Chapter Three

"They've what?" Hermione screeched.

The goblin who had just delivered bad news to Hermione now stared at her from his perch at the long, gleaming marble desk at Gringotts. His face was inscrutable, but his long fingers had begun to pick the barbs from a white quill. "A manager will be here in a moment," he said in a low croak. "If the Miss could just lower her voice..."

"No, the Miss will not lower her sodding voice!" Hermione yelled. "Gringotts had no right to close my account and turn over my assets to anyone!" She turned for support to Draco, who had edged over to the adjoining queue in order to look as if he wasn't with her. "Did you hear what they did?"

"Everyone heard, Granger," he replied with asperity.

"They had no right to take my money, Draco. As a prisoner, my assets should have been frozen, not taken away! I know my rights! Except in instances where fair compensation for damages to persons or property is ordered by the court..."

"Okay, um, here's the manager," Draco interrupted. Several people had begun to edge nearer, either to lend support or listen more closely.

A second goblin joined them. "If the Miss would accompany me, we can discuss the matter confidentially." He gestured toward an office on the far side of the lobby, clearly anxious to limit the potential noise level.

"Listen, Granger," said Draco, "I'm sure you can handle this alone, but if you need me to come in and help, I will."

She patted his arm distractedly. "Thank you for the offer, Draco, but you go ahead and get your banking done here. I'll catch up with you when I'm finished."

Draco nodded with relief, and Hermione watched as he joined a group of friends. They were soon chatting away in the crowded lobby.

She followed the goblin down toward his office, but at the door she pressed a hand to her forehead. "I suddenly feel quite faint," she said to him, putting a quaver in her voice. "Your blatant flouting of domestic banking laws has upset me greatly. I need to go outside and get some air. But when I come back, I shall want a full accounting..."

"Certainly, Miss. Say no more." The manager gratefully bustled her over to a side door Hermione had never noticed before, and unlocked it with a touch of a long, claw-like fingernail. The door swung open, letting in the afternoon sun. After a hasty glance back, Hermione slipped out the door. She quickly made her way back to Diagon Alley and headed away from the bank without looking back.

"Hello, Madam, welcome to Borgin & Burkes. May I help you?"

Mr. Borgin was a thin, weasely oik with thinning grey hair and a voice that seemed to float into her ears from the nasal depths of his deviated septum.

She gave a disdainful sniff. "No, thank you. I'm browsing."

He tittered quietly, setting Hermione's teeth on edge. "Hmm, an aficionado, I see. It's very rare that someone visits us merely to 'browse.'" The oily tone changed, and took on a harder edge. "Most of my customers have a very exact idea of what they are looking for, Miss Granger."

Hermione shot him a look, then glanced about. They were alone in the shop. "Well, then, I'm looking for something to decorate my wall......a landscape, or a portrait, perhaps."

A languid hand gestured toward her left. "We have a fine selection of wall art in the next room."

Hermione gave him a smile so frosty, he faltered. "I'll just have a look, shall I?" she said, her tone marginally colder than her smile. "Won't be a sec."

The shopkeeper frowned in distaste as Hermione sauntered into the little anteroom. When Borgin was out of sight, she cast a Silencing charm and hurried over to a stack of dusty paintings propped against the far wall. She flipped through them, starting from the back.

"Please be here," she muttered. A portrait of an old witch with the most fascinating wart glanced up at her words.

"Looking for me, dearie?" she cackled.

Hermione immediately pushed the next painting back, covering the witch, who made a muffled sound of protest. Frolicking nymphs in an idyllic landscape waved and giggled at her from the next canvas, and a sleeping boy with what looked like a cluster of broccoli growing out of his ear came after that. At last, she found the one she was seeking.

"Well, now, here's a familiar face," drawled the figure of an elderly man. "Little Miss Granger. I knew it would be only a matter of time before you came calling. Out doing a bit of shopping, eh? How did you find me?"

Hermione looked into the gaunt, aristocratic face of Phineas Nigellus Black. She'd carted him around in her beaded bag the entire time she, Harry and Ron had been searching for Horcruxes throughout England. At the thought of that time, tears came to her eyes. Phineas was her final link to those days, her last days with Harry and Ron.

"I was told you might be here, Headmaster Black. I would have come sooner, but...but I've been..." She tried to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. "I've been... unable to come."

Phineas avoided her eye, making a show of smoothing the front of his dress robes. "Yes, well," he said gruffly, "some plug ugly troll of a man sold me to this establishment. Most undignified. I've been forced to loiter about in the company of broccoli-eared children all this time. Mind you," he added archly, "at least it's been quiet; no bouncing around in that infernal hold-all of yours."

Hermione could not repress a smile. In spite of his biting words, he sounded almost wistful.

"I'm very sorry you had to be bounced around, sir, but I wouldn't have taken you with us if you hadn't been of such importance to us."

"Of course, Miss Granger," he replied with a heaviness to his voice. He waved his languid hand dismissively. "No matter. I already know the whole, terrible tale. Mr. Potter lost the battle, and you were taken to Azkaban. It was all the talk in here for months." He looked up at her with something like pity. "You mustn't blame yourself, child. You were a boon to the cause. Clever, resourceful, intelligent. Particularly cunning for a Mud..."

"Professor," she interrupted, "can we dispense with the prejudices just this once? I didn't come to take a stroll down inferiority lane."

The portrait looked at her with narrowed, shrewd eyes. "No. You came here for a different matter entirely, didn't you, my girl?"

She stood up and pulled the portrait out of the stack. Looking around, she spied a small spindle table against the wall. She propped the portrait on the table and drew up a chair so she could speak to Phineas more comfortably.

"Headmaster," she whispered, "you're my only hope. I have no idea where to start. I have one piece, but I don't know where the other pieces are, or even how many there are altogether."

His eyes widened in surprise. "You still have the piece McGonagall gave you? Well, good for you." He leaned forward, his expression intense. "Is it safe?"

"It's hidden," she replied cagily. "Well hidden."

He nodded, pleased. "I'm glad to hear it. Now, I have much to tell you. First of all, you should know ..." he stared at her grimly. "There are five pieces altogether."

She tried to hide her dismay. Five pieces. Four pieces left to find, and she was just one paroled and hobbled witch, all alone.

As if he could read her thoughts, Phineas went on. "But I know where there's a second piece, and I believe I can help you find more, if they haven't been moved, or given to someone else." His tone was disapproving. "McGonagall and Dumbledore played their last, most desperate game very close to the chest, those two. I doubt if even Headmaster Snape knew."

"Merlin, I hope not," she grumbled. "If that traitor knew, no doubt he'd have found all the pieces and destroyed them."

Phineas looked at her keenly. "Traitor? That's quite a new tune for you. After the Forest of Dean, I gathered you two were rather..."

"Well, not anymore," she hissed. "Not since he's become the Dark Lord's fair-haired boy. You may not know, but he has a very prestigious position at the Ministry now."

"So do you, Miss Granger. Yes, I keep my ears open," he added, when she gaped in surprise. "One hears many things about the new spokeswitch for the Ministry. It begs the question: whose side are you on?"

She gasped. "The same side I was always on! The side of the light!" She clutched the edges of the portrait so hard, her knuckles were white. "Snape betrayed us! He took sides..."

"Enough, girl! You're working yourself into a state. Can't abide a woman in a state," Phineas muttered. "Remember, not everyone is as they appear, Miss Granger. Not you......not anybody."

"Sound advice, sir," she snorted. "That and two Knuts will buy you a cup of tea."

"Impertinent chit!" He glared at her, and she glared back. Then suddenly they relaxed and smirked at the same time.

"You know, I rather miss our adventures, Miss Granger," he said.

It was Hermione's turn to be wistful. "I don't. But do I miss the company, Headmaster."

His face softened. "I know, child. I know you did all you could to protect them. It's not your fault that it wasn't enough." Suddenly, he brightened. "But we can have more adventures, can't we? Buy me, my dear. Take me home with you. Along with the piece that's landed in this very shop."

Hermione felt her lips go numb. "What?" she replied stupidly. "There's one here?"

Phineas smiled. "Indeed. And further, I have a rather good idea who may know where at least two other pieces are." To her surprise, he winked. "I'm not the only former headmaster with a portrait in more than one place. There aren't many of us, mind," he added, lowering his brows, "which leads me to suspect Albus decided to use his more mobile colleagues..."

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "In case Hogwarts became compromised, he needed conspirators who could leave!"

Phineas looked irked at being interrupted in the middle of his revelatory moment. "Yes. Some of us have the dubious fortune to be mobile. Dual portraits. As for the rest: destroyed. Every headmaster and headmistress whose only portrait resided at Hogwarts is gone." He slapped the arm of his chair in impotent anger. "What a waste! What a loss of knowledge and counsel. Madness, sheer madness."

Hermione thought of Dumbledore's anxious face as she stood in the Headmaster's study. "Pumpkin pasties," she murmured. "He meant it as a password when I meet other headmasters' portraits."

He eyed her keenly. "Yes, that's right. Now, there's an unusual item on a shelf in the back room...brass, with black vines on its face, very distinctive. You're sure to recognise it," he remarked, a sly smirk on his thin lips. "Shall we?"

Cancelling the Silencing charm, she leaped out of her chair, the portrait still clutched in her hands, and nearly collided with Borgin, who was just walking into the anteroom.

"Ah, lovely craftsmanship," the shopkeeper said, hooking a pair of spectacles over his jug ears. "This is a portrait of Bertram Nobulous Styles, the famous cauldron maker."

"Why, you ignorant peasant!" Phineas spluttered, rising from his painted chair.

There was a crash within the painting as Hermione tilted it sideways, spilling Phineas and his chair out of the picture. "I recognised it instantly," she said with a gleam in her eye. "I'm a huge fan. I own of one of his, er, cauldrons." She handed Borgin the painting. "I'll take it. Will you please have it wrapped and shrunken for me? And I'll want to look around a bit before I finish up here."

Severus walked soundlessly down the corridor of the Janus Thickey Ward, a silent, slim shadow amongst the lurid painted ramblings of its inmates. In spite of the many times he had come to this ward, he never got over the feeling that the paintings somehow watched his passing, and knew he was no threat to the damaged and vulnerable residents of the floor. He imagined them shouting and screaming otherwise.

The Healers' station was deserted, as it always was at this time. Three o'clock in the afternoon, he knew from his own experience, was a time for stretching tired limbs, grabbing a cuppa, sneaking out on the fire escape for a crafty fag. It was the moment between the body's blood sugar dropping and tea time; and even the most stalwart found the urge for a catnap at its most irresistible at three. Second winds only happened between four and five o'clock.

As a teacher at Hogwarts, Severus had hated three o'clock. Dinner was hours away, the students were lethargic and irritable, and he himself always longed for a nap. His frequent bouts of insomnia meant that late afternoons were particularly tortuous. Sometimes he thought he would sell his miserable excuse for a soul to have those dozy afternoon hours back; he often longed for those uneventful days when he had nothing to face but the hope the house elves would have fixed Spotted Dick for dessert.

It occurred to Severus that he had often been awake while the world around him slept. He had prowled the halls at Hogwarts in the wee hours, long past the time when anyone else would be awake. He paced his quarters during those awful early days, restlessly hoping for a solution to his ever increasing burdens. He lay awake, staring at his ceiling, wishing to fall asleep and just not wake up. For a man who had always thought of himself as a creature of the night, he had spent far too many dark hours longing for dawn.

The Healers and Medi-witches were no doubt on coffee or fag or loo breaks, desperately trying to buy a little slice of alert to get them through the last couple of hours of their shifts, which meant that Severus could make his regular visit unnoticed by many people on the ward...anyone lucid, that is.

He paused at the door and knocked quietly. "Hallo?" came the husky answer within.

Severus opened the door and said softly, "Good afternoon, Mr. Weasley. I trust you are well?"

Ron Weasley stood. "Hello, Professor. What brings you back to London so soon? Another Order meeting?" The faintest look of confusion settled in his expression. "I think Dad mentioned there would be one when I saw him yesterday."

He replied, "I had some business in town, Mr. Weasley, and I thought I would stop by for a visit." Inwardly, Severus sighed in relief. Sometimes Ron mistook him for Harry Potter, and even during one regrettably unforgettable visit, Sirius Black.

Ron merely continued smiling at him. His hair was cropped short, and his genial, open face pleasant as always. It was tragic to look into the mobile, expressive face and see so little of the boy he had known as a student. His condition, according to Medi-witch Tickle, was similar to being subjected to a very powerful Confundus spell. Counter-curse after counter-curse, potions to regenerate brain function, mental and physical and psychological therapy......all had been tried in a myriad of variations and potencies. The only results they produced were roomfuls of Healers shaking their heads regretfully.

The damage had been devastating and extensive, but Arthur had been determined to keep his last remaining son (he had given up on Percy) from a lifetime at St. Mungo's. The wizard had foolishly thought his son would be safe at the Burrow, and he had been right, after a fashion...until Arthur was arrested. The boy had practically set Ottery St. Catchpole aflame before being brought here.

"When you see Dad, tell him to remind Mum that Harry's coming to the Burrow next week." Ron beamed, obviously pleased at the thought. "I think he's bringing his gear for school, and I'm dying to try this move I saw at the Quidditch World Cup." He jumped up on his chair and crouched, his arms out, his brow furrowed in concentration. "You sit very low on the broom, you see, then you bank to the left..."

"I thought you might fancy a game of chess this afternoon, Mr. Weasley. I'd like to have a chance to redeem myself."

Instantly, Ron leapt down from his chair, the Quidditch move forgotten. "Sure, Professor." He laughed shortly. "I'll give you another chance to let me beat you."

He turned toward the desk and his smile faded. His chessboard was empty. He frowned, looking around the room uneasily. A look of panicked confusion flickered over his eyes. With an embarrassed shrug, he said, "I...I'm sorry, Professor, but I seem to have misplaced my men..."

Obliquely, Severus passed a hand over the board, and a ghostly set of chess pieces appeared. "No matter, Mr. Weasley. I thought I might have more luck with my own set. Would you like red or black?"

"I think red, sir," Ron answered respectfully, already drawing up to the board.

For the next hour they played cutthroat chess, both saying little, both throwing everything they had at the board. Severus, who considered himself a consummate chess player, was delightfully impressed with the young man's ability. Mentally damaged as he was, he was a better chess player than most. In fact, only Lucius or Draco ever challenged him to a game anymore. Lucius never managed to finish a game, as affairs of state or otherwise always took precedent, especially if he was losing. Draco was an indifferent player, usually manning the board more to be polite than out of any real interest. Ron, however, was skilled, imaginative and bold, even in his madness.

Severus was convinced he had Ron, but at the last minute the boy used his clever knights to take down Severus' bloodthirsty bishop, checkmating him and winning the game.

As Severus' king threw down his sword in sullen, sore defeat, Ron looked up from the board, a genuine smile of joy on his earnest face. "Well done, sir."

Severus didn't want to feel disgruntled at the thought of being soundly trounced by a mental patient, but found himself grumbling, "Not well enough to beat you yet, Mr. Weasley."

"It's alright, sir. What else do I have to do here all day but play chess?" He gave Severus a sly look. "But seeing as I have won, sir, I believe the old saying is 'to the victor belongs...'"

"...the spoils, yes, I'm familiar with the phrase as well, Mr. Weasley," he shot back, unable to prevent his own lips from twitching. He reached into his pocket and removed a small wrapped box. "I believe this will suffice for now."

Ron's eyes lit up, and he opened the present with the single-minded thoughtlessness of a child. Within was a blue, pentagon-shaped box. Ron shook it, and to his delight, a soft croak answered from within.

"Excellent! I love chocolate frogs! I've been collecting them for years!" He opened the packet and the spell-infused amphibian immediately leapt from its confines into the air. Severus watched in bemusement as Ron tracked the frog's apogee, ducked until he was directly under the frog's trajectory of descent, and caught it expertly in his mouth.

Ron smiled at Severus, then hastily turned the card over to open the back. "I've got about a thousand of these now," he said, carefully peeling the back from the Famous Wizards/ Witches card. He froze, his eyes growing wide and fully of joy. "Blimey, I don't believe it! Look, Professor!" He thrust the card into Severus' hand.

"Whom did you get this week? Morgana? Armando Dippet?" From the card's frame, a haughty wizard with a nose to rival his own sneered disdainfully out at Severus, then, to his surprise, blew a raspberry at him.

Ron's face broke into a smile that rivaled the sun. He crowed, "It's only Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim!" He leapt out of his seat as if he were planning to do a backflip. "Do you know how long I've been trying to get Agrippa? Only since I was about eight years old!"

Severus returned the card. "Well, this is a piece of luck, Mr. Weasley."

"I'll tell you what it is...it's brilliant, that's what it is!" Ron exclaimed, his eyes glowing as he looked at the card. "It's the only one I could never get, other than Claudius Ptolemy. I can't wait to add it to my collection." He turned toward his desk again. "Wait 'til Harry sees this..."

He grew still, and the animation and pleasure drained from his face. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Harry is dead," he said, dully. He looked at the card, and placed it reverently on the table. He cast his eyes about the room, as reality bled back into his tattered mind. "They're all dead." Looking over at Severus, Ron slowly sat down in his chair, and stroked the card gently. Tears welled in his eyes. "I don't have a collection anymore. I burned it down at the Burrow."

Severus stood, and placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. Ron trembled as he wept. "Then start another collection, Ronald. I will help you."

Ron looked up at Severus, his eyes full of grief. "What's the fun of collecting something if you don't have anyone to show it to?"

Draco accepted Hermione's story that she had simply gone ahead to the dress shop after her failed business transaction at Gringott's. "Just put all that banking rubbish out of your mind for now, Granger," he told her reassuringly. "Besides, your money's no good at Madame Malkin's anyway. This frock is going to be charged to the Minister's Office." He winked. "I can't wait to see the look on His Excellency's face when he gets the bill."

He set to work immediately. Snapping his fingers, Draco set the entire staff to work, hauling out a rack of expensive dress robes with the help of Madame Malkin herself. Before long, he found her a stunning robe in a deep rose shade, which made her skin glow. The cut of the empire waist accented the gentle swell of her breasts, and gave her the illusion of height. Pretty dancing shoes completed the ensemble.

Finally, he pulled a slim box out of his breast pocket to reveal a garnet pendant set in heavy gold, with matching earrings. They were Goblin-made and very beautiful.

"My mother said she would love for you to borrow these," he murmured, shifting behind her to fasten the clasp around her neck. Hermione shivered at the touch of his fingers as they brushed the cold length of golden chain. Together, Draco and Hermione gazed at her reflection in the mirror, admiring the effect. "I think I've hit the mark on this one," he murmured.

"Thank you, Draco. For everything." She met his eyes in the mirror and tried to smile, but her throat suddenly constricted with emotion. For a stupid moment, she was tempted to tell him the truth, but then remembered the portrait, shrunken and hidden in her cloak. "You're a good friend," she managed. He looked pleased, even touched.

"I'm not spelled to pay empty compliments, dear," croaked the old mirror pleasantly. "But I think you look like a queen."

Hermione straightened her shoulders and looked again at her reflection. A queen. I must act like a queen. But the haunted look in her own eyes told her the truth.

I am the Queen of the Lost, she thought.