FIC: Tavern Songs for the Abyss [Millicent/Hermione]

[hp_drizzlemod]

Title: Tavern Songs for the Abyss
Author: borealgrove
Prompt: # O52 – The fog looks dangerous.
Pairing(s): Millicent Bulstrode / Hermione Granger
Word Count: 20,200 words
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): N/A
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Thank you to my beta, M.M.B., who took it upon her shoulders to double-check most of my research, and tamp down on my unhealthy obsession with commas. reeby10, thank you for the wonderfully open-ended prompt, and I hope that what I have come up with entertains you half as much as writing it entertained me!
Summary: Hermione and Millicent set out on what would optimistically be called a 'wild goose chase' into a dense forest to find some ancient manuscripts that probably decomposed centuries ago. Merlin help them.

PART I

We fled to the west lands just after the harvest, into an ancient forest. We did not know its name, only that it warded off our pursuers better than we had dared hope, and quieted the rage of the sea. We called upon the goddess to obscure our path, and to each spirit by name as we lost ourselves further into the depths of the forest, for shelter, for sustenance, for breath and quickness of foot. This land is unknown to us, and we did not know whether our voices would reach the spirits, but they did. The galdor still flows from our mouths, thanks be to the goddess.

We thought to wait out the violence, but it does not abate. Still, the magus search. We took all the writings that we could carry, but they were not enough. The spirits in the crystal show Ansithe visions of flame, of knowledge that burns as we cower in the darkness of the wood, of the wrath that spreads to the east. Every land will soon be consumed.

Our home is lost to us now, Ansithe has seen this. But the goddess is kind. She provides the sea in which to fish, the streams from which to drink, the vegetation from which the fruits grow. We are forbidden to hunt the game. They are not of our kind. But as the goddess and her spirits can still hear our supplications in this place, we have come to understand that this was always to be our fate. After three moons of wandering, we have found the place that She had always intended for us. The spirits are strong here, and here we make our true home.

- from Old English, c. AD 475. M. B.


The wind coming in from the coast pushed at Hermione's hair, ruffling it, but did not manage to send it into disarray. Her curls were stubborn that way, immediately settling back down like a cat might after reacting to a sudden, subtle noise. The smell of the ocean was only faint up on the ridge, but had been prominent the whole morning, as they hiked steadily towards their current vantage. Her upper lip, when she licked over its faint, dry cracks, tasted salty—though she wasn't certain whether that was from sweat or sea air.

Hermione stared out at the horizon, rested her hands at her hips, and let out a long breath.

The last third of the hike had been more of a climb, steep enough that she had had to get on all fours several times and even accept a helping hand; she was fit enough to handle a long, arduous walk, but wasn't at all strong enough to support her body weight with her arms alone, much less pull it up over a ledge. Millicent, meanwhile, had hiked and climbed steadily, each movement calculated and assured; but then, it was familiar land for her, a terrain she had memorized with her body instead of her eyes.

She was also an accomplished athlete, so there was that.

Hermione tried to shake off the embarrassment over her own (honestly rather understandable) shortcomings.

"Shall we press on until it gets too dark to continue safely?"

"I think so."

"I'm famished though."

"Nibble while you walk."

"Any idea how bad that is for your digestion?"

Millicent shrugged, looking like she was trying to hide some amusement. "I'm still in one piece."

"I can wait till we make dinner later."

"Oh, I believe you."

"Stop it," Hermione tsked, trying not to laugh.

"Look—there are berries over in those bushes by the tree line," Millicent pointed out, eyebrow raised. "I'm not going to carry you the rest of the way if you faint from exhaustion."

"We don't even know if they're edible," Hermione pointed out, feeling just a tad exasperated. "Let me get out my book—it's—in here somewhere—"

"Or we could just walk over, and I could tell you right away if it's likely to poison us."

Hermione sighed.

"What's that for?" Millicent barked out in an incredulous laugh.

"I was just about to—" Hermione raised her hands in surrender. "It's fine."

"Come on." Millicent shook her head, a small sardonic smile slipping onto her features.

The sun, starting to set, was sending deep, golden light over the cliff, casting tentative shadows under shrubs, tall grasses, the near-translucent petals of wildflowers. The clouds, wispy and travelling across the sky with intent, were tinged pink, the colour shifting into orange and purple where the they were thickest. Crickets were starting to chatter in their high, plaintive language of chirps.

"There. Blackberries. You didn't need to crack open a book to figure that one out."

"Smartarse."

"Language." Millicent rounded on her in shock.

"You say far worse," Hermione reminded her dryly.

"Yes, because I'm me."

"I'm comfortable with my current level of crassness," Hermione remarked lightly, unable to keep a smile off her face. "And it is above null." She took out her wand and pointed it at a broken twig, performing the incantation that would turn it into a small, woven basket whose rounded bottom could fit comfortably in her open hand. Millicent was already pinching berries off the bushes, and tossed several into her mouth as she worked to fill her upturned palm with them. Apparently Hermione hadn't been the only peckish one.

As Hermione began filling her basket with blackberries, Millicent went to sit at a nearby tree, carefully lifting the strap of her sling bag over her head, and letting it drop to the ground beside her. She leaned back against the tree trunk and reached into her bag, digging around for something one-handed (her other hand, she lifted to her lips, and tipped so that several berries fell into her mouth). She shook a leather-bound notebook free of the opening.

"This does look like the place." Hermione glanced back at the ridge they had climbed over just minutes earlier. "It's plausible you could fish over the edge of that cliff using a summoning charm."

"Well they weren't going to bother with fishing line, were they?"

"Ah, yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make."

"Piss off," Millicent snorted, the notebook falling open on her lap as she pulled at its place-keeping ribbon. "There's only one other area where this forest touches the ocean in some form, and even Lovegood couldn't imagine a field of petrified trees into a cliff."

"I wouldn't put it past her," Hermione remarked with more humour than contempt.

"You almost done, there? We need to press on—might be wandering for days."

"Says the person who decided to sit down."

"I can get back up easily enough."

"Can you." Hermione was grinning, her basket of blackberries now filled to the brim.

Millicent gave her a dry look, looped her arm back through the strap of her bag, and sprung back up on her feet without losing or crushing the last few blackberries enclosed carefully in the palm of her broad, scarred hand.

"Impressive."

"Stuff it."

"I thought Slytherins were known for their witty repartees."

"Can never go wrong with a classic."

"Whatever you say," Hermione said in a jaunty tone, knocking shoulders with her companion playfully.

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PART II

In the morning before Ansithe's labour began, a great oak fell into the clearing, broke in two upon a stone that the spirits had not permitted us to move. With the felled tree, we knelt and bade the spirits to make it into a table for our bread, a bench upon which to sit, a door to cover the mouth of the hill. Then, when the sun sat highest in the sky, Ansithe felt the pains, and we began the galdor, raising our voices to the goddess.

Our son came into the world after dusk, when the moon was full, the air heavy with summer. Ansithe rested her back upon the birthing stone, glad of the spirits' foresight in not allowing it to be disturbed. I sat by side the side of my wife, watching with her as the light from the goddess came down from the heavens to beam upon our child's open eyes. We knew then that the goddess had granted our son Her gift.

- from Old English, c. AD 476. M. B.


The air felt damp, still had something of a chill, when Hermione woke, curled up inside a Muggle sleeping bag. Millicent, beside her, was sprawled out under a linen blanket and some fur pelts, her coal-black hair covering most of her face, and muffling her already rather soft snoring.

One of her hands, thrown out during an intense dream perhaps, pressed into the wall of the simple canvas tent, causing the whole roof to tremble with each noisy intake of breath. Hermione covered her face with her hands and giggled silently to herself.

It was some time later before Hermione had managed to convince her body to move, to get up, to face the cold of morning. Shivering, she rifled through her bag one-handed, and wrestled out her Weasley jumper, pulling it over her head as quickly as she could. Her soft cursing went unnoticed. The snoring continued on beside her, under the gentle rise and fall of the pelts, and Hermione could not resist placing a small kiss on Millicent's cheek before she pushed past the tent flaps to stand up and stretch in the open air.

It was peaceful, but certainly not quiet—the birds were chattering away to one another, calling out complex notes over long distances, or repeating the same call over and over again to some end that Hermione could not properly imagine. She went to sit by the pit that had housed their small cooking fire the night before and after a moment of thought, summoned a wrapped bundle from inside the tent. A grumble of protest followed it.

Hermione winced with a grin, not feeling all that apologetic. "Morning!"

Her greeting went, quite pointedly, unanswered.

"I'm not going to eat all the leftovers, if that's what you were worried about," Hermione commented, feeling even more cheerful as she untied the wrapped bundle and it fell open on her lap. There were some dry, but edible sticks of carrot, four thick slices of still-spongy bread, a mound of shredded, smoked venison, and a sizeable piece of hard cheese—all of which they had brought with them from the Bulstrode estate after having been treated to a sending-off feast two nights prior.

Hermione had eaten one of the slices of bread with an accompanying slice of the cheese and was chewing her way thoughtfully through one of the carrot sticks when Millicent finally emerged from the tent, grumpy-looking and wearing nothing but a tunic, her large dragon-hide boots and, Hermione had to assume, some under things. Though she wouldn't put it past Millicent to go knocking about the forest partly exposed.

"Breakfast?" Hermione tried, holding the bundle of leftovers up slightly.

Her companion grumbled, completely unintelligible (if she had even been trying to form words in the first place), gave her a rough, unsteady squeeze of the shoulder, and then moved past her to disappear into the trees. It was several minutes before the sound of Millicent's heavy footfalls disturbing the underbrush faded from earshot. Thirty more passed.

By then, Hermione had re-tied the bundle of food to keep from eating all of it, and summoned a book to busy herself with—though that was difficult to manage, when her thoughts had turned to worry, and then to the devising of a list of pros and cons for springing into action. She was able to think of many reasons for why there was no sense in panicking, but all were outweighed by the very simple fact that Millicent couldn't cast a Patronus charm. If the unthinkable happened, and she was out of shouting range, Hermione would be none the wiser. Just as she had set her book aside, and stood up to anxiously take stock of what she would need for her one-woman rescue mission, she heard the heavy footfalls again and sighed in annoyed relief.

"You better not have eaten all the cheese." Millicent paused, coming back into their hastily-made camp, and considered Hermione's expression. "What?"

"I was starting to worry."

"And I was fine—no. I was brilliant." She offered Hermione the basket she had been holding with a self-satisfied smile. "Nothing like a good walk to wake you up."

"Still—" The lecture died in its tracks.

The basket, lined with several large, saw-edged leaves, held a pile of berries, some walnuts, a few mushrooms, and a heap of stalks and leaves from a variety of plants. But all of it was second-fiddle to the fresh cut of honeycomb that was resting on top of the berries, dripping slowly. Hermione looked up in astonishment, and said the first thing that came to mind: "Are you certain the mushrooms are edible?"

"Merlin, yes," Millicent barked out in an incredulous laugh, "I'm completely fucking certain."

"I don't think you should have gone alone."

"Noted," she said in a mild tone, wincing as soon as she reached down into her boot for her wand. Hermione gave her another look, and she relented, some of the grumpiness returning to her expression. "I got two or three bee stings."

Hermione pressed her lips together. It really wasn't funny.

"Glad one of us is amused," Millicent remarked as she settled heavily at Hermione's side and summoned a small, aluminum pot from the tent, into which she cast Aguamenti. She then jabbed an Incendio at what remained of their campfire wood from the night before, and began dropping the mushrooms, leaves, and stems into the pot to be boiled. "You finished the damn cheese, didn't you?"

Hermione laughed, shaking her head, as she picked up and pressed the wrapped bundle of leftovers into the grouchy woman's lap.

--------

By the time they had packed up to leave their hasty camp, the sun had become strong enough to fully penetrate the canopy and begin to evaporate the dew that had formed on all the leaves, and in the grass, the night before. It became warm enough for Hermione to change out of her jumper and into a much lighter set of layered shirts. Millicent chose to stay in her tunic, though she did put on a proper pair of trousers, and secured a supple leather belt around her waist, upon which she fastened the sheathes for both her wand and her hunting knife (I know, we agreed on foraging only—stop giving me that look, stop it—it's useful for foraging too, you lunatic—I didn't mean that... fucking hell...).

The forest became thicker the further inland they ventured, and the paths all but disappeared. The chill returned too, with the sun no longer able to reach the forest floor at all, never mind evaporate the condensation that clung to every rock, log, and leaf. The earth, where uncovered, was a deep brown, nearly black in some areas due to days-old rain, creating the perfect environment for moss and lichen to grow rampant.

The damp, which had seeped into the muddied ground to form puddles, and which hung cold and heavy in the air, wormed through all their layers, so that before noon, they had both decided to stop to cast warming charms on each other. Hermione had already put her Weasley jumper back on almost as soon as the sunlight had disappeared, and even Millicent had eventually stopped to slip on and fully fasten her leather jerkin, the hairs where her forearms were exposed standing on end. The warming charms helped, but dissipated quickly each time they were cast, unable to last when being pressed from all sides with several layers of clothing saturated with the cold.

As they walked into the afternoon, the sun continued to stay out of sight and their morale flagged. The beautiful, mild morning they had woken up to began to seem more like an unlikely, shared delusion than actual fact. Millicent's grumpiness, in consequence, returned full force.

"Well, we're looking for a stream, a felled tree, and a great fucking stone..." she trailed off with a grunt as she scaled an enormous fallen log. "How fucking hard could that be?" Her put-upon tone was muffled by the dense vegetation. "There, hold out your hand—oh, delightful—yes, cover me in rotting bark on the way down, why don't you?"

"Shut up!" came the retort, its bite dulled by the laugh that followed it.

"Care to remind me whose idea this was?"

"Yours."

"Exactly, which is why I'm going to go on with my perfectly reasonable complaints."

"It really should be me complaining."

"You don't have the constitution for it."

"Oh, Lord," Hermione chuckled incredulously. "There's still a slice of bread and some meat left... please have some. For both our sakes."

"I never said I was hungry."

"Not to worry, I can just tell these things."

"Would you stop your chortling?"

"No."

"I should have invited Pansy instead. At least she'd be too miserable to open her mouth. Dear Pansy, I would write, Sorry I haven't spoken to you in ages due to your propensity for being shallow and annoying. That said, care to join me on an expedition into a forest that is perfectly pleasant to walk through, to find a tree that fell somewhere in it about one thousand years ago? We can spend the weekend pretending that the dirty great tree has somehow managed not to decay for centuries. Let me know!"

Hermione burst into laughter at the falsely-cheery tone that Millicent had put on.

"I'm glad one of us is enjoying herself."

"Just sit down, you nuisance!" Hermione got out between giggles.

"Nuisance? Really?"

"Your silliness deserves an equally-silly insult."

Millicent harrumphed in disgust, but did as she was told, and found a place to sit—or to lean, rather. With her back against the exposed trunk of an evergreen, she reached around in her bag for the wrapped leftovers, and was soon munching away without another word, her frustrated expression melting into something more neutral. Hermione suppressed a fond smile and turned away to look out into the trees and how they clustered, at the limit of her vision.

Dim sentries, forming the illusion of a wall.

Without the clanking of the pot in Millicent's bag, and the clap of hardcover book falling on shatter-proof glass from Hermione's; without the constant rub of fabric from their trousers as they walked, or the rhythmic sound of their exerted breathing, the forest felt incredibly still.

Instead of birdsong, there was the occasional, sudden flapping of wings. Or tree leaves shifting in the treetops, pushed half-heartedly by a breeze that wasn't low enough to reach the forest floor. Standing still, the silhouettes of individual midges suddenly came into focus, where they flew in busy swarms of disarray everywhere Hermione looked. They made no sound, just struggled against the air, unable to penetrate the charms she and Millicent had cast to keep all insects at bay.

It smelled strongly of earth, and of the slow, inoffensive rot of plant matter.

Something knocked against her upper arm, and she startled.

"Drink," Millicent said simply, giving Hermione's reaction to the tin-plated canteen a bemused smile. She'd already packed the bundle of empty cloth back into her bag, and pushed away from the tree trunk to join Hermione in her aimless contemplation of the road that stretched ahead of them. "Have a nibble on this, too." She held a third of the slice of bread out at mouth level.

"Thanks," Hermione smiled after she had taken a gulp of the cool water that had been conjured into the canteen. She tried to take small bites and savour the bread, but failed miserably, devouring it instead, the taste hardly registering before she had washed it all away with another gulp of water.

"I'll be keeping a proper eye out now for anything edible," Millicent assured her, holding her hand out for the canteen.

"Don't you think you should've—"

Hermione stopped, looking down at the canteen she had been handing over, feeling a shiver run through her at the sight of the lacy frost that was suddenly dulling the shine of the metal. The hairs at the back of her neck stood on end, and her heart thudded in dread of what normally happened when she felt that chill, that singular chill. She felt off balance, and her vision stretched out into a tunnel, one that blocked out everything around her and the canteen. In it, the War was pinned down, end to end, so that it was one long jumble of impressions, and sensations, and emotions—impossible to focus on, impossible to ignore. Certain details made themselves known: an empty bottle, a doctored photo, blood, twitching, the matching grin to those manic eyes that drew agony from thin air. She wanted to look away, to back out of that tunnel, out of herself and her painful memories, but she was caught, like the frost under her fingertips that melted and dripped away into the earth whether it wanted to or not.

And just like that, the canteen was taken from her hands.

She looked back up at Millicent, whose forehead had creased in concern, and felt the tunnel receding, her heartbeat slowing. The canteen was capped and put away, out of sight.

"What the buggering fuck was that about?"

Hermione let out a weak laugh. "I sort of thought... Dementors?"

"I'm sure I would have felt something as well, if they were here."

Hermione nodded, subdued. "I'm sure." Her voice shook.

Millicent wrapped an arm around Hermione's shoulders, squeezed her gently, and Hermione let herself relax into the hug. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, thinking of where she was, who she was with, how they were searching for knowledge that might not even exist—anything to remind herself that she was not back there, back fighting for survival.

"You know... if a Dementor ever tried anything, I'd punch it right in the mouth."

"Oh, shut up," Hermione groaned, half-annoyed at Millicent's attempt at levity. She laughed anyway.

"I'd do it."

"You can't even produce a Patronus."

"Well I don't need one when I've got these fists, do I?"

"Stop it," Hermione tsked, trying very hard not to grin and encourage her.

Millicent gave her a peck on the cheek, another squeeze. "D'you think you can keep going?"

"Anything to get out of this stupid part of the forest."

"That's the spirit."

Hermione gave her a flat, unenthused smile (provoking a chortle in return), and soldiered on.

The canopy had eventually relaxed enough to let rail-thin columns of light lance through to the ground below, shifting and reappearing according to the whims of the overcast sky. They had started spotting healthy clusters of berry bushes as the forest floor became drier, and made quick stops each time to graze and pick a small handful that could sustain them later on in a pinch. The strangest thing by far had been passing another couple out for a hike (Muggles, as far as they could tell) after so long spent in relative isolation. Not that the encounter had lasted long: Hermione had spared the couple a greeting and they had continued on their separate ways, the soles of the Muggles' boots squeaking and crunching away into the undergrowth, before disappearing altogether.

It was not long afterwards that Hermione finally lost her resolve not to cast a tempus charm, something that Millicent had repeatedly warned against (it will take however long it takes—knowing the time will only make it worse). It seemed a sensible enough thing to do, with the afternoon sun deepening in colour, losing its warmth.

"Forget the stupid charm," her companion huffed, pushing mussed hairs away from her sticky forehead, out of her face. "The angle of these sunbeams puts us around three o'clock."

"That's..." Hermione shook her head, banished and recast the charm. "Not what this says."

"I wasn't going for precision, obviously—"

"No, I know. It's not that." Hermione looked up at her. "This doesn't actually make sense."

"What's there to make sense of?" Millicent snorted, looking bewildered.

"This is telling me that it's one o'clock," Hermione said, at a loss, gesturing toward her wand with her free hand. "Not in the afternoon—in the morning."

"I told you, that stupid charm—"

"Millie, I've never had a problem with this charm before."

"Well, clearly..." She pointed up at the canopy, where it was obscuring most of the still-bright sky.

"You try it, then."

"Why?"

"Because you'll get the same result. I don't know why, but you will."

A heaving sigh. "Fine."

"Well?"

"Give me a second," Millicent huffed, getting out her wand. She stood looking at it in thought for a few seconds too long.

"You've forgotten the movement, haven't you?"

"It's a stupid, lazy spell."

Hermione suppressed a laugh. "It's a clockwise twist ending in your palm facing upwards."

"Right."

"Well?" She prompted again.

"One in the bloody morning."

"I knew it."

"I suppose next you'll want us to cast Four-Point Spells."

"Of course."

"I already know which way is north," Millicent said flatly.

"But do our wands?"

Another long-suffering sigh.

"Look," Hermione said, holding her hand out next to Millicent's after the spells had been cast. "Nonsense. Pointing in different directions. North is where?"

"In front of us," Millicent supplied, looking put-upon. "Which you already knew. We checked the stars last night, and after we got out of all that damp, I could actually read the moss again."

"Exactly, exactly," Hermione went on, pocketing her wand. "It's all wrong. Interference." She shook her head, thought for a moment. "A normal, magnetic field shouldn't disrupt a spell that way. The disruption must be magic. And if it is... then what could possibly be its purpose?"

"To make us get lost."

"Yes, exactly," Hermione grinned. "Hang on... I wonder if a Muggle compass would work. I do have one in here somewhere..." She held her bag opened with one hand, and summoned with the other, a small contraption made of clear plastic zooming out and hitting her in the chest. She picked it up, eyebrows creasing in annoyance, and then held it flat in her palm, muttering and shifting around while Millicent waited with a raised eyebrow. Finally, Hermione looked back up with a strange smile. "It won't settle on any one direction."

"Suppose we ought to thank Sinistra and Sprout for teaching us alternatives then."

"This is good," Hermione continued, ignoring Millicent, strange smile widening, "I don't know what we've stumbled into, but we're not supposed to be here."

"Weasley does have a point, calling you mental all the time."

Hermione waved her off, unbothered. "Whoever cast this doesn't want anyone at all poking around... and not only that—they don't want anyone suspecting something is amiss. Most of us would rely entirely on a Four-Point Spell to orient ourselves, so it's quite lucky that you're so stubbornly opposed to using it."

"Thanks. I think."

"It's brilliant. We go in circles, or end up back where we started, which exhausts and discourages us, perhaps even causes infighting. Whatever is being protected remains hidden, we storm back home grumbling about that bloody forest, never to return. And Muggles? If someone's gone to the trouble of throwing off compasses, I imagine they've also gone to the trouble of setting up a ward to turn Muggles away from the area. It's very neat."

"If you say so."

"Well, it could be neater, honestly."

Millicent rubbed at her eyes tiredly and let out an incredulous laugh. "You know what I think?"

"Aside from my being mental."

"Yes, that was a given," Millicent smirked. "I think you're missing one very important detail."

The corner of Hermione's mouth curled with annoyance.

"If this interference was created by the writer of the journal whose inadvertent clues we're following, I don't think it's possible the creator would have thought to add spells to confuse a compass. Something tells me they were invented later. Can't imagine it was Muggle Studies, so it must have been Mum ranting about something or other... such a stickler for accuracy at festivals. Insufferable, one could say. But I digress."

"I'm not sure when they were invented exactly," Hermione admitted after a moment of intense thought. "But it's possible—you may be right about them not coming to Britain until after this interference went up."

"It could be like Hogwarts: the sheer volume of magic in the area causes Muggle technology to go batty. Which would make it coincidental instead of incidental."

"We've no real proof either way," Hermione pointed out, annoyance all but erased from her face.

"Good, you've noticed. Welcome back."

Hermione rolled her eyes and backhanded Millicent's shoulder without any real ire, provoking another laugh, this time fond-sounding.

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PART III

The goddess has granted our son Her gift, and in turn, we teach him of Her ways. He draws river from stream, pulls our kind to the forest, sees what things may come to pass through the crystals, though he cannot speak to tell us what they may be. We thank each spirit by its name for his birth, for our lives, for their protection.

The child has particular affinity for animals, and we see many normally timid, or ferocious, approach him without fear, to lay next to him, to eat with him. Two days past, as I returned home from the castle market empty-handed, I discovered our son drinking at the river with two goats. He could not tell me when I asked him whether they would stay with us, but as he returned home, so did they follow, staying near him as ducklings might a mother. When the moon bade us to sleep, ram and ewe followed us into our cave, and slept. They left to graze as the sun rose, and returned again in the evening to gambol with our son, and then to sleep with us in our cave. My son has shamed his father, providing the livestock his father had set out to procure.

At times I have found myself asking the spirits why he does not speak to us, why he takes solace in the company of animals, but not in ours, and each time they are just as silent as he is.

When the goddess asks for your patience, you can do no more than to give it.

-from Old English, c. AD 480. M. B.


They pushed on through to the evening, until the sunlight faded from a deep golden orange to a muted pink that eventually disappeared altogether. The moon, which they could only occasionally glimpse through breaks in the canopy, gave off enough secondary light for them to make out each other's shapes in the dark of the forest floor, but not enough to walk by without tripping and injuring themselves. Despite their sensible decision to stop early on the night before, they decided to press on this time due to Hermione's sudden and very odd complaints of a dizzying headache that started whenever they lingered for too long in one spot. A headache potion hadn't helped in the slightest. With the both of them at a loss to explain it, marching deeper into the forest at a steady pace with lit wands aloft had seemed the only solution.

The wind was stronger now, so that the forest was in constant movement, the damp chill from earlier that day returning with a vengeance. Leaves rustled from all directions, the rare pauses in the sound devastatingly quiet to their ears. They did not have to go far before Millicent began to feel nauseated.

"Think I need... to..." she managed weakly, stopping to prop herself up against a tree trunk.

"That's fine," Hermione said in a soothing tone, "we should be taking a rest anyway. You're probably just doing too much on an empty stomach, that's all."

"Oh... it's not empty," Millicent assured her, the attempt at humour merely sounding pained.

"Well, just rest a bit," Hermione repeated, leaning against a tree right next to her and clutching her head with a wince. "See if that helps."

Millicent looked too green to say another word, so she gave Hermione's wand hand a squeeze instead, before going back to clutching her roiling stomach. It was all Hermione could do to stay upright, the dizziness coming back to her in a wave that made her feel as if the world had been knocked awry, tilted several degrees to the left. She clutched desperately at the bark of the tree.

"Sorry," Millicent finally got out. "I think it's getting better now. You hanging in there?"

"Mmm hmm," Hermione murmured in a bald-faced lied.

"Stupid question. I'll be okay to keep moving soon. Really wish I could make that headache stop."

"It's alright," Hermione breathed, sticking her wand in her pocket and reaching out blindly to take Millicent's hand for reassurance. Her head was throbbing; she squeezed her eyes shut.

"It's actually pretty shit," her companion countered with a pained laugh. "But if it helps, you go on believing that we're somewhere other than right in the arse crack of hell." Just the sound of her breathing was like sandpaper, but when she spoke, it was like a radio crackling, the volume spiking unexpectedly—it sent washes of red, black, and white spouting painfully behind Hermione's eyelids and she groaned in distress. "Come on, put your arm around my shoulder—there—let's get walking, just let me lead—hah! Always wanted to say that..."

It was a good thing that Millicent was so stocky, or they might have toppled over when Hermione stumbled during her first steps, her sense of balance failing her. Instead, eyes closed, she felt an arm tighten around her lower back, and a strong hand steady her at the collarbone each time she thought she was in danger of falling. They went at a glacial pace for several minutes before Hermione could open her eyes, retrieve her wand from her pocket, and walk unaided again.

"I wonder if a sleeping draught might work."

"When we finally get exhausted enough, or find a patch of ground that isn't riddled with these stupid tree roots, I'll give it a go."

"Cushioning charm," Millicent supplied helpfully.

"You're right," Hermione conceded with a long-suffering sigh. "I can't even think straight."

"Don't be so bloody hard on yourself," her companion chuckled, incredulous. "We've been walking just about all day with hardly any rest, which—now that I think about it—isn't something you're used to, and that's likely where the headache came from. A good sleep and you'll be just fine. Your body probably doesn't know what to do with itself when it's standing still now."

Hermione was wracked with near-hysteric laughter, the sort that comes after a situation has passed the point of hilarity and turned hopeless. "I don't think... that's how it works."

"It is now," Millicent replied, unconcerned.

She couldn't stop laughing, was swaying drunkenly as she walked, the exhaustion setting in and making her feel demoralized, but also strangely euphoric. "We're complete idiots for even coming here, you know that?"

"Yep, no, I got that much."

"A bloody cliff, a tree, and a stone? Are you joking?" Hermione cackled, leaning into Millicent's side, tears running down her cheeks. "Oh—oh, and a hill, and a cave, neither of which exist according to every known map we consulted—not to mention, your parents telling us we were nutters—oh, Circe..."

"At least you're not being a nutter alone."

"You always know just what to say."

"It's a... talent," Millicent said in a funny, off tone, and proceeded to brace herself against the nearest tree trunk to be sick all over the forest floor.

"Oh, Millie..." Hermione winced, the hilarity of the situation vanishing instantly.

"I'm fine," she said gruffly, still braced against the tree and breathing heavily as she stared at the ground. "Things were getting a bit too sentimental."

And Hermione was back to laughing—though her mirth was tinged with indignation.

"Liked that, did you?"

Hermione fell back with a grunt of pain, narrowly avoiding cracking her wand against a protruding root as she landed on her back with a thump.

"Hermione!"

She couldn't breathe for a terrifying moment, and then finally her lungs let her draw in air; she gulped it back greedily, lying back into the damp, uneven ground and closing her eyes to the dull throb that had begun near her left temple. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she managed at length, barely audible.

"I've heard that one before, and I'm not falling for it again," Millicent told her in consternation, "We're—"

Even through the haze of her steel spike of a headache, Hermione noticed the eerie sensation of her hairs standing on end, a prickle that made itself felt all over her body, not just on her arms, or the back of her neck. She forced herself to speak, though only in a murmur.

"Millie?"

"If you had to, do you think you could cast a Patronus?" Her voice was unusually subdued, and Hermione heard Millicent back up, crouch down near her shoulder.

"I... maybe?" Hermione tightened her grip around her wand, in too much pain to open her eyes. Her heart began to knock against her ribcage, a chill passing through her body. "What's happening?"

"Not sure," Millicent replied in that same subdued tone, voice quieter than before. "But there's a weird glow coming from the soil several yards from where we are now, and the temperature's dropped."

Hermione let go of her wand in order to grab at her forehead, letting out a keening cry between gritted teeth. The pain was nauseating now, and she couldn't help the tears that rolled down her cheeks as she rocked in place, like an antenna trying to find the one position that would eliminate the static getting in the way of a signal. Millicent was gripping her shoulder, calling out her name—and other things—but the pain was too bright a haze to let anything more than her own name register. Not that she was in any shape to formulate an intelligible reply.

She felt her torso being lifted away from the damp ground, and the whoosh of something being cast; when she was let go, her back landed on something soft, springy. A small section of the dirt had been cushioned, though Millicent was no longer saying her name, gripping her shoulder. Hermione forced herself to open her eyes, panic overtaking the pain for a moment, but shut them again within seconds, unable to see Millicent, unable to see much of anything. Her heart beat faster, and her breaths came in gasps.

Had Millie been taken?

Her headache broke like a fever, the acute pain becoming just shy of unbearable, enough so that she could stop clutching her head, and feel around at her side from her wand. Her fingertips dug into the damp, loose soil, pulled at a root, and the panic climbed higher.

"Hermione?" Came Millicent's disbelieving voice. "Hermione? Oh fuck," she exclaimed, sounding relieved and near tears. "Thank fucking Merlin! I was putting up wards—it's getting closer, no idea what in the fuck it is—thought you were—fucking hell, don't ever do that to me again. Next time you decide you're about to die, reschedule."

Hermione felt her hand being lifted, a shaky kiss being pressed into her palm.

"Got it," Hermione rasped in a tearful facsimile of a laugh.

"You are the most bearable person on this stupid planet."

"Thanks, I... think." Hermione managed to open her eyes to a warped, watery image of Millicent crouched down next to her, and blinked several times to regain focus. She gave the other woman the most reassuring smile she could muster, the pain receding further. "You could just tell me that you love me, you know."

"Thought I just did."

The smile came far more easily this time.

Millicent glanced off to the side, in the direction that Hermione's toes were pointed, and her expression turned sour. "We need to be ready—I've got your wand here. You were getting quite agitated and I didn't want you to accidentally snap it. Fucking hell. Do you think you could cast a Patronus?"

"I—I think so," Hermione tried to sit up, holding her head with one hand, the now-manageable throb of pain spiking briefly with the change in position, but settling again when she closed her eyes and tried not to move. She felt Millicent's hand pressing suddenly against her back to support it. "But—what is it?"

"There was a strange glow on the ground just ahead of us before it appeared, and the temperature dropped." Millicent had ducked her head under Hermione's arm, and was trying to haul her to her feet. "It's fog, but it's moving towards us like smoke, and it gets thicker every time I turn my back."

"Okay, alright," Hermione said evenly, trying to stay calm. "Clearly not normal fog."

"No. It's got backlighting."

Hermione groaned at the weak joke, and dispelled the light on her wand tip. With a series of jabbing motions, she conjured two sizeable bluebell flames onto her forearm instead. "Here, put this one on your shoulder. It's not going to burn you—hurry up. It'll stick." Hermione felt exhausted, but her headache had gone away almost entirely; she lifted the second flame to her own shoulder. "If we need to defend ourselves, better that we have a stable source of light."

"Nox," Millicent murmured.

"I think I can stand on my own now," Hermione told her, pressing her forehead to Millicent's cheek, before unhooking her arm from around the other woman's shoulders and stepping in front of her. "Is the ward perimeter large enough to fit the tent?"

"Of course."

"I just figure—if we need to wait it out..."

The fog, lit a pale, milky white by whatever was causing the ground below it to glow, rolled steadily forward, dispersing upwards as it approached. They could hear wind only behind them now, even then only faintly. It made Hermione's skin crawl, the way it probed at the ground as it neared the edge of the ward that Millicent had cast. Like watching a spider suddenly scuttle down the wall as you lay in bed, and then linger just in sight.

"Do you feel that?"

Hermione nodded at the whispered question. It felt like buzzing, like hair full of static, like white noise, as benign as it was menacing. And when the ground below their feet began to glow, her heart plummeted through her chest.

"Hermione..."

"Fog is more substantial than light—it probably won't be able to pass through."

"We might need to run."

"I know."

When the fog finally reached the edge of the wards, it halted for a moment at the unexpected resistance. Hermione watched with bated breath. Then, like water overflowing from a riverbed, it pushed forwards again, splitting so that it could continue its advance through the forest around the sides of the ward, over the top of it. They could only look on in horror as the fog surrounded them from all sides, the glow beneath their feet and the light from their blue flames combining to make the fog appear even more otherworldly. Soon, they could no longer see even the shadows of nearby trees beyond the wards.

"Right, then. I'll get started on the tent, shall I?"

Hermione forced herself to look away from the blank space pressing in at them. "I'll see if there's anything edible in the area. I still remember what you brought back this morning—"

With a loud crack that turned into a sizzling noise, energy arcing visibly all around them, the wards flashed and disappeared entirely.

"Hermione! We need to—"

"Protego Horribilis!" Hermione shouted, throwing herself against Millicent's side before the other woman could follow suit. Millicent's Protego Totalum, cast a split-second later, nested just underneath the shield that Hermione had conjured, and they both huddled together, crouched and staring wild-eyed at the fog encroaching upon the increasingly-small space they had demarcated as theirs.

"Unfortunately, I don't think the tent can fit in here."

"Millie," Hermione pleaded, halfway between a laugh and a cry.

"It could just be normal fog," she offered weakly.

"Normal fog would pass through the wards, not destroy them," Hermione pointed out, feeling miserable at her inability to keep her mouth shut, to preserve the illusion of safety.

"Let me rephrase:" Millicent sighed, seeming more exhausted than bothered by the doubtful comment. "The fog is clearly magical, but it could be harmless."

"I hope you're right," Hermione said in a tremulous voice.

"We're not going to die here," Millicent assured her, sounding like she meant it. "We're far too clever for that."

Hermione couldn't say a word, just grabbed Millicent's wand arm instead, and soon felt Millicent's free hand covering her own in solidarity.

"We'll be—"

The fog hit the outer arc of the shield charm, and with a fizzle of energy so brilliant they had to close their eyes in a yell, the charm collapsed with a loud popping sound. Hermione shrieked, despite herself, when she opened her eyes. The world had shrunk to an orb containing just the two of them, with a roiling mass of eerie blue fog pushing at them from all sides. When the fizzling started again, they reached out for one another, folding themselves into the smallest possible target they could, saying one another's names over and over, the emotional strain in their voices containing all the other words they didn't have the time to say.

They closed their watering eyes against the blinding flash of crackling energy.

Then, nothing.

--------

PART VI

Winter has begun to break its hold on the land, and for the first time in four moons, we have seen rain. While the snow has not melted enough to cause the river to double its size, the rain has made it swell, and the spirits have shown Ansithe the oncoming flood in the crystals. We decided that I must depart for the market with our wares as soon as we had packed the cart.

The goddess was kind, and the bridge over the river, still concealed beneath the last of the winter snow, was as sturdy as the day it was built. Yesterday morning it stood the weight of man, horse, and cart. If it washes away before I have returned, the spirits will aid Ansithe in rebuilding it.

I do not look forward to the return journey, nor to the bartering that lies ahead of me.

It has been three days, and it will be several more before I am within the castle walls, but I fear what will await me there. The last time that I was able to bring our wares to market, I saw even common folk approaching the wandmaker's home, good folk that had once rejected these unnatural objects as being follies of the conquerors, the nobility. The farrier who had always re-shod our horse had bought one for himself, and used the conquerors' tongue to command the spirits when I paid him for his work. I supplicated the spirits afterwards for forgiveness.

Alban is no longer the land of our goddess. It has been given over to a brutish people who take what they require of the spirits by force. This magica that the conquerors have brought with them is violence and blasphemy, a false channel to the goddess and the spirits. Yet even those that once counted themselves as dryw embrace it.

Our child will know galdor, will know the love that is contained within a question well-asked, and in its honest answer.

-from Old English, AD 481. M. B.


Hermione opened her eyes and closed them again in confusion, bringing her hands up to her eyelids to rub and wipe at them. It wasn't any help. When she opened her eyes again, her field of view was still colourless, shapeless, drifting like smoke or... fog. She lay her hand on her forehead, suddenly remembering. A root was digging into her lower back, and her left leg was asleep, pinned between her right and another root. Her left arm was asleep as well, trapped under something else that looked like a log or stone when she turned slightly to peer at it through the thick blanket of fog. She changed her mind when it groaned and shifted.

"Millie?"

Her voice was strangely muffled, even to her own ears.

Even quieter, as though through an adjacent bedroom wall, she heard a return, "Hermione?"

She couldn't feel her hand or her forearm to move them, but tried as best she could to roll onto her side and use her good arm to pull herself closer to where Millicent seemed to be laying. It was disconcerting to look down and not be able to see past her own thighs.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

Millicent's torso came into view in stages, the fog seeming to peel away from her the closer Hermione's eyes got to each area of her body. Her legs remained out of sight, as did her outstretched left arm, but after a struggle, Hermione was close enough to see her dazed-looking face. Millicent blinked up at her for a moment, and then with a grunt of effort (or realization) she turned onto her side so that Hermione could pull her nerveless forearm away from where it had been trapped. Millicent fell back again with a small huff of exhaustion.

"Are you hurt?" When Hermione shook her head, Millicent's left hand emerged suddenly, looming at her from out of the fog, to lay in reassurance on Hermione's back. After a moment the pressure on her back increased, and Hermione was pulled down to Millicent's chest completely, her still-asleep forearm flopping uselessly to her side.

"Told you we were too clever to die," Millicent murmured in a shadow of her usual dry tone.

Hermione let her eyes close in relief as Millicent's other arm wrapped around her. "In this case, I think stubbornness was the culprit."

Her companion let out a long-suffering sigh and then nuzzled Hermione's cheek. "Always have to have the last word, don't you?" Hermione smiled a bit at that. "Well, whatever happened, best get up and get moving before our luck runs out."

"My left leg and arm are both asleep," Hermione muttered tiredly into the other woman's hair, the prospect of standing (never mind walking) a daunting one. She was beginning to feel pins and needles in her numbed limbs again.

"Then let me up, and I'll help you stand."

"Let you? You were the one that pulled me down here in the first place."

"Correct, and I stand by my impulse. Let me up."

Hermione eased herself back into the ground with some difficulty, and watched Millicent's body shift in and out of view as she slowly stood up. The prickling in her limbs turned into a throb, almost painful in its intensity; she gasped, curling into a ball and cradling her arm, which felt especially bad. Not that it did any good. By the time she thought to look back at Millicent's disembodied legs, they were gone.

"Where are you?"

Her agitated voiced bounced back at her, wooden and strange, as though she were yelling in an enclosed space.

"Millie?"

The metal tip of a boot materialized out of the empty space. Then knees, then hands. Her face.

"Circe's tits, that was fucking mad," she breathed, hanging her head. "It's completely disorienting. I couldn't see my feet, I couldn't see you... it took me a minute to work up to the nerve to just drop back down here. I think I must have taken a step back in shock. Fucking hell. I knew you were down here, but when you're up there, it looks like an abyss. Fucking hell..."

"I brought some yarn—thought this hike was going to be a lot more relaxing—that should do the trick of keeping us from becoming separated." Hermione grimaced and clutched her arm again at the painful throb of blood rushing through her wrist and out to her fingers. It felt like they were about to burst. "My arm feels like it's filled with rampaging hippogriffs."

"And your leg? Think you can stand?"

"Yeah, it's... yeah."

It was an adventure all its own to retrieve Hermione's bag, as it had rolled out of sight when they had fallen; Millicent had felt around blindly for ten minutes before she had found it, Hermione keeping her good hand on whichever of the other woman's limbs she could reach so that she didn't get lost. By the time they had fastened a good length of the yarn (a light blue that had been meant for baby socks) around each of their middles, the pain in Hermione's arm had dulled to an occasional twinge, though her grip remained weak. Standing and walking through the fog was an ordeal, the experience far worse than Millicent had led her to believe. Standing, it was impossible to see the ground, though they could see tree trunks and the tops of tall bushes if they got close enough. They took tiny, cautious steps at a glacial pace.

Unable to see the sky, the terrain, or guess at which way they had come, they lost track of time. They walked for lack of any other option, on the hope that at some point they would reach the edge of the insubstantial mire; the thought of staying longer than absolutely necessary in such isolation was untenable. Curiously, the nausea and headaches that each of them had been experiencing before the sudden change in atmosphere did not return, though the lack of stimuli began to wear on them just as much. After a time, they squeezed together, the yarn hanging limp between them, periodically touching parts of their own bodies and each other's, just to remind themselves that they were tangible, and not alone.

They spoke too. Or hummed. Anything to drown out the cottony pressure between their ears. Millicent resorted to belting out tavern songs eventually (to Hermione's chagrin), but stopped after the first three due to an overwhelming feeling of homesickness.

Even Hermione could have gone for an ale at that point.

Or a nice, hot Butterbeer.

The fog had brought a chill with it, one that couldn't be dealt with using conventional means. Their attempted warming charms were met with the same sort of crackling and arcing flashes that their wards and shielding charms had inspired before failing, though luckily on a smaller scale. Millicent had complained that the spell to engorge the shrunken wool sweater that she had wrestled out of her sling bag had caused shooting pains in her wand hand for some time after.

The fog did not take kindly to spells, whatever it was.

By far, the strangest thing of all was their lack of exhaustion. Their muscles began to cramp and feel sore from all their near-stumbles, from the slow, shrinking pace they were forced to adopt, but neither of them complained of feeling sleepy. This was remarkable given that complaining (after the tavern songs had ended) became their most readily available source of amusement. In short, their only amusement. Neither of them much felt like reciting obscure dates or competing to see who could create Arithmantic datasets the quickest; too much thought led to a discomfiting silence. So they reminisced about their school years, grumbled at one another, and gossiped (most of what they knew was outdated, but it served well enough as a diversion). When all else failed, Millicent began to treat Hermione to in-depth analyses of her most recent jousting matches aloud, along with her plans for new strategies, reducing the normally-thrilling sport to tedium.

Emerging from the fog was sudden, and an assault to their deprived senses.

The small clearing they found themselves in was painted in barely-there shades of dusk, burnt orange and navy, the minuscule nighttime noises of the forest magnified to the point that they both gasped and slapped their hands over their ears as soon as they were free. The colours, drab as they were, seemed to them like the most remarkable of hues, bursting over their eyes like rain after a long drought.

Hermione couldn't bring herself to move for a long time, afraid that it was all a mirage, that she would take a single step and be back in the unending blank space of the fog. Eventually Millicent nudged her forward, and with a shriek of surprise, her beaded bag slipped from where she had tied it onto a belt loop and crashed to the ground. The belt loop, ripped clean off at the seams, floated after it serenely. She whipped around when she heard a yell from Millicent, only to see all the contents of her sling bag returning to their original sizes, the bag itself virtually exploding at the seams from the force of the dispelled magic.

They regarded one another in shock.

"What in the bloody fucking hell was that?"

Hermione held out her hands in bewilderment, mouth working uselessly.

"That was my favourite bag," she continued in an indignant yell. "Are you listening to me, you cockwomble of a forest? My grandfather made that!"

Hermione was tempted to let out an inappropriate giggle at the epithet, but sobered quickly upon taking a proper look at the full-size items that were strewn in a half-moon behind Millicent. Luckily, there hadn't been anything breakable, but the thought of having to re-shrink all the items was an exhausting one—the sleepiness that had been curiously absent in the fog suddenly returned to her.

"I suppose this is as good a place as any to spend the night."

"This stupid clearing didn't give us much choice, did it?" Millicent snapped, glaring at the ground as she bent to pick up all the wooden tent-beams that had been scattered behind her.

"Here, I'll fix your bag, alright?" Hermione offered gently, holding out her hand. "A Reparo should do until we get back, and then someone can mend it properly and strengthen all the charm latticework."

Millicent grunted something unintelligible and handed the ruined bag over, keeping her face mostly hidden. She set pointedly to work on building the tent.

Many people made the assumption that Millicent was brutish, unfeeling, or stupid. It was an easy mistake to make—one that Hermione had made herself for a long time. She was one for putting on false bravado, for parading her physical strength as crude intimidation—for easy, crass language. For shouting or snapping in anger when she was hurt. She shrugged off half-joking comments about trollish intellect when she had difficulty with seemingly-simple spells, and quietly achieved top marks in disciplines like Arithmancy, Astronomy, and History of Magic. Insults rolled off her back like water, sometimes soaking through, but always, eventually, drying out in the sun.

Millicent didn't care about having the approval of strangers, of acquaintances, of teachers; she only cared that those closest to her could see her for who she was. It was something about her that Hermione deeply admired.

Her shouting at the forest had been for show. The discrete sniffing and wiping at her nose and eyes with the hem of her shirtsleeve was real. Hermione didn't know all that much about Millicent's grandfather, only that he had passed away before she had gone off to Hogwarts, and that the two of them had been inseparable. Millicent always found it difficult to talk about him. Like most members of the Bulstrode family, her grandfather had learned an old-world craft for a hobby, apprenticing with both Muggle and magical artisans in his youth to learn leatherworking. The bag had been a painstaking creation, interlaced with several permanent charms and enchantments that her grandfather had lovingly cast himself. If for no other reason than that, it was impossible to truly repair.

Lowering herself to the ground, Hermione carefully laid the bag out on the grass in front of her, the setting sun still providing enough light to see the individual pieces of leather by. She flicked and twisted her wand, calling out the incantation.

Nothing happened.

Her eyebrows creased and she tried again to no avail. Deciding to start with something simpler, she whispered Lumos and her blood went cold as she stared at the tip of her unlit wand.

Frowning, she reached over slightly to pick up her beaded bag where it had dropped earlier, and though the straps pulled taut, it wouldn't budge. She took a moment to cover her face and inhale.

"Millie?"

"What?" She sounded calmer, more like herself, though there was a thickness to her voice that belied her earlier tears.

"I think we have another problem."

"Of course we do," she huffed, rolling her eyes.

"I... can't cast anything."

"Buggering fuck."

"Pretty much," Hermione conceded with a heavy sigh. "Can you try a spell?" She watched as Millicent went through several simple charms, each one failing to produce even sparks or a bit of smoke, the hallmarks of misdirected or misfired magical energy.

"Well, I suppose the good news is, we must be approaching something worthwhile."

"Stop with the optimism. We discussed this."

"If we did, I don't remember," Hermione said with a serene smile. "My best guess is that the fog drained us in some way—it was very reactive to magic. A good night's sleep should help us build back up our reserves."

"And what of our bags?"

"Well..." Hermione crossed her arms in thought, gaze wandering up to the patches of sky that were clear of clouds. "Hmm. Our bags obviously won't be able to regain their magic without our help, but I think I have an idea for what happened. The shrinking charm suddenly breaking on all of the things in your bag caused the rupture. The feather-light charm suddenly breaking on my bag caused it to drop like a stone; I'm lucky it was on my belt or I could have injured myself quite badly. It didn't break apart because the extension charm is permanent, so everything still fits inside—it's just too heavy to carry."

"Clever clogs."

Hermione shot her a mocking smile. "I'll help set up the tent, shall I?"

"I think the more pressing concern is light, warmth. Did you pack those matches after all?"

"Yes, of course. I packed everything on the list."

"Ah, right, the one I didn't bother to read."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Well, I can do us one better: I packed a torch."

"Either way, we'd need matches," came the flat reply.

"No, a Muggle torch. One that uses electricity."

"Well excuse the confusion, but I'm pretty damn certain Muggles used to use proper torches back when they were content to leave well enough alone."

"Your blood purity is showing."

"Oh, it's been a long day. Let me be bitter. I'm harmless."

Hermione shook her head with a fondly exasperated smile and knelt down to rummage through her bag. It was no easy task to sift through all the piles of things that she had considered essentials for the trip without being able to use a summoning charm. In the dark, no less. The torch, with its unique shape, she found relatively easily after a minute or two of poking and prodding the confines of the bag. The matches, packed into a small, embossed tin, took longer as it had become wedged in between several books. Mercifully, the torch lit up when she tried the switch.

"Circe, that thing is bright!" Millicent exclaimed on the downswing of her mallet.

"Muggle ingenuity," Hermione shrugged with a smile. She hopped up from her sitting position and came to join Millicent at the tent, aiming the torch's beam at the support pole being hammered into the ground.

"No complaints here." Millicent bent to retrieve the third and last pole, which she heaved up between notches in the first two to make the simple skeleton of the tent. The large bundle of folded canvas was already waiting at her feet, and Hermione picked it up without comment, pointing the torch, which she placed on the ground, at the unfinished shelter. They worked efficiently, unfolding the canvas in tandem until wooden pegs roped into the hem tumbled out, and then slowly moved together to drape the fabric over the frame. Millicent then took her mallet back in hand and started to drive all the pegs into place, Hermione holding on to the canvas on the opposite side to keep it taut.

The sun had set completely when they finally stepped away from their serviceable shelter to retrieve their sleeping gear, neither of them having enough energy to make a fire, much less search for a late meal. Millicent was already unrolling another, smaller square of canvas on the ground inside the tent when she noticed Hermione's approach.

"Oh, forget about that stupid thing," the black-haired woman groaned. "Would you just get in with me? You're being ridiculous."

"My sleeping bag is warm though."

"Not without warming charms, it won't be."

Hermione held her tongue. It really wasn't the time to begin explaining how the material of her high-end sleeping bag worked to conserve heat. "And you think you can do one better? You're always stealing the sheets on me in your sleep at home—at least this sleeping bag will be consistent in covering me."

"So unzip the stupid thing and toss it on the furs—I don't care! Just get in the bloody bed with me!"

Hermione tried to give her a stern look, but it morphed into a playful one. "Bossy."

"You're damn right, I am," Millicent scoffed. "You think I put up this tent just to sleep alone? Not a chance."

"I did help," Hermione pointed out, just to goad her. She received an annoyed glance for her efforts. "Alright, you did most of the work."

"Get inside and keep that torch lit. Do you have everything? I'm going to bring down the front end of the canvas so we don't freeze to death."

"It's the middle of summer."

"Figure of speech."

While Millicent was shutting out the night, Hermione set to work on making their bed, unfolding and placing several layers of linens and furs on the canvas that covered the ground. It was a far cry from the sleeping bag she had been using, and she was already dreading the inevitable drafts that would come from being under loose layers instead of ensconced in a veritable cocoon. After some consideration, she unzipped only one side of her bag, and arranged it under the covers, open side facing inwards. A happy medium that allowed closeness without any unfortunate drafts or worries about stolen covers.

Hermione felt two hands slide around her waist, a chin press onto her shoulder.

"That wasn't so difficult, was it?"

She snorted, patting the arms that were crossed over her abdomen. "I will zip myself back into isolation if necessary."

"I'm sure it won't come to that."

As it happened, she was right.

--------

PART V

Hermione woke feeling somewhat sweaty, but well rested. Between Millicent's impressive body heat, and the insulation of her sleeping bag, Hermione's fears of drafts and chills had been laughably off the mark. Indeed, she felt almost too warm.

Gaps in the canvas let in bright strips of sunlight, some of the beams falling across the foot of their makeshift bed; the entire tent glowed, no shadows able to fall on it in the clearing. Birds were chattering distantly, and there was a breeze shifting the tent back and forth like sighing born of tedium. The morning was mild, if somewhat muggy, and Hermione easily fell back into a doze, waking again only when Millicent began shifting around in earnest.

She was a grumpy sort of sleeper: restless, huffy, and with her thick, angled eyebrows, always seeming the slightest bit annoyed at whatever it was that was happening in her dreams. The fact that she was a snorer certainly didn't do anything to diminish the impression. Hermione was content, for a little while, to watch the small movements beneath her eyelids, the unconscious smacking of her lips, the reassuring rise and fall of the covers half-shoved off her chest. But eventually Hermione had to shift her attention to her empty stomach (she assumed Millicent's would be in a similar state), and to the repairs awaiting them just outside.

"Millie?" She gave the other woman's shoulder a gentle shove and received a particularly loud intake of breath as a reply, but not much else. She shrugged out of her sleeping bag, which had shifted away from the reach of most of the other linens during the night, and pushed through the covers to cuddle into Millicent's side. Hermione tried calling her name again, this time brushing some wavy hair out of her face so that she could press her nose to Millicent's cheek, give her a kiss for good measure. Instead of having it returned, she instead found herself trapped snugly between Millicent's chest and one of her muscular arms—certainly not a place she could budge or slip out from under if Millicent didn't want her to. She felt the other woman nuzzle her forehead then, a warm exhalation sweeping over her closed eyelids. Millicent was pretending to be unaware of her actions, clearly, but being held hostage to feigned sleep felt pleasant enough that Hermione was willing to humour her for a little while.

"Morning."

Hermione didn't get any chance to reply at the sudden breaking of Millicent's charade; her lips were too occupied with answering an equally-sudden kiss. And then shrieking with laughter as Millicent bade her goodnight and mimed falling back to sleep, this time trapping Hermione under the bulk of her weight instead of just her arm.

"I surrender, I surrender!" Hermione gasped out, laughing, and the pressure eased. She felt fingers sliding to the nape of her neck, pulling her in for another kiss, one that ended in the covers being a lot warmer and sweatier than they had been to begin with. Millicent went out to scrounge up breakfast looking more than a little satisfied with herself, and left Hermione in a content heap to contemplate her returning hunger while her heartbeat slowed.

Or at least she would have if a yelled fuck! hadn't caused her to scramble out of bed and hastily throw on all the clothes she could reach before dashing outside (her pants, she would have to fish out of the covers later). The glare of the sun made her blink and shield her eyes, but as the only other person in the clearing, Millicent stood out easily enough; rigid with contempt, she looked down at a fallen branch near the forest's edge.

"It's not working," she said with a spectacularly sour frown when she noticed Hermione's approach. "I've tried several times. I can't make a basket."

"Shall I try it, then?" Hermione asked, stomach dropping like a stone.

The morning went downhill from there. It wasn't simply their inability to cast spells of any kind that contributed to the aura of doom that they each fed for the entirety of the morning leg of their hike, but also their failure to have thought of the possibility of such a thing happening in the first place. Aside from some matches, a torch, the sleeping bag, and Millicent's knife, their strategies and manner of transporting their essentials had all relied on spells. Finding food, at least, was easy enough. Hermione reached into her bag and dug out the two widest-mouthed glass bottles she could find for their forage, and then, using some of her yarn, tied rudimentary harnesses around the bottles so that they could be hung, hands-free, from their necks while they searched. The harnesses were an inspired idea, but in practice so ineffectively tied that they kept having to hold the bottles in their hands anyway as they walked. Eventually, coming across a brook, Hermione had realized with a frustrated start that they would have to find and boil water until their magic returned, and they had sacrificed one of their two bottles meant for food to the cause.

They faced their belongings after they had eaten and gone back to the brook again to collect more water, armed with more containers. This time, looking at everything strewn all over the clearing, seeing the massive wall of fog that somehow was still looming in the bright warmth of the morning, Hermione was hit with a powerful wave of vulnerability. They were alone, in the middle of an apparently-hostile forest, with no way now to protect themselves (she was reluctant to consider the knife 'protection'), no way to carry their grounded equipment, no way to quickly warm themselves, or procure water. So much of their journey had been planned around magic, so much of the security she had felt in embarking on an indefinite hike (read: wild goose chase) had rested on her magic being there. It wasn't like when Harry had snapped his wand and been able to borrow another. Her magic simply wasn't there. Or wasn't responding in any way that she could understand. She was Muggle-born, certainly, but she had never, not once, been without magic.

"Hermione."

"Mm hmm?" She stared out, dejected, at the way they had come, at the fog still so dense it was impossible to see what lay beyond it. It felt almost as if they had been cut off from the rest of the world—there was a void between the sky, and where the grass of the clearing started.

"Turn around. I can hardly fucking believe it."

Hermione humoured her, and her eyes widened immediately. "It's the hill."

"It's so far away that you can't see it from any other vantage in this clearing, but I think we really are onto something. The forest doesn't seem as dense as it was yesterday—I bet we could reach that hill before nightfall if we leave as quickly as possible."

"Alright," Hermione said, taking a deep breath. She forced herself out of her spiralling, negative thoughts, and tried to focus instead on what was possible under their new circumstances. "We're going to have to leave a lot behind."

"That's fine. I doubt anyone else is going to be stupid enough to muscle through that fog, so whatever we leave here should be safe enough if we hide it under some branches or something."

"Branches. Sure." Hermione shook her head, managing finally to find some humour in the situation. "We need containers for certain—I'll reinforce the ones we have now with more yarn so we can hopefully carry them a little more easily. The match tin and torch can fit in one of my pockets. In the other, I can stuff the rest of the yarn. The sleeping bag pouch has straps, and I'll be able to carry it on my back."

"Do we really need the sleeping bag? What if we used that pouch for something else?"

"Like what?"

"For the tent."

"There's no way all that canvas would fit, and frankly I don't fancy carrying all those wooden poles with us."

"I can make more poles," Millicent said with impatience, pointing out the knife on her belt. "Look, your sleeping bag seems comfortable enough in good weather, but if it rains, it'll be worse than having nothing at all. At least if we brought the floor canvas, we could hang it between some trees, or drape it somehow to keep out wind and rain."

"Why not bring both? We can roll that one up tightly, and it'd probably be long enough to hang around your neck without slipping. We could probably roll one of the linen sheets inside it as well. The sleeping bag we can unzip and share along with the sheet."

"It really irritates me when you're clever."

"No it doesn't," Hermione disagreed with a smug smile.

"Why don't you tie the other linen sheet around your neck like a cloak?"

"Are you serious?"

"Oh yes," Millicent said with an entirely innocent expression.

"I know you're just trying to take the piss, but having another sheet couldn't hurt, so I'll—wait." Hermione clapped her hands together, feeling excited. "We could tie that sheet up into a bag!"

"Could we?"

"Of course! Just tie the ends off together and you could carry it like a knapsack! Oh, perfect!"

"Right then," Millicent said, managing to suppress all but a small chuckle. "Take a deep breath—save that energy for the hike. I really was just taking the piss, but that's a frustratingly clever idea. I'll carry the tied sheet, and we can put the pot in it, maybe some extra clothing, or another bottle."

"I'll see if I can find the bandages and sewing kit I packed—maybe the Murtlap essence and Dittany as well, though I have no idea if they would still work without our magic helping."

"I suppose that's everything." Millicent let her arms unfold from her chest and drop to her sides.

Even with a solid plan of action for the rest of the day, realizing all they would not be able to take with them was certainly a blow. Their possessions were now heavier, bulkier, and more unwieldy to carry—even considering the fact that they were carrying far less now than they had the previous two days. Hermione had to try several times before she could knot together a bag that wasn't lopsided and liable to fall apart once filled with the bare minimum of supplies they could reasonably carry; even when it was filled, it wouldn't sit properly until Hermione had thought to loop the rolled canvas around Millicent's neck through the armholes for extra support. Hiding her beaded bag wasn't particularly difficult, but it did bring up questions that Hermione wanted to avoid, that she only had half-formed answers to.

How would they bring everything back with them through the fog, especially if she couldn't re-cast a feather-light charm, or repair Millicent's sling bag? The most obvious answer was that they wouldn't. The more complicated answer was that they might be able to if they took everything out of the bag, and then moved it all into the fog they had come from; if they were really lucky, the fog might not prevent them from casting the simple spells they would need to become mobile again, to return their belongings to manageable sizes. Hermione was still holding out hope that their magic would return with more rest than she had originally predicted would be necessary and eliminate the problems they were currently facing altogether. But that hope dangled on a thin thread, and wasn't informed by fact.

With less canopy to cover them as they began their hike, and far more open space to move around in, it was a more comfortable walk in many ways than the one they had undertaken the afternoon before. The awkwardly distributed weight they both carried and the sunlight they were exposed to, however, combined to make the early afternoon feel miserable in its own way. It was cloudy, but not enough to fully dampen the heat being given off by the sun, and they found themselves having to stop frequently for sips of water, horribly conscious of having to ration what they carried. Running out would mean having to find a water source and then stopping to build a fire (Millicent had pushed to forego that step, but Hermione had been very insistent on boiling the water—she knew that much, at least, about Muggle survival techniques). Worse than being time-consuming, searching for water ran the risk of veering them wildly off-track, which would make both finding the hill (which was still out of sight), and reclaiming their belongings on the way back that much more difficult.

They picked whatever edible plants they noticed along their route as they walked, and had filled one of their empty bottles partway when the tip of the hill finally came into view over the treetops. It was a sign, they decided, and they stopped for a brief, rather unsatisfying lunch before pushing forward again, the hill looming larger before them each time they passed through an open area. The midday heat was starting to fade and a cool breeze setting in when they heard running water, the sound louder with each step.

"Circe, if it isn't a little river cutting right through the forest."

"But it is the river?"

"Merlin's tits, who knows? Get that last empty bottle out of my linens and let's fill it up with water before we continue on. I'll fill the canteen too. I'm still famished from our last meal and the hill doesn't seem very far now." When Hermione made no move to do as she had been asked, Millicent added, "come on, let's get on with it."

Hermione's lack of action was suddenly made clear. On the opposite bank of the river, a boar was staring at them, its long snout dark brown and glistening with fresh soil. Its posture wasn't rigid or threatening, but it was such a shocking sight that the two of them stood frozen, uncertain of how to proceed. When the staring did not abate, Millicent put one hand on the hilt of her knife, and with the other pushed Hermione behind her. The boar turned and fled.

After a moment more of standing still, Hermione finally raised one hand to her chest and let out a long, relieved breath. "I thought they were extinct."

"Not any longer, apparently," Millicent commented wryly. "Or maybe they've continued to live here in secret."

"That was terrifying..."

"Says the woman who went after Lord Noseworthy when she was just a teenager."

"That's a poor comparison. I had use of my wand then."

This got a disbelieving laugh out of Millicent. "Well, that boar seemed curious, nothing more. I doubt it meant us any harm."

"I just got a very eerie feeling from it," Hermione admitted. "I—I don't know what it was, but it was unsettling. It seemed... intelligent. I dunno. I must be going mad."

"Well," Millicent reasoned, as Hermione finally reached into the makeshift sheet bag for the spare bottle, "you probably haven't encountered many wild animals before. It's always a bit like that. Humbling, somewhat unnerving. Humans don't always give them the credit they're due, removed from the wilderness as they often are."

"I suppose you're right," Hermione conceded, wondering. She submerged the glass bottle against the lazy current, air gurgling out as the cold water rushed in.

On the other bank, just inside the tree line, they found the beginning of a well-trod path, almost certainly made by the boar they had just encountered. Though Hermione was dead set against following it, she eventually relented in the face of Millicent's insistence that it would be safe as long as they remained alert—that the possibility of danger would be a given no matter where they walked.

The path did indeed make the walk an easier one, and remained curiously straight, offering plenty of edible plants to pick within sight of the path along the way. Millicent's jar had filled up so quickly that Hermione had emptied her pockets into Millicent's bag in order to fill them with mushrooms and nuts instead. At last the path disappeared.

"I told you that boar was strange!" Hermione exclaimed, pointing at the stone wall, at least a head taller than either of them, that had cut off the path completely. There was no proof that the boar had been on the path ahead of them as they had walked, but the path was well-worn, while the stone wall looked old, had been colonized by vines and moss. There was no way that the wall had been put up recently, certainly not recently enough to bisect such fresh-looking track marks.

"Funny that the journal didn't mention a wall."

"It suddenly ended though, didn't it?" Hermione pointed out, reaching forward with caution to touch the half-concealed stonework. "Maybe the wall didn't actually exist when the writer of those accounts died."

"I suppose that's plausible."

"Who would build a wall, especially one this big, if they didn't have something to protect? This is just incredible. I wonder if there's a way around it. Maybe a door..."

"Look—it stretches out on either side as far as we can see. For all we know, it could encircle the entire property... If it can be called that. It's simple: we go up and over."

Hermione shot Millicent a disgruntled look. "You expect me to climb this?"

"No, I expect to give you a leg up, and then help you down when I've safely landed on the other side. I'm not going to suggest anything to put you in danger, obviously."

Hermione gave her an apologetic frown at the bristle in the other woman's tone. "I know. I trust you."

"Well, it's going to get dark soon. The sooner we get over to the other side, the sooner we can find a spot to make camp, have a proper meal."

Hermione took a deep breath. "Alright, how are we going to do this?"

Millicent took her gently by the shoulders and directed her to stand closer to the wall. Then, she crouched down behind her. "Take a step back into my hand—there you go. Now I'm going to slowly stand up, and you grab hold of the top of the—yes, exactly. I'm going to lift you as high as I can, so just try to get a leg over and—well done, you. Wait there."

Hermione looked down, feeling awfully vulnerable, to watch Millicent feel around the wall in the immediate vicinity for several minutes, pushing and pulling at vines, and sweeping some away. Finally, she carefully positioned herself facing a portion of the wall a few steps away, one of her steel boot tips in a crevice, and then leapt into action, manoeuvring herself from one handhold to the next until she had thrown her elbow over the top of the wall and pulled the rest of her body weight up after it. Somehow she managed not to drop or break anything, even the bottle in the sling around her neck—a testament to how good her reflexes were. She let her legs dangle over the other side, supporting her weight with her belly and bent arms, and then after a breath in, pushed away from the wall and dropped gracefully to her feet, landing with a huff in a crouch.

"Easy," Millicent commented, breathing a little harder than usual but looking none the worse for wear. She came to stand below the spot on the wall that Hermione was straddling, and raised her arms. "Just turn around and let both your legs dangle over the wall, and I'll catch you as you come down. I promise, as soon as your legs are in reach, I'll be holding on."

Hermione gulped, giving her a flat, unconvincing smile, and turned to do as she had been told, keeping the reassuring imagine of Millicent's outstretched arms at the forefront of her mind. True to her word, as soon as Hermione had worked up the courage to let both legs dangle over the other side, arms trembling with the effort to hold herself steady, Millicent had taken firm hold of her thighs and guided her feet to the ground. When she could stand on her own, Hermione turned around to give Millicent a warm hug out of gratitude and relief, one that was returned with no small satisfaction.

"Shall we?" Millicent finally asked, looking at Hermione with a fond, widening smile before catching herself. "I mean, considering they've already laid out the welcome mat for us."

"How's that?" Hermione snorted, pulling her back in for one more hug.

"Look down."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake."

"We might as well continue following it," Millicent suggested with an edge of resignation.

"I'm telling you, that boar wasn't normal."

"What, d'you think he just hopped over a wall two times his height and continued on his way?" Millicent asked with a bark of laughter.

"No, I'm wondering if it might have walked straight through."

"Hermione. Please tell me you haven't suddenly forgotten that only witches and wizards can become ghosts. Not to mention, the little bugger would be near-impossible to see in daylight. Which—see counter argument number one—is a moot point."

"It could be a witch or a wizard though."

"What the hell are you on about?"

"It occurs to me that I've never read anything about an Animagus becoming a ghost. Now there's a gap in the literature."

"Don't get ahead of yourself Hermione—we only planned for one revolutionary discovery on this trip."

"Very funny."

"I thought so."

"No, but it's plausible, isn't it?" Hermione insisted, bringing them back to the topic at hand with a delighted smile. "Oh, this is better than I expected!"

Millicent heaved an exasperated, but altogether fond sigh, and steered Hermione, who was deep in thought, forward onto the path.

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The hill, which had seemed so small from their morning campsite, towered over them now, blocking out the evening sun so that the forest around them was dim in spite of the pale blue sky. They were still several hours away from sunset, but it was hard to tell on the path, which had been encased entirely by the foliage overhead. It began to wind and rise ever so slightly after the sky had been shuttered from them, and the tree trunks grew fatter, their thick roots looping gracefully in and out of the forest floor, waiting for sun or rain, like river snakes, with their bodies half-concealed in murky waters.

When the level of darkness finally caused Hermione to stumble on a root (Millicent's hand automatically went out to catch her at the elbow), she decided that enough was enough, and stopped to fish the torch out of Millicent's bag. It cast harsh, unnaturally bright light with none of the softness of a charm—the shadows it drew from the trees were equally harsh, looking dark as pitch when they walked past, the light keeping pace with her gait. The shadows seemed to jump at them from all sides, rather than flicker and sway the way they would in the presence of Lumos.

Still, it was better than tripping and breaking either of their necks in the premature dark.

"Well hello!" Millicent exclaimed with a surprised laugh. "Bugger me sideways—these actually look ripe!"

"Sorry?" Hermione asked, only managing to suppress part of her bemused laugh.

"Crab apples—right there. They look edible!" She was pinching one between her thumb and forefinger.

"And that's... odd? We've passed plenty of these trees the last couple of days and you scoffed at me when I suggested we pick some."

"I didn't scoff."

"You did, actually."

"I'm sorry—whatever, I didn't mean it," Millicent waved her off, too impatient to sound all that sincere. "They normally don't ripen for another couple of weeks—but these look ripe, they feel ripe..." She unsheathed her knife and sliced through one of the little fruits like butter, then another, angling their flesh towards the light of the torch. "They are ripe. Interesting."

"I... suppose... the change in elevation had something to do with it?" Hermione was grasping at straws. The only thing she hated more than grasping at straws was admitting she didn't know something. Unfortunately, the study of Herbology did not generally extend to edible plants, as very few fruits and vegetables were magical (though a respectable number of herbs and fungi were both magical and edible). The reason for this discrepancy was hotly contested among herbologists, and had inspired several incompatible theories—that, at least, was something that Professor Sprout had covered during a class in their fifth year. There were some spells to trick edible plants into flowering or fruiting out of their usual cycles, but the spells were often damaging over time, and so Professor Sprout had understandably refused to teach them. Millicent only knew as much as she did because the self-sufficient Bulstrode estate boasted its own farm, which she had been required to learn the workings of during her summers.

"Elevation would be more of a hindrance than a help, and the tree wouldn't be getting all that much sunlight down here; terrible place for a fruit to grow." Millicent took a large bite of one of the halves, avoiding the pips. "They're rather sweet," she remarked out of the corner of her mouth, sounding impressed. "Have this one," Millicent told her, holding out the second apple that she had sliced in half. "I'm going to pick more for later. Fucking brilliant."

The crab apple was sweet, for a crab apple, anyway. Still, after having walked on an empty stomach for an hour, the taste was mouth watering, and she gobbled both halves down in short order.

"Well, I suppose that's enough," Millicent finally said, her hands full. "Plenty left for the return trip, if the animals haven't picked the branches clean by then. Could you toss them in the bag?"

The forest was a low drone of noise, heightening as dusk stretched into night. The calls of insects overlapped and repeated, rising and falling as they walked from one minuscule territory to the next. The path was nowhere near as distinct now, the lack of grass making the indents in the earth less conspicuous. Still, the evening was a mild one, with none of the chill or wind that had been present the night before, so neither of them saw any reason to stop and make camp, especially not when there was a possibility they could make it back out into the open air where they could get some sun in the morning. That, and Hermione privately wasn't thrilled with the idea of going to sleep in what seemed to be a boar's territory. Its glistening snout was still burned in her memory.

It was a gradual change, but the trees eventually stretched higher, their lowest branches growing well above either of their heads, some trunks pole-thin, others so wide they could not have encircled them, even holding hands. The forest morphed into a cavernous space, with no boisterous insect chirping to fill it; the shadows cast by the torch that Hermione held shrank and disappeared into the wider darkness of the area. It was just them, and their narrow beam of light.

"Merlin's hairy arse," Millicent muttered, shifting the homemade straps of her bag with some discomfort. "I know it's not the best place, but maybe we should set up the tent soon... if we don't get any rest, or have a proper meal, we'll be useless tomorrow."

Hermione stopped in her tracks suddenly, unable to draw breath, and felt Millicent bump into the sleeping bag hanging at her back with a grunt of surprise. She stumbled, and the torch fell out of her hands, the beam of light bouncing wildly around their surroundings before hitting the ground with a thump. Trembling, Hermione scrambled to pick it back up, and aimed it at the spot where a pair of familiar, glittering black eyes had been staring back at them both only seconds before.

The space was empty.

"What was that about?" Millicent asked her, taken-aback.

"The boar. It was staring at us, just ahead, and I was..." Hermione shook her head at herself, feeling frustrated. "Maybe you're right. We should rest. It doesn't seem to want to cause us any harm, it was just... watching. But I still get such an eerie feeling from it."

"Really? It showed up again?"

"Yes," Hermione replied, feeling a degree of impatience.

"I believe you," came the defensive reply, "I just didn't see it this time, that's all. Look, I really do think we'll be safe if we camp here. The cooking fire alone should warn it off, and even if it doesn't... well, we'll be sleeping, and not any kind of threat to it. We can sleep next to one of these huge trees, with you between me and the trunk, of course—I'll have the fire at my back. We can set a perimeter of breakable twigs and dried leaves as well, and those might wake us up if anything approaches. But I seriously doubt that anything would be tempted."

"Believe it or not, I don't actually feel better about the situation, thinking of you acting like a human shield," Hermione protested.

"Well I do," Millicent chuckled, throwing an arm around Hermione's shoulders and directing her to turn back towards an enormous tree several paces behind them. "And anyway, I'm volunteering for the job."

That night, Hermione was startled out of her miserable attempts at sleep with every small sound that carried through the forest, too tense to make herself comfortable. She had tucked her ends of the linens and the canvas sheet tightly around herself, sealing out the insects and the cool air—but she could not shake the sensation of having been watched. The suspicion that they still were. Millicent seemed to have no such difficulty, and turned often, sleeping in her usual disastrous manner. Her snoring was as disruptive as it was comforting to listen to.

Eventually, when the canopy had finally begun to lighten in the approach of dawn, Hermione gave in to exhaustion, and relaxed just enough to close her eyes and rest.

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PART VI

"I didn't want to disturb you," Millicent explained with a small smile, when Hermione, bleary-eyed, looked over at her.

"Morning," she ventured in a croaky voice, her mouth feeling dry and uncomfortably pasty.

"I'm never going to let you forget this, by the way." Millicent was stoking their banked fire from the night before with a casual air, a pile of singed-looking mushrooms, apples, and other leafy greens sitting atop the flattened sleeping bag pouch beside her.

"Forget what?" Hermione finally asked, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

"The morning you slept in later than I did."

Hermione gave her a weak, incredulous chuckle. "Right. Only that's something I do every time you have a tournament."

"No," Millicent disagreed, looking far too satisfied with the situation. "No, I wake up early on purpose for tournaments, and you wake up just a little later. In comparison, this morning, I woke up after a very long, very pleasant sleep, and you continued to snore away well past a length of time that even I would consider excessive."

"Oh, come off it," Hermione shook her head and cast her gaze skyward, trying not to laugh. She heard the shuffling of boots and then felt something smooth push at her arm.

"Here—start by having some water. I wasn't able to find another source within sight of our camp, but I did boil the rest of what we collected from the river yesterday. Maybe we can do a better search after we've eaten, before we completely put out the fire. Anyway, the apples and the mushrooms should help a little with staving off the dehydration—along with any other berries we can find on today's walk. Careful—don't drink it all in one go."

Hermione made herself sit up when Millicent brought the improvised plate of breakfast over to the bed, but getting herself to eat was difficult. She wasn't certain how long she had been asleep, exactly, but she was certain that it must have been several hours less than ideal. Millicent looked at her with concern, and pushed most of the meal towards her, but did not otherwise comment on her lack of energy. The surprising brightness of the forest was nice, at least. Where the height of the canopy had made for terrifyingly dark stretches of space the previous night, the open areas now served to make the place seem serene and airy.

Hermione continued to feel listless until Millicent announced that it was time to pack up and set off in search of water—or the incredibly vague location they had been attempting to find for several days—whichever came first. The practical act of folding, rolling, putting away, and retying their bedding helped make Hermione feel more like herself. Finding water after only twenty minutes of searching near their camp had cheered her up the rest of the way. After boiling and cooling the water in all but one of their containers, they had smothered their fire and set out for another day of wandering.

The forest thinned the more they walked, and as they began to ascend again, they stopped periodically to enjoy the sight of the forest of Amroth stretching out below them, so small for all the grief it had caused them so far. The fog, they were astounded to find, still hadn't dissipated, and actually stretched out in a wide band around the area, enclosing it completely. Hermione wondered aloud if it was perhaps an ancient ward of some kind, but there was no way to tell for certain. Millicent simply grumbled at the realization that there would be no slipping around it on the way back.

As noon approached, they'd once again discovered a well-trod path, which this time wound around a steep section of the hill, so narrow they decided to walk single file just to be safe. When they turned a corner, Millicent suddenly let out a sharp laugh.

"Look—that's where we started."

"Circe, are you serious? I can't even imagine going all the way back there now..."

"We won't have to."

"Denying it won't make it any easier. Of course we—" Hermione stopped herself and shut her eyes, shaking her head while Millicent had a good chuckle.

"You're a brilliant witch... when you remember that Apparition exists. Once we're clear of that fog—"

"Oh, do hush up," Hermione said in a dry tone.

"Humblest apologies, madam. I'll do that."

"Thanks," Hermione said, sticking her tongue out in mock offence when the other witch glanced back at her.

"I could think of a better use for that."

"Millie!"

"We're in the middle of a bloody forest, who the fuck else is going to hear my dirty joke and take offence?"

"Even so!" Hermione burst into giggles, a mild coastal wind breezing past them.

"In my day and age," Millicent said in a creaky, trembling voice that reminded Hermione, very unfortunately, of the trolley witch that tended the Hogwarts Express, "ladies did not stick their tongues into the fannies of others..." With a ponderous intake of breath, Millicent raised a tremulous hand for emphasis. "They used their fingers instead."

Hermione was gasping, absolutely gasping, tears of mirth rolling down her cheeks.

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It came into view unceremoniously, was simply there when they turned a corner into a field—though they did not recognize it for what it was at first. The field was filled with wildflowers, and even (as Millicent pointed out) small clusters of grains that were somewhat concealed by tall grasses. In the centre was a boulder that had become home to what appeared to be several species of lichen, their colours and textures varying wildly over the rough stone surface. There were a handful of trees, too, the largest of which was an impressive oak, its trunk riddled with knots and tinged green with moss. Two much smaller crab apple trees grew close to a stony part of the hillside, with an ash, in front of a small thicket, reaching up towards the hilltop with its thin, spindly branches.

"A home," Hermione murmured to herself. "In the mouth of the hill..." She looked over at Millicent, who had already trampled over some wildflowers in order to examine the lichen-covered boulder. "An immovable stone. But where's the...?"

Something about the thicket was very peculiar. The more she stared at it, the more certain she became.

"It's right there."

"Sorry?"

"The house. That's... that's it."

Millicent looked back at her, bemused.

Hermione covered her mouth with her hand while she let out short, disbelieving huffs of laughter. "It's actually real. It actually exists. I thought... I honestly didn't think—"

"What are you looking at?"

"That," Hermione said, pointing insistently at the thicket, shaking her head in disbelief. "It's completely overgrown, but there is some sort of structure under there, and it's not natural. You can see, there's a pile of stones just down in the right corner, and from a certain angle—maybe you can't see it—there's a stone wall. But not the smooth stone of the hill there, a manmade wall of stone and mortar. I can't believe this."

She didn't have to tell Millicent twice. By the time Hermione had made her way to the boulder, Millicent had already flattened a path most of the way to the misleading thicket. Hermione's heart was in her throat as Millicent brushed aside some branches, forced her way past two bushes that came up to her knees, but it dropped when the wall came into full view. Part of the wall was crumbling, and ivy had colonized a large section of it, but the structure was still reasonably intact.

Millicent looked back at her, eyes wide. "Fucking fuck, it's real."

Hermione resisted the impulse to laugh hysterically. "There must be a door, an opening."

"Try the left side?"

Millicent backed out of the dense tangle of vegetation and they both rounded the buried structure; the left side was just as choked with growth, but they each got to work in peeling away layers of branches and foliage, pushing deeper each time, until there it was: a door. It was covered in ivy, a thick collection of rotting planks welded together with rusted strips of iron, and it took the both of them throwing their weight against it to make it burst open.

The house was filled with a greenish, hazy sort of light.

Grasses and tiny bushes pushed up from cracks in the stone slab floor, but moss was the main resident of the room, growing just about everywhere that Hermione thought to look. She and Millicent were both frozen at the threshold, the absolute quiet making each of them hesitate to advance any further. The original roof had collapsed in one corner, taken over instead by the canopy of a small but industrious tree.

Hermione felt a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder, and then Millicent pushed past her into the room.

"This is..." Millicent shook her head, unable to finish her whispered thought.

"I know." Hermione followed her inside, stepping gingerly over the plants growing through the floor.

"This is where the journal writer used to live." Millicent looked around, up at the ceiling, took several, small steps further into the room. "He died within our castle's walls—no record of how. But we took his journal. His wife, his child... they probably had no idea what happened."

Hermione reached out to squeeze Millicent's shoulder this time, overwhelmed with the reality of being in a place that, for them both—but Millicent especially—had been raised almost to the realm of myth.

"I started translating the journal for practice when I was in fourth year," she whispered, the both of them advancing toward another door, at the back. "This secret artefact that had been in my family's private collection for centuries. I felt almost as though he were speaking directly to me, about a culture and a way of life that has been erased, in so many ways, from history." Hermione could hear the intake of breath, the thickness of her voice. "I didn't even know his name. But he lived here."

"We really found it," Hermione whispered, feeling like crying, herself.

"Help me with this," Millicent swallowed, wiping her eyes with her forearm before bracing her shoulder against the door, ready to push. Hermione came to lean on the door beside her and on a silent count to three, they nodded to one another and shoved. The door bowed to the pressure, but did not open. They tried again, and heard a crack. After two more coordinated attempts to force the door out of the position it had been stuck in for centuries, it finally gave, part of it splintering, and swung open with a crash. The room beyond was completely dark, the green light that filtered into the main room through the foliage nowhere near strong enough to reach the other space.

Hermione fished the torch out of her pocket and passed it wordlessly to her companion. It seemed right, that Millicent should be the first one to enter.

The torch's beam of light, when it suddenly burst into the darkness, illuminated a stone tunnel that curved gently out of sight. Its aging walls were unnaturally smooth and stained dark brown, even black, in certain spots. They glistened slightly, and Hermione could see tracks down the walls that would have been carved by runoff from the surface. They had to duck as they slowly crept into the passage, to avoid the roots that dangled from the ceiling, and Hermione shivered at the way the ends seemed to stir as they approached, though she knew it must simply be down to the sudden current of air that they had brought with them. Or else a trick of the harsh torchlight.

"Oh, Hermione..."

Millicent sounded overcome again, and it was easy to understand why. The tunnel led to an enormous room with vaulted ceilings and rough-hewn pillars that had been adorned with carvings—simple, but recognizable shapes of plants, and of animals that had been hunted to extinction on the British Isles centuries ago. There were runic inscriptions too, twisting around the pillars, stretching up towards the ceiling, and Hermione pressed her hand over her mouth in disbelief, her mind racing with the possibilities of what she might decipher upon the stone.

There was a slight echo in the cave whenever one of them shifted and a persistent series of slow drips further back. The air was stale, but cool, and with the door still open around the corner, there was a slight draft at their backs, intent on intermingling with the air in the previously closed-off space.

There were several alcoves in the walls that lined the room, some that may have been large enough to house beds, and others that had probably functioned as cold storage, altars, or shrines. Hermione drank it in, her eyes flitting from one spot to the next without rest, imagination just as restless.

Millicent took several tentative steps forward, through the narrow, central path in the chamber. When the beam of the torch concentrated and hit the back wall, Hermione let out a shaky breath.

Jars.

Their burnished surfaces shone, ruddy brown, where they had been placed in two rectangular alcoves the height of their elbows. Each jar would have been handmade, and no two that Hermione could see were alike. Every jar, except for one, had been fitted with a lid, and then firmly sealed with what appeared to be beeswax.

Millicent looked back at her seeming to be caught between feeling terror and elation. Hermione imagined she probably looked the same.

Hermione had never felt so much anticipation as she approached the spot where Millicent had stopped in front of the jars. Her body was hot, but she had broken into a cold sweat, and her heart hammered in her chest. The hairs at the back of her neck, on her legs, on her arms, stood on end. They both drew closer to the one jar that did not have a lid and with bated breath, Hermione reached for it as Millicent lit her way. She held it out between them, and they peered inside.

"Fucking hell," Millicent breathed shakily, "oh, fucking hell..."

Rolled loosely within the jar was a sheet of vellum, water-damaged, but still somehow intact.

Hermione let out a chuckle that sounded terrified to her ears, and then another, until there were tears rolling down her cheeks and she was crying uncontrollably, still holding the jar between them. It was almost too much to imagine what they had discovered, to think that each of the jars might have its own scroll, or manuscript, or codex, each containing knowledge that had for centuries been lost. The journal alone, with its allusions to a magic steeped in religious practices, which rejected the use of a wand, of incantations—of everything that Hermione had been taught during her schooling—had been incredible enough.

All of the history books she had ever read, in all of the classes she had ever attended, she had never heard mention of a magical framework that was not dependent on the use of wands. They were ubiquitous throughout history. Wandless casting was characterized as difficult, an unusual feat that only the most skilled witches and wizards were capable of, limited to the handful of spells they had a natural affinity for. The notion of going without a wand entirely was unthinkable. Wands were considered the focus, the source of a witch or wizard's power.

And yet. She stared again at the dozens of jars packed into the alcoves, felt her knees go weak.

"I hate to put a damper on things, I really do," Millicent suddenly spoke in a low, reverent tone, "but there's no way we'll be able to carry these safely back to our camp, never mind bringing them back through that damn fog."

"You're right," Hermione replied, bitterly. "Can we afford to simply leave these here, though? Anything could happen."

"They've survived this long," Millicent pointed out.

"I know..." Hermione carefully put the jar she had been holding back where she had found it. "Maybe we can figure a way of safely transporting this one, at least."

"Well, we'll need something to convince the Heritage Council to give us funding for a proper expedition, now, won't we?" Millicent frowned in distaste. "Not that I'd really like them involved in this."

"I'm not sure we have a choice. A discovery this enormous shouldn't be kept private."

"I didn't mean we should keep it private, just that we shouldn't involve..." she trailed off in a sigh. "Fine. I suppose I did mean that we should keep it private. At least until we've had a chance to look everything over for ourselves."

"Honestly though, Millie, that sort of thinking is exactly the problem in our society at the moment. Knowledge like this should not be kept secret or stored in private collections. It should be spread, and studied, be made available." Hermione suddenly raised her eyebrow in challenge. "Your family should have gone public with the journal, for that matter, at least after the danger of it being destroyed died down. Maybe it would have encouraged other families to do the same."

"Yes, yes, I am well aware of your thoughts on the matter," Millicent huffed with more exhaustion than annoyance.

"Good," Hermione said simply, giving her a small smile. "As long as you're aware."

"I really, really am," Millicent drawled in a dry tone, giving Hermione a peck on the lips as she moved past her to examine the carvings on a nearby pillar more closely. "I'm also really regretting not taking Ancient Runes. Absolutely detest it when my mother is right about things... you'll need it," she said, imitating Heloise Bulstrode's tone of voice remarkably well, "but fine, take your Muggle Studies and learn all about their modern gadgetry and tekological claptrap—forget the timeless value of the ancient runic language!"

"Luckily, I've more than lived up to your mother's expectations in that respect," Hermione commented with a short laugh.

Millicent rolled her eyes, suppressing a smile.

Hermione crouched to examine some of the carved writing on the pillar Millicent was admiring, but the more Hermione looked, the more confused she became.

"What is it?"

"I've never seen some of these before." Hermione shook her head as if to clear it. "I mean, of course, these would be in Elder Futhark, and, I should say, they are—there was no set standard at the time, so there would be a lot of variation in how the runes were written, but..." She looked up at Millicent. "This is incredible."

"So you're saying... we may also have inadvertently discovered a lost language."

"A dialect, at best, but... yes."

"I see." Millicent paused. "And you're fine with someone else swooping in after we've divulged this location to the wider public, cracking the meaning of the new runes, and getting all the credit for the discovery."

Hermione's lips twisted with the effort not to say something hypocritical.

"Hmm. Look. It's our friend, the boar." Millicent pointed at a crudely carved pictograph toward the bottom of the pillar, which had a distinctive snout, and what appeared to be two very small tusks. "Has its own rune, too."

"I suppose that will help, if some of these pictographs have the unusual runes... beneath... them."

Hermione stared, and felt her mouth go dry. She heard Millicent, beside her, make a strangled noise.

"Even I know that one," Millicent commented weakly, breaking the stunned silence.

"Merlin."

Hermione felt her hair stand on end again to say the name aloud, and though it was only her imagination, the chamber felt suddenly cold, unnerving her. She grabbed Millicent's hand and made to leave—it was a mark of how unsettled Millicent was as well that she did not question or protest at being led hurriedly back outside. When they cleared the thicket that had grown around the stone entryway of the house, Hermione finally let go of Millicent's hand and turned on her, chest heaving.

"That boar—" She stopped herself, put her palm over her mouth to try and collect her racing thoughts. "No, no—it's not just that. Remind me again, what was the tree that fell before the writer's child was born?"

Millicent just stared at her.

"The tree—what was it?"

"Oak," Millicent answered, holding her head between her hands in shock. "It was a fucking oak." She squeezed her eyes shut. "But Hermione—Merlin was alive around the time that Hogwarts was founded, nearly five hundred years after that journal was thought to have been written."

"And yet," Hermione replied quietly, shaking with adrenaline, "you may not realize this, but Muggle historians and storytellers placed Merlin's existence closer to when the journal was written. Until now I'd simply assumed that our historians knew better. What if they don't? Are we absolutely certain that Merlin went to Hogwarts? That he was taught by Slytherin, instead of being the teacher, himself? Couldn't that have simply been propaganda? The legends of his English Oak wand... what if they're only half-true? Do you really think, with the parents he had, that he would have used a wand? It would have been against their beliefs. What if that's why he was known as one of the most powerful wizards to have ever lived?"

"Hermione, I—it's..." Millicent looked torn. "It was just one rune, and really, the mention of an oak tree? We shouldn't jump to conclusions..."

"But why else—for what other possible reason—would that rune be there?"

"I honestly don't know. Coincidence? Maybe the great Merlin himself stole the rune from another that came before him, and that was who lived here?"

"Maybe," Hermione murmured, unconvinced. She sank down into the overgrown field, some of the grasses and wildflowers tickling her chin as she knelt. "But what if this is where Merlin lived? Everything we know about that rune mark ties it inexorably to Merlin—it was his personal symbol, something that no one during that time would dare reproduce. And it's here, in this home that far predates the time we have always been taught that Merlin lived. Either way... he must have been here at some point. As a child, or as an adult stealing the rune for his own use. The symbol is complex—I truly just cannot believe that two people would make up the very same complicated symbol at different points in history. That, to me, is what seems far-fetched."

"I'm sorry, I'm just going to need a minute to process this." Millicent said after a long stretch of silence. "You are making some sense, but you're also completely mad."

"I know," Hermione admitted. "I feel mad. What am I even saying? You know, I didn't actually sleep well last night."

"No, you were too afraid that Merlin's ghost was going to kill you," Millicent remarked with a disbelieving laugh.

Hermione let out a deranged titter.

"If there's even the slightest chance that you're right—and I suppose there is—then we really can't go to the Heritage Council with this."

"No, we really can't. They'd laugh us out of the room."

"Or steal our discovery." Millicent thumped down into the grass next to Hermione, and let out a long, aggravated sigh. "Merlin's hairy arse. I'm already dreading the return trip to this place, and we haven't even packed up and left yet."

Hermione looked over by the ancient, gnarled oak tree on a whim and flinched in shock.

But she blinked, and it was as if the piercing black eyes had never been there at all.