not you! I know you; you wouldn't ever give up on him like that! There has to be something! Something you missed! Something we can still do! I— I wont..." Tracey was right in front of her face, her bloodshot eyes grasping onto hers in a desperate last-ditch effort.

And yet, Iris had to grab that last fleeting spark of hope, and feed it to the shadows. It was the only way. She had to lie. Lie to everyone, lie to the world, lie to her very best friend. All to fulfill her own ambition. In the end, she was worse than Lockhart.

Wrenching every ounce of control over her facial expression she possessed, Iris dove into her Mindlight and reached for that tiny, shivering morsel of empathy, and crushed it. Instead, she dredged up years and years of carefully putting on all sorts of faces and masks for her relatives, her classmates, her teachers, and occasionally Harry.

"There is no magic powerful enough to truly bring back the dead, Tracey," she said.

Dumbledore's words thrown back in her best friend's face.

For all the time she had known Tracey, the girl had worn her heart on her sleeve. In that regard she was somewhat similar to Iris, at least on the surface. But Tracey had been like this through and through. Although sometimes morally flexible, and occasionally even cunning, at her core she was a good person. Just a cheerful girl, always seeing the bright side of life. She had had her childhood friend torn from her, and had been joking and learning together with Iris not even an hour later with a smile on her face. She had endured isolation and mockery, becoming an outcast for her sake. And yet, at the end of the day, she had been smiling.

And yes, even right now, Tracey was smiling. Or at least, Iris assumed that's what it was supposed to be. A visage as if someone who had never known anything other than despair had read in a book what a smile was supposed to look like.

A shaky hand reached out and closed around her own. And Iris understood. Tracey wasn't smiling. Usually, she would smile, whether genuine, or to hide what was going on inside her. But right now, she was trying to smile, just for Iris' sake. Trying, and horribly failing.

"Iris..." the girl croaked, looking up from their hands.

Iris couldn't watch this. She wanted to look away, to turn and run, to call the shadows and sink into the ground on the spot.

"No matter what... you know I'll... That I'll... be there for you, right?" Tracey said, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself.

Iris' hand stayed loosely clasped within Tracey's own. She wouldn't dare return the gesture. Could she actually do anything right? Tracey was supposed to hate her. But Iris hadn't even managed to do that correctly.

Iris let out a deep breath. No matter how much she craved it, she needed to rationalize. Keeping her friendships would prove beneficial to her plan. She had been over this. No matter how much she deserved to be hated, Harry came first.

"Right..." Iris said.

Somehow, actually accepting her friend's consolation made it feel even worse.

"Thanks, Tracey."

~V~

Alright. So far, so good. The book hadn't gone into specifics of how to set this part up, but she was pretty sure she had managed to piece something together from the descriptions of other past applications from other books.

This was the worst kind of magic, in her humble opinion. There were absolutely no rules to this. Books were useless. Logic was meaningless. It was an abomination; a slap in the face of everything she believed in. But it was still her best and only shot.

As far as she understood, the intent would be solely guided by the current perception that people would have of the symbols she used. And that would obviously change over time. Which made it basically impossible to provide a consistent step-by-step instruction in a book like with Potions.

There was no correct way to do it, and this irked Hermione to no end. Sure, there were wrong ways, and even worse ways to do it. The list of possible mistakes one could make was basically half of the entire book. But it was one thing to just... try to avoid mistakes, but then she still had no idea where to even start without a proper guide. Or at least she hadn't, when she had started looking into this. Her original plan for the summer had been to keep pestering Professor McGonagall on her ridiculous arbitrary restriction, but the events at the end of the school year had thoroughly thrown those plans out of the window.

First, of course, she had tried a variation of the Point-Me Charm. That had quickly resulted in a terrifying letter from the Ministry Office for the Misuse of Underage Magic, which she still had nightmares about to this day. Not that the spell had worked, anyway. But despite every fiber of her being protesting the idea of trying something else, and possibly being expelled for it, Hermione hadn't been deterred. Harry needed her help.

So she had turned to the only principle of science that she could apply to a problem like this.

Trial and Error.

Her first attempt had been a close call. She had set up a small ritual to try and find her mother to start with. Just as she had set up everything and had been about to start the ritual—even if she had had no idea how to actually do that, her new cat Crookshanks had burst into the room and nicked the map she had been using as a focus. She didn't even want to imagine what would have happened if he had done that when the ritual was already active.

So for her second attempt, Hermione had locked him outside the room. Then she had spent an embarrassingly long time trying to start the ritual, only to at some point realize that she had no idea how to actually... do that. The books didn't say. It was one thing to put a bunch of symbols together in a certain place, but the books weren't quite clear how to actually make that... well... become a ritual.

She had awkwardly stared at the map, the hand-made Wanted poster, and even tried to say several phrases. Even trying to place her wand to it did nothing. Only in the end, she had accidentally figured it out, after she had given up, removed the Wanted poster, and let Crookshanks back inside. Or rather, tried to. Instead, she couldn't find him. And in her desperation, she had grabbed one of the combs she had used to try and tame his unruly hair, and placed it on the map, while begging the Magic to help her find her new friend.

And without a second's hesitation, the regular Muggle-printed map had zoomed in, and a small symbol of a brown cat had appeared on the crossroads two streets down. Her symbolization had been by far worse as it had been with her mother before, but the core ingredient had been missing back then. Intent. She had asked Magic for help. Which seemed distinctly different than making her own magic do certain things.

Hermione had been angry at the books for not explaining it like that, but the more she had thought about it, the more she had to grudgingly admit that she would have no idea how to describe something like this, either. You just had to... do it.

So next, she had tried with her mother again, which had also worked. Somehow, this seemed almost too easy. If it were that easy, why wasn't everyone doing it? And why was it banned?

But, at least, the Ministry didn't seem to be able to detect her attempts at free ritual so far. She hadn't received any further owls bearing any more sternly worded letters, much to her relief.

Hermione wasn't sure about this.

The one part that she was dreading the most hadn't been relevant so far. The sacrifice. The one thing all the books had been clear about. You needed to sacrifice something you valued similarly to what you were trying to achieve. The more inadequate the sacrifice, the more likely it was to fail. Whatever that meant. Failing because a sacrifice was inadequate would result in the ritual either partially not working, or not working at all. It wasn't like there was some sort of punishment to it, but if there was one thing that all the books had been clear about, it was the fact that repeatedly trying with inadequate sacrifices would just yield worse and worse results.

But what on earth could she sacrifice to equal something as invaluable as Harry's location? It wasn't just his location, she wanted Harry back. He was her best friend in the world, well, maybe along with—

Oh.

But how would that... how could she sacrifice a friendship? Write a letter with all the things she had always wanted to say to him? But even that would probably just get him to nag her back, but not break their friendship... make up some insane excuse or a lie to break it off on purpose? But if there was one thing she read over and over, it was that trying to cheat a ritual sacrifice was a bad, bad idea. So it couldn't be anything she could just reverse after the fact.

God. What was she even thinking? No. There had to be another way. All the things that came to mind to actually achieve that... those were things she could never do. If she did that, she would never be able to look herself in the mirror, much less face Harry ever again. There had to be something... Something else...

A sharp knock at her door caused Hermione to jolt out of her thoughts. One second later, a cold shiver ran down her spine.

There was nobody at home. And she hadn't heard the downstairs door either.

There was another knock. For a moment, Hermione imagined dust crumbling off the walls from the sound, like in a horror movie. Holding her breath, she scrambled for her desk, ruffled through her bag, and fished out her wand, and aimed it at the door—

The doorknob glowed yellow for a moment, then the key on the inside of her door started turning by itself, until the door clicked open.

"Well, here I am."

Hermione gasped, as she recognized Harry's sister standing in her doorway. "Iris?" she exclaimed. "I almost cursed you! You scared me half to death! How did you get in?"

"Through the door?" Iris replied sheepishly, earning a glare from Hermione.

"No, I meant— Forget it. You received my letter, then?" Hermione retorted.

She tried to gather herself as the dark-red haired Slytherin girl curiously began to inspect her room. Iris' gaze trailed along the sprawled-out map on the ground, and the various Wanted posters of Harry and others in Hermione's best imitation of western movie pop-culture.

"Huh..." she said quietly, picking up one of the posters, and raising an eyebrow, probably at the last name. "Are those... did you already attempt—"

"Well, yes, of course," Hermione said matter-of-factly. "I wasn't just going to do it blind. And the books from the restricted section didn't exactly provide step-by-step instructions..."

"Hermione!" Iris snapped.

Hermione froze, caught in her intense gaze.

"You know how dangerous this is, right? You tried this on... on your mother?" Iris asked.

"I mean, yes... I guess... but I don't really— So what if I get hurt? Harry is missing! If anyone would understand, it should be you!" Hermione tried to justify herself.

Iris was just staring at her silently, then took a step closer, a strangelook on her face. "I wasn't talking about you," she said in a soft voice.

"I... I— what do you mean?"

"Just because you are the one doing the ritual does not mean you are the only one that can get hurt."

But, but she... She... Hermione's gaze drifted over from the map on the ground to the Wanted Poster of her mum clutched in Iris' hand.

Oh.

"But... I wasn't even doing anything that... I mean, none of this should be remotely..."

"You made a Wanted poster, Hermione," Iris said. "Even if this one says alive, less than half of all the people in the world can actually read English. You are running a good chance of the ritual interpreting this as dead or alive. And then it's a coin-toss."

Hermione's breath caught in her throat, staring down at the Wanted poster like a deer caught in the headlights. Merlin. What the hell had she done? Was she... was mum alright? The first time hadn't done anything, but...

"Also, all of these letters have different meanings in different languages. This is the whole reason why you don't use written words as symbols in rituals," Iris said.

She had been so stupid. Hermione felt like Professor McGonagall had just handed her back her final exam with a big red letter T scrawled all over it.

"Do you want to know just how badly things can go wrong with symbolization?" Iris asked quietly.

Hermione hesitantly met her gaze, curious despite herself.

"Malfoy," Iris said.

"Malfoy?" Hermione echoed, just as quietly.

"He wanted to do a ritual for good luck. He was forced into a duel with an upper-year Slytherin because he tried to help me. And so he picked out a ritual book from the nineteen-twentys, looked up the main recommended symbol for luck from that time, and did a ritual with it."

He did what? The... main recommended symbol for Luck from the early twentieth century? Many things came to mind, all of which were more general symbols and still in use to day... Four-leaf-clovers, chimney-sweeps... And... oh.

But there was no way he had actually tried to use a Swastika, right?

"W-what happened?" Hermione whispered.

Iris closed her eyes, and said nothing for a while. Finally, she took a breath and spoke up.

"Almost blew up half the castle. I drew the Peace Symbol across it to prevent the War aspect from going all World War Two on us. But apparently, it did nothing about the lingering hatred."

Hermione's eyes went wide. "You mean... he wasn't always like... this?"

Iris sighed, and didn't reply for a while. Finally, she spoke up, "I don't know. He might have always been like this, and I was just too naive to see it. Or the ritual might have done something. Maybe it twisted him into this, maybe it just brought out who he had been all along. I don't know. But whatever the case, any effects of a ritual are always permanent."

Hermione had no idea what to say to that.

Just the thought of accidentally doing something like this to her own mother... Ron had been right. She really was a Nightmare.

"Do... you have any ideas how to fix it, then? I mean... it did kind of work, right? So there should be a—"

"No," Iris cut her off.

Hermione flustered. "I know it's dangerous! But you're here now, I know you've got an idea, you always do! If we could just—"

"No," Iris repeated.

Hermione paused, then grew indignant. "What do you mean, no? It should be possible, right? I did figure out how to make a ritual to find my mother at work, as well as Crookshanks, even if it... Well, anyway. If we can figure out a better symbol, then—"

"The problem isn't the symbol."

That caused Hermione to frown. "What?"

"The issue isn't crafting the right ritual to find a person," Iris began, slowly approaching her with a strange expression. Hermione had always been horrible with expressions.

"Then what?" she asked, confused.

"The issue... is that even something like a ritual cannot look for a person that cannot be found."

Hermione's breath caught. Then she hesitantly asked, "Do you mean... like a spell, trying to prevent someone from finding him?"

Iris stared back for what felt like minutes, before she finally replied, "No, I don't."

No. She didn't. Someone who could not be found by magic, but not because magic was involved. There was enough Ravenclaw within her to unravel that riddle in an instant, but she still spent an agonizing minute looking for another solution, anything else, something that would explain this. It had to be a trick question, right?

Right?

The teachers had said he had gone missing, so she had just assumed...

"But... Professor McGonagall said..."

Yet Iris just shook her head. Just like that.

"I'm sorry."

She... she was...

Harry was...

Hermione had never been one for tears. She had quickly learned to bury such emotions in primary school. She wasn't sure if there had been any time she had cried ever since she was eight. Even when Ron had called her... that. She had just gone and locked herself in her room, and stared down at a book until she had gotten her thoughts in order.

Harry... was...

Hermione wasn't sure if she could even make it that far. One glance drifted longingly across her room towards her bookshelf. Her one escape from reality.

But Harry's sister was still standing across from her, expression mostly blank, not that she could read it anyway.

No. The only time she had been able to let go in years was when Harry had pulled her out of that nightmare, right after he had rescued her from that hellscape of shadows his sister had trapped her in. She had wandered in that dark place for hours, losing herself, until Harry had brought her back. And right now, she felt like she was back there.

But this time, there was no Harry to save her.

~V~

Iris was well and thoroughly drained. She hadn't been able to either just write a letter or not tell some of her friends when she had told the others. So she had gritted her teeth, forced the intrusive thoughts back and made the rounds.

None of her visits had gone any better than the first two.

Susan had reacted much like Tracey, except Iris wasn't all that close with her in the first place, so it had been an agonizing thirty minutes of Iris awkwardly standing there while Susan was losing it in the corner by herself.

Luna had gone very quiet and then vanished, until at some point her father had shown up to awkwardly see her back outside.

Neville had been the hardest. There had been a stark contrast between the things he said, and what his expression betrayed. Apparently, they had been even closer friends than she had thought.

Ron... well, Iris wasn't sure. At first it had seemed like he had taken it about as well as one could expect in that situation. There had been no shouting, no crying, just some awkward silence, and talking about what had happened. Most of the time he had been talking about all the things they did together, the fun they had playing chess, and how Ron was going to join the Quidditch team once Harry inevitably became captain. Iris thought they had left things on good terms after that. He had stopped sending her cauldron cakes, though.

Iris hadn't bothered to go visit Theo. So far, she hadn't even replied to his letter. She'd confront him on the train and hear him out, but until then, he could stew a little longer.

So, yeah. All things considered, Iris was exhausted. On a happier note, she still hadn't heard anything from Sirius. And on a less cheerful one, neither from Lupin. Iris wasn't sure if she wanted to send a letter to him to try and find out; afraid that he wouldn't write back.

The only thing she could bring herself to do was to read. And after having finally read through the last of the interesting books she had liberated from Flourish and Blotts, she figured it was finally time to check out the loot she had brought from Germany.

Iris carefully peeled open the old black leather book with the inscription Der Todeshändler.

On the inside of the cover, there was a large red seal proclaiming International Confederation of Wizards — Prohibited Text — Last Copy

How had she missed that the first time she had opened it? She guessed that would explain the price. And also, now she was getting really curious about its contents. She really hoped it wasn't just about weapons dealers. Iris turned the first page.

And yep. German.

Iris carefully fired up her Mindlight and began to parse through the words. This was easier said than done. She had only imprinted the knowledge of how to speak the language, but not read it. Unlike when speaking it, she couldn't simply understand it. Instead she found that she had to parse through the words, translate them to English, and only then begin to comprehend what was being said.

But slowly, she settled into a rhythm, where part of her mind would just work on translating the thing, and then comprehend it after the fact. It went a lot slower than reading anything in English, and a lot of the words she didn't understand—especially since they seemed to be written in a much older and fancier version of German—not to mention the large and overly stylized font—but slowly, she was making progress.

Settling into the gathered pillows on her bed, Iris flipped the page and began to dive into the foreword.

~V~

Much like many of our stories, this work is based on a tale told to us by our grandfather. I cannot begin to imagine where and how he gets his ideas. Friedrich was a great father, and an even better grandfather. Our father always had nothing but praise for him. All of his stories were so very strange, so very... for the lack of a better term, magical. He had lived a very long life, so long that in the end, we joked to the townspeople that he was in fact Friedrich Junior.

Anyway, I digress. As he aged, he grew increasingly slanted of the mind. He kept insisting his stories were true, that they were all a part of this world just as much as we were, that we just didn't remember anymore. That the world had made everyone forget. That there actually was such a thing as Magic.

Towards his end, his stories grew increasingly disturbing. But diligent writers that we were, we kept cataloging. Some of his stories he had told for such a long time to the people in the church that they were now considered folktales, and the people still wanted to hear them.

But this story is different. It was one of his very last stories, when the fang of time had already buried deep within his withering psyche. He kept insisting that it needed to be heard, that it was a cautionary tale, a warning to the world. And he had done so until the very day he died. But it was so very different from all of his other stories, so very detailed and real, and yet so impossible and fantastical at the same time.

In the end, I could not bring myself to publish it along with our other works, so it will instead remain here, with the family, to be forgotten to all but the very people closest to his heart.

May you rest in peace, grandfather. And may your stories continue to be told forevermore.

Wilhelm