Chapter 4

Thanks to miraba for the beta.

Disclaimer: Not mine to the nth degree.

Chapter 4

The image of the Tor burning white hot will not leave Hermione alone.

She spends the next morning sequestered in her office, absentmindedly sorting through the inter-departmental memos piled on her desk. Occasionally she catches herself staring off into space, remembering the glow snaking along the terraces of the Tor, blazing so brightly that it could have easily lit the entire town.

She'd be lying to herself to say it hadn't and bothered her deeply. The Tor isn't supposed to do that. The lore about Glastonbury is full of half truths and second and third hand accounts of mysterious encounters with everything from ghosts to King Arthur to UFOs, and the glowing Tor was one such bit of lore, except... well, except, she'd seen it for herself.

The Tor glowed.

Hermione frowns, pondering what she'd seen while tracing a rough approximation of the Tor's shape on a memo from Human Resources reminding employees not forget that Friday was Dress Like a Muggle Day.

She had read up on Glastonbury when she first took the flat. The sources all agreed that Glastonbury is full of mystic energy, as it sits on a ley line, that those graves in Glastonbury Abbey do contain the remains of King Arthur and Guineviere, and that there's a good possibility that the Tor is the mythical Avalon. But the stories of a fairy king and his court inside the Tor? Utter rubbish. Likewise for a Muggle psychopomp god and the underworld. Pixies and fairies and doxies might exist right along with trolls, goblins and elves, but the Fae – the baby stealing, trick playing, time altering Midsummer's Eve fairies – do not exist. Neither do their fairy kingdoms or their fairy kings.

But the Tor glowed.

Hermione throws down her quill with a sigh and rubs her burning eyes. Why does she have to obsess about this now? It was probably her imagination; the Tor couldn't have possibly been glowing. It couldn't have, because if the Tor really did glow, would that might mean that all the rest might be true. Fairies, fairy kingdoms, fairy kings....

...An entrance to the underworld.

"Get a hold of yourself, Hermione," she mutters, irritated by her overactive imagination. Those half realized fantasies are doing nothing but making the thought of the years without Ron that lay ahead of her more painful to endure. "There's no such bloody thing. Stop thinking about..."

The door of her office suddenly opens with a sharp creak; Hermione starts, looks up, war-honed instincts prompting her to aim her wand and poise a defensive hex on the tip of her tongue.

But when she sees no one there, she relaxes and puts away her wand; there's only one reason why the door of her office would be acting of its own will.

"Hi, Harry," she says, settling back into her chair. "Who are we hiding from today?"

Harry begins to materialize from the feet up as he pulls off his Invisibility Cloak. "Percy this time, the tosser." He throws the cloak over one of the guest chairs and plops down in the other. "He's harassing me about security for the World Cup again." He rubs his scar absentmindedly, looking tired and drawn and over-worked. But then, Harry always looks that way lately, and that atrocious scar always seems to be glowing. "Mind if I hide out for a bit?"

It isn't unusual for him to hide in her office two or three times a week to escape the wide array of Ministry officials who are always harassing him to use his fame for their own ends. He and Ron used to disappear for hours on "important Auror business," which, loosely translated, meant they hid out in a Muggle pub somewhere, getting sloshed and watching the telly. But without Ron, Harry has lost that idiotic enthusiasm for skipping out on work completely and spends all of his time hiding out with her, even though she usually bullies him into working.

It is like fourth year all over again, except this time, Ron wouldn't come to his senses and return to them.

Ron won't be returning at all.

"If you'd like. You did bring something to work on, right?"

Harry scowls at her. "Are we in school again or something?"

"I'll take that as a no." Hermione grabs a handful of memos and shoves them at Harry. "Here, you can help me sort through this mess."

"You really know how to show me a good time," he grouses, but takes the memos anyway.

They sit in silence for a while, sorting through the memos she's been ignoring for about a week now. Harry balls up them up and tosses them in a pile at his feet while Hermione drops hers in the rubbish bin next to her desk.

She's about half way through her pile when Harry says, "You haven't even opened this yet?"

Hermione looks up, taken aback with the anger in his voice. Harry is holding up a green envelope with gold lettering. It's the invitation to Molly's birthday party.

"Well, I knew what it was," she mutters and returns her attention to the dwindling stack of memos. "Didn't need to open it."

"So you're coming, then?"

She tosses a memo about diligently reading inter-departmental memos in the rubbish bin. "Maybe. When is it again?"

"Hermione..." Harry sounds disappointed in her, and Hermione is irritated that his disappointment makes her feel so guilty.

Hermione scowls and pulls over her desk calendar, hoping a very important meeting is scribbled in on Saturday and circled in red, or even a bit of dangerous and invasive Muggle surgery. Unfortunately, she finds Saturday disappointingly free.

She nods miserably. "I'll be there."

"Good. Molly and Arthur will be really happy to see you."

Hermione sighs in defeat. "I know."

Harry nods approvingly and returns to sorting through the memos in his lap. Hermione stares blankly at her own memos, a coil of anxiety tightening in the pit of her stomach. They'll be talking about Ron at that party, Molly's birthday or not, and worse, they'll want to talk about Ron with her.

She's already looking forward to Saturday with dread.

*****

As she is walking from the Ministry approved Apparition point that evening, she finds her gaze drawn to the Tor. In the late afternoon light, it appears to be a normal, earthly National Trust site, with tourists and footpaths a single medieval tower at its summit. It has no otherworldly glow; UFOs aren't hovering in the sky, and fairies aren't pouring out of hidden tunnels.

Hermione sighs in exasperation, suddenly feeling ridiculous and idiotic for spending all day obsessing over something that hadn't happened and couldn't have happened. It had been a dream. Just a dream.

Still, she watches it suspiciously through her bedroom window as she is stripping out of her work clothes. If it was a dream, it had seemed very real, with the hard, cold floor beneath her feet and the icy air pouring through the windowpane and the glow snaking up the terraces, gleaming like the sun.

But her dreams had been vivid lately, she tells herself as she pulls on a pair of jeans and a heavy sweater. The nightmares, the dreams about Snape – all vivid, disturbing and seemingly real, but just dreams. The glowing Tor is no different, just a dream.

Only a dream.

She keeps telling herself that as she walks up the Tor. It still appears as normal as it had earlier, all big and green and hill-like. As she climbs to the summit, her lingering unease fades, and the peace of the place settles over her, dispersing her anxiety over her dreams and Molly's party on Saturday and the drudgery of the World Cup project.

The sun is setting when she finally reaches the top, and she watches the last of the sunlight bleed from the sky, leaving behind strata of oranges and blues and purples in its wake. She stands there for a long time, gazing at the rising crescent moon and the stars as they slowly begin to prick the sky. The cold settles into her limbs and from a distance, she hears the chattering and laughter of the few intrepid sightseers, still wandering on the Tor, braving the sharp cold. Below her, the lights of the town come on one by one.

She feels peaceful, still, comforted; she feels like Ron is nearby; she feels like life is actually bearable.

Then something cold and wet touches her hand.

She shrieks in surprise and jumps away, her heart pounding wildly, the urge to draw her wand in self-defense only tempered by her awareness of the few nearby Muggles. She whirls around and finds the dog she rescued behind her, straining at the end of his leash and staring at her with big, eager eyes. His two pack mates are sitting on either side of him, watching her with doggish interest. Behind them with their leads in his hand is their owner, the strange old man with that orange eyesore of a sweater.

"Rupert!" the old man scolds. "Watch that nose! Not everybody likes cold noses on their skin." He grins apologetically at Hermione. "Sorry about that. When we saw you, Rupert wanted to come say hello. We didn't expect to frighten you like that."

Hermione puts her hand to her chest, feeling her heart racing beneath her palm, and takes a deep breath. "It's okay. He just startled me."

"Cold, wet noses tend to do that." The old man pats the dog to Rupert's left, and it twists back his head to lick at his owner's hand. "It's how Liam here wakes me up every morning, isn't it Liam?"

Hermione nods in understanding. "My alarm clock is a fat, twenty year old cat. Sometimes he uses the cold nose method, but usually he just nips at my hands and purrs until I get up."

The old man grins and nods as he fishes a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. "Just as effective, I'd say. Mind if I smoke? I'll be sure to stand downwind."

Normally, Hermione would mind, but there's something strangely companionable about the old man, something familiar and easy that makes the smoking a minor inconvenience.

Hermione shrugs. "Go ahead. But they'll kill you, you know."

The old man chuckles. "So I hear." He lights the cigarette with a silver lighter and drops it back into the same pocket from which the cigarette came. "Now, Ms. Granger, what are you doing all the way up here on a cold evening like this?"

Hermione shrugs. "I like it up here. It's very peaceful."

The old man nods sagely. "It is, isn't it?"

They stand in silence for a bit, watching the stars. The old man smokes, flicking ash away from his cigarette occasionally. Hermione shivers and shoves her hands in her pockets, wondering why she didn't bring a pair of gloves along and if she could cast a warming charm without anyone noticing. The dogs settle and curl up at their master's feet, content to wait until he's ready to move again.

At last, the old man drops his cigarette and grinds it into the ground with his toe. He tilts his head to the side and studies her for a moment. "You feel closer to them up here, do you?"

Hermione blinks at the old man in confusion. "Do I feel closer to who?"

"Whoever it is you lost."

Hermione gapes at him in surprise, then suddenly looks away, out into the darkness, towards the lights of the town. Her chest tightens at the thought of Ron and she's afraid to speak lest she break down in tears. She nods, pursing her lips together, blinking against the burn of unshed tears.

"I'm not surprised," the old man says. "Most people do, perhaps because the gates to Underworld are beneath our very feet."

Hermione scoffs, the threat of tears rolled back by her indignation. "I really don't need that, you know."

"Need what?"

"The false assurances that he's in a better place now and all that rubbish." Her voice is bitter and sharp, even to her own ears, and she forces herself to keep her eyes on the town, so she doesn't have to see that look of pity so many people wear whenever Ron's death comes up.

"You don't believe that he's in a better place?"

She clenches her hand in her pockets. Her nails press sharply into the palm of her hand, distracting her from the knot of confusion the question raises. She doesn't know what she thinks, and not knowing always bothers her. "I don't know. There is an afterlife, I know that, but I don't know what it's like or if it's any better than here. But I'm fairly certain that I'm not standing on top it at this very moment."

"Are you now?" The old man chuckles in amusement. "Oh, you wizards know everything, don't you?"

Hermione looks up at him sharply. "How did you know I was ..."

"A witch?" The old man gives her a gleeful grin. "Oh, you can't be around as long as I have and not know a thing or two about wizards. And I happen to know more about this Tor than those rubbish wizard scholars who've been wringing the joy from magic since time began."

Hermione frowns. "So you're not a wizard?"

"No."

"A Squib?"

The old man shakes his head. "Not that either. I'm just an old man who loves Glastonbury and all of its lore. Did you know that there was a labyrinth that once snaked up the side of the Tor?"

"I did." Suddenly they're on familiar ground. Absolute knowledge, the kind that can be cross referenced and double checked, and verified. The kind with evidence. "The wizard sources say the labyrinth was actually several levels of terraces used for farming, and some Muggle sources agree, but others say it was used as a part of some sort of induction ritual for a goddess cult."

"Ah, well, both are right. The Muggle settlers did use it for religious purposes. Muggles may be non-magical, but they can still sense magic. Usually they muck it up and get it confused with religion, so you'll find that many pagan religious sites are built in places where magic is the strongest."

"Like the Tor?" Hermione says, deciding to just go along with the conversation to see where it ends up.

He nods. "Like the Tor. Originally, a group of Celtic witches settled here in pre-Roman times to guard the doorway to the Underworld on the earthly side for the Tor King ... your sort of witches, by the way – and they terraced the hill for farming. Of course, when the Roman wizards came, they wanted to harness the power for themselves." He shook his head sadly. "Those poor witches never had a chance."

"I see." Hermione knows she sounds skeptical, but she can't help it. None of her sources, Wizard or Muggle, discussed a group of Celtic witches, and she suspects what she is hearing is actually local oral lore. And oral lore in Glastonbury really can't be trusted as the stories about UFOs and ghosts clearly demonstrate.

"You don't believe me? Where do you think that doorway in your Department of Mysteries comes from?"

Hermione stares at him in shock. "How do you know about..."

"The Veil?" The old man gives her an enigmatic smile. "I told you, can't be around as long as I have and not know a thing or two about wizards. Or their mad schemes. And the Veil is a particularly mad one. The Roman wizards killed those witches and built a doorway into the spiral castle of the Tor King to steal his power, but the only thing they managed to achieve was to enter the other realm years before they were meant to, the idiots. It isn't possible to cheat death or control it. Muggles and wizards alike have a problem understanding that."

Hermione nods, thinking of Voldemort and the Horcruxes and the people who died to make them.

"Not that it matters," the old man continues. "The Wild Hunt catches everyone in the end, no matter how fast they run."

Hermione frowns. "The Wild Hunt?"

"Yes, you know? When Gwyn ap Nudd rides out with his Gabriel hounds to collect the dead. If you see the Tor glow, that's the King, off to hunt down the dead and the dying."

Hermione stares at him, her heart racing madly, and the image of the glowing Tor rises again in her mind's eye, gleaming in the darkness. "The Tor glows?"

The old man cocks his head to the side and studies her for a moment. "It does. I've seen it myself a dozen times at least. When the Tor King rides out, the gates to the underworld open, and the earthly Tor is lit by its otherworldly twin for the brief time they are open." He gives her a knowing smile. "You've seen it, haven't you?"

Hermione looks away, out over the town, up at the stars, anywhere but at him. "I don't think so."

The old man chuckles. "Oh, you have. And you, a witch, refuse to believe the place where we're standing is the Tor King's realm? That's irony, that is."

Hermione opens her mouth to sort him out – it was a dream, a dream ... but he's clicking his tongue at the dogs, untangling their leads as they get to their feet, fishing in his pocket for another cigarette, and Hermione can't really come up with anything to say that won't make her sound like a petulant little swot.

"Go home, lass," the old man says before she manages a reasonable response. He's holding the unlit cigarette in one hand and the leads of the dogs in the other. "It's cold, you're tired, and the lads need feeding. Have a nice cuppa and sit in front of a warm fire."

Hermione nods numbly, suddenly relieved to be free of this conversation and unwilling to think about why. "Yes," she says. "That sound like a good idea."

The old man grins at her. "Fantastic. Have a good night, yeah?"

She musters what is mostly an honest smile. "Yes. You, too."

The old man clicks his tongue and he and the dogs are off, crossing the summit to the footpath down the Tor. Hermione watches him go, with the dogs trotting along in front of him, their noses to the ground, sniffing the myriad of scents with interest.

It's only when he's disappeared below the rise of the hill that she wonders if maybe she shouldn't have Obliviated him, even though the thought of doing so makes her feel ill. He seemed to know an awful lot about the wizarding world for a Muggle. Too much in fact.

She looks up at the slim moon again, at the constellations now forming at the sky, and decides that since he's made it this long without being Obliviated, she isn't going to worry about it.

It's not like that mad old man and his three hounds could possibly be a threat to anyone anyway.

*****

Severus meets Granger on his way out to the pub that night.

She's bundled into a long winter coat, her cheeks are flushed, and her hair is wild and windblown.

As he passes her on the stairs, he sneers at her on principle, she refuses to look in his direction, and they do not speak. Severus intends to keep walking, but the same impulse that undoubtedly caused Lot's wife to turn to salt and Orpheus to banish Eurydice back into the underworld causes him to turn and watch her climb the stairs. His eyes trace the line of her coat, lingering on the neat narrowing of her waist and the sway of her hips, his mind tormenting him with the image of his fingers tangled in that unmanageable mane. As soon as she rounds the corner at the landing, Severus, ashamed of his own interest, turns abruptly before she catches him watching her, and hurries out into the cold night.

He tries to chase the image of his fingers in Granger's hair out of his mind with whiskey, but still he dreams of her, propped up on his potions bench, that long winter coat open around her and nothing underneath. He slides his hands down the lovely taper of her waist, feels the soft warmth of her flesh beneath his fingers, and grips her by the hips. When he thrusts into her, she moans and whimpers and wriggles her bottom to get closer to him, her hands clutching at the back of his shirt, her breath coming in little pants. He grabs a fist full of her hair and tangles it between his fingers, then tilts her head back to crush his lips to that prim mouth...

His eyes fly open. He's in bed, the street lights are illuminating his bedroom with dingy orange light, and the wind is howling beyond the window panes. His body is tingling, his cock hard and eager. Irritated, he rolls over and adjusts the pillow under his head. It takes him a bit to convince his body that, no, there would be no wanking to dreams about Hermione Bloody Granger, and eventually falls asleep again.

Only to dream about the scent of prey in his nose and the pounding of his feet on the ground and the freedom of hunting beneath the stars.