Chapter 8

The days and weeks following Hermione's appearance and departure had the surreal feel of a half-dream. It was almost as if the life he was living, the war he had been fighting for most of his adult life, was the aberration, and not the baffling appearance of this remarkable woman in reflective glass, and then, unexpectedly, through the glass, before disappearing as if she had never been at all.

But that was not the whole truth, and Severus had pledged to be honest with himself. Her arrival here had changed everything. Her very existence and the blinding awareness that his universe was only one of many, one of a multiplicity of possible worlds, had blown apart his conception of his role...in this universe or any other.

The idea that entire worlds existed parallel to his own, worlds in which different choices had been made, led him to rethink the implications of his own choices. It had been so long since Severus had allowed himself to contemplate what might have been had he made different decisions all those years ago. It was almost too much to bear...wondering 'what might have been.'

Worst of all was that he had no one in whom he could confide. No one in all the world...not in this one at least...who could be trusted with his most secret longing.

Seven days with Hermione, and now he knew loneliness.

Seven days with the woman who was and was not Hermione Granger, and the bedrock of the assumptions on which he had staked his mission had been shaken.

How much must he sacrifice for the greater good?

It took him weeks to go back. He supposed that the tangible reminder of her disappearance was not something he wished to revisit. Still, here was the one place where he could speak freely of what he knew, of what he felt.

"Master Slytherin?"

The Great Hall was dark, save for the flame of the candle in Severus's hand. Light reflected off the stained glass and spilled onto the floor where he stood.

The image of Salazar Slytherin opened its eyes and smiled.

"We've been waiting for you, Severus. Welcome back."

"Hermione."

Professor Evans was exasperated. Again.

"Yes, Professor?"

"Are you coming to Professor Sinistra's engagement lunch?"

"I'm sorry, Professor. I've been..."

"Yes, I see," Evans interrupted, gesturing to the table full of books. "You've been holed up in the library even more than you've been in the lab. Researching I don't know what." The Potions mistress sat down next to Hermione at the table piled with books she'd already discarded as useless.

For the first time ever, the Hogwarts library had failed her. Even more disturbingly, so had the headmistress.

Hermione closed the book in front of her on the table and rubbed her eyes.

The headmistress had been sympathetic to Hermione's story, even believed it. But she had also been adamant that Hermione put the experience behind her and move on.

"I believe you, Hermione. But even if what you say is true," Headmistress McGonagall had told her that night, putting up a hand to forestall Hermione's protests, "Even if what you say is true, you mustn't intervene. If the Founders created parallel universes, then they are meant to remain so without interference from any of us."

"But how do you know that?" Hermione had maintained. "If that were true, wouldn't it be impossible to cross from one world to another?"

But none of her arguments had swayed the headmistress. So while Hermione had finally stopped fighting, she had refused to forget. If only she had access to that window, she could talk to the Founders, herself. But McGonagall had seen Hermione eyeing the stained glass portraits and, without a word, blocked her Floo and restricted password access to her office to more senior staff. Time after time, she'd made a point of meeting Hermione outside her office, until finally, Hermione had installed herself in the library, growing less and less hopeful with each passing day that she would find the information she needed.

Each day, though, Hermione watched for Severus, searching for his reflection in every piece of glass, in every pool of water. Sometimes, she thought she saw a flash of his sharp jaw line or the sweep of his hair as he turned his head, but before she could be sure, it would fade away.

"Hermione?"

"Sorry," she muttered again, looking at her mentor.

Professor Evans sighed and picked up one of the more useless books.

Tremores Orbis Terrarum? Hermione, are you going to tell me what this is about?"

Hermione looked down at the open page in front of her, the words blurry. What could it hurt? She'd exhausted every other option available to her.

"Do you remember the night of the Welcoming Feast?" she asked softly.

"I do."

"We tested the Fatum Revelio potion, but it didn't work."

"Right."

"But I saw something. Someone reflected in my goblet that night. Remember? I told you."

Professor Evans nodded and Hermione looked at her, hoping she was making the right decision, telling her the truth.

"He's real."

"Real? But you said he was standing at the podium in the Great Hall, addressing the students."

"He was," she said. "I still don't understand why, but it wasn't the potion that allowed me to see him. There's something else going on. Something big. What I saw was real, but I don't know why I'm the one who saw it; well, he saw it, too. Saw me, I mean." She stopped.

"No, go on."

It had been hard enough explaining to the headmistress where she'd been, what she'd seen. She'd been so careful when talking about Severus, as if revealing his secrets here, even in a world where he never existed, still might put him at risk.

"You'll think I'm mad," Hermione said. "It's too hard to explain. Too incredible."

"Try me," said Evans.

But there was another reason Hermione hesitated to tell Professor Evans what she'd learned. She glanced at Severus's copy of Hogwarts: A History.

Because, really, how do you tell your teacher, your mentor, your friend, that in another world, just beyond the glass, she is martyred? Dead. Murdered by a megalomaniac in defence of her baby, his prophesied vanquisher: The Boy Who Lived.

Lily Evans sat, just staring at the book lying open in front of her. She hadn't spoken once since her first gasp of surprise, and her haunted expression made Hermione's heart ache.

The child, Harry Potter, didn't exist here, not in this universe. Here, he had never even been born. James Potter had been an old school friend, apparently long forgotten.

But Hermione remembered how chilling it felt to learn that there was another Hermione, identical to her and yet entirely different, out there...in this other world...fighting for her life in a war where wizards would happily kill her based on her parentage.

"She was very brave. I mean, I... Or... I don't know." Professor Evans paused and licked her lips.

"She," Hermione said. "She's not you."

"No."

She ran her fingertips over the words that described her alter-ego's martyrdom and her son's importance to the wizards in that world.

"It's odd. I know."

"Do you?"

"There was another Hermione Granger there, too," she said.

"At Hogwarts?"

Hermione shook her head. "Not anymore." She hesitated. "She was good friends with Harry Potter. Is good friends, I mean. She and Harry and Ron Weasley, of all people, were on the run from The Dark Lord. Voldemort."

"On the run," she echoed. "I can't even imagine."

"I know," Hermione said. "But you can feel it in the air there. The tension. Like the whole world could crumble at any moment."

They sat together, the silence almost reverent. Professor Evans imagining. Hermione, remembering.

"Where did you find the book?"

"Severus gave it to me." In a manner of speaking. He had given it to her. She'd just neglected to give it back.

"Is that the wizard who pulled you through the glass?"

"It is." Hermione paused, considering. "He was your best friend as a child. There, in his world." She took a deep breath. "And he's the one who divulged the prophecy to The Dark Lord, before he realised it referred to you...to her, to her son."

Lily Evans eyes grew wide, alarmed.

"He was my friend? Her friend, I mean? And then he..."

Hermione nodded.

"I think he loved her," she whispered, finally voicing the fear that had niggled at her for weeks. "The Lily Evans in his world."

Her professor looked shocked.

"Does he still?" Evans asked.

Hermione flinched. "I don't know. Maybe. He has spent most of his adult life trying to repair the damage done because of his mistakes," Hermione said softly. "I think he means to sacrifice himself in this war, and I can't let him."

Lily took a deep breath and Hermione could see her trying to piece it all together. This wizard, her friend and unintentional betrayer, trying to fix what he'd he had a hand in breaking...not here, but in another world.

"He's trying to make amends; he wants to come back."

"Yes, but he's all by himself," said Hermione. "I can't leave him there alone." She would understand this, Hermione thought, hoped.

"So that's why you've been so preoccupied."

"Yes."

"Have you found any way to find him, then, to get back?"

Hermione shook her head and closed another useless book that lay open on the table.

"Nothing other than using the same portal as the first time. But I can't get back into the headmistress's office. She doesn't want me talking to the Founder's portraits. She wants me to forget about it and move on."

Lily Evans laughed. "She's met you, hasn't she?"

Hermione snorted. "Yes, but she expects me to put the concerns of the collective first, of course. Not my own desires or even what I think best."

Wouldn't her mentor expect the same? But who decided what was for the best? How did they decide such things in Severus's universe?

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?"

"Where were you just now?" she asked, waving a hand in front of Hermione's face.

"Just thinking about the differences between here and..." she gestured towards the book she'd taken from Severus's rooms. "...his world. Such different expectations. Not just superficially."

"It's so strange that they have headmasters and wizards teaching. I wonder how that came about."

"There are lots of things that are different," Hermione said. "More than I could learn while I was there. That's why I brought this back with me." She gestured to the book. "Severus wanted me to investigate the parallel worlds, to find out more about them. How many there are. How they differ." She paused. "I think he was just trying to distract me, though."

"Distract you? From what?"

"From dwelling on the fact that I didn't want to come back here at all."

Salazar Slytherin, as it happened, was rather talkative for a wizard who had been asleep in a frame of glass for nearly a thousand years..

"He likes you," said Gryffindor one night during the Easter holidays. The castle was nearly empty, and the three wizards had indulged in a heated debate regarding the efficacy of incantations in potions brewing, culminating in Slytherin heading off to the stained glass windows in the library in search of a reference. "He's not this engaged with just anyone."

Severus fidgeted. He'd taken to visiting the glass portraits nearly every night, long past curfew, carving out a few precious minutes from days and night stretched thin and filled with horrors. A distraction spell on the doors to the Great Hall, the Bloody Baron patrolling outside as a translucent sentinel, and he'd managed to steal a moment of peace each evening where he could let down his guard. It was worth more to him than sleep and left him far less restless.

"I'm grateful," he answered at last. "I like him, too. And admire him a great deal, of course," he added.

"Telling tales out of school again, Godric," sniffed Slytherin, sliding an enormous reference book under Gryffindor's nose. "Never mind about that. I'm right. See, it's right there. I told you."

Gryffindor smiled, and Severus raised his eyebrows. Gryffindor's grin widened and he winked.

Slytherin huffed in his direction but didn't look terribly put out, really.

"Any news, Severus?" asked Helga Hufflepuff, with an indulgent smile at the men.

He turned to the witch sitting at the edge of the window pane, book closed on her lap. She must have already heard, snippets of conversation whispered at the head table drifting to her sharp ears. Still, she had waited to ask, giving him this oasis of time and space outside the unremitting stress and uncertainty that was his life. One day, he would have to show her his gratitude. Somehow. Tonight, though, at least he could answer her questions. Tell her the truth.

"Potter and his friends were caught by Snatchers and brought to Malfoy Manor last night," Severus said, and they gasped. "They escaped not long after with three other prisoners, but not before Bellatrix called the Dark Lord." He clenched his jaw and let out a shuddering breath. "Stupid cow."

He didn't need to mention the spectacular tantrum their escape had triggered. Even worse, the Dark Lord was now on his way to Hogwarts for the first time since... before, and Severus hoped the hours of practice reinforcing his Occlumency shields would keep the Dark wizard from detecting the changes Hermione had wrought in him.

"How did they find them?" Gryffindor asked, pulling him out of his thoughts. "The Snatchers."

"According to the wolf, one of them said the Dark Lord's name. The Taboo got them."

They all flinched.

"They really got away?" asked Slytherin.

"They did," confirmed Severus.

The five of them...four wrought of glass and magic, and one of flesh, blood and tears...sat. Silent. Each imagining what might have happened had the wizarding world's only hope (in this world, at least) not escaped the Death Eaters' clutches. He was grateful, so grateful, that his own Hermione was safe. Away from here, even though it meant being away from him.

Severus sat back in the chair he'd pulled up close to the windows. Every night as he talked with the Founders, he longed to ask, to find out if they had seen her, if they knew. Every night, he'd resisted, as if self-control in this matter might allow him to protect her, if not forget her. Every night, he wondered if she had already forgotten him in the aftermath of the return to her world.

But now, the war was escalating. Potter was getting more reckless, perhaps a sign he was getting closer to whatever job he was meant to finish.

He had to know.

"Have you seen her?" he murmured without preamble. "Is she all right?"

Hufflepuff gave him a gentle smile. "I don't believe she's been back to the window since we escorted her through the portal, Severus."

"Surprising, really," said Gryffindor. "From what you told us about her, I'd have expected her to be back with a thousand questions."

"It is odd, isn't it?" said Severus, alarmed. "Has she returned to the headmistress's office? That's where the windows are in her world."

The four Founders looked at one another and then again at Severus.

"Actually, now that you mention it, I don't believe she has," said Ravenclaw.

He hadn't known her very long, but it had been long enough to know this was not like Hermione. She was determined. She wouldn't just give up.

"Have you seen her reflection, Severus?" asked Hufflepuff. "The way you did before she came through the portal?"

Of course he had been looking. Constantly.

"Only a handful of times," he said. "And then, just flashes. I can't explain why it's been so fragmented when before..."

Before he knew her, she'd seemed close enough to touch. But now, now that he would give anything to see her face, he saw only glimpses of her smile or of her hair bouncing as she walked away. Always away.

But the Dark Lord would be at the castle any moment. Severus couldn't afford to be distracted, not now. He nodded at the Founders as he gathered his thoughts and readied himself.

It's time, Severus.

objects we bring to the Hallowing lie before us. They are meant to be absorbed into the fibre and structure of the castle. They are meant to become alive, like the stone and wood and air and water we weave with our magic.

I feel it happening though I can do nothing to stop it. It has happened, it will happen, it is happening now, even as we sanctify the castle with our intentions and with our power.

Our voices echo in the Great Hall [in the headteacher's office, in the library, in the entry hall, in the highest tower of the castle where one day, a witch will tell true prophecy for few to hear] and I hear Rowena cry out. The tiara is ripped from her. Not here, but in another world. And Godric, oh, Godric.

"No!" he shouts as his wand becomes the weapon he had never intended it to be. Salazar reaches for him, but he is doubled over, clutching the ring...the stone...in both hands.

"Not like that," Salazar whispers. "Please."

I can feel them, each of the possibilities. The probabilities. The ways in which our intentions are changed, subverted, supported, enhanced. I feel my cloak slip through my fingers. [It rips, it doesn't rip, it is cared for lovingly, it is put to nefarious use...] and the tears stream down my cheeks.

I understand now. We send our magic out into the world, and it is no longer ours.

"It belongs to all of them now," I say, even though I don't fully believe it yet. We have to leave it to them. Trust them to fix it when it goes awry.

We will wait a long time.

She dreamed of him.

Even though she'd had no more than a glimpse of Severus for months, she found him in her sleep. Saw the contours of his face, grown gaunt, heard his voice, words of baritone velvet skimming over her. Even, if she concentrated, could taste the sharp salt of his skin on her tongue.

Each morning, waking was painful. Her feelings for him didn't abate, and she wondered what it was about this man, this wizard, that evoked both need and joy in her like no other had done.

"Severus," she whispered as she walked along the perimeter of the lake one spring morning, "where are you?"

She had done this circuit nearly every day since the weather had begun to warm, twice a day during the Easter holidays while the castle had been nearly empty. Each time, she returned to the castle, dejected. Maybe it was the way the sun reflected on the surface of the brilliant, blue water, or perhaps today, her cries reached receptive ears. She would never know why, but this time, when she looked out on to the surface of the lake, hoping, longing to find him there, she did.

He was standing by the window in his bedroom, the same one she had sat beneath, reading. His face was pale and drawn as if he hadn't slept well in ages, and his eyes were unbearably sad. But he was alive, and if he was standing there looking worried, it must be that the war had not yet come to its climax.

Severus. Had he been looking for her all this time, as she had, him?

She knelt by the water and leaned over, hoping to get closer. Just a little bit closer. Right then, he looked up and his eyes widened.

He sees me; he can see me. She laughed out loud.

"Severus," she whispered.

He pressed his hand against the window and his lips formed the shape of her name.

"Severus. I'm coming to find you."

His lips curled into the half-smile she loved and he leaned his head forward until his forehead touched the glass.

She dipped her fingers into the water, reaching for him, but the ripples carried him away.

The school year was drawing to a close. Students were huddled together in the Great Hall and in their common rooms studying, and the staff was enjoying a brief respite before the storm of final exams.

"Miss Granger," called the headmistress, "may I speak with you in my office for a moment?"

Hermione's heart began to pound. It had been months since McGonagall had allowed her in the office.

The circular room hadn't changed in the months since she'd last been there. Even the figures in the stained glass windows still stood just as she'd left them, immobile in their frames of pigment and glass. Hermione's eyes strayed there over and over again, wondering what it would take to enliven them.

"How is your apprenticeship research progressing, Miss Granger?" the headmistress asked as she motioned to a chair by the hearth and sat down on the chair opposite.

Surprised, Hermione stumbled. "I, erm. I'm making slow progress. It's more difficult than we anticipated to draw something so meaningful through a reflective surface."

"Yes, I would imagine it would be," she said. But her sharp-eyed glance was kind, and Hermione was confused.

"I've not stopped working on it," she said. "I know that there is something important to be found there and I won't stop until I find it." Until she said the words, she didn't know they would sound so fierce.

But McGonagall looked pleased. "I am counting on that, Miss Granger."

"You are?"

The headmistress smiled. "I am." She looked towards the windows and furrowed her brow. "You see, I couldn't be sure. Not at first." She looked Hermione in the eye. "You are not the only one who takes time to do her research, you know." The headmistress smiled. "The legends describe it, but it's all so vague."

Hermione held back from saying that the headmistress was being rather vague herself and only echoed her. "Legends?"

McGonagall reached over to open a large book that sat on the table between them. An ancient copy of Hogwarts: A History.

"The contemporary copies do not contain the complete text of the legend. It was thought to be too... inflammatory, perhaps." She flicked through the pages until she arrived at the text she was looking for. "But all headmistresses are informed at the time that we take the position."

"Informed of what?" asked Hermione.

"Informed that we are not the only universe that exists. Informed that Helga Hufflepuff split the world into seven parts at the time of Hogwarts' founding." She leaned forward, her hands resting on the ancient parchment pages. "Informed that once in every century, there is the possibility of two across the worlds who might see, who might begin the process of linking the worlds together again."

Hermione could barely breathe. The headmistress knew? Yet kept her from going back? She bit back an unfamiliar surge of anger.

"I saw," she said tightly.

"You did," agreed McGonagall. "Please understand, it has always been thought that only headmistresses and, if their universe contains them, headmasters, have this capability. Perhaps scholars believed that only leaders of the school would possess characteristics similar enough to the Founders to permit such a magical ability to emerge."

"I don't understand." Why could she see him? Why could she pass through?

"Neither did I, Miss Granger, to my profound regret. I only suspected, and then when you returned after disappearing through the glass, I wanted only to protect you."

Of course. The mandate to protect trumps all.

"Why are you telling me this?"

The headmistress smiled. "Because I have come to realise that it is not for me to decide. If you and this wizard can see one another from across the worlds, it is not for me to prevent you from finding one another and doing...whatever it is you're meant to do."

"Why now?" It had been months. Months of agony, of waiting, of wondering where he was and if he was safe.

McGonagall flushed. "I should never have blocked your access, and for that I am sorry," she said. "Things are shifting here, Miss Granger...Hermione," she said. "Since you crossed over, the Ministry has begun to reconsider some of its policies. It has all been rather overwhelming."

"I'd noticed," Hermione said. Barely noticed, through the haze of research and worry about Severus. There had been more Ministry visits, often followed by small changes in curriculum or protocol that hadn't meant much on their own, but together felt far more momentous. And then there was the biggest change of all, right here at Hogwarts.

"I was especially surprised to hear of Professor Sinistra's engagement. I don't think I've ever heard of a staff member marrying." She paused. "I heard that she petitioned to remain with the partner she'd chosen despite the poor astrological predictions for such a marriage."

"Precisely," agreed the headmistress. "She did. The world is changing. This world is changing.. We are reconsidering the structures that we have always taken as given. I can only imagine what is happening elsewhere." She looked over at the stained glass windows, the figures inside still frozen. "But it would seem that you are the only one capable of finding out why, and, perhaps, helping it to unfold in the most beneficial ways."

Hermione's eyes filled with tears.

The headmistress's eyes flicked to the windows and then back to Hermione. "Do what you must. I trust your judgment."

Hermione could only nod, speechless. "Thank you," she whispered finally, when she could find her breath. "Thank you."

"I will leave you now. I have a meeting at the Ministry and mustn't be late." She stood and threw a handful of Floo powder into the flames. "Ministry!" she called out, and disappeared in a flash of green.

The office was flooded with sunlight, the stained glass windows throwing shafts of colour along the floor and against the walls. Hermione wasted no time approaching the Founders' windows behind the enormous desk.

From all appearances, nobody had touched the glass since that night months ago when she had wiped away some of the dust that obscured it and fallen into another world.

"Why has nobody cleaned these windows?" she wondered out loud.

So she set about it herself. Bit by bit, pane by pane, she cleared away the grime of centuries, the residue of decades of dust, revealing the vibrant beauty of the colours and the majesty of the witches and wizards contained there. It was meditative work, and Hermione lost herself in the flow of magic from her fingertips as she worked over the panes inch by inch. Finally, she pulled a chair close to the windowpane and sat.

The Founders stood before her in all their glory, each of them holding the Hallow they had crafted for the castle. She remembered what they'd told her in the portal, that the Hallows were for far more than protection; that she would need aspects of all four to find Severus again, to help him.

"Can you tell me what I need to do?" she whispered to the immobile portraits. "Please."

She reached out her hand again to the cloak wrought of glass and light and shivered at the cool surface. Slytherin had said that only the cloak had been meant for protection; the other Hallows were meant for different tasks. She let her hand drop to her lap.

Were her feelings towards Severus just protectiveness? The urge to rescue wounded or mistreated creatures ran strongly in her, but that was to be expected, wasn't it? Such sentiments were encouraged, taught in school and nurtured on every level.

We are responsible for each other.

No, it's more than that, she said to herself. She was drawn to him in a way she'd never before experienced, not even towards someone in pain. To his power, to his intensity, his persistence, and even to his isolation. In her world, she had never met anyone as passionate or as alone...who had to fulfil so massive a task with nobody beside him, nobody to support his efforts. Bravery and quiet persistence in the face of opposition were qualities she'd never before considered, but ones she found incredibly compelling.

She looked up at the wand, Godric Gryffindor's Elder Wand, and thought about the appeal of focused power and individual initiative...qualities that were most definitely discouraged here, in her universe.

What's best for the collective. The motto they lived by.

No one is greater than the sum of us all. Another.

It feels safe here, certainly, Hermione thought. But when she thought of the other Hermione, trying to free the elves because she was horrified at their enslavement, she couldn't help but smile. When she remembered about the other Hermione and her friends running from danger, living on their wits and their skills, pushing back against an oppressor, she felt a surge of pride for the woman she wasn't, but might have been. The woman she had actually become, under other circumstances.

Did she have the capacity to overcome what she might find this time beyond the portal?

Hermione looked up to see Salazar Slytherin's deep brown eyes open and looking right at her.

"Lovely afternoon, Miss Granger," he said sharply.

"Yes, sir. I mean, hello, sir." She stood up. "It's good to see you again, sir."

"Relax, Miss Granger," said Gryffindor. "Salazar is always a bit gruff when he first wakes up."

"Speak for yourself," snapped the other portrait.

"Boys," interrupted Ravenclaw. "If you don't mind." She raised her eyebrows and smiled at Hermione. "Now then. It's good to finally see you back. Severus has been asking after you, you know."

Her heart leapt.

"He has? Is he all right? I saw him in the lake this morning...his reflection...but I can't communicate with him, and I have been so afraid..."

"He's safe for now, Miss Granger. Hermione," said Hufflepuff in her soft, reassuring voice. "But the war in his universe is coming to an end soon. Very soon, in fact. Quite possibly in a matter of hours."

"Hours?" Hermione sat down again and took a deep breath. "What should I do? I don't know how to find him. How will I know if he needs help?"

Hufflepuff looked at Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor crossed his arms and sighed.

"It's time, don't you think?" said Hufflepuff.

"I think so," said Slytherin. "Godric?"

"Yes," he said. "This one should be able to handle it, I think."

"Handle what?" asked Hermione. "What is it time for?"

Helga Hufflepuff shifted the cloak from her lap and lifted the object that it concealed. In her hand was a mirror, the one Hermione thought she'd seen on the night she passed through the portal. It glistened, edged in gold, but made of multi-colour light.

"It's time for a living witch to be the keeper of the portal," she said.

"The keeper?" Hermione whispered.

Before she could formulate a question, the image of Helga Hufflepuff rose and reached her hand through the glass. The mirror shimmered...wrought of air and light and then, all at once, solid but no less vibrant...and Hermione stood.

"Take it," said Hufflepuff. "Guard it well."

Hermione reached out and took the mirror with both hands.

She was standing in the headmistress's office...

...in the Great Hall where she could feel the echo of Severus's presence still...

...in the library, where Slytherin stands with his back to the others...

...in the entrance hall where even larger hour glasses stand...

...in a castle that echoes from its emptiness...

...in a deserted hallway, high in the castle's highest tower...

...in the dungeons where the weak light hides the windows well.

The mirror groaned with the effort of seven worlds' loosening grasp, releasing it into her possession, into her care.

Hermione held it, lost in the swirling colour and the echoes of words spoken and not; lives saved and lost; love nurtured or left to die.

"What do I do?" She could barely breathe; the weight of it squeezed all the air from her lungs.

"Respect that his world is different from yours," said Ravenclaw.

"Honour the histories that make them so, Professor Granger," added Slytherin. "They are not always what they seem at first glance."

She nodded.

"Do not be afraid," said Gryffindor. "The knowledge will only strengthen you, and your courage will be a boon to your world."

A boon. Hermione shook her head. Such headstrong behaviour was certainly not encouraged here.

"Hermione," said Slytherin. "He is a good man. Never, ever forget that. He has a job to do and he must finish it."

"And then," said Hufflepuff. "Bring him back."