Unofficial Portkey Archive

Substitute Author's notes:

Substitute? Alas, it's true. Your favorite fan writer and mine, Fae Princess, is in fanfic limbo for the present. Whence this chapter, then? Therein lies a tale -- one which Fae suggested I save for afters while we proceed directly to the main course. It's long past time we sorted out Harry's little problem with Voldemort, and we don't want to keep you waiting any longer. The previous chapter left quite a few questions in the air. The answers lie directly below. Meet you at the bottom!

So this is death, Harry thought as his body drifted weightless in a kind of misty sea of warmth. It's not so bad.

A sudden, unsettling thought passed through his mind. On the night three years ago when Voldemort had emerged reborn from the cauldron at the foot his father's grave, he had ruminated on the subject of Harry's impending death, "It might even be painless. I would not know. I have never died."

You have now, Harry thought with a reinforced satisfaction. And so have I.

Strangely, that last thought did not dampen Harry's feeling of contentment. He had done what he knew he must. And he had succeeded. The sight of Voldemort's withering body crumbling to dust had been the last thing Harry's eyes had seen ere death closed them forever. He smiled inwardly, not knowing if his body (had he a body here on the Other Side?) were following suit. No matter. His triumph was undiminished either way. Voldemort was destroyed. The wizarding world -- no, Harry amended, the entire world -- was safe from the evil of the Dark Lord forever.

But Victory came not without price.

Forgive me, Hermione, Harry thought again. I did it for you. The wizarding world can think I did it for them, that I was fulfilling my destiny as "The Chosen One." But it was all for you. I love you.

Hermione could now live out her life free from fear, of being branded inferior, something less than whole -- a Mudblood. But even in triumph, Harry was not deluded. He knew that Voldemort's religion of hate would not die out with the expiration of its High Priest. That blight on the human soul (both wizard and Muggle) had been ancient before Tom Riddle was born, and it would endure far beyond his death. Harry had not been so arrogant as to believe that he could accomplish such a feat single-handed, prophesy or no. But for now, for as long as the story of Voldemort's final destruction were whispered furtively in shadowed places, perhaps that leprous hatred would fester only in the polluted minds of its worshipers and not spill out to blight the hearts of decent folk. A dragon was a danger only when awake. Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon. Following a long and terrible awakening, the dragon was sleeping once more. Long may it slumber.

But as Harry closed that thought with a renewed satisfaction, a new, more profound thought took its place.

Where do I go from here?

He now focused his attention more fully on his surroundings. All was shadow and mist in every direction. Indeed, he seemed composed of the same shadow as his environs. Something he had heard from time to time in passing stirred in his mind. Wasn't there supposed to be a light, leading him onward? Harry saw nothing resembling a light. Or was it a tunnel? He couldn't remember. Was this all there was to death, then? Borderless, unending nothingness? Not a comforting thought.

But even as he pondered this eternal enigma, the featureless horizon altered subtly. Harry was reminded of the night four years ago when the clouds over Hogwarts castle had parted abruptly, bathing him and his companions -- among them Professor Remus Lupin -- in moonlight. And -- yes! There was the light! It was coming closer, growing more distinct with nearness -- yet, strangely, remaining fuzzy and indistinct around the edges.

And all at once, Harry realized the truth. It was a face, drifting nearer and nearer, its aspect growing more defined every moment. And the fuzziness surrounding that face? A halo! It was an angel, come to lead Harry to the next world.

Harry's heart was light in his ethereal bosom as the face drew ever closer. It was smiling. It was a beautiful face. Could the face of an angel be otherwise? And all of a sudden his heart leaped. The halo surrounding the face was not composed of white light, as he might have supposed. It was as dark as the mist from which it emerged. Harry gasped. It was a halo of rich, full-bodied chestnut hair! And the face in its midst --

"Hermione?"

Harry was momentarily overcome with a terrible despair. Surely Hermione had not died as well? The whole point of his sacrifice was to spare her, and Ron, and everyone he loved from coming to harm on his account. Had it all been for naught?

The answer came to him with a suddenness as of a flash of lightning illuminating a midnight sky. The mystic realm beyond the door that was Death -- heaven, paradise, whatever one chose to call it -- was ever described as a place of beauty beyond imagining. Yet was it not also said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? One person's ideal would not necessarily mirror that of another. Beauty, therefore, was whatever the individual conceived it to be. In Harry's mind, and in his heart, all that was beautiful in the world -- in the universe itself -- was embodied in the soul one person. Was it so surprising, then, that even the angels of heaven should appear before him in the image of Hermione?

Harry's breast swelled nigh to bursting as the face drew closer, bathing him in a smile that sent his soul soaring higher than any broomstick had ever carried him. A beckoning hand was extended toward him, and he reached out, his fingers spread wide to grasp and hold. The smiling messenger's hand folded warmly over his. Dark eyes embraced him, and Harry heard a voice speaking as from a great distance, its song resounding less in his ears than within his very soul.

"Take my hand, Harry." Harry saw the angel's lips moving, speaking with Hermione's voice. "It's time to come home."

"Yes," Harry said, feeling the firm but gentle grasp of the hand that was drawing him toward his final destination. Their eyes were still joined as his celestial escort glided back the way she had come, bearing Harry along effortlessly. A halo of pure, white light seemed to be growing behind the darker halo of the angel's dusky crown. It expanded moment by moment, its brilliance growing until Harry could no longer bear to look upon it. Instead he stared fixedly into the dark, mesmerizing eyes of his guide, letting her carry him where she would. The light continued to grow until it filled his senses. It seemed to fold around him, as the green light had when he stood face to face with Voldemort on his dark altar. Harry nearly cried out as he was blinded by the intensity of the pale nimbus enveloping him.

Then, without warning, the heavenly face was hovering directly before him. But there was something different about it now. The large, coffee-colored eyes were shining with tears. Glistening rivers were streaming down cheeks flushed with emotion, curving over lips stretched wide in a smile of mingled love and agony. The eyes blinked once, twice, spilling more tears over the glowing face. A sob issued from the rose-colored lips, followed by a titter of laugher that wavered on the edge of the hysterical.

"Welcome back, Harry," the voice said in a quavering treble.

Harry's vision was blurred. The blinding light lanced his eyes like needles, penetrating all the way to his brain. In a move prompted by no conscious thought, he lifted his hand and covered his face, blocking out the light in a blanket of soothing darkness. He felt his eyes watering. He rubbed them with his fingers, feeling cool wetness on his skin.

Harry cried out, a short, piercing sound that made his ears thrum. His eyes flew open, and he threw himself forward. A wave of dizziness pulsed behind his eyes, and he fell back onto something soft and cool. As he stilled the throb in his brain by force of will, his senses seemed to awaken as from a long, deep slumber. He opened his eyes slowly, and the sight that met his astonished gaze nearly made him cry out again.

He was surrounded by austere walls, broken at intervals by high, mullioned windows. One of these was open near at hand, and a soft breeze was wafting through it, ruffling the curtains on either side. The gentle flow of air kissed his face, cooling his cheeks where they shone with his tears. His vision was still blurred in terms of minute detail. His other senses compensated for this. He felt the unmistakable embrace of a feather mattress, sagging slightly under his weight, and his head was cradled by the familiar softness of a pillow. He reached out a blind, groping hand, and he felt something being pressed into his palm. His fingers closed around the object with instant recognition. With a smooth, practiced motion, he slid his glasses onto his face and blinked hard as his vision became sharp and clear.

"Harry!" a voice -- Hermione's voice -- sobbed. The next moment, his head was smothered by a cloud of thick, bushy hair.

"Hermione?" Harry answered in a nearly identical sob. His hands darted through the dark tangle enveloping him, and he eased her back until their faces were less than a centimeter apart. Soft lips covered his, tasting sharply of the salt of tears, and he felt a fire surge through his limbs as if he had just drunk an intoxicating draught. Their faces parted languidly, and Harry felt his own tears flowing freely again, mingling with Hermione's as their cheeks brushed lightly. He took in the details of her face, noting every familiar line and curve with a new appreciation. He remembered with a sudden fearful rush the sight of Hermione hanging battered and bloodied overlooking the serpent altar, clinging to her life by the thread of Voldemort's perverted whim. He kissed her again, cherishing her taste and feel. His senses swam, robbing him of rational thought. Hermione drew back at last, smiling down on him with love pouring from her large, dark eyes.

Harry felt his pillow being shifted under him, raised up against the headboard of the bed. Hermione helped him slide up into a sitting position. When he was settled comfortably back, he looked around, taking in the familiar details of the hospital wing in a detached manner. His thoughts were still occluded, and he struggled to dispel the shadows from the corners of his brain. As his eyes drifted about, they fell almost absently on a tall, thin figure standing on the other side of the bed from Hermione, and he jumped back in surprise, his head just avoiding a collision with the headboard.

"You know, Harry," Dumbledore said placidly, his blue eyes twinkling behind the lenses of his half-moon spectacles, "we really must stop meeting like this."

Harry gaped at the headmaster, who responded with a very un-professorial smirk and an uplifting of his snowy eyebrows.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" Dumbledore went on, clearly enjoying the look on Harry's face. "No matter how the school year begins, it always seems to end the same way, with you lying here in bed while the rest of us stand over you with worried looks on our faces. I have begun to think that the Sorting Hat made a mistake placing you in Gryffindor House." When Harry's mouth fell open at these words, Dumbledore finished, "I think it would have done better to sort you directly into the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey would have made an excellent head of House -- and with only one student to supervise, she might have succeeded in keeping you out of mischief more effectively than either I or Professor McGonagall have managed over the last seven years.

"But," the headmaster sighed with an amused twitch of his silver moustaches, "somehow I doubt it."

"What -- what happened?" Harry stammered. "How did I get here?"

As his thoughts cleared, he realized with a start that there was no sign of either Ron or Draco in the room. Were they still alive? But that question brought another, more terrible question: Why was he still alive? It had been his intention in that terrible encounter with Voldemort to spend his life as the price for ridding the world of the Dark Lord. But if he was lying here now -- Harry's eyes went wide with sudden horror -- if he still lived, did that mean -- ?

"Voldemort!" Harry cried out, his eyes piercing Dumbledore's. "Is he -- "

But Dumbledore answered with a serene smile that quieted Harry's fears more effectively than the words which he spoke reassuringly a moment later.

"Voldemort has been destroyed, Harry. And," he added as if reading Harry's thoughts, "your friends are all safe and well. You may put your fears to rest."

"You did it, Harry," Hermione said, her hand caressing his face tenderly. But without warning, her wrist snapped sharply as she slapped his cheek with a resounding crack. He felt something hard impact with his cheekbone, and he saw that Hermione was once more wearing her ring on the third finger of her right hand. Harry touched his cheek bewilderedly as he stared into Hermione's eyes, which flashed with the hardness of polished mahogany. "I know what you tried to do," she said, and there was an edge in her voice that stung Harry more than her hand had done.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, feeling a pain beyond anything he had suffered at Voldemort's hands. "I knew you would never agree. I had to do it. There was no other way."

Before Hermione could respond, everyone's attention was arrested by the sound of the door to the nurse's office banging open. Harry turned instinctively, expecting to see Claire White emerge, wearing a reassuring smile. Instead, Harry was amazed to see Madam Pomfrey bustling toward him, elbowing the headmaster aside as if he were of no more consequence than an ill-placed footstool blocking her path. She bore a smoking goblet in her hand, and before Harry could utter a word, she thrust it into his face without ceremony.

"Drink this, Mr. Potter," she ordered in a voice that brooked no refusal. Though still curious about Claire's whereabouts, Harry took the goblet meekly and drank, wincing at the bitter taste. He handed the goblet back to the nurse, who examined it to see that her patient had drained every drop. Satisfied, she turned to face Dumbledore and said, "You have exactly twenty minutes to visit with this patient, after which time you will either leave under your own power or be expelled by force."

Not waiting for Dumbledore's response to this ultimatum, Madam Pomfrey turned on her heel and walked back to her office, closing the door behind her.

Harry felt the potion he had just drunk writhing inside him. He realized all at once that he was very tired. But the questions bubbling inside him were more powerful than the medicine he had just ingested. He turned to look at Hermione, and he was suddenly overcome with a tide of emotion that made it hard for him to speak.

"I had a dream," he said. "I dreamed I was passing on, and an angel appeared to lead me to the next world." He paused, his eyes touching Hermione's softly. "The angel was you, Hermione. She came to me and said she was going to take me home."

"That was no dream," Hermione said, her harsh words forgotten as a loving smile spreading across her face. "It was really me you saw. And I did come to take you home."

"What?" Harry said. "How?"

Hermione reached into a pocket of her robes and withdrew a small, spherical object which she held out in her open palm. Harry judged it to be about the size of a Golden Snitch, but wingless and composed of some smooth, shiny substance that gleamed like polished jet.

Reading the question in Harry's eyes, Hermione said, "When we got you back, Dumbledore was waiting for us at the front gate. He seemed to know that something had happened, and he'd already set the wheels turning. Remus had been sent to fetch Sirius, and he carried an emergency portkey so that Claire could return to Hogwarts without delay. She had everything ready here when we brought you in, and she examined you straightaway. She said that whatever you'd been through hadn't done any appreciable damage on the outside. But she said there was something going on inside you. She said it was like your soul was being poisoned from the inside."

"How is that possible?" Harry asked.

"It was something to do with all the Dark magic surrounding Voldemort's altar. It was beyond her experience, so she asked Dumbledore to bring in Madam Pomfrey." Hermione paused, her eyes going hard, though her voice remained temperate. "She said there's no shame in admitting that you need help sometimes. It's not a sign weakness, but of strength."

Harry sensed that Hermione was reminding him of his own foolishness in regard to his plan to defeat Voldemort, which he had neglected to confide in either her or Ron. He nodded once, in unfeigned contrition, and Hermione's chastising look retreated as quickly as it had come.

"When Madam Pomfrey looked you over," Hermione said, "she agreed with Claire's diagnosis. Claire gave me the book she'd used, from Madam Pomfrey's personal medical library, and I read it while they were treating you. It said that when someone is being consumed by Dark Magic Poisoning, the only way to fight it is from within."

"With potions?"

"No," Hermione shook her head. "With this." Harry saw that Hermione's right hand was now closed into a fist around the tiny sphere, which he had all but forgotten about, arrested as he was by her narrative. When she opened her hand a moment later, Harry gasped. The sphere was now pulsing from within with a deep, violet light that made it seem almost alive.

"What is that thing?" Harry asked, leaning closer.

"Claire said it has many names," Hermione replied, "but it's commonly called the Third Eye. She recognized that it was the one thing that might allow you to fight off Voldemort's magic, but she knew she wasn't as practiced with it as Madam Pomfrey. It can be very dangerous if not used with absolute precision."

"What's it do?"

"It opens a door to someone's inner core," Hermione said. "Madam Pomfrey used it to touch your mind and shut your body down. It left you in a kind of coma on the edge between life and death."

"But how did that help?"

"For a start, it arrested the poisoning so you wouldn't slip farther away from us. But that was only the first step."

"And what was the next step?" Harry asked, his eyes held by the dark, pulsing rhythm of the sphere.

"The next step," Hermione said, "was for you to turn your whole mind and spirit toward fighting against the Dark forces eating away at you"

"But," Harry said bewilderedly, "how could I do that if I was unconscious?"

"Madam Pomfrey told me," Hermione answered cryptically, "that there's only one force powerful enough to destroy the corruption of Dark Magic Poisoning."

"What's that?" Harry asked in growing fascination, his attention still riveted by the pulsing stone in Hermione's open palm.

"The antidote," Hermione said, her cheeks flushing slightly, "is love." As Harry's head jerked up, the tender smile on Hermione's face was augmented by an amused twinkle in her soft brown eyes. "The love inside you -- the love that makes you who and what you are -- alone had the power to cure you. But -- "

"What?" Harry asked, noting that Hermione's blush was now deepening.

"Dark Magic Poisoning," Hermione explained, "is very invasive. Nothing from without can combat it with any hope of success. As I said, the power resided in you. But in order to activate your defenses, a catalyst was needed to inspire you to fight back. So after Madam Pomfrey put you to sleep, she passed me the stone and showed me how to use it to -- to go inside you."

"Inside me?" Harry said blankly.

"I told you," Hermione said, "that the stone opens a door to your inner being. Madam Pomfrey told me I had to go through that door and touch the part of you where your greatest power lay. When I held the stone and concentrated, it was like I could see right inside you. And the harder I concentrated, the less I became myself and the more I became...you. In the end, it was as if I'd left my body behind and settled inside yours. It was rather like slipping into a comfortable jumper. I felt all warm and safe inside, surrounded by your love."

Harry felt his mouth moving soundlessly. His eyes stared into Hermione's, and his face began to glow as brightly as if the sunlight streaming through the window were being magnified tenfold upon it.

"I remember...something," he said in a hoarse, ghostly voice. "I remember feeling...feeling..."

He could not find the words to describe what had gone on inside him when he was drifting in that endless expanse of nothingness. He had felt a warmth that seemed to permeate him, the sensation not unlike basking in the glow of the fire in the Gryffindor common room on a chill, black January night. In his deep, magical slumber, he hadn't the presence of mind to question the sensations surrounding him. He was a babe in a womb, having no thoughts, yet somehow aware that he was surrounded by something good and nurturing. He wondered if that made any sense. If Hermione were inside him, how could he feel as if he were inside her? What did it mean?

"When I was inside you," Hermione said, her soft voice arresting his musings, "I could feel a terrible cold where Voldemort's Dark magic was poisoning you. I was afraid I wasn't strong enough to fight something that powerful. But then I felt something else. It was -- it was like a tiny flame burning in a cold, dark room. And I concentrated on that flame. I imagined it growing larger. I envisioned its light expanding until all the cold and darkness shrank back and was gone."

Harry felt a sudden chill despite the warmth of the day. He remembered Dumbledore's words, so oft repeated when the subject of Harry's final encounter with Voldemort was broached. The power he knows not.

"Madam Pomfrey said I couldn't go inside you for more than hour at a time," Hermione said. "But once I was there, I never wanted to leave. I wanted to stay and not come out until I could bring you back with me. But she was right. When I came out after an hour, I was as exhausted as if I'd been without sleep for a week. In the end, we arranged a schedule where I'd come in every morning and evening, sleeping most of the time in-between."

Harry suddenly thought of all the study hours Hermione had sacrificed in this manner, and he was torn between laughing out loud and throwing himself onto her this very moment and crushing her in an immense hug. But this brought another question to mind, one he now felt foolish at not having asked straightaway.

"How long has it been?"

"Four days," Hermione said, her smile returning now, surrendering none of its former brilliance. "Madam Pomfrey always gave you a look-over both before and after I went in. This morning, she said she thought the time was right to try to bring you back. She examined you every hour with probing spells. She said if you weren't strong enough, I'd have to try again tomorrow. But as soon as I went in, I knew. The cold that had been there was gone. I knew that you'd finally fought off Voldemort's magic. But..."

Hermione hesitated, and Harry took her hand without thinking so that he could feel the warmth of the black sphere against his palm.

"What?" he prompted gently.

"Madam Pomfrey said that this magic is both very powerful and very delicate," Hermione said. "Once the coma has been induced, there's no way to dispel it by magic alone. The only way for the sleeper to come back is for him to want to. So when I went in this last time, it wasn't to help you heal. It was to bring you back. If you weren't strong enough -- if there was still too much of Voldemort's darkness in you -- I couldn't have carried you out. But as soon as I went in, all I could feel was warmth and light. I knew it was now or never. Madam Pomfrey said that sometimes the sleeper can't wake if he's been under the spell too long. She said it usually takes only a day or two to fight off Dark Magic Poisoning. But Voldemort's magic was so strong and insidious, we were pushing the time limit with every hour. For a moment, just before you took my hand, I feared that -- "

Harry caressed Hermione's hand warmly.

"The moment I saw your face," he said thickly, "I couldn't have gone anywhere but with you." He swallowed almost painfully. "You saved me again. Just like you've always done. You helped me save the Sorcerer's Stone from Quirrell. You solved the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets. Together we saved Sirius from the dementors. It's always you, Hermione. If I really have that power Professor Dumbledore says I have, it's from you. I love you so much."

Hermione dissolved into tears, and Harry wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair. When her sobs faded into a few soft hiccups, she drew back and wiped her eyes with her free hand, still holding the black stone in the other.

Without warning, Harry's face assumed a look of confusion that bordered on distress. He looked up at Dumbledore, who promptly exchanged his pleasant aspect for a more solemn demeanor upon seeing the alarm in Harry's eyes.

"Professor," Harry said slowly. "You say that I destroyed Voldemort. But -- how did I do it? I mean, there was no way I was powerful enough to defeat him on my own. That was why I -- "

Harry's throat constricted guiltily as he remembered the hurt in Hermione's eyes when he had confessed his intention of sacrificing his life in exchange for Voldemort's. Dumbledore understood, and he nodded respectfully toward Harry.

"You are wondering why, if Voldemort is dead, you are not likewise."

Harry nodded mutely, aware of Hermione's eyes on him. Dumbledore smiled gently.

"The answer to that question," the old wizard said, "is the same as it has always been, Harry. You defeated Voldemort with the one power he never commanded, yet which you have in abundance."

Harry was more confused than ever. It was for love of his friends that Harry was ready to give up his life to rid the world of Voldemort. He had been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, knowing that nothing less could thwart the power of the Dark Lord. But if that sacrifice had not taken place as he intended, how had he triumphed? What did Dumbledore mean?

"I don't understand," Harry said helplessly. "I remember trying to turn Voldemort's power against him. I was succeeding, I think. He was growing weaker, but so was I. Then everything went black, and I woke up here. What happened?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said, "that is a tale worth the telling. Unfortunately, I fear that none of us could do it justice with words alone. That is why I have made arrangements -- "

The sound of the outer door opening brought Dumbledore's head around, and he smiled broadly as a tall, dark-haired figure entered the room, his ashen eyes narrowed.

"You were right to send me along, Albus," Sirius growled. "We ran into Snape, and to say that his knickers were in a twist is putting it mildly."

"I feared as much," Dumbledore said unworriedly. "I daresay he has not taken this latest escapade very well."

"It's his own fault," Sirius said shortly. "He's still going on about his authority being flouted. What was he playing at, changing the password to your office? The school charter clearly states that the teaching staff and the Head Boy and Girl have access to the headmaster at all times. When I think of what could have happened..."

Harry's throat constricted. The pleasure he had felt upon seeing his godfather was suddenly replaced with a sickness inside that was unrelated to his injuries.

"We went to see Snape," Harry said hurriedly. He was looking at Sirius, but he was speaking to Dumbledore as well as to his godfather. "When we figured out what the prophesy meant, we wanted to alert the Order. But the gargoyle wouldn't let us pass."

"I know, Harry," Sirius said with a hard smile, showing no surprise at seeing Harry awake and alert. "Hermione told us everything. In your place, I'd have done the same thing. It took a bit of courage to go off on your own like that, risking your lives for the greater good. Your father and mother would have been proud of you. I know I am."

"We should not be too hard on Severus, Sirius," Dumbledore said unexpectedly. When both Sirius and Harry turned their heads sharply, the old wizard responded with a wise smile. "You know as well as I do, Sirius, that we have all been trying for most of a year to locate the place where the Death Eaters were to gather for the purpose of resurrecting their master."

Harry was about to blurt out his surprise that the Order had known all along what Lucius and his followers had been up to, but he realized all at once that he should not have been surprised at all. Sirius had hinted over Christmas that he knew more than he was telling about the destruction of the Hanging Tree in Ottery St. Catchpole. They had probably pieced the Death Eaters' plan together ages ago. All that remained was for them to discover where the ceremony was to take place.

"Well, what of it?" Sirius replied darkly. "In time, we'd have found where they were gathered and sorted them out."

"But," Dumbledore countered, "you refute your argument by your own words. Time was the one thing we did not have. If it were not for Harry's inspiration, we would now be faced with the threat of a fully resurrected Voldemort, more powerful and dangerous than ever he was. If Harry and his friends had told Severus what they had deduced, it would have been out of their hands. They would not have been faced with the desperate straits which prompted them to take matters into their own hands as they did. Under such circumstances, would it have occurred to Harry that the dragons in Hagrid's concealed paddock were the only creatures that could penetrate the magical barrier behind which Voldemort and his Death Eaters were secreted?"

Here was another revelation. How long had Dumbledore known that Hagrid was keeping a clutch of baby dragons in the Forbidden Forest? Hermione must have included the dragons in her account of their journey to forestall Voldemort's return, but had Dumbledore known all along? If he knew of the mother dragon's kidnapping, as was likely, he must have noted the sudden disappearance of her clutch of just-hatched young. Knowing Hagrid perhaps better than anyone, he might expect his gamekeeper to fall prey to temptation in regard to the abandoned hatchlings. It would be like Dumbledore to turn a blind eye to Hagrid's clandestine activities out of compassion, even if he did not anticipate the role the dragons would play in the end. Harry shook his head, realizing, not for the first time, that there was very little about the doings at Hogwarts that the headmaster did not know, or, at the very least, suspect.

"You're saying," Sirius retorted with a disdainful curl of his lip, "that Snape was merely part of a universal plan? That his insufferable arrogance was a preordained catalyst that tipped the scales away from Voldemort and toward us by forcing Harry into an act of desperation?"

Dumbledore's answer was an expression of almost supreme benevolence, and the younger wizard's dark, wrathful aura dimmed visibly.

"I won't deny," Sirius said grudgingly, "that Harry's use of the dragons was brilliant. Still, he might have come up with the idea anyway. He is my godson, isn't he? Oh, I wish I could have been there to see him taking on those Death Eaters! And the way Hermione described that duel with Voldemort -- and you're telling me that he wouldn't have done all that if not for Snape? Do me a favour, Albus. He's the son of James and Lily Potter. He did precisely what they would have done in his place. Snape was an impediment if anything. If Harry had come to you or me, we would have listened to him and saved precious time. As for old Snivelly, even if he hadn't changed the password, like as not he would have slammed the door -- your door -- in his face before Harry could have got two words out, and given him a detention to boot. A lot of good Harry could have done locked in a dungeon, scrubbing cauldrons or pickling frog brains, while the Death Eaters were bringing their master back from oblivion. So you'll pardon me if I'm not too keen to pin the Order of Merlin on Snape's bony chest any time soon."

"Perhaps you are right," Dumbledore said, bowing his head deferentially. Sirius' taut expression relaxed almost instantly, and Harry recognized that Dumbledore had thus extinguished what might have become an incendiary discussion by this judicious concession.

With the weight of his precipitous actions thus removed from his shoulders, Harry sank back against his pillow in a wave of relief. But he quickly sat up again as he remembered his question to which Dumbledore had not yet given answer.

"Professor -- " Harry began, but at that moment another figure appeared in the doorway. Dumbledore, seeing Harry's expression, turned his head and smiled pleasantly at the newcomer.

"Splendid," Dumbledore said delightedly. "Your entrance could not have been more timely, Mr. Weasley."

Ron grinned broadly at Harry as he strode into the room. His wand was before him, directing a large box which preceded him on the wings of a Levitating Charm. The hand that was not holding his wand was not idle, but held a very large pastry from which Ron took an enormous bite as he approached Harry's bed.

"Sorry I'm late," Ron said, his voice slightly muffled as he licked his lips. "Just nicked down to the kitchen for a minute."

"Well," Harry laughed, "I can see not all of you were worried about me. Knew I'd pull through okay, did you, mate?"

"'Course," Ron said as he took another colossal bite. "Never doubted for a minute."

"Don't let him fool you," Hermione whispered. "He's hardly left your bedside since we got back. Ginny's practically had to force-feed him to keep his strength up."

"And how about you?" Harry said, his eyes going hard behind his glasses.

Avoiding Harry's eyes, Hermione turned and smiled at Ron. "Just set it on the table," she said, indicating the night table next to Harry's bed. Ron complied, setting the box down gently with a twirl of his wand. The table groaned as the box settled onto it, and Harry's curiosity was aroused.

"I told you, Harry," Dumbledore said as he approached the box, "that we could none of us do justice to the tale of what transpired when you were -- ah -- occupied with Voldemort. The only way you may understand fully is to experience it for yourself."

Drawing his wand, Dumbledore tapped the box smartly. The sides fell away, revealing a round stone basin in the bowl of which a lambent glow danced like cold fire.

"You have been using my Pensieve to great effect these last few months," Dumbledore said. "It will serve in this capacity one last time before I return it to my cabinet. Mr. Weasley, if you are prepared?"

Ron licked his fingers hurriedly, shaking off the remaining crumbs from his recent feast, and stood before the Pensieve. He looked uncertainly at the swirling contents of the stone bowl, then up at Dumbledore, who smiled in a grandfatherly manner.

"I've never actually extracted a memory before," Ron said. "Hermione did it the last time."

"But if I recall Miss Granger's account," Dumbledore replied, "that was a case of a hidden memory which you could not locate without your friends' assistance. Surely this memory, residing so close to the surface, will present no problem."

Ron nodded and raised his wand. He closed his eyes and concentrated. He touched the tip of his wand to his head. When he drew his wand back a moment later, a slender thread of silvery vapor emerged, clinging tenuously to his wand-tip. When the memory-thread was completely separated from his head, Ron placed it in the heart of the Pensieve and stirred it with his wand.

Harry leaned forward and looked into the Pensieve. He saw faces at once strange and familiar swimming in the silvery pool. He looked up at Dumbledore, who nodded meaningfully.

"The answers you seek lie within, Harry," Dumbledore said. "And I would advise you not to delay. If Poppy returns to find you out of bed, I daresay she will not be as forgiving as Claire. Indeed, I fear her wrath may prove even greater than Voldemort's."

Swallowing hard, Harry swung his legs out so that his feet brushed the floor. Tossing his bedcovers back, he stood up, placing his hands on either side of the Pensieve for support against the lingering weakness pervading him. Bending, he held his breath and, before his resolve could waver, plunged his face into the bowl.

The moment Harry's face touched the liquid, he felt his feet leave the floor as he tumbled over and over through swirling, silvery clouds. Almost at once, the clouds of mist opened to reveal an endless panorama of indigo sky beneath which loomed a vast expanse of murky green-gray that was the North Sea. He wondered what would happen if he missed his target and plummeted into the sea. Falling from such a great height, he would plunge fathoms deep before his descent slowed enough for him to attempt to rise to the surface -- assuming, of course, that the impact did not flatten him like one of Mrs. Weasley's pancakes. Neither prospect was inviting.

Could a living person die inside a memory?

But Harry quickly realized that there was no need for worry. His many Pensieve journeys had bred an instinct in him which he now employed. By a simple act of will, he angled his descent so that he soared gracefully toward the dragon upon which he had sat before Apparating to the island. He swung his legs downward, opened them, and fell smartly onto the dragon's back.

For a moment, he felt the instinctive urge to grab one of the dragon's horns while his free hand yanked his wand out and performed the Sticking Charm. But he realized almost instantly that the wind lightly ruffling his hair was exerting no influence on his body. The wind was an illusion, merely a realization of what his own memory recalled from the experience of flying, whether on a broomstick, a hippogriff, or, as this night, a dragon.

Drawing a relaxing breath, Harry turned and surveyed Ron, who, unlike Harry, was holding onto his dragon with a look of mingled determination and dread. Harry certainly could not fault Ron that last. Anyone who did not feel the bite of fear upon attempting what they all had done was either unconscious or mad.

Harry saw Ron stiffen, his eyes suddenly ablaze. Following Ron's gaze, Harry saw what had caused his mate to react with such surprise. Where there had been only a blank expanse of ocean only a moment before, a small island was now looming directly ahead. Harry had no doubt that, had he and his friends been following the dragons on brooms, they would have been smitten by the defensive spells surrounding the island at this point. Harry thought he understood the reason for Ron's determined look a minute earlier. His dragon had evidently flown into the sphere of the protective wards, which had overwhelmed Ron almost instantly. He might have felt a sudden urge to turn around, even been compelled to hurl himself off his dragon and into the sea. But he had clung to his resolve, resisting the power of the spells, trusting that his dragon would carry him on past the barrier. The tenseness of Ron's grip might have indicated that he was wrenching desperately at the dragon's horns, trying to turn it from its destination. But Harry had correctly surmised that, once the dragons came within a certain range of their mother, nothing short of death could have turned them from their path.

Now that the dragons had flown across the defensive perimeter, Ron's eyes, heretofore magically blinded, would have seen the island appear as if from nowhere. Harry saw Ron's face grow pale beneath his smoldering freckles, but the natural fear in his blue eyes was tempered with a resolve which Harry had seldom seen. Though faced with a quite natural fear -- perhaps the greatest fear of all, that of the unknown -- Ron had responded valiantly. Harry smiled at his longtime friend, giving him a nod and a thumbs-up.

As the island drew steadily closer, Ron moved with deliberate purpose and speed. Checking the brooms under his left arm, he drew his wand and held it firmly in his hand against the push of the wind. Harry knew that Ron was looking for the best opportunity to jump from his dragon's back and complete the last leg of his journey by broomstick. Harry felt his own body tense as Ron stared intently ahead, his wand held as steady as the rushing wind allowed.

Ron cried out in sudden alarm, and Harry's outcry, though unheard by any save himself, was not a moment behind. In an explosion of splintered branches and scattered foliage, a great black shape burst from the forest, its leathery wings spread wide, its nostrils belching twin jets of flame. The Devil's Bane hovered for a moment, turning its horned head this way and that, as if searching for something. Ron whimpered in fear, which sound Harry was hard pressed not to echo. Harry was, of course, in no danger from the dragon as was Ron. But as memories of his confrontation with the Hungarian Horn-Tail in the Triwizard Tournament rushed to the surface of his memory, he felt a thrill of excitement race along his spine which no rational argument could repress.

The Devil's Bane thrashed its mighty wings, hovering above the forest canopy as it jerked its grotesque head about, sniffing the air for that which its feeble eyes could not see. And at last it spotted them. The four baby dragons tossed their heads in reply, roaring a plaintive call to their mother -- a call that was answered a moment later by a screeching wail such as Harry had never heard even in his most terrible nightmares. In a rush of black wings, the adult Devil's Bane surged forward, directly at her four lost babies -- and, perforce, at Ron. Harry experienced a flicker of alarm as he saw Ron freeze for a moment, his wand arm turned to stone. Then, in the wink of an eye, Ron acted. He cancelled the Sticking Charm under him with a jerk of his wand. In one fluid motion, he whipped Harry's Firebolt from under his arm (it was, after all, the fastest of the two brooms) and flung his leg over it, keeping his own Nimbus 3000 clamped securely against his side.

A flash of panic jolted Harry like an electric charge. How was he to follow Ron to the island? In theory, the magic of the Pensieve should keep anyone invading a memory close to the one whose memory it was. Perhaps Harry would simply be swept along in Ron's wake. But as the frenzied shrieks of the Devil's Bane increased in intensity with its onrushing approach, all reason left Harry. As Ron clamped his legs around the Firebolt's polished handle, Harry leaped from his own dragon. He felt his fingers catch the tail twigs of his Firebolt just as Ron leaned forward and shot off at an angle. Harry felt like the tail of a kite as he whipped hither and yon in response to Ron's quick change of direction by which he just missed being clipped by the point of the mother dragon's left wingtip. His rational mind told him that he need not hang on this way, that the Pensieve would carry him to wherever Ron's memory carried him. But cold reason alone was impotent to unclench Harry's fingers from the tail of his broom. He hung on as Ron sped toward the forest, aiming, it seemed to Harry, for the ragged gap in the trees through which the Devil's Bane had burst.

Harry was momentarily confused. The ceremony was taking place in a clearing. Why did not Ron simply fly directly for the opening in the trees?

A quick glance downward revealed the answer. There was no opening -- at least, none that was visible from their point of vantage. In a flash of insight, Harry realized the truth with such clarity as if a book had fallen open before his eyes. The protective spells surrounding the island would also disguise the forest so it would appear as an unbroken canopy. Realizing this himself, Ron had done the only thing that made sense and headed straight for the gap through which the dragon had come.

"Well done, mate," Harry grunted through clenched jaw muscles. "Wherever the dragon was, that's where the ceremony is taking place. Brilliant."

Ron swooped down in a spiral, drawing nearer to the gap in the trees with every pass. He was, Harry saw, proceeding cautiously while maintaining the utmost speed. By descending in a spiral, Ron could glimpse a flash of what lay below the canopy's edge with each swing, ensuring that he would not recklessly blunder headlong into the very teeth of whatever danger lay below. It was a calculated move, at once efficient and intrepid. Even as he was whipped about from the force of Ron's descent, Harry found time to marvel at this strategy. If Ron lacked the grades to be an Auror, he certainly did not lack the instincts. Harry did not believe that he himself could have done better.

Harry sensed the rush of leaves and branches on either side as they dived into the gap and burst suddenly into the clearing. Ron took in the scene with a sweeping glance, and Harry heard him cry out. Harry would have cried out himself had he not been so breathless.

The scene in which he had so recently been a participant seemed strangely distorted when viewed from the position of spectator. Ron landed with a jolt, and Harry let go of the broom tail and landed on his feet, staying a tumbling landing by an effort of will directed at the spell infusing the Pensieve. There lay Draco, unconscious, bound to the splintered shaft of his pillar. Above him hung Hermione, imprisoned on her own pillar.

And -- Harry gaped in astonishment -- there was the serpent altar, surrounded by a weird green glow that seemed to pulse like a giant, gangrenous heart. The two figures at the center of that nimbus were unrecognizable in that eerie haze, but Ron, staring into the midst of the emerald fog, sensed immediately who they must be.
"Harry!" Ron shouted, racing forward with his wand at the ready. "Harry, I'm coming! Hang on, mate! Hang on!"

Ron skidded to a halt as near the glowing sphere as he dared, his mouth slack with dread. At this distance he was now able to recognize one of the figures, if only by the dark blur of his black hair.

"Harry!" Ron shouted again. He sent a series of spells at the pulsing sphere, all aimed at the pale figure locked in combat with the smaller, dark-haired shape. The spells bounced off like pebbles from the shell of a Skrewt. Ron swore, unleashed another flurry of spells, all to no more effect than before.

"R-Ron?" came a feeble voice behind Ron. He wheeled about and let out a sob.

"Hermione!"

Ron pounded across the clearing, coming up so fast that he nearly collided with the post from which Hermione hung. He sized up the situation quickly, casting a glance over his shoulder at the grim battle playing out under the spectral green dome. Giving it up for the moment as a bad job, Ron whirled toward Hermione.

"Hang on, Hermione -- I'll get you down."

"Hang on?" Hermione tittered, her eyes flashing with grave humor as she winced from the pain coursing through her shoulders. "I think I can manage that."

Harry had quickly followed Ron to the foot of Hermione's post. He watched breathlessly as Ron caught up the abandoned Firebolt and leaped into the air. He severed the cords binding Hermione to the post and eased her onto the broom handle. Harry winced as he saw the pain in Hermione's eyes, relaxing a moment later as she sighed and settled in against Ron, who held her safely with his right arm (still clutching his wand) while guiding the broom slowly down with his left. He touched down gently and eased Hermione into a sitting position, her back against the pole. Harry knelt next to Ron as the latter produced a trickle of water from his wand and played it across Hermione's face. Some of the dirt and blood on her cheeks ran wetly, making it look as if she were crying muddy tears. Harry's heart ached with longing to reach out and hold her, but knowing it was impossible in this Pensieve-memory, he resigned himself to the role of helpless observer. He had to keep reminding himself that he was only a spectator here. He could do nothing to change what had happened, however much he wished.

And that thought reignited the fuse in his mind so that his thoughts exploded back onto the reason for his being here. Why was he still alive? How had Voldemort been destroyed? What had happened to prevent the Dark Lord from triumphing, yet at the same time spared Harry's life from his intended sacrifice?

A soft moan from Hermione brought him out of his reverie in a flash. Once more he knelt beside Ron, peering painfully into Hermione's heavily lidded eyes.

"Hermione," Ron said in a weak, fearful voice. "In that -- that green bubble -- is that -- I mean..."

"Y-Yes," Hermione said, real tears now leaking from her eyes. "It's Harry -- and Voldemort."

Too alarmed even to wince at the sound of Voldemort's name, Ron said with another glance over his shoulder, "What's going on in there? Where did that green bubble come from? Did You-Know-Who trap Harry inside? Is there any way to get him out?"

"I -- I don't know," Hermione said mournfully. "B-But you've got to t-try, Ron. You've got to get H-Harry out of there."

"I've used every spell I can think of," Ron said defeatedly. "Even made up a few. Didn't do a thing." He paused, his face going slightly pale. "What's going to happen if we can't get them out?"

"H-Harry's -- " Hermione choked, "Harry's going to try to destroy V-Voldemort."

"But,' Ron said, looking thoroughly baffled, "isn't that why we came here, to sort out You-Know-Who once and for all?"

"Y-You don't understand," Hermione sobbed. "I kn-know what Harry's doing. He -- he's increasing the power of his magic by -- by using his own life-force to power the spell."

"What?" Ron gasped. "He -- he's going to do himself in and take You-Know-Who along? No...no, he wouldn't do that. I mean -- "

"H-He knows it's th-the only way," Hermione wailed softly. "I p-picked up his D-Defense Against the Dark Arts book one day, when he and Remus were practicing dueling. I saw one of the pages was folded over. It was on the chapter on h-how to boost magic by using life-energy. I asked him about it, and he said he was r-reading th-the other side of the page -- a new ch-chapter on d-dueling strategy. Since he and Remus had been dueling, I didn't give it another thought. B-But he was really studying the other chapter -- th-the one about -- oh, Ron..."

"I'm sorry I lied, Hermione," Harry said, knowing that he should be saying these words to the real Hermione who was waiting for him outside the Pensieve. "I knew you'd never agree to let me practice ways to divert my life force through my wand to boost spell power. I hoped I wouldn't have to use it..."

His voice trailed off feebly as Hermione bent her head and sobbed, unable to look over Ron's shoulder at the two shadowy figures battling in the heart of the green sphere. But as he turned to look at the scene which Hermione could not bear to acknowledge, he wondered anew: Why is Voldemort dead, while I'm still alive? What happened after I blacked out?

Leaving Hermione quietly sobbing into her hands, Ron unfolded his long legs and rose to his full height. He regarded the green sphere with something resembling disgust.

"Harry, you stupid prat," he spat. "There had to be another way! There had to be! I know you want to avenge your parents, and Cedric, and all the others the bastard's murdered. But it's too much, mate! The price is too high!"

Ron stood helplessly as he saw the blurred figures twitch slightly behind the emerald curtain surrounding them. The smaller figure -- Harry -- was shaking now, as if his efforts were draining his strength -- his life -- at an increasing rate. The Dark Lord was shaking as well, but in a different way, or so it appeared to Ron.

"It's working," Ron mumbled thickly, his voice laced with pain and misery, much of it (so it seemed to the disembodied Harry now standing at his side) directed at himself, at his inability to do something, anything, to save his best mate's life. "He's doing it. He's using the one weapon You-Know-Who can't fight. And there's nothing I can do to stop him."

Ron averted his eyes, unwilling to watch his best mate commit suicide. No matter the cause, no matter the benefits the wizarding world -- indeed, the entire world -- would reap, it was still too high a price to pay. All this Harry saw as he stared into his friend's blue eyes, and through them into the depths of his soul. He knew what Ron was thinking as surely as if he had spoken aloud.

"Not too high a price," Harry said into Ron's unhearing ear. "It was the only way. I knew from the beginning that, if Voldemort ever did come back again, he'd be too powerful for ordinary magic to defeat. Even Dumbledore would have had a job of it. And no matter what Trelawney's bloody prophesy says, I'm not a powerful enough wizard to destroy Voldemort."

But then, what had destroyed Voldemort in the end? And why was he, Harry, still alive?

Ron was now pacing the clearing back and forth before the glowing sphere, his eyes darting about randomly. He seemed ready to explode like an overwound spring as he alternately cast glances at the silent battle on the serpent altar and then tore his eyes away violently. Harry, his own frustration nearly the equal of Ron's, began to follow him a few paces behind. He kept darting looks at the sphere, as if expecting some miracle to strike like lightning from the sky. What in Merlin's name had happened to avert the disaster that was to have been of Harry's own making? What power could have destroyed the Dark Lord while sparing Harry's life in the exchange?

Turning away from the silent battle, Harry now saw that Ron was staring down at the ground at his feet. Bending his long legs, Ron knelt and caught up something in his left hand. He rose smoothly and held his hand outstretched, allowing Harry to see what it was that he had found lying on the packed earth.

It was Hermione's ring. As Harry stared, Ron looked at the ring with an expression of loathing.

"It's all your bloody fault," Ron said to the small, silver object lying uncaringly upon his palm. "If it wasn't for you, You-Know-Who couldn't have come back. My best mate is going to die! And it's all down to you!

Ron jerked his arm back savagely as if to hurl the ring into the trees and out of his sight. Then, just when Harry expected to see the ring flying through the air, Ron came up short. He brought his hand to his face and stared once again at the ring. Only this time, instead of wearing an expression of accusation, Ron's face morphed into one of desperation -- and hope.

"You brought You-Know-Who back," Ron said grindingly. "It's your fault that my mate is about to to die. Well, what you did you can bloody well undo! You sorted him out once, didn't you? Get at it, then! What are you waiting for?"

Ron closed his fist around the ring and thrust the whole at the shimmering sphere, as if to mime punching it, or aiming a spell at it. The look in his eyes verged on madness, Harry thought. Wracked with guilt over his inability to change the events before him, he seemed to be mocking the object which had wrought those events.

A great weight seemed to descend on Ron as he slowly lowered his arm, as if in defeat and acceptance. He opened his hand and looked at the ring again. And as Harry looked on with a pressure in his chest the equal of that on Ron's shoulders, something quite unexpected happened. For the first time since their arrival, Harry saw a glimmer of genuine hope in Ron's eyes. Ron continued to stare at the ring, not accusingly, but expectantly. A light sprang into his eyes with the suddenness of a lightning flash.

Whirling about, Ron sprinted back to Hermione, who was slumped against the pole, her face twitching slightly as if in the clutches of a nightmare. Ron fell to his knees in front of her and shook her gently with his wand hand. She started, looked around dully for a moment before fixing her eyes on Ron with a kind of torpid inquisitiveness.

"Hermione," Ron said, holding his hand out so that the ring lay inches from her face. "This ring sorted out You-Know-Who once. Why can't it do it again?"

Hermione looked at Ron as she had not quite heard him. "What?"

"This ring brought You-Know-Who back," Ron said, barely suppressing his excitement. "According to Trelawney's poem, this ring is the key that let You-Know-Who come back. There must be some way we can use it to open that door again and send him off where he came from."

Hermione's eyes seemed to clear a bit, and she regarded the ring for a moment before returning her attention to Ron's tense face.

"It's useless, Ron," she said, the defeat in her voice manifest. "It wasn't the ring that destroyed Voldemort a year ago. It was the ring-spirit, Amara. She came out of the ring and turned Voldemort to dust -- the same dust the Death Eaters brought here from the Forbidden Forest. The ring is useless now. It's just...just...a ring..."

Her voice trailed off as her eyes fell half-closed again. But Ron's enthusiasm was not diminished. If anything, his fervor had increased.

"Then we'll bring her back!" he said resolutely.

"Wh-What?" Hermione said wearily.

"I said we'll bring her back so she can sort out You-Know-Who like she did before!"

Her eyes now once more focused on Ron, Hermione said in a pitying voice, "She's gone, Ron. She's gone off to her world, to be with her people. She can't come back."

"We can bring her back with the Priori Incantatum!" Ron exclaimed. "It'll work, I know it will!"

"Ron -- " Hermione began, but he spoke over her with soft urgency.

"I don't know what else to do, Hermione! I've got to do something! I wasn't here with you and Harry when you needed me. If I'd come along, maybe things would have gone better. Maybe the Death Eaters wouldn't've had the chance to do the ceremony. Don't you see, Hermione? I can't just do nothing! I can't simply wait around for my best mate to snuff it! No matter what our chances are, I have to try!"

Hermione seemed unable to respond to the desperate guilt oozing from Ron's self-imprecations. Very slowly she raised her hand and took the ring from Ron's cupped palm.

"Is there anything special we need to do?" Ron asked. "Didn't the ring-spirit say something about -- I dunno -- what you had to do to release the magic?"

Her voice tired and hopeless, Hermione said mechanically, "Amara said there are three keys to releasing the magic of the Friendship Ring. Trust. Loyalty. And love."

Nodding eagerly, Ron said, "Yeah, I remember now. So what we need to do is -- is -- put all of that into some kind of spell, maybe."

"Those aren't the ingredients of a spell," Hermione said. "They go beyond magic. That's why the ring was so long in finding the one who could fulfill the requirements of the curse and release Amara from her prison.

"We need to tell the ring," Hermione said, her eyes now looking over Ron's shoulder at the green sphere, "how we feel. About Harry. About the three of us...about the bonds that have linked us for the last seven years."

Ron turned his head to see the two trembling figures behind the green veil shuddering. The Dark Lord was apparently resisting Harry's sacrifice with all his power. The conflict must ultimately consume both combatants, nor was that moment far, judging from the aspect of the warring pair.

Turning back to Hermione, Ron gently closed her fingers around the ring.

"No one loves Harry more than you," he said. "The last part will be down to you."

"This can't work," Hermione murmured under her breath as she closed her fingers tightly around the ring. "The Priori Incantatum only works on wands. It can't work..."

Folding his large hand around Hermione's smaller one, Ron squeezed, prompting her to look up. Instantly his china-blue eyes ensnared hers.

"Hermione," he said in a quiet voice yet brimming with urgency, "What are those three words again? The three keys?"

Hermione blinked dully for a moment before replying in a confused hush, "Trust. Loyalty. And love."

"In that order?" Ron asked. Hermione stared into his eyes curiously before nodding. "Why?"

"What?" Hermione said.

"Why in that order? I mean, why 'trust, loyalty, love?' Why not 'loyalty, trust, love,' or 'love, trust, loyalty?'"

For a moment, Hermione's face was still as carven stone. Then, speaking in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance, she said, "Because...because trust is where it all begins. Without trust, nothing else is possible."

Smiling, Ron squeezed her hand again. "Trust me, Hermione."

Hermione peered deeply into Ron's eyes as she felt the strong reassurance of his hand on hers. Very slowly, she nodded.

Ron dared a glance over his shoulder, wincing at the sight that met his eyes. The green glow surrounding the warring figures was somehow more poisonous looking than it had been. If he and Hermione did not act quickly --

Turning back around, he saw that Hermione's eyes were closed. Her lips were moving silently, as if she were praying. He squeezed her hand, and her eyes opened. She regarded Ron for a moment, then dropped her gaze to their joined hands.

"Concentrate," Ron said, increasing the pressure of his hand on hers. He raised his wand and held it at the ready, screwing up his face with the intensity of his own concentration. "Trust. Loyalty. Love."

"Trust," Hermione repeated. "Loyalty. Love."

Concentrating as he was on the ring clutched in Hermione's hand, Ron did not see her fumbling at the neck of her robes with her free hand as she spoke. But Harry saw. Her hand dipped beneath her neckline and emerged, her fingers wrapped around something. She opened her hand, and Harry saw that she was holding the pendant he had given her for Christmas. The tiny head of Amara floated ghost-like in the heart of the crystal as it lay on Hermione's trembling palm. Her eyes embraced the image as she repeated the invocation with desperate urgency.

"Trust. Loyalty. Love."

"Believe the words, Hermione," Ron said through tightly clenched jaws, his eyes still locked fast on their joined hands as if seeing through flesh and bone to the magical object hidden within. "Say it and believe it."

"Trust," Hermione said more strongly now. "Loyalty." She paused, her eyes flickering once more to the blurred figures behind the glowing dome. Her eyes fixing on the smaller, dark-haired shape, she said in a whisper that was almost a song, "Love."

"Now!" Ron barked, snatching his hand from Hermione's fist. Hermione opened her hand, and Ron stabbed his wand at the ring. "Prior Incantato!"

For a moment, nothing happened. Hermione, her last feeble hope dashed, let out a tiny sob. "It couldn't work," she said faintly, defeatedly. "I knew it couldn't -- "

Ron and Hermione abruptly gasped in unison, the sound echoing unheard from Harry's lips as he stared in amazement at Hermione's open hand. The ring had begun to glow with a soft, pearly light. It began to pulse softly. It almost appeared to be singing. Very slowly, a wisp of silver vapor wafted up from the graven head. It grew and expanded, assuming a form which they had not seen for a year, and had never expected to see again.

"A-Amara?" Hermione said, her face a mask of astonishment.

Ron was staring open-mouthed, as if he had not truly expected success, for all that it had been his idea.

"Hello, Hermione," the ghostly figure said gently.

Hermione stared for a moment, then squeezed her eyes shut with a sob. "It's not real. You're not real. You're like Cedric -- and Harry's mum and dad -- just an echo -- not real -- "

"But I am real, Hermione," Amara said.

"But -- how?" Hermione gasped, her face now leaking fresh tears. "The Priori Incantatum -- "

"It was not the incantation that brought me back," Amara said. "It was you. In the moment that Ron spoke the spell, you believed. You believed in Ron, in whom you placed your most fragile trust. In that moment, I felt the key enter the lock. Ron's loyalty to his two closest friends gave him hope where none should have been. So the key turned, and my own hope took wing. And love -- yours and Ron's, united in common cause against impossible odds -- opened the door. The three magic words, Hermione. Trust. Loyalty. Love."

"B-But," Hermione stammered, "you were -- you were gone -- you said you couldn't..."

"Did I not tell you that I would always be watching over you?" Amara smiled gently. "Over you and Harry?"

"Y-Yes, but..."

"I have never been far from you, Hermione," Amara said with an almost motherly affection. "Since the moment I departed to rejoin my people, I have been watching you and Harry from my realm. I have seen you in pools, in the clouds, in the face of the moon. There has not been a moment when you have not been in my thoughts, and in my heart. Always I have stood ready to do what I might at a propitious moment, to reach between our worlds to give events a nudge here and there so that the course of your life's journey might remain true." But now Amara's lovely face fell. "But I was sorely heartsick for that I had not the power to intervene here, when you and Harry needed me most. Until -- " And she turned her eyes on Ron, whose ears promptly turned a violent shade of pink. "Ronald Weasley, it was your friendship...your loyalty...your love...that is what allowed me to return. You were unwilling to stand by and see your best friend sacrifice his life. You had faith where none should have been."

Amara now turned back to Hermione.

"But it would not have been possible without you."

"I -- " Hermione choked, her eyes looking ashamed. "I didn't believe -- if Ron hadn't -- "

"You believed," Amara smiled warmly. "You always believed, deep in your heart. Even when your head told you that what you sought was impossible, your heart still believed. And in the end, that is what brought me back. You opened the door which I could not and permitted me to return to the place where I was most needed."

"OH!" Hermione exclaimed, her eyes going wide with horror. "Harry! Oh, please, Amara, you have to save him! You mustn't let him -- H-He's going to -- "

"I know of the sacrifice Harry has chosen," Amara said. "But I cannot help him. Not alone."

"What -- " Hermione began.

"I am no longer of this world," Amara said. "I can remain only for a tick of the clock. I will need your strength if I am to do this thing. Yours and Ron's."

"Trust," Ron said. "Loyalty. Love."

"Yes," Amara said. "But haste, for the sands of our hourglass are nigh empty! Give me what I need so that I may do that for which I came."

Following an unspoken command, Hermione closed her hand around the ring again. Ron replaced his large hand around hers.

"Trust. Loyalty. Love." The words were repeated over and over as Hermione, resisting the compulsion to look up at the pulsing green sphere, concentrated on the ring hidden inside the smaller sphere that was her hand and Ron's. "Trust. Loyalty. Love. Trust. Loyalty. Love."

Amara seemed to increase with every syllable. Her cloudy form grew more distinct, her otherworldly face more beautiful than either Ron or Hermione remembered.

"Yes," Amara said happily. "Yes."

Harry snapped himself out of the trance in which he had been watching these incredible proceedings. While Ron and Hermione remained behind, still chanting their heartfelt mantra, Harry followed Amara to the edge of the green sphere. He held back through instinct, fearing to touch the poisonous barrier even in a memory. But when Amara drifted through the glowing curtain as if it were not there, Harry could not remain behind. He plunged through after her, and was immediately staggered at the sight that met his eyes.

He saw himself and Voldemort, locked in a silent, deadly combat composed of sheer strength of wills. Voldemort's formerly Olympian features were twisted grotesquely as he strove to stay the power of his opponent's sacrifice. The trembling figure that was Harry was smiling even as he gave a great shudder and began to fold upon himself like a withering flower closing its petals for the last time. He opened his mouth and spoke in a voice too faint for human ear to hear. But the other Harry repeated the words from memory.

"I love you, Hermione."

"And she loves you," said Amara as she descended over the trembling figure of Harry like a gossamer cloak. She wrapped her ethereal body around him in a loving embrace. As the disembodied Harry watched, she began to glow with a soft radiance that increased with every beat of his heart. The white glow crept along the faltering Harry's arm until it touched his wand. The beam of green light connecting two wands was pushed back, inch by steady inch, by a beam of purest white. The horror in Voldemort's eyes quickly morphed into stark terror. He tried to wrench his wand arm away, but a paralysis seemed to be stealing over his body, arresting his movements as if he were turning to stone. Only his face remained alive, his mouth gaping, his nostrils flaring, his eyes wide and overflowing with naked fear.

Slowly, inexorably, the beam of white light pushed the green beam back toward Voldemort. The Dark Lord shook his once proud head violently as the white beam touched the tip of the wand that had been Harry's. The white thread seemed to enter the wand fully until there was no longer a beam connecting the two wands. Voldemort screamed soundlessly, his body quivering violently. The wand in his hand began to glow, as if the white light were seeping through the holly shaft like potion strained through a cloth. Harry saw Voldemort's hand begin to shrivel, as if the wand he held were a hot brand. It was like watching a speeded-up film of a body wizening and decaying into something like a diseased mummy. Voldemort's once vigorous muscles shrank and cracked like dry plaster. As Harry watched in astonishment, the Dark Lord began to wither away, becoming less and less as his once proud body wasted away into the poisonous dust from which it had come.

It seemed to Harry that the wand -- his wand, he reminded himself -- was absorbing Voldemort into itself. Both figures crumpled. Harry watched his other self slump down and lie still, Hermione's wand trailing from limp fingers. Lifting his eyes, he saw the debilitated remains of Voldemort, now little more than a stick figure, a pale, grotesque parody of a bowtruckle wavering on thin, feeble limbs. Harry thought he heard a faint outgoing of breath from the crumbling remains of Voldemort's desiccated lungs. Before Harry himself could draw another breath, the Dark Lord was gone. Harry saw his wand lying before the motionless figure of his other self. It no longer appeared to be made of holly, but of the whitest ash. The incredible truth came home to him in a rush of shock and disbelief. His wand had become Voldemort's tomb, containing within itself the dusty remains of what had been the most splendid body to walk the earth in an age, now reduced to the base substance in which the Dark Lord had once made his servants grovel at his feet.

Harry roused himself, shaking his head as if he had just awakened from a dream. Looking around on all sides, he saw that the poisonous green sphere was gone, expiring with the one whose magic had maintained it. He saw a faint vapor rising from "his" prone form. It wafted down the coils of the stone snake, and Harry bounded after it. The misty form drifting slowly toward the ones whose heartcries had summoned her only vaguely resembled the beautiful spirit it had been only minutes earlier. Amara smiled down on Ron and Hermione, looking quite as transparent as any ghost at Hogwarts.

"The sand has run from my glass," Amara said. "I must return whence I came."

Too stunned at first to understand what they had heard, Ron and Hermione stared for a moment before Hermione opened her hand to reveal the Friendship Ring. She stared at the ring, then up at Amara.

"How can I ever thank you?" she said tearfully, her smile at once radiant and occluded.

"It was not I alone," Amara said. "The sword is only as keen as it has been honed, as sure as the hand that wields it. Yours was the hand and the stone. I was but the tool."

Hermione held her hand out, the ring cupped in her palm glinting in the soft light. The fading spirit that was Amara drifted forward, her features growing indistinct.

"Will we ever see you again?" Hermione asked.

"To cross the barrier between worlds is no easy thing," Amara said faintly as she began to dissolve before their eyes. "I may return. Or we may never meet again, save in sweet dreams. But I will always be here for you. I will watch you and Harry, in the water, in the clouds. And if I can reach a finger through a tiny rent in the tapestry, perhaps you will feel a nudge from time to time. If an ill wind suddenly blows fair...if the sun appears unexpectedly on a cloudy day...it may only be the world unfolding as it was meant to. Or it may mean that your love has opened the door a crack so that I may touch again the lives of the ones who set me free, to thank them in some small way for the gift you have bestowed."

"After today," Ron said, finding his tongue at last, "we're square. Thanks."

Bowing her head deeply in farewell, Amara dissolved before their eyes. The ring in Hermione's hand glowed faintly for a moment, then dimmed to its normal, silvery lustre once more. She folded her fingers around it before lifting her hand to her bosom and whispering a prayer of thanks.

"Bloody hell!" Ron swore suddenly, leaping to his feet so fast that his head swam. "Harry!

Her eyes glowing with reawakened alarm, Hermione allowed Ron to help her to her feet and they made their way across the clearing and up the coiled steps to the dais whereon Harry lay. Hermione fell sobbing onto him immediately while Ron groped for Harry's wrist.

"Still alive," he said, though with less confidence that Hermione would have liked. "We have to get him back to Hogwarts. Quick as we can alert Dumbledore and Claire, they'll be able to sort him out." There was a hesitancy in this last statement, the hint of a question wrapped in the guise of assertion.

"I don't know if I'm strong enough to fly," Hermione said, suddenly remembering her many aches, temporarily forgotten in her worry over Harry.

"Can you handle a rejuvenation spell?" Ron asked. "That should last for a few hours, long enough for us to get back to the castle."

"I think so," Hermione said.

Ron pointed his wand at her and said, "Ennervate!"

A surge of energy flowed through Hermione. Her eyes brightened, her face relaxed. She stood up and tested her strained limbs.

"That should do to be getting on with," she said. "Though I may need a few extra replenishing potions from the hospital cupboard when we arrive."

Hermione took her wand back from Harry tenderly and conjured a stretcher. She took Harry's feet as Ron hefted his shoulders, and together they stretched him out as comfortably as they could. She then tore off a piece of her robes (which were tattered and torn from her furious battle with the Death Eaters) and took up Harry's wand very carefully. She wrapped the wand from end to end, careful to leave not a square centimeter exposed, before sticking it in her pocket.

Ron was looking down at Harry, his face tensed, as if he were trying desperately not to cry. Harry still showed no slightest trace of wakefulness, and Hermione stifled a sob. Using her wand, she directed the stretcher down the coiled steps until they were on level ground. They moved back to the ring of poles, and Ron stopped to catch up his and Harry's brooms.

"Oh, my goodness!" Hermione cried out suddenly. "Draco!"

It was clear from the look on Ron's face that he had not given Draco a single thought since his arrival. Hermione rushed over to the sundered post and severed Draco's cords with her wand. She conjured another stretcher and instructed Ron to help her place Draco upon it. Ron looked down on Draco with mixed emotions.

"I think I like him better this way," he said. "Not that I want him dead or anything. But a few broken bones -- "

"Ron!" Hermione scolded. "Draco fought bravely -- and against his own father! You should have seen him. He risked his life to try to get onto the dais to destroy Voldemort's ashes. And he saved my life at least once that I know, and who knows how many more times I didn't see."

"Okay, okay," Ron grumbled.

"I think he proved today that he's good enough to be your sister's beau," Hermione said as she used some water from her wand to wash out some small cuts on Draco's face and arms.

Ron avoided the subject by checking Harry's pulse again.

"Thready," he said in a would-be calm voice.

"I don't think it would be safe to awaken Draco with the rejuvenation spell," Hermione said. "The Curse that knocked him out was a particularly nasty one. It would be too much of a shock to his body to wake him by magic." Ron looked as if he might enjoy Draco waking up to a variety of aches and pains. "I wish we could take both of them back on stretchers," Hermione said.

"Why can't we?" Ron said. "And why conjure them in the first place if we can't use them?"

"We needed to get Harry down those steps, didn't we?" Hermione responded. "And these cuts of Draco's are so dirty, he needed something clean to lie on while I tended to them. But there's no way we can carry them back to Hogwarts this way. We'll have to carry them back ourselves, two passengers to a broom. I'll take Harry back on his Firebolt, of course."

Ron nodded, then his head shot up forcefully.

"Hang on! If you're carrying Harry -- "

There was no need to finish the thought. Ron jerked his head around and stared down at Draco, whose cuts Hermione had now tended to her satisfaction.

"You bloody well better be worth all this trouble," Ron muttered. "And if you ever do anything to make Ginny cry, you'll wish the Death Eaters had killed you before I'm done with you."

"Right, then," Hermione said brightly, forcing a smile. "Shall we be off?"

Grumbling, Ron scooped Draco up off his stretcher, which Hermione promptly vanished. Hermione used a delicately controlled Levitating Charm to lift Harry into the air before dispensing with his stretcher with a wave of her open hand (her wand being engaged in holding Harry aloft). Ron looked impressed.

"Do you think you can make it?" Ron asked as Hermione mounted Harry's Firebolt, which hovered steadily at her side, and maneuvered Harry's weightless form into position before negating the levitation spell. She applied a Sticking Charm to herself and Harry, then wrapped her left arm around him securely, clamping her right hand to the broom handle (her wand now safely in her pocket).

"I'm counting on the broomstick to do most of the flying," Hermione said. "Harry always said a Firebolt almost flies itself."

"Yeah," Ron said a little enviously as he mounted his Nimbus, balancing Draco unsteadily as he applied a Sticking Charm to himself. He considered "forgetting" to place the Charm on Draco, but changed his mind instantly when Hermione glanced at him warningly. He looked down on Draco ruefully, as if picturing him plunging into the North Sea somewhere between Azkaban and Hogwarts. If Hermione saw the satisfied smile tugging at a corner of his mouth, she gave no sign. Then, without warning, Ron exclaimed, "Oi, Hermione, where's your ring? Be a right joke if you lost it again after all the bother we went through to fetch it, wouldn't it?"

Hermione gasped in horror. Where was her ring? She realized that she had completely forgotten it in her eagerness to rush to Harry's side. It must have slipped from her hand unnoticed in her frantic charge across the clearing. Merlin's bones, it could be anywhere!

But she relaxed almost instantly as the light of reason replaced the panic on her face. Had she not enchanted the ring as a safeguard against this very occurrence? Working around Harry, whom she still held securely in the crook of her left arm, she took out her wand and balanced it on the palm of her hand, as she had done in Gryffindor Tower. Obeying her unspoken command, the wand spun around once and stopped, pointing directly toward the place where the ring lay unseen on the hard-packed ground. Grasping her wand once more, Hermione took aim and said, "Accio ring!" She caught the tiny object deftly as it whizzed hornet-like past Harry's ear and replaced it on the finger from which it had been taken.

"Thank you, Ron," Hermione said gratefully. "For everything. What would we do without you, Harry and I?"

Ron coughed with embarrassment, though he could not restrain a very pleased smile.

"I wonder what everyone back at the castle will say when they learn what we've been up to?" Hermione wondered aloud as she bent her knees to push herself and Harry aloft.

"Probably say it's just another day in the life of 'The Boy Who Lived,' won't they?" Ron grinned.

Hermione gave a not altogether convincing laugh as she hugged Harry to her, her face straining not to cry. Then, with a nod, she kicked off. Ron followed a moment later, grumbling something inaudible, in which the words "Ginny" and "appreciate" were barely discernable to the detached figure of Harry Potter, before the rushing of the wind smothered further conversation.

As the two double-burdened broomsticks rose into the air, Harry felt himself rise up with them. But when his eye tried to follow them, they were quickly lost in a haze of swirling silver mist. Harry felt his stomach lurch. He tumbled over and over. The next moment, he felt his feet settle onto solid ground again. He was back in the hospital wing, surrounded by Dumbledore and Sirius and Hermione and Ron.

Harry was trying to speak, but he seemed to have left his voice behind in the Pensieve. He staggered slightly, and Hermione quickly eased him back into bed and pulled the covers up to his waist. Ron, meanwhile, was retrieving his memory from the Pensieve and returning it whence he had taken it.

Harry was looking around in a kind of daze. Hermione took his arm worriedly.

"What is it, Harry?"

Harry blinked at Hermione, shook his head and turned toward Dumbledore.

"Professor?" he said weakly.

"Yes, Harry?"

"I -- " Harry was still finding it difficult to speak. "I don't understand."

"What don't you understand, Harry?"

Harry hesitated, swallowing dryly. "You -- " he croaked, "you said that -- that I destroyed Voldemort -- that I defeated him with the one power he could never command."

"That is correct, Harry," Dumbledore said.

Harry shook his head. "I didn't."

Dumbledore looked at Harry with a polite expression that seemed almost amused.

"It wasn't me who destroyed Voldemort," Harry said, his voice gaining strength with every syllable.

"Indeed?" Dumbledore said disbelievingly.

"It was the Ring Spirit -- Amara -- she did it. And it wasn't me who called her -- it was Ron and Hermione who did it. They did it all, not me."

Harry's eyes were now as round as two gold Galleons. He looked at each of his companions in turn before bringing his focus back to Dumbledore, his gaze incredulous.

"The prophesy was wrong," he said.

"You are speaking, I presume, of Sybill Trelawney's prophesy concerning the one who would destroy Voldemort?" Dumbledore said.

"It was all wrong," Harry said, shaking his head dazedly. "It was all for nothing! I was never the One!"

"Why do you say that, Harry?" Dumbledore asked quietly, the amusement in his voice scarcely concealed by his placid expression.

"Why?" Harry exclaimed. "Do you know what happened? Do you know what I just saw in the Pensieve?"

"I did not witness it for myself," Dumbledore admitted. "But I have your friends' testimony, and I have no reason to doubt either their truthfulness or their accuracy."

"Then how can you say that I destroyed Voldemort?" Harry demanded. "I tried to destroy him -- I tried to trump his magic with my life-energy. Maybe it would have worked. But in the end, it wasn't me who destroyed him. It was Amara."

"That is so," Dumbledore said. "But the prophesy was fulfilled nevertheless. And the statement I made to you regarding your power over Voldemort is no less valid. Indeed, the events you just witnessed in the Pensieve bear out my words most eloquently."

"How can you say that?" Harry cried desperately. "You said it was my ability to love that would destroy Voldemort."

"And so it did," Dumbledore said.

"You're not making sense," Harry said with an impatient grimace. "How does what I saw in the Pensieve validate what you told me over and over about my ability to love being the key to destroying Voldemort?"

"Because," Dumbledore said tranquilly, "it was your love which ultimately brought about the return of Amara. Without that force burning inside you, impelling you to sacrifice all to save the world from Voldemort, Amara could not have returned from her distant realm to tip the scales as she did. Prophesies are tenuous things, Harry. Even when we think we understand them, there is always some small portion that remains hidden. I have concluded that Arama was indeed involved in Sybill's prophesy, unseen and unsuspected even by those of us who thought to understand it fully. But Amara would have been powerless to act without you. When a tree is felled, is it the axe that performs the deed, or is it the hand that wields it?"

Harry looked at Dumbledore as if the old wizard were mocking him. His old anger was rising up inside him, and he fought it back with an effort of will. Dumbledore seemed to be waiting for Harry's inner storm to abate. Only when he saw the tightness withdraw from Harry's jaws did the headmaster continue.

"It is a common mistake," Dumbledore said, "for the unlearned and inexperienced to assume that love is a singular noun. In fact, it is plural. Indeed, it is infinite, reaching out to touch the farthest corners of the human heart. But rendered in its simplest form, love is a lens that magnifies whatsoever passes through it. It differs, however, from an earthly lens in a very special way. When its two faces are in perfect harmony, it magnifies in both directions. I spoke truly when I told you that your greatest power was the ability to love -- but that must also include the reverse, which is to say, your being loved in return. And that was what ultimately destroyed Voldemort."

Harry was regarding Dumbledore with an expression of bafflement mingled with renewed ire. The old wizard looked down on Harry from under his bushy silver eyebrows, and his blue eyes seemed to mist over for a moment before he spoke again.

"We have seen that Voldemort was one who disdained love in any form," Dumbledore said. "He regarded it as weakness, and he ever sought strength and power. Little did he suspect that there is nothing in the universe more powerful than that emotion which he despised above all things.

"There was a time, perhaps in his earliest youth, when Tom Riddle was capable of feeling and understanding love. But he quickly closed that door and locked it fast, nor could it ever again be opened. Thus did he seal his fate. For in refusing himself the weakness of love, he likewise denied himself its greatest strength, in that he denied others the opportunity to love him."

Harry began to stare at Dumbledore with new interest. He saw that Hermione and Ron -- and Sirius as well -- were attending the headmaster's words as keenly as he.

"Lord Voldemort had many followers," Dumbledore said. "Witches and wizards were drawn to him by the force of his personality as much as by the seductive might of his power. Those whom he named Death Eaters served him above all others, placing his will over their their own, as well as their families and friends. But they did not love him. How could they love one to whom the very concept was alien? They feared him. They admired and even respected him. But they never loved him.

"Why, then, did Lucius and the other remaining Death Eaters risk so much to return their master to power? Because they, like him, did not understand. When you and your friends arrived in their midst, they could not apprehend why you had risked so much to undertake what they saw as a fool's mission. But they were the fools. Always in the past when the tide turned against them, they fled rather than suffer their master's fate. The bonds holding them to their lord were weak, and thus were they easily broken.

"But the bonds between you and your friends, Harry, were more powerful than they could conceive. They followed you toward what awaited them, even their own deaths, not out of fear, or in hope of gaining some reward. They followed you out of love. That is the other side of which I spoke, Harry. The power you possessed which Voldemort could not comprehend was not merely love...it was the power by which you inspired others to love you."

Harry had been staring at Dumbledore so intently that his eyes were becoming dry. He blinked rapidly, bringing a trickle of tears to his cheeks. He felt something soft touch his arm. Hermione's hand slid along his wrist and folded around his fingers. He looked at her, and the glow on her face was startling in its intensity.

"Do you suppose," Dumbledore said with a beneficent smile, "that the miracle of love which has saved you, not once, but twice, could have been accomplished by the followers of Lord Voldemort? We have seen that it was indeed Amara and not you who, if only in practical terms, destroyed Voldemort. Does that make the prophesy untrue? Or did Amara merely assume her place in the grand mosaic?

"We must look at the whole picture, Harry. You were foretold before your birth as the destroyer of the Dark Lord. Yet how could you, a teenage wizard of admittedly no small ability but limited training, possibly accomplish this? It is because you were the key that alone could unlock the power of Princess Amara. All that she has done has been made possible by you, Harry. It was your love -- I should say, yours and Hermione's, which amounts to the same thing, as you are each part of the other -- that freed the princess from her prison one year ago. She then proceeded to destroy Voldemort -- or so we thought. But how could this be, when it was you and not she who were foretold as the instrument of Voldemort's downfall?"

Dumbledore paused, and his snowy eyebrows met above the bridge of his long, crooked nose. His blue eyes surveyed Harry over the rims of his glasses, and he smiled wanly.

"In the months following Voldemort's apparent destruction," he resumed, "my mind was troubled, for reasons I yet knew not. It seemed to me that what we believed to be true was, in fact, a falsehood -- a foul face wearing a pleasing mask, if you will. My suspicions grew as word came of Lucius Malfoy's renewed efforts to resurrect his master. Whatever may be said of Lucius, he is no fool. If he believed that his master was not lost, I was forced to act on that belief. I rallied the Order of the Phoenix, enlisting Sirius and Remus to act on my behalf while I ensured that Hogwarts was as secure as it could be. The news they ultimately brought me was in accord with my suspicions. The Death Eaters were indeed plotting to return their master to his former might. I knew then that I must keep a wary eye on you, Harry. For Lucius knew as well as I that the ultimate fate of his master lay in your hands.

"To delay your interference, he sought to enlist his son, Draco, as his inside man. In this, as we have seen, he was less than successful. But your life, and that of the one closest to you, remained in danger. Therefore I arranged for you and Hermione to receive preliminary Auror training so you might have the greatest chance against the pending threat of Lucius and his followers. In this endeavor I succeeded beyond my greatest hopes. It may interest you to know that, as a result of your actions -- and thanks in no small part to the prompt actions of Sirius and Remus after the fact -- both Lucius and Mulciber are presently occupying cells in Azkaban pending official sentencing."

This was welcome news for Harry, but he had no time to dwell on it now, arrested as he was by Dumbledore's narrative, which resumed after a brief respite in which the old wizard drew a long breath into his ancient but still forceful lungs.

"As the Order gradually pieced together the elements of Lucius' plan -- indeed, I should say Voldemort's plan, for it was he who left behind the instructions which Lucius followed faithfully by his master's command -- I saw that we were ever one step behind, seemingly destined to fall short of our goal before time ran out. For we divined even as did Hermione that the ceremony to restore Voldemort must take place on the anniversary of his destruction. As that date drew near and our hopes thinned, I placed my hopes on you, Harry, and on your friends. For I still believed in the prophesy, and I knew that your part in this drama was yet to be seen. I did not share this confidence with you, for which I ask your pardon. But I believed that your destiny was just that, and that any other hand, however well-intentioned, that attempted to steer events toward a desired end would only serve to divert them instead. I therefore allowed you the latitude to proceed as your conscience dictated, trusting that you would act for the best, as you ever have."

Dumbledore paused again, and Harry thought the old wizard looked particularly frail. But the light smoldering in his blue eyes was as powerful as ever as the headmaster smiled down at Harry from his impressive height.

"When I ultimately learned what you intended," Dumbledore said gravely, his eyes darkly shadowing Harry's intended sacrifice as a means of ensuring Voldemort's destruction (had he suspected that all along, too? Harry wondered), "I was torn inside. I did not know whether to weep or rejoice. As Sirius never tires of reminding us, you are truly the son of James and Lily. As they were willing to give their lives to achieve a greater good, so were you. But always I remembered the prophesy, and Amara's part in it. I held to the belief that your destinies were intertwined, and that, against all reason, the two of you would bridge the gulf separating you and complete the equation. I knew not how this would come about, but I knew the means by which it would be accomplished. Ever I reminded you, Harry, that you possessed the power to destroy the Dark Lord, power which he both feared and disdained. It was that power which prevailed, as I knew it must. I presume you heard the words Amara spoke to your friends, which they repeated to me when they brought you here. Did they not love you so powerfully, Amara could not have spanned the chasm between her world and ours to turn defeat into victory. Did I misspeak, then, when I said it was your love that would unmake the Dark Lord? No. For if it was Ron and Hermione who empowered Amara, it was the love which you planted in their hearts that provided the spark that kindled the holocaust. As Sybill Trelawney foresaw, it was you, Harry, who ultimately destroyed Voldemort. For none but you could have inspired the love and devotion in your friends -- and even in a former enemy -- by which the princess returned to fulfill her destiny...and yours."

As Dumbledore fell silent at last, the air in the hospital wing seemed to crackle with electricity. Harry reflected long and hard on Dumbledore's words. Unable to articulate, he lifted Hermione's hand, which throughout had remained firmly in his, and kissed it, his lips touching the ring that had described such a fearful circle over the preceding year, only to return whence it had started. He caressed her eyes with his, then turned to find Ron grinning down on the both of them, his blue eyes twinkling as merrily as Dumbledore's.

"Professor," Harry said at last, his voice creaking like oiled leather, "did you always know that this was what the prophesy meant?"

"Always?" Dumbledore repeated, his eyes smiling sagely over the rims of his glasses. "That is a word that must be used with caution, even in the best of circumstances. I...suspected many things for a long time, things which I could not prove. When the Friendship Ring first appeared, I believed it had a greater part to play than we had yet seen. This was borne out when Amara's curse was lifted, freeing her from her long imprisonment, and in the process setting wheels in motion that are only now spinning down to their final rest. As I have said, I harbored certain doubts which I confided to no one at first, for that they had no foundation save an old man's whimsy. I knew only that, despite what had transpired, the prophesy was not yet fulfilled. When, not long after, Lucius' plans became known to me, it was plain that the final note had not yet been struck, and I took the steps I have already described. When I learned of the recent theft of Hermione's ring, I knew it boded ill, since it was the only link between our world and that of Princess Amara. I knew that wherever the ring was, there would we find Lucius -- and Voldemort. We doubled our efforts, but we could find no trace of the Death Eaters' hidden refuge. I have come to see that I was arrogant not to think that you and your friends could succeed where older and wiser wizards had failed. Had I confided in you sooner, much misery could have been avoided. Alas, I believed that mine alone was the true vision. In this I again ask your pardon. Old age ever underestimates youth. It is the one curse for which no counter-spell has been found, save only repentance."

Harry suddenly felt uncomfortable looking at Dumbledore. As he often did in moments like these, he turned instinctively to Ron, trusting his mate to find a way to lighten the mood. But Ron seemed not to see Harry. He was looking thoughtful, having been moved in his own way by Dumbledore's words. Suddenly noticing Harry's scrutiny, Ron grinned awkwardly, shrugging his shoulders as he turned toward Dumbledore.

"You know," Ron observed, "none of this would have happened if Harry hadn't had those visions all year. They always seemed to come at just the right time, didn't they? Lucky for us, too, or You-Know-Who and his mates would be sending the Dark Mark over Hogwarts about now."

"Oh, luck had nothing to do with it, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said.

Ron's smile fell, and Harry turned to stare at the old wizard with renewed wonder.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

With a knowing smile, Dumbledore said, "I am sure you will recall, Harry, that you and Voldemort once shared a certain -- empathy. In unguarded moments, you were able to see through Voldemort's eyes, and to experience his emotions. When he realized this connection, he erected a wall around his mind so that you were no longer troubled by what you once took to be dreams, but were, in fact, visions."

Harry nodded. "But that couldn't have happened this year," he told Dumbledore. "Voldemort was dead. I couldn't be seeing into his thoughts."

"But we have already established that Voldemort was beyond death," Dumbledore countered. "After Amara reduced his body to dust, there remained a spark of life which his Death Eaters attempted to fan into a terrible flame once more. Voldemort had left certain instructions with Lucius Malfoy, which he followed in precise order. Do you suppose that Voldemort was unaware of this, even in his reduced capacity? I am not saying that Voldemort was in communication with his servants, directing their actions -- that was beyond even his fearsome abilities. Rather, I believe that he imagined the steps by which he would be resurrected unfolding in their precise order. And as the image of each event filled his mind on the cusp of its fulfillment, it was transferred to yours in a form that you took to be a clairvoyant vision. And in each case, these visions occurred when you were in Professor Trelawney's class. Is that not so?"

"Yes," Harry said. "Why was that? I know I don't really have the Inner Eye. If I was seeing what Voldemort was thinking, why didn't I have those visions anywhere else? I can't believe that he was thinking those things only when I was in Divination."

"That would be too great a coincidence," Dumbledore agreed. "I believe that, although, as you have said, you do not possess any true clairvoyant skills, yet you were striving to do your best under Professor Trelawney's guidance to encourage your mind to open itself in this manner. Thus, it was only when you were making a concerted effort to see beyond the mundane that your mind was opened and you received your visions of what was in Voldemort's thoughts. At all other times, the connection between you and Voldemort was too tenuous for you to see beyond the physical."

Harry suddenly remembered something. "I got tired of having those visions," he said. "So I started practicing Occlumency, and the visions stopped."

"Just so," Dumbledore said. "In his incorporeal state, Voldemort could not block his thoughts from you as he did before. But a door may be closed from either side of a wall. When you erected your own protective barrier, the connection between you and Voldemort was severed. And in his reduced capacity, he never knew that his thoughts were being intercepted, so neither could he detect when the connection between you ceased. In either case, he was helpless to prevent you from seeing the visions that led to his downfall."

"But what about the last prediction?" Harry looked directly into Dumbledore's blue eyes, searching them for yet one more answer. "When I stopped having my visions, Professor Trelawney went into another trance -- you know, like she did when Wormtail came back."

"Indeed?" Dumbledore said, showing no surprise at this statement.

"But it was different this time," Harry pressed. "She spoke in rhyme."

"I am sure you know, Harry," Dumbledore said, "that Sybill Trelawney, bless her, is not a true seer, though I would never be so heartless as to tell her this to her face. On those occasions when she has demonstrated such abilities, it was not she who was speaking. You have heard all three of her predictions, Harry. Was it her voice you heard at any time?"

"No," Harry said. "It was like someone else was speaking through her."

"And not merely one person," Dumbledore said. "Sybill is, for want of a better term, a conduit. True seers who have passed beyond this world will, at a time of their choosing, speak through her. The voice you heard was one of many which have elected to use her as their, shall we say, spiritual telephone. It was evidently of utmost importance that this latest prediction reach your ears. Well for us all that you heeded it."

"It was Hermione who figured most of it out," Harry said, casting a loving eye in Hermione's direction.

"We all figured it out," Hermione said. "Ron did his part, too. Harry supplied the final piece, just in time."

"Who can measure the value of friends in silver and gold?" Dumbledore observed, his hands spread before him. Clasping his hands together meaningfully, he said, "You are blessed one and all to have been joined in this way."

Harry saw that Ron's ears were now glowing in the familiar Weasley manner, nor were Hermione's cheeks far removed in hue. Harry's eyes fell on Sirius, and he was surprised to see silent tears painting the old Marauder's face. Sirius became aware of Harry's scrutiny and smiled.

"I wish I could have done as much for Lily and James as your friends did for you," Sirius said, his eyes glowing with mingled joy and sadness. "I'd have given my life for them gladly. So would Remus have done, too. I think even Peter would have, before Lucius and his lot turned his head."

This last reminded Harry of Dumbledore's comment on Harry inspiring loyalty not only in his friends, but in a former enemy.

"Where's Draco?" Harry asked no one in particular. After all they had shared, he thought Draco would have come to visit him as Ron and Hermione had. But perhaps Ron's presence had put him off. Hermione said Ron had scarcely left Harry's bedside since their return. Placing Ron and Draco in the same room for any length of time might well have led to an altercation that would almost certainly have incurred Madam Pomfrey's wrath.

"He's fine," Hermione said. "His injuries were only physical, like mine were. Claire fixed us up while Madam Pomfrey was working on you."

"Where is he?" Harry said. "I have a lot to thank him for."

"Funny thing, that," Hermione answered with a puzzled expression. "He's been keeping to himself mostly. The Slytherin prefects say he's either studying for his N.E.W.T.'s in his common room, or off having mysterious meetings."

"With Ginny?" Harry said. Ron grunted sourly but otherwise made no other comment.

"And with Sirius," Hermione mouthed softly, rolling her eyes toward the one named, who gave no sign that he had heard. When Harry's eyes flashed her a questioning look, she gave a small shrug and said, "No idea."

"We owe him a lot," Harry said, ignoring Ron's exaggerated rolling of his eyes. "He didn't have to come along, but we really needed him in the end."

"It's like Professor Dumbledore said," Hermione smiled. "It takes someone very special to turn an enemy into a friend."

"I cannot help but recall," Dumbledore reflected expansively as all heads again turned his way, "the words of a very great and wise wizard who said, 'A heart is not measured by how much we love, but by how much we are loved by others.'"

"What wizard?" Ron asked.

"Why, the Wizard of Oz," Dumbledore replied, the corners of his mouth twitching under his silver moustaches.

Harry and Hermione burst out laughing. Ron looked thoroughly bemused. Sirius sidled over and clapped his hand roughly on Ron's shoulder.

"When we visit Remus' house over the holidays," he said, "I'll introduce you to a Muggle invention called a DVD. It captures an entire cinema on a disc the size of a house-elf's tea saucer."

"You're winding me up," Ron said, regarding the old Marauder much as he might Fred or George.

"Isn't your dad always telling you that Muggles know more than we wizards give them credit for?" Sirius said.

"I know, but -- blimey!"

Harry and Hermione broke out in gales of fresh laughter. Harry laughed so hard that his glasses slipped from his face, bounced off the bed and shattered on the stone floor. Hermione stifled her laughter and retrieved Harry's glasses, thereafter touching them with her wand and saying, "Reparo!"

As Hermione replaced his glasses, Harry stared for a moment at her wand. Something had just clicked in his mind -- something he had seen in the Pensieve, yet which he had somehow neglected to ask about in all the confusion.

"Professor -- " Harry began urgently, only to be cut off unceremoniously by Madam Pomfrey, who burst from her office like a tornado, her eyes spitting flames.

"Really!" she said sharply. "I could hear the din through my office door! This patient needs rest, not more excitement. I daresay he's had quite enough of that to be getting on with. I've given you your allotted time and then some. Out, the lot of you! Out!"

"Madam Pomfrey is quite correct, Harry," Dumbledore said. "We can resume this tomorrow, when you are properly recovered."

"But -- " Harry stammered.

"Professor Dumbledore is right, Harry," Hermione said.

"We'll see you tomorrow, mate," Ron said, giving Harry a thumb's-up.

"I'll tell Claire that you're back among the living," Sirius laughed.

"Where is she?" Harry asked, feeling guilty that he had not asked sooner.

"Having a well-earned kip," Sirius said, avoiding the nurse's poisonous stare as he edged slowly toward the door. "She's been staying up nights, watching over you while Madam Pomfrey slept, checking your progress, giving you sips of replenishing potions to keep your strength up. There was never a moment day or night when you weren't under the best of care." Spotting the guilt on Harry's face he was unable to conceal, Sirius grinned, "As soon as the two of you are awake at the same time, I'll have her pop in. She can't wait to give you a massive hug -- and to box your ears for doing something that, in her words, 'only a barmy old ex-Marauder would be mad enough to attempt.' Me, I take that as a compliment." He thrust out his chest, and Harry snorted with laughter.

Harry wanted to continue the conversation, but the nurse would have none of it. Sirius followed Ron out, winking at Harry over his shoulder. As Harry sighed with disappointment, Hermione kissed him goodbye before being ushered outside by Madam Pomfrey, who promptly handed him another goblet full of potion that seemed to appear in her hand from thin air. Harry looked at it suspiciously.

"It's only a sleeping draught," she told him. "When you awake in the morning, you should be well enough to leave."

Harry drained the goblet and handed it back to Madam Pomfrey. As he lay back, feeling waves of delicious sleep washing over him, he tried to focus on the question he had wanted desperately to ask Dumbledore. But the more he tried to think, the more sluggish his thoughts became. His head sank into his pillow and he thought no more.

Harry awoke the next morning to the sound of drums. At least, that was how his ears interpreted the rhythmic din that greeted his return to wakefulness. His eyes, once fully open, revealed the truth. Madam Pomfrey was directing her wand at the tall windows lining the outer wall of the hospital wing. One by one, in such cadence as a troop of soldiers would have been proud to imitate, the windows were banging open, filling the room with the sweet smell of the lush, green lawns surrounding Hogwarts. The scent was like perfume to Harry, and he closed his eyes and lay back, savoring the feel of the breeze and the symphony of birdsongs without.

"Ah, Mr. Potter," Madam Pomfrey said as she noted Harry's movement, and the contented smile he now wore. "And how are you feeling, may I ask?"

Harry sat up and stretched languorously. He pondered a moment before answering the nurse's question. How did he feel? The answer came almost immediately. He felt wonderful! It was as if he had awakened from the best sleep he had ever had, only to find the day more perfect than he could have imagined.

"Smashing," he answered truthfully as Madam Pomfrey approached him, her wand before her. She gave the implement a few tricky waves that bore an uncanny resemblance to the defensive moves he and Hermione had practiced in their many Auror sessions with Sirius and Remus. Harry felt probing waves of magic ripple up and down his body. It was rather like experiencing a very mild electric shock.

"Yes," Madam Pomfrey said approvingly. "You're coming along nicely."

"I can go, then?" Harry said eagerly, swinging his legs out from under the covers.

"Not just yet," Madam Pomfrey said.

"But," Harry stammered, "you just said I was doing nicely."

"And so you are," the nurse assured him. "But I have one final prescription before I release you."

She waved her wand, and a breakfast tray appeared on Harry's bedside table.

"You have been four days without solid food," Madam Pomfrey said. "When you have assimilated the proper nourishment without any ill effects, I shall be convinced to release you. Now, eat!"

Harry had to stop himself from attacking his tray like a starving jackal. Madam Pomfrey was right, he was positively famished. He had to hold himself back from wolfing every morsel; if, after all he had endured, he made himself sick by eating too fast, Ron would never stop taking the mickey out of him.

As if the thought had been a magical summons, Ron appeared in the doorway, his trademark grin firmly in place.

"Oi, Harry!" he called as he approached the bed. "Better eat slower, mate, or people will reckon we're twins separated at birth."

Ron pulled up a chair and sat down next to Harry's bed. Sparing a glance between bites of toast and jam, Harry saw that Ron was holding a square of folded parchment in an attitude of importance. He nodded indicatively, his mouth being too full to articulate, and Ron pushed the parchment toward Harry.

"Message from Dumbledore," Ron said.

"Re' it oo ee," Harry mumbled as he took a large swig of pumpkin juice and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his pajamas. Ron unfolded the note and sighted down his long nose at the writing thereon.

"Your presence is most humbly required in the headmaster's office today at 11:00," Ron read. "Matters remain to be addressed in regard to the events of Sunday last. Please be punctual. Kindest regards, Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster."

Harry nearly choked on his pumpkin juice. He remembered all of a sudden the question he had wanted to ask Dumbledore before Madam Pomfrey had forced the sleeping potion on him. He finished the remainder of his breakfast in record time, knowing that the nurse would expect him to eat every bite before she deigned to certify him fit for release. It was only when he pushed his empty tray aside that he remembered something.

"I'll need the password to get into Dumbledore's office. He changes it every Monday. All I know is last week's. Did he tell you the new one?"

"No," Ron said. "I never went to his office. He gave me my assignment while I was at breakfast, along with the note."

"The note," Harry said. "Is there anything under the message about the password?"

"Hang on," Ron said as he unfolded the parchment again. "There's something at the bottom. It says, 'Remember the sweet I ate when I first visited you here six years ago.'" Ron looked up, his brow wrinkling. "Do you make any sense out of that?" Harry answered with a knowing smile.

"So," Harry now thought to ask, "when Dumbledore gave you the note, did he ask you to come, too?"

"Oh, I already know what it's about," Ron said importantly. He seemed to swell even more as he added, "I have more important things to be about this morning."

"Such as?" Harry inquired wryly.

"Handling your duties as Head Boy," Ron said almost regally.

"Get off!" Harry laughed.

"Somebody has to get things done while you're playing the layabout," Ron retorted. Harry laughed again. "Seriously," Ron said in a humbler tone, "Dumbledore said you're to have a short holiday after -- you know. So he came over at breakfast this morning and asked me to fill in for you."

"Couldn't have picked anyone better," Harry said. Ron's ears went slightly pink. "You and Hermione going off when you leave here, then?"

"Oh, she's taking a holiday, too," Ron said. "Padma Patil is filling in for a bit."

"Padma doesn't mind being seen with you, then?" Harry smiled.

"A lot's happened since the Yule Ball," Ron said, his smile offset by a dark shadow in the depths of his azure eyes.

"Too true, that," Harry said with a clouded smile. His expression lightened as he asked, "How does Leah feel about sharing you with a 'woman from your past'?"

"Oh," Ron said with an uneasy shrug, "well, as to that..."

But before Ron could go on, the outer door opened and Hermione bustled over, looking very businesslike despite the pleasant expression with which she favored Harry.

"I thought I'd find you here," she said, turning to Ron. "You left your duty schedule in the Dining Hall."

Hermione handed Ron a piece of folded parchment, which he accepted with an abashed grin.

"Not a very good start to my first day as Head Boy."

"You did look a bit distracted at breakfast," Hermione observed.

Harry, remembering the topic of their interrupted discussion, asked, "Is it something to do with Leah?"

"Have you and Leah had a row?" Hermione said in surprise.

"Sort of," Ron answered off-handedly.

"I would have thought you'd be her hero in shining armor after what you did," Hermione remarked. Word of their adventure had quickly spread through the school, thanks in no small part to the Fat Lady and her gossipy friend, Violet, and abetted by the boasting of Nearly-Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost.

"Yeah, well," Ron said, "that's sort of what touched it off."

"I don't understand."

"She was a bit fussed that I'd gone off with you and Harry without telling her," Ron shrugged. "Said it was a stupid thing to do and I could have got myself killed a hundred different ways."

"Well, she's right there, mate," Harry said with a grim smile.

"Well!" Hermione said indignantly. "Doesn't she know how important it was that we go? It's not like we had any options."

"She said I should have used my brain and stayed behind instead of going off with you lot," Ron said. "She said that you and Harry would have done okay without me."

"If you hadn't come along," Hermione said briskly, "the whole mission would have gone down the plug hole. You were the one who thought to use the Friendship Ring to bring Amara back. If you hadn't been there, Harry would have died!"

"I got the impression," Ron concluded, "that she wouldn't have minded so much if it was only me and Harry going off."

Hermione's eyes flashed like those of a basilisk. "She -- she actually thinks that you -- that you still -- "

"That I still fancy you, yeah," Ron said, the words coming easier now that he had finally got them out. "I told her that was ages ago, before you and Harry got together. I think she thought I was hoping Harry would snuff it going up against You-Know-Who, and I wanted to be there to, in her words, 'comfort you.'"

"She actually said that?" Hermione gasped.

"More or less," Ron said.

Hermione's face was growing hot. "She thinks you'd betray your best mate by nicking his girlfriend while he was giving his life to save the wizarding world?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Ron said easily.

"I knew there was something about her," Hermione muttered darkly. "How the Sorting Hat ever put her in Gryffindor is beyond me. She'd have done better in Slytherin. Merlin's hat, doesn't she know Harry and I are practically engaged?"

These words struck Harry to the heart. He was reminded in a sudden rush of despair of the rendezvous he had arranged in Hogsmeade between himself and Hermione, his carefully-laid plans that had gone up the Floo when they'd gone off to face the threat of the Death Eaters -- and Voldemort. A silent explosion burst in Harry's brain, and he realized with a thrill of alarm that he must speak with Ron immediately, apart from Hermione. But how could he get her to leave without arousing her suspicions? The purity of his motives notwithstanding, he knew that Hermione was too clever a witch to fall for subterfuge, however skilfully devised. Yet he must find a way to speak with Ron alone!

Fortunately, Ron again snatched victory from the dragon's jaws as he had in the shadow of Voldemort's altar.

"You haven't heard the best part," Ron chuckled through a broad grin. "She said I'd promised to help her study for her O.W.L.'s, but I'd obviously got my priorities skewed. Can you imagine someone thinking exams are more important than ridding the world of You-Know-Who? I ask you!"

Harry and Ron both regarded Hermione closely, each for a different reason. Ron was enjoying his subtle indictment of his classmate's inherent fervor when it came to studying and exams. But Harry was looking expectantly for the explosion he knew was only moments away -- the eruption that he hoped would be his salvation. Nor was he disappointed, for Hermione promptly shot up like a rocket, her cheeks blazing.

"Where you off to?" Ron called cheerily as Hermione swept toward the door in a swirl of black robes and dancing brown curls. She jerked her head over her shoulder with a baleful stare that would have cowed a Bulgarian Devil's Bane.

"I'm going to have a few words with your ex-girlfriend," she said in a controlled voice.

"Cheerio, then!" Ron said as Hermione disappeared through the doorway. Turning back to Harry, he hooked his arm over the back of his chair casually and gave a small shrug. "It's all for the best, you know. We'd gone as far as we could, Leah and I. Did I tell you she found this Ravenclaw bloke to help her study for O.W.L.'s? Last time I saw them, they were carrying on smashingly, if you know what I mean."

But where Ron expected to see Harry flashing a knowing smile to mirror his, instead he saw an urgency smoldering in Harry's eyes that erased the grin from his face faster than a Vanishing Charm would have done.

"What is it, mate?" Ron asked. "You look like someone who's just checked his pocket and discovered he's lost a hundred Galleons."

"I've lost more than that," Harry said hollowly. "Do you remember what I had planned the night we went off to sort out Lucius Malfoy and his mates?"

"The dinner!" Ron said with cold realization. "Blimey, I'd forgot. Well, you can set it up again, can't you?" But Harry replied with a shake of his head.

"If you'll check that list Hermione gave you," he told Ron, "you'll see that the next Hogsmeade weekend won't be until after final exams."

"So?" Ron said. "You'll go then, won't you?"

"No good," Harry said glumly. "The Head Boy and Girl have to help with grading the exams for the first through third years. McGonagall's already assigned our regular duties to the prefects for that weekend. There's no getting out of it. We won't finish up until Monday at the earliest."

Ron looked for a moment as though he was about to suggest that he cover for Harry then as he was doing now. But he quickly realized that his present duties were a far walk from grading exams, as Professor McGonagall was sure to remind him if he dared make such a suggestion. Instead, he looked at Harry helplessly and asked, "What can you do, then?"

"That's what I need you to help me figure out," Harry said desperately.

Ron snapped his fingers. "You and Hermione can get special permission to visit the village after! The teachers can all go whenever they want, can't they? Hagrid's always having a pint at the Three Broomsticks, isn't he? And when Sirius was going on about the password, he said that the Head Boy and Girl were to be given the same consideration as the teachers. That means you can visit the village any time you want, right? After exams are done -- "

"After exams are done," Harry said glumly, "it'll be too late."

"Why?"

"Because," Harry explained patiently, "the 'special arrangements' I made for that night took ages to set up. There's no time to start over."

"Took a bit of doing, did it?" Ron said cautiously.

"You have no idea," Harry said.

"Well," Ron said, forcing a smile, "you can always ask her somewhere else, can't you? I mean, the question is more important than where you ask it, right?"

"I suppose," Harry sighed. "But if you knew what I had planned for Hermione at the Golden Eagle...Natty Lovegood and I worked off and on over three Hogsmeade weekends to get all the enchantments just right. Hermione never suspected a thing. She thought we were just going out to dinner. When she finally saw...I mean, she would have been so knocked over, she'd have had to say yes."

"What, like she'd say anything else?" Ron scoffed. But Harry felt his old insecurities returning. Hermione had a glorious future ahead of her, which would be cemented by her final marks on their N.E.W.T.'s. If hers were not the highest grades in the history of Hogwarts, Harry would eat the stone boars guarding the entrance to Hogwarts, wings, tusks and all.

"The spells and enchantments were all in place for our arrival," Harry said dejectedly. "Timed to activate at 6:30 on the dot. Everything was balanced so delicately, once it started, there was no stopping it. But," he sighed dejectedly, "at 6:30 Sunday night, we were hundreds of miles away, flying over the North Sea. The only one who got to see is Natty..."

As Harry's voice trailed away, Ron saw a gobsmacked look appear on his friend's face. Harry shook his head as if clearing his thoughts. He blinked and stared at Ron, his eyes alight.

"Ron," Harry said excitedly, his voice low and conspiratorial. "I need you to do something for me -- right now, this minute."

"Right," Ron said eagerly.

"I need you to go to Hogsmeade."

"Hogsmeade?" Ron repeated. "But -- can I -- I mean -- I'm only filling in -- McGonagall won't -- "

"No," Harry agreed, his voice now a desperate whisper. "You'll have to use the Invisibility Cloak."

"Uh -- right," Ron said, looking bemused.

"I have to meet Dumbledore at 11:00, so you'll have to be back before then. You can use my Firebolt."

"Okay," Ron said.

"And quick as you get back," Harry said, "you have to find Hermione and have her meet me at the entrance to Dumbledore's office. Can you do all that?"

"No worries," Ron said confidently. "But you haven't told me what you want me to do in Hogsmeade. Is there something you want me to bring you? Something for Hermione?"

Harry nodded, his eyes flickering across the door to Madam Pomfrey's office before returning to Ron.

"Consider it done," Ron said.

"Thanks, mate," Harry said. He leaned very close and whispered in Ron's ear. Even had Madam Pomfrey been utilizing a set of Extendable Ears from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, Harry doubted she could have heard the instructions he whispered to Ron. When he was finished, he looked anxiously into Ron's eyes. Ron nodded firmly, and Harry smiled as he relaxed against his pillow. He was not a moment too soon, because at that moment Madam Pomfrey burst from her office and made straight for Harry and Ron.

"You are not upsetting my patient, I trust?" she said to Ron as she eyed him beadily.

"Just the opposite," Ron said, resisting the temptation to wink at Harry. "Bringing him good news, in fact. Professor Dumbledore wants to see him at 11:00."

"Well then, Potter," Madam Pomfrey said, eyeing the empty breakfast tray with approval and measuring it against the untroubled expression on Harry's face, "you had best get out of that bed and make yourself presentable for the headmaster."

"Right," Harry said. Looking about to see where his clothes had got to, he spotted a set of fresh robes lying on the next bed. The fastideous manner in which they had been folded told him that Hermione had placed them there for him sometime during the night (being Head Girl, with full access to the castle at all hours, had many plusses). As he pulled off his pajama top, he exchanged a knowing look with Ron, who grinned broadly before turning toward the door.

Harry was standing in front of the gargoyle at five minutes to 11:00. He checked his watch, looking up and down the corridors for a sign of Ron. Without warning, something jabbed him sharply in the back. He turned, seeing no one. Then he spied a disembodied hand emerging from thin air. Harry clasped the hand in his, feeling a small object press into his palm. He slipped this into his pocket just as a black-robed figure rounded the corner and walked toward him purposefully.

"Harry!" Hermione said excitedly as she threw her arms around him. After nearly strangling him with a fierce hug, Hermione stepped back and looked Harry up and down. "Madam Pomfrey fixed you up, then?" she said, beaming.

"Good as new," Harry smiled. Hermione's answering smile was quickly replaced with a questioning look.

"Ron said you're going to see Dumbledore," she said. "He said you wanted me to come along. But if Dumbledore didn't specifically invite me..."

"We're part of each other," Harry said, taking Hermione's hand in his. "As the Death Eaters learned the hard way, where one of us goes, the other goes, too."

"Everywhere but the loo," Hermione chuckled. Harry grinned before turning to face the stone gargoyle.

"Ear wax," he said. The gargoyle came to life and leaped aside as the wall parted, revealing a winding staircase that spiraled upward like a magical Archimedes' Screw. Harry and Hermione mounted the steps and rode up to a landing where they found themselves facing a large oak door ornamented by a knocker in the shape of a griffin. This Harry employed, and a familiar voice sounded from behind the door.

"Enter."

Harry pushed the door open, allowing Hermione to precede him before entering the headmaster's office. He closed the door behind him and turned to face a magnificent claw-footed desk behind which Dumbledore sat in an attitude of deep contemplation. Harry wondered what Dumbledore's reaction would be upon seeing Hermione. Technically, the invitation had been addressed to Harry alone. But Harry was not overly surprised when Dumbledore's expression brightened as he surveyed his guests over the bridge of his long, crooked nose.

"Ah, Hermione!" Dumbledore said delightedly, showing no surprise at her presence. "I rather expected to find you accompanying Harry. You are most welcome."

"Thank you," Hermione said with a respectful nod.

Harry's manners should have dictated a similar gesture of respect, but he was too full of anxiety to pay heed to proper decorum.

"Professor," he said at once, "there's something I forgot to ask you yesterday in the hospital wing."

This was another breach of etiquette. Dumbledore had invited Harry to his office to "discuss certain matters." It was the headmaster's privilege to set things in motion in a manner of his own choosing. But if he was offended by Harry's impropriety, his pleasant expression betrayed no sign. If anything, his benign smile grew even more solicitous.

"Indeed," Dumbledore said, touching his fingertips together in a long, pointed steeple before his bearded face. "I believe I know what you wish to ask me, but I will not presume to usurp your prerogative. Ask away, and I will answer as succinctly I can."

"What happened to my wand after -- after Voldemort was destroyed."

Dumbledore nodded in a manner as if to indicate that this was indeed the question he expected. In answer, he opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a polished wooden box. He placed it on the desk, and Harry and Hermione took a step closer to examine it in more detail. It was of a size that might have comfortably held a Beater's bat, but if Harry was certain of anything, it was that nothing so innocuous lay hidden under that elegant facade. Smiling, Dumbledore opened the box and lifted from it a gleaming obelisk of transparent crystal, which he held up before his guests' inquisitive eyes. A long, thin object hovered in the heart of the crystal. Harry recoiled slightly as he beheld the pale, leprous thing floating in its pristine casket.

"Is that -- " he said hesitantly, his voice dry, " -- is that -- my wand?"

"It is," Dumbledore said as he set the item in question on his desk next to the box from which it had come.

"What happened to it?" Harry asked with a small shudder.

"You happened to it, Harry," Dumbledore replied, his blue eyes twinkling.

Harry started, recalling all of a sudden the image of Voldemort employing this wand -- Harry's wand -- against him. Dumbledore saw the remembrance in Harry's eyes and smiled with something that might have been pride.

"When you faced Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore said, "the two of you warred with great and terrible power. In the end, you conquered, and Voldemort fell. Consumed by his own dark and shriveled soul, he was stripped of his last semblance of humanity. He became in fact what he had for so long been in essence: Death."

Harry peered more closely at the ghastly thing that had been his cherished wand. It's flanks were no longer smooth with the rich sheen of polished holly. It was pale as bleached bone, poisonous-looking, leprous and foul.

"I remember a bit about what happened when I was fighting Voldemort," Harry said. "And Ron's memory showed me things in more detail, but -- "

"Yes, Harry?" Dumbledore said encouragingly.

"If what I saw is what I think I saw," Harry said slowly, "then that's really..."

"Yes, Harry," Dumbledore said. "Encased within this fragile shell is all that remains of the body and spirit of Tom Riddle, alias Lord Voldemort."

"I still don't understand," Harry said. "I thought Princess Amara destroyed Voldemort."

"She was the instrument of his destruction," Dumbledore concurred. "But as we have established, yours was the true power that was Voldemort's unmaking. You are aware, I take it, of the relationship between your wand and Voldemort's?"

"They're brother wands," Harry answered. "They were," he amended. "Voldemort's wand was destroyed with his old body a year ago, so he used mine against me when we dueled."

"A grave error," Dumbledore said. "One of many which together formed the nexus of Voldemort's destiny. When a wizard acquires a wand, it is the result of a bonding initiated by the wand itself. Wand and wizard become one, each absorbing the traits of the other on a subtle, mystical level. Your wand took from you the traits which I have enumerated -- the qualities which set you apart from Lord Voldemort. A small portion of the love inside you permeated your wand -- or I should say, its core, for therein lies its true power. When Voldemort attempted to turn your wand to evil ends, it resisted, if feebly. Being a soulless object, its innate power was necessarily limited. It was only when you set your will against Voldemort's that the wand he sought to employ to his own ends became a weapon to be used against him. Do you recall Voldemort's final moments, as you beheld them in the Pensieve?"

"It looked," Harry said hesitantly, "like Voldemort was being drawn into my wand -- as if it were absorbing him into itself."

"Just so," Dumbledore nodded. "Aided by the power of Princess Amara, you defeated Voldemort by smothering his evil spirit, as it were -- overwhelming it in an embrace he could not resist, for that he could not understand it."

"But," Harry said, his thoughts all a-jumble, "I still don't understand how my wand could have done all that when Voldemort was holding it. I remember Mr. Ollivander told me on my first visit to his shop that a wizard will never get the same results with another's wand. But even if that's true, a wand has to obey the wizard who holds it, doesn't it?"

"Ordinarily, that holds true," Dumbledore said. "But if a wand is under the influence of more than one person, it will be more susceptible to the will of its rightful owner."

"But how could I command my wand, even subconsciously, when I wasn't in contact with it?" Harry asked.

"Ah, but you were in contact with your wand, Harry," Dumbledore said. "Do you not recall the thread of pure energy connecting the two wands? Your will was focused in that beam, and when it touched your wand, Voldemort's command over it was overthrown."

"But how?" Harry said again, his confusion deepening.

"When Voldemort compelled you to duel him," Dumbledore said, "employing your wand against you, whose wand did you use, Harry?"

"I -- " Harry's gaze flickered to his side, catching a pair of soft brown eyes for a moment before he returned his attention to Dumbledore. "I used Hermione's. Voldemort told me..."

"What did he tell you, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"He said...he said it would suit me," Harry said, the back of his neck crawling as he recalled the disdain on Voldemort's face when he commanded Lucius Malfoy to arm Harry with Hermione's wand in preparation for their duel.

"And so it did," Dumbledore smiled warmly, the glow on his face encompassing both Harry and Hermione. "As I stated earlier, you and Hermione share a love that is greater than the sum of its individual components. In his arrogance, Voldemort handicapped himself by attempting to use your wand against you. But his downfall was ensured when he compelled you to use Hermione's wand in place of your own. Better for him had he given you Lucius Malfoy's wand, tainted as it was with cravenness and mindless servitude. For if your wand was infused with your love, which was poisonous to Voldemort shriveled soul, so was Hermione's wand steeped in her love -- in partifcular, her love for you. Linking the two wands completed a circuit that unleashed the fullest measure of that love against Voldemort, before which he was utterly helpless. Recall, Harry, that I described to you of the duality of love. The love within you, combined with the love which you inspired in Hermione, together created a power that not the most terrible Dark magic could withstand. What was that thread of energy that emerged from the wand in your hand, before which Voldemort was powerless? Magic, surely. But whose? Amara's? I think not. For all her power, Amara possesses no true magic as we define the term. That is the province of earthly creatures. What we perceive as magical qualities in her are merely those aspects of her otherworldly nature that are beyond our understanding. Whence, then, came that thread whose pristine might consumed the Dark Lord? What magic was powerful enough to overcome one whose arcane knowledge was unequaled in the annals of wizardry?

"It was, I am convinced, composed of pure love, yours and Hermione's. Thus, after a fashion, does history repeat itself. It was through no power of your own that you survived Voldemort's Curse seventeen years ago, but that of your mother's love for you. Now as then, it was another's love dwelling in you that broke the Dark Lord's power. But there is a vast difference between the twain. For in this case, Hermione's portion could never have been were you not the man you are. In the end, it was you, Harry, who set the course which led us all to this moment. The common bond that links the race of Man, whether wizard or Muggle, is that we are all shaped by our choices. It was ever thus. Though your ethereal clay has been molded by events often beyond your control, and your spirit haunted by auguries not your making, in the end you are neither more nor less the man you have chosen to be, Harry. Can there be any doubt, then, who ultimately destroyed Voldemort? Or that the tapestry of Sybill Trelawney's prophesy has at last been revealed to the final knot?"

Without realizing he had done so, Harry found himself taking Hermione's hand in his. As their hands locked gently, Harry felt a stirring inside that seemed to lift his feet off the stone floor of Dumbledore's office. He felt as if his heart would burst in his chest. His spirit, burdened for so long by the weight of his destiny, seemed to take wing. The prophesy had been fulfilled at last. He was free.

As Dumbledore replaced the final remains of Voldemort in its box, Hermione took a step forward, hesitantly breaking the respectful silence she had maintained since her arrival.

"Professor?" she asked. "What will you do with Harry's wand now?"

Dumbledore halted his action and once more lifted the object from its box. He regarded it with mild interest before raising his eyes and smiling at Hermione.

"There is always a chance -- small though it may be -- that some fragment of Voldemort's essence survives within this crystal. It will therefore be transported to the Department of Mysteries, where it will be locked away and protected by spells and enchantments that will ensure that Lord Voldemort never rises again."

Dumbledore regarded the encrusted wand intently through the intervening crystal. He gave his head a slow shake as his bushy eyebrows met above the bridge of his long, crooked nose.

"Lord Voldemort delved deeper into the secrets of life and death than any before him dared. But I think, for our purposes, we may regard this noble object as his place of final repose. May he evermore remain entombed herein, never again to plague the world of men and wizards."

Harry felt a tugging in his heart as Dumbledore closed the box for the last time and fixed its magical seals with his wand. It was now become a casket in the truest sense of the word. Harry would never again know the familiar feel of his faithful holly-and-phoenix-feather wand. It was like losing an old friend. But that mournful thought gave way in its turn to the true purpose behind Harry's visit today. The time had come at last for the question burning in Harry's mind to be given voice.

"Professor?" he asked with near-breathless anxiety. "If my wand is going to be...I mean...what am I -- "

"Ah!" Dumbledore said, his serious demeanor replaced on the instant with an expression of pure delight. "Now we come to the crux of the matter, as it were -- the true reason I have asked you here at this most propitious moment."

Dumbledore pointed his wand at a narrow door set in the farthest corner of his office and gave his wrist a small flick. The door opened noiselessly, and a tall, aged figure (though not nearly as ancient as Dumbledore) emerged. The newcomer regarded the headmaster politely with eyes like pale silver moons before turning about smartly to face Harry.

"Mr. Potter," Mr. Ollivander said crisply as he essayed a short bow. "And Miss Granger," he added, bowing to Hermione before returning his attention to Harry. "Well, Mr. Potter, it seems that I was right about you, wasn't I?"

"Right about me?" Harry repeated blankly, amazed at seeing the old wand-maker for the first time since the Triwizard Tournament more than three years ago.

"You will recall," Ollivander said with an air of almost regal smugness, "when you first entered my shop nearly seven years ago, I told you that we could expect great things from you."

Harry nodded slowly, and Ollivander preened slightly.

"The moment your wand selected you," the old wizard went on, "I owled Dumbledore to tell him that the second wand had at last chosen its master."

Harry nodded again. Harry's wand had been the second and last of a pair containing a tail feather from Dumbledore's pet phoenix, Fawkes, whom Harry now saw was sleeping peacefully on his perch in a shadowed corner opposite the door through which Mr. Ollivander had entered. The first wand, of course, had gone to a young orphan named Tom Riddle.

"It is not unusual," Ollivander continued in the midst of Harry's musings, "that a witch or wizard go through a number of wands in a lifetime."

Neither was this news to Harry. Ron had come to Hogwarts with his brother Charlie's old wand, which the older Weasley had undoubtedly replaced with a new one from Ollivander's shop.

"When Professor Dumbledore informed me of the significance of those two wands," Ollivander concluded, "I realized that your wand, Mr. Potter, existed solely to fulfill a certain, very special destiny. I knew that, when that day arrived, whether soon or late, you would find yourself in need of a new wand. That day is now here -- which is, as you may have surmised, the reason why I am standing before you now."

Ollivander reached into his flowing robes and withdrew a long, thin box. Bowing low, he presented it to Harry much as a minister might have proffered a jeweled scepter to a prince on the occasion of his coronation. Harry stared at the box in his hands, making no movement to open it until Hermione prompted him to action by a gentle touch on his shoulder. Opening the box with fumbling fingers, Harry discovered the most beautiful wand he had ever seen. It shone in the sunlight like watered satin, and Harry hesitated to taint its perfection by touching it. At last he took it out, allowing Hermione to take the empty box and set it on Dumbledore's desk. Harry held his new wand before him, unable to take his eyes off it.

"As I am sure you will remember, Mr. Potter," Ollivander said, interrupting Harry's nearly hypnotic euphoria, "it is the wand that chooses the wizard, and that often through much trial and error. However, in this case I think you will find your new wand ideally suited to you."

"Try it out, Harry!" Hermione chirped.

Harry considered for a moment, then nodded to himself, recalling a memory from his first week at Hogwarts. He pointed his wand at Dumbledore's desk and gave it a casual flick. The desk instantly turned into a pig, which looked around bemusedly for a moment before Harry returned it to its original form. Harry looked up, grinning. He saw that Dumbledore, far from being put off at having his desk Transfigured into a farm animal without his consent, was in absolute transports of delight.

"Splendid, Harry!" he exclaimed, his blue eyes alight with an almost child-like glee. "Non-verbal Transfiguration involving inanimate to animate and back again. I shall remember to tell Minerva so that she may add a few points to Gryffindor's hourglass by way of acknowledgment. She will almost certainly expect you to achieve an Outstanding on your N.E.W.T. next week."

Harry saw Hermione's eyes flash momentarily at mention of their exams, which had been the farthest thing from their minds a few days ago. But this was not the moment to dwell on such matters, as Hermione seemed to understand; she and Harry exchanged a smile as he swished his wand through the air, admiring its balance as the sun played along its polished flanks with a sublime poetry beyond words.

"What's this composed of?" Harry asked Mr. Ollivander, his green eyes twinkling in a manner to suggest that he knew the answer.

"I elected not to tamper with perfection, Mr. Potter," Ollivander said, the self-aggrandizing glow suffusing his pale face confirming Harry's suspicions. "Your new wand is composed of the finest holly wood, containing the tail feather of a particularly excellent phoenix."

"Named Fawkes?" Harry said, grinning unabashedly at Dumbledore.

"He was delighted to donate another feather for a good cause," Dumbledore said, nodding toward the sleeping bird, which seemed quite indifferent to its contribution to wizarding history, either past or present.

Hermione was hugging Harry's arm, her face glowing as she continued to admire his new wand. No doubt she was envisioning Harry performing spectacular feats of magic before the astonished eyes of the examiners during their N.E.W.T.'s. Harry's enthusiasm was dampened only slightly at the thought of all the studying and practice he was facing over the next few days. After what he and his friends had just endured, how bad could even the N.E.W.T. examiners be? And with a magnificent wand such as this --

When at last Harry slid his wand into his pocket, he was momentarily surprised when the tip glanced off a solid object in the folds of his robes. His stomach did a somersault as he remembered the item Ron had passed him under cover of the Invisibility Cloak only moments before Hermione's arrival. Harry's soaring spirits crashed to earth, and he cast a surreptitious glance at the cupboard behind Dumbledore, staring as if seeing through the wooden panels to the object reposing within. He quickly averted his eyes, hoping Hermione had not seen. His former elation upon receiving his splendid new wand had been replaced with a feeling of utter foolishness. The grand plan he had whispered to Ron less than an hour ago in the hospital wing had sounded marvelous, even better than it had seemed when he had hatched it in his mind. But now, as he felt the subtle bulge of the tiny object in his pocket, he had no idea how to proceed. His mind was casting about desperately for a course of action when Dumbledore abruptly turned to him and Hermione with a smiling bow.

"And now, Harry, Hermione," Dumbledore said, "if you will excuse us, I have promised to treat my guest to a most exquisite brandy which Madam Rosmerta has just procured. Compensation for his wandmaking accomplishments, both past and present, to say nothing of his swift arrival in response to my last-minute invitation. We will not wish to hurry through such a splendid moment, so I trust I can rely on my valorous Head Boy and Girl to lock the door on their way out?"

"Uh," Harry said stupidly, "right. No problem, Professor."

"Excellent."

Dumbledore escorted his guest out the door, which closed behind them, leaving Harry and Hermione alone. Harry suddenly found his mind going blank. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

Bloody hell, Potter! his brain reverberated with cold fury. You just faced Voldemort, you git! Where's that bloody Gryffindor courage now?

"Harry?" Hermione said, looking at him intently. "Is there something wrong?"

Screwing up his courage, Harry said, "Hermione, you remember where I was going to take you last Sunday -- you know, before I went off to 'play the hero'?"

Hermione responded with a mild blush of guilt before her memory clicked into place.

"The dinner," she said consolingly. "At the Golden Eagle. It's a shame we couldn't go. And we won't have another chance, with exams coming up and all." Grinning thinly, she said, "Pity we don't have that Time-Turner I used in third year. It would come in handy now."

"We don't need a Time-Turner," Harry said. He walked around Dumbledore's desk and opened the cupboard at which he had been staring before. Using his new wand expertly, he levitated the Pensieve and settled it gently onto the desk. As Hermione looked on in bewilderment, Harry switched his wand to his other hand and dipped into his pocket. Hermione saw a glittering object emerge, held reverently in Harry's hand.

"Is that a phial?" she asked.

"Yes," Harry said as he pulled out the stopper.

"What's in it?"

"You'll see," Harry said. He held the phial over the Pensieve and tipped it. A delicate silvery thread spilled out and plunged into the bowl. Harry used his wand to stir the corruscating liquid for a moment. Hermione's eyes widened with recognition.

"A memory?" she said with new interest. Harry nodded. "Whose?"

"You'll see," Harry repeated. "After you?"

Hermione approached the stone bowl and, casting Harry a last curious look, plunged her face into the liquid. She felt herself turning over and over until, at last, her feet settled onto a hard, stony surface. As she blinked her eyes against the encroaching mist surrounding her, she heard Harry land beside her.

"Where are we?" Hermione said wonderingly. "Not back in the clearing?"

"No," Harry said with a warm smile. He took Hermione's hand and walked purposefully ahead. The mist parted as before a sweeping hand, and Hermione gasped.

"Hogsmeade?"

Still smiling, Harry led Hermione along the paved sidewalk shouldering the narrow, cobbled main street. When Hermione's eyes left Harry and turned ahead, she gasped again.

"The Golden Eagle!"

"We can go right on in," Harry said casually, giving Hermione's hand a gentle squeeze. "We have reservations, after all."

As they entered the restaurant, Hermione saw patrons sitting at the tables, talking and eating -- and, now and then, kissing. She blushed, even though she knew these people could not see her observing them. This was only a memory, after all. But again she wondered: Whose?

Harry led Hermione to a small, secluded table nestled in a far corner of the restaurant. As was common in the finer dining establishments throughout the wizarding world, certain tables had been enchanted with a Silencing Charm that would permit its occupants to converse freely (and intimately) without being overheard. For an added surcharge, a Concealment Charm similar to the one which Hagrid had placed around his secret dragon paddock would ensure total privacy. Hermione recognized this as such a table, set apart from the main dining area and surrounded by an almost palpable aura of magic. Such spells were of no use now, of course. As the two of them were not really present, but merely experiencing someone else's memory, they could be neither seen nor heard by the people around them.

Harry could not seat Hermione, strictly speaking, since they could not affect anything here on a physical level. "Pensieve-nauts" could touch solid objects in a memory, but not even a giant's strength could move even the smallest object the breadth of a cat's whisker. Fortunately, the chairs sat just far enough from the table so that they could slide into them and seat themselves. Harry affected the gesture of holding Hermione's chair in gentlemanly fashion before slipping into the one opposite her. Nodding indicatively, Harry turned his face toward the back wall of the restaurant, which reached to the summit of the high, peaked roof. Imitating Harry's action, Hermione turned to behold the object of Harry's scrutiny: a large, ornate clock that looked down on the diners like a friendly, cyclopean eye. Hermione smiled comprehendingly when she saw that the minute hand was only moments away from striking the half-hour. Their dinner date had been for 6:30 the previous Sunday. Harry had brought them to the precise moment when they would have begun their date had not Fate intervened.

"Any second now," Harry said expectantly.

Hermione turned away from the clock to regard Harry curiously. There was something in the tone of his voice that set the wheels of suspicion turning in her head. She had supposed that Harry had brought her here as a romantic gesture -- it was not as if they could enjoy the dinner they had missed. But the anticipation in his voice -- it was as if he were expecting something to happen -- but what --

Just as Hermione was about to give voice to the questions buzzing in her brain, the minute hand clicked smartly onto the number six. A single, dulcet chime rang out, and the breath with which Hermione was about to form her query became instead a squeak of astonishment. For at the moment the clock chimed, the table separating her and Harry vanished, along with their chairs. Harry's hand darted out and caught hers, and he tugged her into a standing position a moment before she would have fallen backwards. Hermione's initial surprise passed on the instant, to be replaced by outright astonishment.

The two of them were no longer surrounded by the familiar trappings of the Golden Eagle. They were standing in the middle of a vast field of long, lush grass that rolled around them in endless waves, propelled by a warm breeze that kissed Hermione's face and ruffled the hem of her robes (though such sensations should have been impossible within the confines of a Pensieve-memory). The grass was dotted with flowers of every shape and hue, and their scents filled the air with an almost narcotic perfume that stole the strength from Hermione's limbs, along with her every worry. Absolute contentment flowed through her as she drank in the scene, which stretched to the limits of her vision. She felt a gentle touch as Harry, stepping close, took her hands in his. She stared into Harry's emerald eyes almost hypnotically, her breath trapped in her lungs.

As if in a dream, Hermione became aware of a series of faint popping sounds all around them. Rousing herself from her Imperius-like state, she saw that tiny, winged creatures were winking into existence overhead. Fairies. Hermione's head turned this way and that as she saw hundreds of tiny wings fluttering in a blur composed of more colors than a hundred rainbows. It was a scene faintly reminiscent of the secret room deep beneath Hogwarts through which she, Harry and Ron had passed on their way to protect the Sorcerer's Stone six years ago. But where Professor Flitwick's winged keys had churned above their heads in a chaos of mad abandon, the beautiful creatures surrounding them now flitted across the enchanted canopy in a dance before which the leprechauns at the Quidditch World Cup would have bowed their heads in silent homage.

As Hermione's eyes drank in this magnificent sight, her ears caught strains of music rising on the perfumed air. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. Turning her head, she saw a ring of tiny creatures sitting cross-legged in the air as if upon invisible cushions. Hermione recognized them at once from her Care of Magical Creatures books (the ones she had bought at Flourish and Blotts to supplement Hagrid's requisite Monster Book of Monsters). They were wood nymphs. The music to which the fairies cavorted came not only from the nymphs' voices, but from tiny instruments in their hands. Lyres, flutes, dulcimers, and delicate harps mingled with the nymph-song to form a symphony that reached inside Hermione's chest to reverberate in the corridors of her soul.

Hermione felt a gentle pressure on her hands, and she turned with an effort to see Harry smiling at her. He seemed to see the wonder and awe in her eyes, and his smile, if possible, grew softer still.

"It's only just begun," he said.

Hermione had no moment to ponder this remark, for even as Harry spoke, the scene around them began to alter with the swiftness of an approaching storm. A purple twilight flowed up from the edges of the magical panorama, reaching with fingers stained violet and indigo to claw at the sunlight and rend it to tatters. The fairies halted their dance and vanished. The nymph-song ceased, its chorus expiring with the ones from whom it had come. The pale, cloud-dotted sky dimmed overhead, to be replaced in a single breath by the blackness of midnight. But more than that, the ground on which she and Harry had stood was no longer beneath them. They were hovering in the center of an endless sphere of emptiness, two tiny motes in an otherwise empty universe. Hermione felt a touch of fear along her spine, and she tightened her hold on Harry's hands.

But her tenuous fears burst like bubbles as the darkness around them suddenly exploded with the light of a billion stars. Hermione cried out as the sky surrounding them came alive with wonders beyond imagining. Comets and meteors streaked hither and yon, lighting up the endless night with flames of fire and feathery tails of gossamer through which the stars glimmered like candles through lace curtains. Above and below, before and behind and to left and right, the universe was a turmoil of restless, kinetic activity pulsing with energy. The stars were vibrating with uncanny life, bursting flower-like into novae and nebulae that spread out in fans of delicate pastels like celestial ink over a dark canvas. And Hermione would have sworn that the stars were singing! It was not such sounds as the wood nymphs had made. It was like nothing she had ever experienced or imagined. All of creation was raising its cosmic voice in a pean of celebration, and Hermione felt as if every note was passing through her. Everything around them was rotating, and she and Harry were at the center, hovering at the core of all that was. Hermione was overcome with emotion, but she did not know whether to cry out for joy or curl up and weep.

Then, before she could come to grips with her conflicting emotions, the scene altered again. The endless stars around her dimmed. Slowly at first, but increasing with every beat of her heart, the stars and galaxies were disappearing. It was as if a gigantic wind were sweeping across a line of torches, extinguishing each in turn until none was left. Before her mind could grasp what was happening, Hermione found herself adrift in a sea of emptiness extending to the limits of eternity. Her only anchor was Harry, whose hands still held her own fast. She tightened her grip, wondering almost fearfully what could follow all that she had just experienced.

Hermione nearly cried out when she felt Harry's hands detach from hers. Prompted, perhaps, by her recent Auror training, she made an instinctive move to draw her wand. But she halted when she saw Harry floating before her, holding a single candle whose flame was reflected in the lenses of his glasses. Seeing the calm assurance in Harry's face, Hermione relaxed, placing her trust in the one who was ever her anchor. And now, after holding his silence for so long, Harry spoke.

"Hermione," he said as his eyes caught and held hers gently, "I'm not very good with words -- as you probably know from all the essays of mine you've corrected -- usually the night before they were due to be handed in." Hermione laughed softly, and Harry responded with a loving smile as he forged on with difficulty. "It seems that the more important it is that I say something, the less able I am to say it properly. When that happens, I usually fall back on the old standby -- magic. And that's what this is all about."

Hermione sensed a change in Harry's voice, a timbre she had never heard before. She stared expectantly into his eyes, which seemed to be glowing so brightly that the flame reflected in his glasses paled in contrast.

"I set up this dinner in the Golden Eagle for a reason," Harry went on. "I wanted to find a way to show you how much you mean to me. If I couldn't use words, I had to find a way to show you some other way.

"The first thing I did was create the most beautiful scene I could imagine. I started by doing some research in the library, but in the end it was one of your Care of Magical Creatures books that put me right. Once I'd found what I wanted, I knew there was only one person who could help me carry on."

"Hagrid," Hermione said at once, smiling as she pictured the Hogwarts gamekeeper's bearded face and shining beetle-black eyes.

"He helped me sneak into a secret corner of the Forbidden Forest," Harry said, "where the fairies were having a celebration in honor of Spring. It goes on for a week, and I was lucky to make it just in time for the final day. I hid under my Invisibility Cloak and watched them for hours, using my wand to copy their dance. I was just about done when I remembered that the wood nymphs also had a similar celebration, but with music and singing in place of dancing -- Professor Grubbly-Plank told us about it when we were preparing for our O.W.L.'s. So I had Hagrid get me close enough to see that, too. It was almost dawn when we finished up. I put the two together with a little help from Natty, and -- well, you saw the result."

"It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Hermione said, her hushed voice trembling slightly. "And I've never heard anything like that nymph-song. I'd imagine you and I are the only humans who've experienced such things in ages, apart from Hagrid. And I wouldn't think that anyone had ever seen the two combined like that. It was positively breathtaking."

"Do you know why I did all that?" Harry asked. When Hermione gave her head a timid shake, Harry said with a catch in his throat, "I wanted to show you -- to show you that it was all nothing next to you. When you were watching the fairies' dance, I was watching you, because nothing in the world is more beautiful to me than you. And when the wood nymphs were playing and singing, it was like the clatter of rusty cauldrons next to the sound of your voice."

Hermione felt a burning sensation in the corners of her eyes. She resisted the urge to dab at them, not wanting to take her eyes from Harry's.

"After that," Harry said, his voice straining as he fumbled for the right words, "I went straight for it and put us right in the middle of the whole universe -- got the idea from this great glass globe I saw in Diagon Alley ages ago. I surrounded us with all the wonders of what Professor Sinestra calls the Cosmic Tapestry. But I didn't need to look around me for something wonderful beyond description. You are my universe, Hermione. All I could ever want or need is in your eyes, and your smile, and everything about you. And if we're talking wonders, the biggest wonder of all is why the cleverest witch Hogwarts has ever seen chose me over all the blokes she could have had."

Hermione was fighting to dam the onrush of tears. It was a battle she was rapidly losing.

"Now," Harry said, his eyes leaving Hermione's momentarily to sweep the velvet blackness surrounding them, "we're all alone in the whole of creation, two specks of dust in a dark, empty void. All we have is this single candle to show us the way." Hermione's eyes fell to the candle in Harry's hand before rising once more to meet his eyes. "For a long time," Harry said, "when I was living in my cupboard at the Dursleys, I felt like my whole life was surrounded by darkness. My parents were dead, I had no friends, and my so-called 'family' treated me like something foul that they'd found stuck to the bottom of their shoe. There were times when I thought I couldn't go on another day, but somehow I kept going, trying to find some reason for it all. I guess maybe I thought my parents, wherever they were, wouldn't want me to give up. So every night in my cupboard, I'd listen to the house creaking around me and stare into the darkness -- " again his eyes touched the lightless void encompassing them, "-- trying to see past it to something -- better. I dunno what I was looking for -- a light at the end of the tunnel, I guess you'd say. But all I ever saw was blackness, and after a time I thought that was all I'd ever see.

"I never realized the reason I never found what I was looking for was -- I was looking in the wrong place. It wasn't until I came to Hogwarts that I found the light that would chase away the darkness. I found it in you. I think I saw it the moment we met on the Hogwarts Express, even if I didn't spot it for what it was. The flame burning inside you became a guiding light that was always there when I needed it. When everyone else deserted me, you never did. You were always right beside me, every step of the way. When no one else believed me -- when no one believed in me -- you did. No matter how difficult or dangerous things became, you never ran away. When I lost hope, you never stopped telling me I'd find a way through -- that we'd find a way through. When I acted like the world's biggest git, you told me off straight to my face, whether I wanted to listen or not. And when all the rubbish about the prophesy and Voldemort made me feel so alone that I couldn't bear it, you were always spot-on to remind me that I wasn't alone, and I never would be as long as you had any say in it. It was always you. The light at the end of the tunnel, leading me out of the darkness."

Hermione felt a howl rising inside her. She began to tremble slightly, and Harry, as if sensing her fragility, reached out and took her hand in his, still holding the candle between them.

"This," he said, indicating the tiny, flickering flame, "is the light that keeps me going. It's all the light I'll ever need. No matter how dark things get, I know this flame will never fail. It's the light Dumbledore was always telling me about. I was too blind to see it before, but now my eyes are open and I can see it for what it is. It's the light of love -- yours and mine, together, burning like a single flame -- a flame that can never go out."

Harry opened his hand. The candle hovered for a moment before fading into nothingless. But as if to bear out Harry's words, the flame did not vanish. Instead, it expanded, reaching out with golden fingers to surround them in a soft, golden nimbus. As the light enveloped her, Hermione could almost sense a presence within, as if the radiance were a living, sentient thing. It was as if a heart and soul as large as the universe and as vast as eternity were joining her and Harry, embracing them with an almost tangible love so that the two of them became as one, neither knowing where the one ended and the other began.

Very gently, Harry released his hold on Hermione's hand and placed it in his, their palms lightly touching. His eyes, caressing hers meaningfully, were eloquent. Hermione's hand was held by no force, however gentle and loving. The choice was hers alone to leave it where it lay, or withdraw it. In the end, it was no choice at all. She smiled, exerting a delicate pressure against Harry's palm with hers. It was a promise without words, needing no voice, and Harry gently molded the curve of his palm against Hermione's, sealing her promise with his.

Harry seemed to be struggling against invisible chains. He drew a short, forceful breath and held it deep in his lungs. He expelled it a moment later in a voice cracking with emotion.

"Hermione Granger, will -- will you marry me?"

With a strangled sob, Hermione flung her arms around Harry's neck.

"Of course I'll marry you," she choked, her voice edged with a kind of gentle reproof, as if to say that the enchantments, though unquestionably magnificent, had been an unnecessary bother. "You only ever had to ask."

Harry enveloped Hermione in a crushing hug. They remained fused for what seemed hours, but was in reality only a few seconds. When Hermione opened her eyes to wipe away her happy tears, she saw that the darkness that had surrounded them was gone. They were standing beside their table in the Golden Eagle, from which all aspect of magic had vanished. All around them, the restaurant's other patrons carried on as before, having seen nothing of the wonders that had so captivated Hermione. Yet someone must have seen, else she and Harry could not have experienced the enchantments locked beneath the privacy spells. But who could have penetrated the secrecy spells? Was there some form of Dark magic involved? But no, Harry would never employ such spells, no matter the cause. Then what was the answer? Whose memory were they inside?

As Hermione turned away from Harry to dab at her eyes with the folds of her robes, she found herself looking into the face of the grand clock looking down on them. Having glanced at her watch a moment before entering the Pensieve (a habit long cultivated in the interests of budgeting her time to extract its fullest value), she was amazed to note that only fifteen minutes had elapsed since their descent into Natty's memory. So little time to have experienced so much. She doubted she would ever again exact such measure from a brief quarter-hour.

Reflecting on the incredible enchantments she and Harry had just experienced, Hermione found a question forming in her rational, ordered mind. But where Harry might have expected her to press him on one or another of the fantastic elements of the many complex spells involved (any of which would be worth an Outstanding on their upcoming N.E.W.T.'s), instead she asked, "How did you manage to hold onto the candle? The other enchantments around us were matters of perception, and wouldn't have been influenced by our presence either positively or negatively. But there's no way you should have been able to physically manipulate an object that exists only in a memory, regardless of the magic involved."

"I didn't," Harry answered. "The candle was set to appear in front of me, so I just held out my hand where I knew it would be and pretended to hold it."

"I suppose you think you're very clever, don't you, Mr. Potter?" Hermione teased, though the delight in her eyes was beyond camouflage.

"Must be the company I keep," Harry grinned. "A bloke hangs out with the cleverest witch at Hogwarts, something's bound to rub off, don't you think?"

As she smoothed her robes, which had become rumpled from her and Harry's empassioned embrace, Hermione found herself looking down on their table, and she was suddenly overcome with a fit of silent giggles. Harry released his hold on her waist and stared at her bewilderedly.

"What in Merlin's name are you on about?" he asked, stifling a laugh as her infectious humor pried the corners of his mouth upward.

"I was just thinking," Hermione said, "that all this has given me a ravenous appetite, and here we are in the finest restaurant in Hogsmeade -- and we can't even order dinner."

"Bit peckish, are you?" Harry said innocently. When Hermione nodded, Harry brought his lips to hers and breathed, "How about if I have you for dinner, Miss Granger?"

"What'll we have for afters?" Hermione responded with a devilish gleam in her eye.

"Guess."

Harry attacked his new fiancee's lips like a famished wolf. They kissed with a passion that would have made the restaurant's prim and proper clientele blush had the latter been composed of flesh rather than wisps of memory. At last Harry fell back against their table with Hermione in his lap. They were both gasping for breath, their robes in disorder and their hair looking like a Filibuster Firework had gone off in their faces. Her right arm locked around her new fiancee's waist, Hermione raised her free hand and smoothed Harry's bangs down over his scar, which she traced playfully with her index finger. Harry caught up her hand and kissed it, but his face fell as he caressed her fingers with a troubled expression that Hermione, her face only centimeters from his, could not fail to notice.

"What is it?" she asked as Harry continued to stare at her hand.

"I wanted to get you a ring," Harry said despondently, his thumb caressing her unadorned third finger. "Real gold, with a diamond that would choke a hippogriff. But with everything that's been going on..."

"You have a short memory," Hermione said with a throaty chuckle. When Harry responded with a confused expression, she said softly, "You've already given me a ring -- the most special ring in the world -- and it's worth more to me than a mountain of diamonds and gold."

Disengaging her right arm from Harry's robes, Hermione held out her hand, and Harry slipped the ring off, holding it between his thumb and forefinger.

"This started out as a Friendship Ring," Harry said. "Then it became a Promise Ring."

Taking Hermione's left hand, Harry slid the ring onto her third finger.

"Now," Hermione said glowingly, "it's an engagement ring. The only one of its kind -- as unique as the wizard who captured my heart seven years ago."

They shared a tender kiss, after which Hermione snuggled against Harry as she held her hand out so that the light from the restaurant's many candles glittered off her ring.

"It's the same ring it always was," Harry chided playfully.

"Men," Hermione grunted, pouting her lip at Harry before turning back to smile at her ring. Without warning, her eyes lit up like twin stars, and she turned to Harry with a look of sudden realization.

"At the end of the enchantment," she said, "when there was only the two of us in all of eternity, I felt a presence that I couldn't quite define, in the light surrounding us. It felt like we weren't alone, like there was someone else there besides you and me. I didn't understand then. But I know what it was now. Or I should say, who."

"I felt her, too," Harry said. "But she wasn't part of the enchantment. I was as surprised as you when I felt her there. I didn't even know her name until you told me last Friday. Remember, I suggested we go visit her on Sunday. Maybe she saw Natty and me working on the spells, and she wanted to be a part of it."

"I told you that Cytheria is the Eternal of Love," Hermione said. "I think this was her way of thanking us for what we did for Amara."

"I can almost feel her now," Harry said. "I know that, since she's always in the Golden Eagle, some essence of her would be here now. But it feels like she's more than just a presence in a memory. It's like she's here with us for real."

"I think she may be," Hermione said, her expression indicating that she, too, was feeling the presence Harry had just described. "There was something almost too real about the enchantments. We know that the Eternals can see people and events across great distances. Who's to say that Cytheria wasn't watching us enter the Pensieve, and she projected a part of herself into the matrix. The distance between here and Hogsmeade would be as nothing. That would explain why we experienced sensations beyond the limits of the memory. She wanted to give us her blessing, and that of all the Eternals, Amara included."

"Do you think Amara knows?" Harry asked as he passed his thumb over Hermione's ring, feeling the imprint of the heart that represented the love joining the two of them.

"You heard what she said in the clearing," Hermione smiled. "She's always watching over us. Even if we never see her again, we know she'll never be far away."

"I dunno if I like the idea of Amara spying on us every minute," Harry said, his eyes narrowing. When Hermione looked at him in surprise, he grinned wolfishly. "After we're married, I plan on doing things with you behind closed doors that I'd rather no one else saw. To quote Fred and George, 'No witness, no crime.'"

"I think we can trust Amara to look away at the proper moment," Hermione said. "And if she does have a peek through her celestial 'keyhole' now and again," she added, a feral light the equal of Harry's leaping into her eyes, "we'll just have to do our best to put on a good show for her, won't we? Just to be on the safe side, you might want to practice up on your Engorgement Charm. We wouldn't want to disappoint her, would we?"

His body exploding with silent laughter, Harry molded Hermione against him, holding her as if he never wanted to let her go. Snuggling contentedly in Harry's embrace, Hermione allowed her eyes to sweep the restaurant languidly between glances at her ring. But she suddenly came alert, remembering all at once the question she had pondered when first they had entered the Pensieve.

"Whose memory are we inside?"

"Natty Lovegood's," Harry said. "She was the one who helped me with the spells, so naturally we had to use a table at her station."

Hermione nodded in understanding, silently reprimanding herself for not coming to that obvious conclusion the moment she saw where they were. As she had observed earlier, their table had been enchanted with privacy spells to ensure that whatever transpired within its perimeter would go unobserved by the other diners. However, it was essential for the waitresses in such venues to be able to circumvent those safeguards, else they could not render service. To that end, each waitress carried a special talisman by which she alone could observe all that went on at her station. Professor Flitwick had touched on such objects in one of their Advanced Charms classes this term, hinting that the N.E.W.T. examiners might be testing them in that area. In virtually any restaurant, a waitress was privy to much that was best not repeated, and such a one was always assured of a very generous tip to promptly forget anything she saw and heard on such occasions. As this table was within Natty's sphere, she would have been the only one to witness the fulfillment of the special enchantments which she and Harry had created for Hermione's benefit.

"The spells were timed to go off at exactly 6:30, whether we were here or not," Harry said, confirming Hermione's mental extrapolations. "Even though we didn't turn up as scheduled, I knew Natty would have been here at her station and would have seen everything. That meant that hers was the only memory we could use to see what we'd missed."

"How did you get her memory?" Hermione asked. "Neither of us have been to Hogsmeade since we got back."

"I sent Ron to fetch it just before we went to see Dumbledore," Harry said. "I knew she'd agree to help when Ron explained it to her. She worked hard on the enchantments, and she must have been disappointed when we didn't turn up last Sunday to experience the results."

"We'll have to find some way to thank her properly," Hermione said as she looked around for some sign of Natty. Since this was her memory, she could not be far away. Spotting her at last, Hermione asked curiously, "Who's that girl she's speaking with? She looks familiar."

Harry craned his neck and smiled in recognition. Natty was talking to a girl with waist-length, dirty blonde hair and very prominent eyes.

"That's Natty's cousin, Luna," Harry said. "We've never been properly introduced. I think she's in Ginny's year, but in Ravenclaw. I saw her a few times when Natty and I were working on the enchantments. She always waited until I left before coming over. Bit shy, I reckon." Harry chuckled, seeing that Luna, per her usual habit, had stuck her wand behind her left ear for safekeeping.

"I knew that name was familiar!" Hermione said suddenly. "The Lovegoods live in Ottery St. Catchpole!"

"They do?" Harry said in surprise.

"Don't you remember when we all walked to Stoat's Head Hill to take the portkey to the Quidditch World Cup?" Hermione prompted. "Mr. Diggory asked if anyone else was coming, and Mr. Weasley told him the Lovegoods had already been there for a week."

"Why haven't Ron or Ginny ever mentioned Luna?" Harry asked. "I mean, if they live in the same village and all..."

"Well, they're not exactly neighbors," Hermione said. "I only know her from my visits to the Ravenclaw table to discuss prefect matters with Padma Patil. And even though she and Ginny are in the same year, they're not likely to know each other, being in different houses. The only non-Gryffindors we know are from shared classes, and we don't share any classes with Ravenclaw, just Hufflepuff and Slytherin."

"Natty told me," Harry said as he watched Natty and Luna talking, "that Luna has virtually no friends. When she's not here on a family visit, she spends most of her time by herself. Bit sad, that."

"I remember how that feels," Hermione said with understanding. "If it weren't for you and Ron, I might be like Luna, never knowing what it's like to feel a part of something bigger than myself." She hugged Harry gratefully, adjusting herself on his lap. Her face went very still of a sudden, and Harry's eyes narrowed.

"What are you thinking, Hermione?"

"Well," Hermione said slowly, her eyes avoiding Harry's as they remained fixed on the two Lovegoods, "I was thinking that what Luna needs is someone who can make her feel -- special. You know, like Ginny and I have."

"Hermione, no," Harry said flatly.

"What?" Hermione said in a falsely innocent voice.

"I know that look in your eyes, Hermione," Harry said. "It's the same look you had when you were helping Ginny and Draco on the quiet. You're thinking of playing matchmaker, aren't you -- putting Ron and Luna together."

"Luna needs someone like Ron," Hermione declared. "Someone good and kind. And the sooner Ron finds someone to take Leah's place, the less chance he'll become bitter on the subject of romance. It's the perfect solution all around."

"No," Harry said more firmly. "I forbid you."

"You forbid me?" Hermione echoed, turning slowly to regard Harry with an amused expression.

"Please, Hermione," Harry said in a more placating voice. "I know you have Ron's best interests at heart, and Luna's, too. But this matchmaking stuff is a bit dodgy. One misstep and it could all blow up like a deck of Exploding Snap."

"You may be right," Hermione said, though she sounded less than thoroughly convinced.

"You'll give it up, then?" Harry said hopefully.

"I'll mull it over," Hermione replied. "But I'm not making any promises."

"Except one," Harry said, passing his thumb over the gleaming band encircling Hermione's ring finger.

"Except one," Hermione repeated, her face glowing.

"We'll have to tell Ron straightaway," Harry said. "He already knows where we are and why, and he'll see it in our eyes the moment he spots us."

"And Ginny," Hermione added. "And she'll tell Draco, I suppose. But after all we've just been through, I'm sure he can be trusted."

"What about everyone else?" Harry asked. "Unless you put a Concealment Charm on your ring, they're bound to spot that it's on your other hand now. You don't need an Outstanding N.E.W.T. in Arithmancy to add two and two."

"We'll work something out," Hermione said unconcernedly, admiring her ring again.

They shared a last kiss as the scene around them dissolved suddenly in a swirl of silver mist. They felt themselves rising upwards, tumbling over and over. They landed on the floor of Dumbledore's office just as the door opened to admit that chamber's distinguished resident. Dumbledore promptly greeted them with a knowing smile.

"You had a pleasant journey, I trust?" Dumbledore said probingly.

The penetrating look in the old wizard's eyes was voluble beyond the words he had just spoken, and Harry's brow creased under his raven bangs. He had harbored certain suspicions in the back of his mind regarding the timing of Dumbledore's precipitous exit from his office, and these were now borne out with insuperable clarity. Chief among the many magical talents which set Dumbledore above his fellow wizards was a consummate skill at Occlumency, the ability to block his mind from intrusion from without, and its direct opposite, Legilimency, the ability to look into the minds of others. Many times in the past, Harry had observed that the shrewd old wizard seemed to see right through his eyes and into his head, there to divine secrets and hidden truths unsuspected by others. The knowing smile now stretching Dumbledore's wizened face was testimony beyond reproach. It was manifestly clear that the headmaster had seen Harry's wish etched on the metaphorical parchment of his thoughts, and he had graciously presented Harry with the means of fulfilling that wish by leaving his young guests alone, with the Pensieve freely at hand and ample time to employ it. Harry would not have put it past Dumbledore to have been waiting solicitously outside his own office door until he heard the sounds of Harry's and Hermione's return.

Lost in his ruminations, Harry was brought back to reality by Hermione, who gently stood on his foot so that he turned with a jerk, his eyes silently conveying his contrition to the headmaster for his ill manners. But Dumbledore's expression showed that he had taken no offense at his guest's prolonged silence. The old wizard merely lifted his silver eyebrows expectantly, his blue eyes peering brightly over the rims of his glasses. Relieved, Harry smiled at Hermione, squeezing her hand, before turning back to face his host's politely inquiring gaze.

"Professor?" Harry said. "Can you keep a secret?"

Afterthoughts:

Right, then. Where were we? Oh, yes, Fae Princess. It seems that, over the past few months, a little thing called Real Life has stolen the time that was previously devoted to bringing you this excellent AU novel (she's been so busy, she had to specifically schedule a few hours to celebrate her own birthday recently!). In addition, our Princess has been suffering from a severe case of computer withdrawal (*gasp!*). Yes, for the last few months she has been forced by cruel Fate to live without a computer, not unlike the tech-deprived wizarding characters about whom she writes so eloquently. But never fear. I have it straight from the source that she will be back in form soon. A newly-rebuilt computer is in her hands as I write this, and she tells me that her creative juices are flowing once again. The next update that appears in this space will be entirely the work of Fae Princess and none other. Yay! (Activating my roaring lion Gryffindor hat, which I borrowed from Luna for this occasion.)

During this extended interval, I, her devoted Beta, have had the honor of filling in for Fae for both this chapter and the previous one. Actually, the other chapter was already designated mine by default. This story began as a joint effort. I was to supply the Voldemort-based plot, including laying out the clues leading to the Dark Lord's resurrection. Everything else came from Fae's fertile brain, from the H/Hr romance to the creation of Claire White and her history with Sirius, from the Ring Spirit originating in Snow to the otherworldly race known as the Eternals. The hands-on writing was Fae's alone from day one, and I think we all agree that she has done a smashing job. But when the time came, as we knew it must, for the final confrontation with Voldemort, Fae asked that I take that burden from her shoulders while she focused on tying up the romantic loose ends that would follow the inevitable victory. We each applied our individual strengths to the story: Mine lies in action/adventure, while Fae's romance puts my feeble efforts to shame. Following that brief interlude, Fae was to return with this chapter, taking over after the dust had settled and steering the story back onto its proper romantic course. But when the aforementioned complications made it impossible for her to resume her storytelling duties, I consented to write this chapter in its entirety. I did my best to keep the spirit of her romantic storytelling alive. I knew I couldn't match Fae's fluid writing style, but at least I've managed to steer everything in the right direction until our Princess can reclaim her throne. I made a few blunders in the early drafts, having forgotten much of what came before -- this story really is a gem of many facets -- but Fae patiently pointed out where I had gone astray so I could set things right. (If any mistakes managed to slip through, I'll dutifully slam my hands in the oven door as penance. Dobby is holding a place for me.) When I received the thumbs-up to post, I procrastinated. What if it wasn't good enough? But Fae pointed her wand at me threateningly, and rather than endure the Cruciatus Curse (or worse, the Tickling Charm), I relented. If the final result was not quite as magical as it would have been under Fae's auspices, it should, to quote Dumbledore at the end of GoF, "do to be going on with." (Take ten points for your House if you know where this quote is found.)

We both regret the massive interval between postings (some of the delay was mine), and are grateful to those who have returned to see how things turned out. This is, by the way, the longest chapter I've ever written. Nothing else even comes close. This is partly to make up for the long delay, and to keep everyone going until the next post (the date of which is still up in the air). Blimey, what a job! But there was so much to tie up, cutting corners would have been disrespectful to the care and devotion with which the entire story has been crafted every step of the way. How does Fae manage it with such elegance, chapter after chapter? A tough act to follow, she is. I know we'll all be glad when she's back where she belongs. (*Waves to Fae, who I hope is reading this*) ^_^

As far as this chapter goes, some of you may have noticed that Harry and I share at least one quality, if a marginally unheroic one. Harry told Hermione that he could not express his feelings properly without employing magic as a sort of crutch. As previously stated, it was originally planned that I would contribute the plot portion of this chapter while Fae wrote the romantic "bookends," concluding with Harry's delayed proposal of marriage. When it fell to me to write the entire chapter, I knew I was for it. Fae has been leading up to this moment since the first chapter -- indeed, since the final chapters of this story's prequel, Snow. How was I to convey the romance of this supreme moment in a manner that would do justice to all that has gone before? The answer was simple: I couldn't. There is only one Fae Princess. So, like Harry, I fell back on magic. The enchantments in the Golden Eagle were substitutes for our respective shortcomings, mine and Harry's. I reasoned that if I could not create a romantic atmosphere to equal Fae's, I would play to my strength and hope for the best. I leave it to the readers to decide if that was enough "to be going on with" until Fae's return. I hope it was. No one treasures this story more than I, who have been priveleged in my capacity as Beta to read every word Fae has written before anyone else. I tried to keep her vision alive as best I could. Thank goodness the final chapters will be back in her hands alone, where they belong. As previously mentioned, the next update might be a while yet. But now that Fae's Muse is back, the wait won't be quite so long. But however long that interval proves to be, we all know it will be worth it just to have our Princess back.

Thanks again for returning to our magical playground. Your longsuffering indulgence is much appreciated. H/Hr forever!