Facing Danger
Chapter 59: Of Fear and Faithfulness (Year 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
Hermione sat on one of the couches in the music room of the Marauders' Den, staring out the back door at the neglected vegetable garden.
I'm almost glad the Den wasn't chosen as one of the new secondary bases. That would have meant I had to write Viktor again and tell him to meet me somewhere else, and he might have thought I was putting him off and been angry with me. Granted, it would have been nice to sleep in my own bed again, even just for a week—though really, my bed at Hogwarts is my own bed more than the one upstairs now, if you count by the amount of time I spend in each one—
Intentionally lowering the shoulders which had started to rise in defensive reflex, Hermione forced herself to take a deep breath and calm the jitters which had her mind babbling. "I'm not nervous about seeing Viktor," she said aloud, quietly so as not to confuse Charlie, who was waiting just outside to act as escort past the wards to that same international Quidditch star. "Not exactly. It's just that he's male, and I haven't seen him since…" Her mind stuttered over that particular clause. "I haven't seen him for a long time. It's normal to be nervous."
Especially without Ron here. But Letha wanted to talk to him, and she specifically said alone, so it only made sense to set it up so that he went to see her at the Burrow while I see Viktor here, since they never did get along…
She giggled under her breath. Ron never did get along with anyone who liked me that way. I don't know why I couldn't see what a hopeful sign that was. But now we've worked it out, and it actually works better than I ever thought it would—we balance, he and I, we keep each other even, a lot like Padfoot and Letha…
A sigh. At least like the way they used to be. I don't know what to make of the way things are now. How can Letha be herself and not herself at the same time? She can't be two people at once… can she? And how are we supposed to treat her? Like herself, or like Mare, or—
Charlie rapped on the French door, breaking into what promised to be a spiraling and inconclusive line of thought. "Think I see him," he called. "I'll go out and get him. Any secret passwords I should know?"
"No." Hermione laughed. "Just make sure he brought the books with him before you open the wards, so he doesn't have to go back out and come in again if he forgot!"
He'll give me what I need, we'll talk for a little while and catch up, and then he'll go away again. She folded her hands in her lap and lifted her head, preparing her best company smile. There is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.
She wished the Peppermint Toads hopping about in her stomach believed her.
I know I have to learn to handle things on my own, but I still wish Ron were here, or I were there…
"Come in," Aletha called at the hesitant rap on the door.
It still feels strange to think of myself by that name, but I've made up my mind and I'm going to follow through with it. I can't live my life ignoring who I was born, any more than I can ignore who I am now.
The trick is going to be defining the two properly.
Ron poked his head into the room, his movements hesitant without the accustomed weight of Neenie on his shoulders. "You wanted to talk to me? Professor," he added after a moment's consideration, clear on his face, about the proper way to address her.
"Yes, I did. Come in, Ron, I'll get the door. Table and chairs about two steps ahead of you," Aletha added, drawing her wand to close the door as Ron stepped inside. A quick Imperturbable Charm ensured they wouldn't be disturbed. This was not a conversation she wanted to be overheard.
Though that's less for my sake and more for his. Unless I'm very much mistaken, he's been bottling everything up for Hermione's sake, keeping it all under wraps so he doesn't upset her, and as gallant as that may be, it's untenable in the long run. He's got to be honest with himself, to admit how angry and scared and, yes, bitter this is making him, or it will poison anything I try to do.
"Your eyes look just about normal from here," she tossed out as an opener. "Meghan did a good job with your cosmetic repairs, though I say it as shouldn't."
"Pity she can't do anything about the real problem." Ron's tone was light, but the undercurrents Aletha had suspected were there, to a trained ear—which mine is, even if I don't necessarily recall the training as a personal matter. Use the skills now, worry about precisely whose they are later.
"It is," she agreed. "But if I remember right, you didn't want her to try."
Ron pressed a hand against the tabletop. "Not if she's going to get hurt by it, I don't. I'm enough of a problem without hurting her. We need her."
"Are you not needed, then?" Aletha shelved the "problem" statement for later use.
"Not nearly as much." The undercurrents were rising, making their presence felt, coming out in the sarcastic edge to Ron's words and the rush in his sentences, as though they all had to be said at once before he lost his nerve. "What good do I do anyone? I don't have anything special I can do, no powers, nothing like her or Harry or Neville. Bog-standard wizard is all I am, a bit below standard actually—copying off Hermione's the only way I get through half my classes, I even got a Troll on one of my O.W.L.s, and I always thought Fred and George were making that up—"
"May I tell you what I see?" Aletha slipped her question into Ron's pause for breath. "As something of a newcomer to the situation, judging it just on how I've seen you and the Pride interacting this last week or so, and what I know of the past?"
Ron jerked one shoulder. "Go on, then." He flushed at the ungraciousness of his answer. "I mean, yes, Professor. Sorry about that."
"It's all right." Aletha wrapped her pendant chain around one finger, lining up her words in the order she wanted. "As you've said, you don't have any special magic you can do that makes you valuable to the Pride. You'd call me a liar, and rightly so, if I gave you the 'don't be silly, of course you're just as important as they are' line."
A bitter half-smile appeared on Ron's face, and he took another breath.
"I wasn't finished," Aletha said calmly before he could speak. "As I was saying, I'm not going to give you a simple rote response. But I will ask you to consider that only half the Pride has any power of the kind you mentioned. Does that mean that they're less important than the others? That Ginny, or Hermione, are somehow not as valuable to the Pride as Luna or Meghan?"
"No—but that's different!" Ron's hands shaped circles in the air in front of him, as though he were trying to sculpt his thought process as Ginny sometimes did with clay. "Hermione's our scholar, our researcher, she can look up anything faster than any two of the rest of us, and Ginny sees how things go together just by looking at them, without her models we'd never have been able to run half the training exercises we did with the DA—"
"So you're telling me that they may not have any particular magical talents, but they still have areas of specialty which make them important?" Aletha allowed herself a momentary grin, but kept her voice strictly neutral, allowing only the bare lift at the end to turn her statement into a question.
"Yes. And—" Ron raised a finger as though to cut her off, though Aletha wouldn't have dreamed of interrupting at this point. "And they're important just because they're them. Because nobody else can be them, and do what they do in the Pride. If they weren't around, or if they were different, then we wouldn't be a Pride. We'd be…" He shrugged. "I dunno. A mess, maybe. Not a Pride. Why d'you want to—"
Aletha swallowed a laugh as Ron's expression went from confusion to shock to angry denial. "That's not fair. It's not like that with me. It's different."
"How?" Aletha challenged. "How is it different?"
"It's…I…it just is." Ron shoved back his chair and stood up. "Look at me. I'm useless unless I've got someone to lead me around by the hand, or sit on my shoulders and do nothing but see for me all day when she's got plenty of better things to be doing. And even when I could see, what was I good for? Nothing except running off on mad excursions and getting myself captured, that's what!"
"On that particular mad excursion, if I remember right, you defeated one Death Eater and were holding off two more when you were ambushed from behind." Aletha kept her tone calm, factual, but allowed a few traces of her private amusement to seep in. Unless she was reading Ron very wrongly indeed, the quickest way to get him to change his mindset on this topic would be to make him aware that he sounded silly. "Doesn't sound like you're quite so substandard a wizard as you were making out. Not to mention, you risked your life to save three other people. That's got a name, hasn't it?"
"Yeah." Ron groped behind him for his chair and sat back down with a thud, folding his arms and scowling. "Stupidity."
"No, that's what you're doing now," Aletha countered with a fair amount of acid in her voice. "And it's getting tiresome. If you're angry about losing your sight, be angry about it. If you're sad about it, be sad. Even be afraid if you're that. Those are all normal, realistic responses to what's happened to you. Blowing everything out of proportion and deciding that you're useless because you've lost one sense is not."
"And what if I don't want to be normal and realistic?" Ron shot back.
Aletha settled into her chair, making sure he could hear it creak. "I can wait."
She counted six heartbeats before Ron laughed reluctantly. "Sorry to whinge," he said, reaching out to find the table and scooting his chair in closer. "I know I shouldn’t. But…" He grimaced, but went on. "I am scared. And sad, and angry, and everything else. I don't want to be useless, I don't want to be a burden, and just being there for Hermione… I know it's not nothing, but it isn't enough. Not for someone that close to Harry. You wanted realistic, well, realistically, we've all got to be able to fight, to defend him and each other, and I can't do that properly if I can't see."
"Very true." Aletha slid her hand across the table until it touched his. "Which is the other part of the reason I wanted to talk to you alone. Now that you've got your feelings in better shape, so they won't be in my way, shall I investigate this particular Dark spell and what it might take to reverse it?"
"You think that's possible?" Ron blinked once or twice, his eyes focused on her with deceptive intensity. "I thought Dark magic did damage that couldn't be healed."
"It can't be healed by normal magic," Aletha corrected. "My power doesn't work quite like that. And even if I can't give you back what you lost, I have an idea or two that might let us work around it. If you're open to creative solutions, that is."
"If it'll let me see again, I'm all for it." Ron turned his hand over, exposing his palm. "What do you need from me?"
"To start with, I need you to relax." Aletha covered his hand with hers and insinuated her power into the sharp-edged twists and turns of the lingering magic around Ron's injury. Mirror-maze is right—this is going to take a lot of concentration even to understand, never mind threading my way through it.
"Relax," she repeated, sending a tiny pulse of magic through Ron's body to aid him in that goal. "Think about all the things you like doing best, and imagine doing them again, just the way you always have."
But once I do understand this spell, once I know what Dolohov intended when he threw it, then I can either fix what's gone wrong, or…
Well, we'll deal with "or" when we know if we need it.
Gathering her forces, she plunged into the labyrinth.
Peter Pettigrew grinned to himself as he approached the last turn in his twisting path. Barely over a week in the new hideout, and already I've found three different ways to get to my rooms. No maze can defeat me, not when there's such a tempting treat at the end of it. And I've got an extra-good story to tell her today, so I hope she'll excuse my coming in early…
"…sure he's not around?"
The voice, rough, male, and as out-of-place outside Peter's rooms as it was familiar, stopped him in the act of taking that final step around the corner.
What does Rodolphus Lestrange want here, and who doesn't he want to be around for it?
"Positive. He stayed to watch the duel between Nott and Malfoy, I saw him settling in myself." The second voice, smoother than the first but otherwise similar, had Peter gritting his teeth. "And even if he didn't, what's a little worm like him going to do to us? I only asked you to come along so you can get a look at our quarry in its natural habitat, as it were. Before we change it for something better."
"Better for us, you mean." Rodolphus sniggered. "You're sure about sharing firsts with me, and giving me the better half? I'd be happy to take seconds, since you're doing the work…"
"No, I want it like this." Rabastan Lestrange's tone oozed smug anticipation. "By the time we get done with her, she'll be properly broken in, ready to do whatever she's told. And besides, didn't Mother always say nice boys share their toys with their brothers?"
Their raucous laughter broke Peter's half-stunned trance. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he had his wand in his hand and had cast a Disillusionment on himself, then shoved it away and transformed into Wormtail. Invisible, he scurried around the corner, positioning himself between the brothers. Rodolphus had turned away, scanning the cross-corridors, while Rabastan muttered to himself over the doorknob of Peter's rooms, tapping it every few seconds with his wand.
Popping back into his human form, Peter snatched his wand out again and threw a Body-Bind over Rodolphus. The slight sound of the transformation and the spell attracted Rabastan's attention, but Peter had already wheeled around, and Rabastan wasn't quick enough to bring his wand up to guard against his unseen opponent before Peter's second Body-Bind struck him full on.
Both brothers toppled slowly over and landed hard on the stone floor of the passage, making a tremendously loud crash that seemed to echo on forever. Peter steadied himself on the wall and fought back dueling urges to laugh and to beg their forgiveness. Neither would come out well. Instead, once he thought he could speak without his voice cracking, he removed his Disillusionment and stared down his nose at them both.
"The Dark Lord himself gave me that woman," he said, trying for a tone of righteous indignation. "If you think you should have her instead of me, go talk to him about it. Otherwise, stay away from her. She's mine."
Shielding his movements from the Lestranges with his body, he removed the locking spell from the door and pulled it open, then turned back to look at them once more. "I'll let it pass this once," he said coldly. "Don't come here again. Now go away." A flick of his wand removed the Body-Binds, and he slammed the door behind himself and double-locked it.
For a second and a half, he stood in awe of his own boldness and tenacity.
Then his head began to spin, his breath to come short, and his hands to shake so hard he had to grip his right with his left just to guide his wand back to its proper pocket.
What did I just do? Am I out of my mind, challenging the Lestranges? Either one of them, Rodolphus or Rabastan, could annihilate me without blinking, and let's not even bring up Bellatrix! The only reason I lived through that was that I got the drop on them, and I won't always have it…
Movement from the other side of the room caught his eye. Evanie rose slowly from behind her own fireside chair, her hand clamped around the fireplace poker, the fear on her face ebbing away to be replaced with something Peter chose not to look at too closely. Instead he focused on the thought he'd been avoiding for weeks, the one he couldn't ignore any longer.
She shouldn't be here.
No matter how much I like having her around, this is no place for her. Not now, not when the Lestranges have taken notice of her. Especially not now, when they have more reason than ever to go after her. They won't have stopped wanting her for herself, but they'd take her now even if she were cross-eyed and hunchbacked, just to be square with me.
Maybe I can't save myself, but I can still save her.
"Put that down," he said hoarsely, jerking his chin at the poker. "Get your things together and think about where you'd like me to drop you off. I'll give you five minutes."
"Drop me off?" Evanie returned the poker to its slot beside the fireplace, her eyes on her work. "Are you tired of me already, that you want to send me away?"
"That's not the point." Peter wished his voice would stop shaking, but it seemed he'd used up all his ability to control that in the corridor. "The point is, you're not safe here, and—"
"And I won't be any safer anywhere else," Evanie cut in. "What's to stop them following me wherever I go and kidnapping me from there, if they want me so badly?"
Peter opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking.
"Besides." Evanie still hadn't lifted her eyes from the rack of fireplace tools, and her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her. "I don't have anyplace to go."
"You must have lived somewhere," Peter objected, ignoring the tiny flare of interest and—could it be hope?—that blossomed in his chest at her words. "Had a home, a family, friends who've missed you."
"I must have, must I?" Now Evanie's eyes lifted, and Peter took a step back at the quiet, patient sorrow that filled them. "But I don't. Nothing but a shabby little flat, and a job working with girls at a Home. Girls like I was, once. Left on a doorstep, or taken from their parents, or any of a million other brands of 'not wanted'." The unnamable emotion began to kindle deep in the soft brown, pushing the sorrow aside. "And that's all I ever was, until you." She turned aside, her voice catching. "But now you don't want me either—"
"I never said that!"
"Then why won't you let me stay?" Evanie whirled back, her hands curled into fists. "Why do you want me to go away from the only person who ever looked at me and saw anything other than a nuisance?"
"Because I don't want you to die, or worse than that, and I can't protect you!"
"You're doing just fine so far." Evanie's chin was up, the flush of battle turning her face a becoming shade of pink. "Here's what I'll do, Peter. If you can look me straight in the eye and tell me truly that you don't want me here, that having me here makes your life worse rather than better, then I'll let you send me back where I came from. If you can't, if that would be a lie, then here I am and here I stay." Her eyebrows lifted. "What do you say?"
I know what I should say. Peter looked away, fighting to keep his expression from giving away the furious battle being waged within him. I know what I have to say. One lie, just one more in a lifetime full of them, and I can get her away from here. She deserves so much better than this. I can hide her where they'll never think to look, make sure that she has what she needs to start her life over, give her everything she ought to have, if I can just get myself to say…
"I can't." He leaned against the door, not daring to look around at her. "And isn't that just like me? I always muff up the important things, always have, always will. You came out of nowhere, you weren't really supposed to matter at all, and suddenly you're the most important thing in my life, and I'm not strong enough, I don't care for you enough, to tell you that lie and give you what you deserve…" He stopped, becoming aware of a minor point about the last ninety seconds. "And I've just said all that aloud, haven't I?"
"I'm glad you did." Soft footsteps crossed the room, stopping within arm's reach of him. "I might never have known it, otherwise."
"I didn't want you to know." Peter swiped angrily at his stinging eyes. "You deserve better than this. Better than me."
"You worry so much about what I deserve, Peter." A small hand rested on his arm, just above the elbow. "Why don't you ask me what I want instead?"
"If you insist." He swallowed hard, simultaneously bracing himself for the answer and trying to clear the annoying thickness from his voice. "What do you want, Evanie?"
The hand's mate slipped around him and caught his other arm, tugging at it until he turned reluctantly to face her.
She stood before him, her face lifted to his and filled with the emotion he dared not name.
"You," she said simply. "I want you."
Peter's mouth opened, but no sound came out. The overall effect made Evanie want to giggle, which urge she stifled thoroughly. I can't laugh at him, especially not now. It would break him to pieces with how fragile he is at the moment.
"You…" Peter finally managed to get out. "You…"
"I believe that's what I said." Evanie moved one deliberate step closer, leaving a bare inch of air between their two bodies. "You are what I want."
"You can't." Peter shook his head, half in negation, half in disbelief. "You can't mean this. You have no idea what you're saying. If you knew what I've done, what I still have to do, you'd understand—"
"I know it all already," Evanie broke in, as gently as she dared. "From what you've told me and what I've heard from elsewhere, I think I know about all there is to be known. And none of it has changed my mind one bit."
"None of it—are you mad?" Peter seized her shoulders and stared at her, his fingers flexing as though he were longing to shake her but didn't dare. "I've killed people! Innocent people, who never did anything wrong, never even knew what was happening to them!"
"And how exactly will your being unhappy all your life do anything to help those people?" Evanie inquired, peeling his fingers loose. "Don't bother answering that. I'll tell you right now. It won't."
"I…" Peter scowled. "Now you've got me all confused."
"Good. Maybe that means you'll listen to me now." Evanie cupped her hands around his, bringing them together between their two bodies, flesh to flesh on one side, flesh to silver on the other. "I never expected anything like this to happen to me. I'm sure you didn't either. But here it is, and here we are, and even if you don't think you deserve happiness, what about me? You were spending all that breath earlier telling me what I deserve, so tell me now, is that part of it?"
"Part of it? No." Peter freed one hand to rest it on her shoulder. "It's all of it. You deserve nothing else but happiness—if I could make you happy, Evanie, I swear I would—"
Got you. "What do you swear by?" Evanie asked, feigning innocent interest. "Wizards, I mean. I know how Muggles swear already."
"It depends. Most of us swear by Merlin, most often his beard, but plenty of other parts of him too." Peter snatched at this gladly as a safe topic, away from the treacherous waters they had just been navigating. "I always thought it made the most sense to swear by his wand, myself, because he couldn't have done all the magic he's famous for if he hadn't had a wand…"
"Merlin's wand, then. All right." Evanie recaptured the wayward hand and looked up at Peter over their intertwined fingers. "Do you swear by Merlin's wand that if you could make me happy, you would?"
"Yes." Peter looked a bit unsettled, but clearly he hadn't seen where she was leading with this. "By Merlin's wand."
"Good." Evanie leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. "That's settled, then. Shall we ask the house-elves what they've made for dinner?"
"Wait." Peter caught her by the shoulder as she started to turn away. "What's settled? We haven't settled anything—"
"Oh yes we have." Evanie smiled. "You swore not fifteen seconds ago to make me happy if it was in your power. Didn't you?"
Peter nodded slowly, watching her as his Animagus form might watch a large, hungry cat.
"Which makes it my turn to swear." Evanie faced him fully, catching and holding his gaze with her own. "I swear to you, Peter, by Merlin's wand or anything else you like, that being here with you has made me the happiest I have ever been in my life. You could make me leave here, you have that power, but even if there were a life waiting for me back in the world I came from, it wouldn't include you, and you're what matters to me now. If you want to fulfill that vow you just swore, if you want to make me happy, then let me stay with you. That's all I want."
"You're mad." Peter shook his head, but the motion was feebler than it had been earlier. "After what just happened out in that hall, you still want to stay here? What if next time I don't come back early?"
"I may have something that will help with that." Evanie reached into her pocket, remembering the stories Sirius had told her about the magical chains that held his own and his family's pendants. "If I understand it right, they turn hot if the other person wearing them is upset, and cold if they're in danger of death."
"Who could possibly give—no, don't answer that." Peter passed a hand across his forehead. "If I don't know, I don't have to account for it. What are they?"
Evanie opened her hand. The two items Danger had given her sparkled in her palm.
"I see," Peter said after a long moment, cupping his hand under hers. "You know it's bad luck to wear one of those if you're not…"
"I'm here all the time anyway," Evanie pointed out, trying to keep her voice level and only succeeding in making it tremble all the more. "We could ask some of the house-elves to come up and be our witnesses."
"You are mad," Peter began, then sighed as he saw the expression on her face. "You're sure these do what you say?"
"Positive."
And even if they didn't, when you give me an opening like that… but no. I tricked my way into staying, so this has to be honest.
Half-consciously holding her breath, she waited.
I can't believe I'm even considering this. Peter stared at the things nestled in Evanie's hand. The Dark Lord would not approve…
Or would he? He chewed on one side of his lip, trying to evaluate all sides of the problem. He's never stopped any of his Death Eaters from taking this step before, and certainly I'm not putting Evanie ahead of my loyalties to him. I'm simply showing how much I value this reward he was kind enough to give me. Not to mention safeguarding her, to make sure she isn't taken from me and I don't have to bother him with such a tiny detail as getting her back. He approves of proper caution, and of valuing things at their true worth.
Besides, what he doesn't know won't hurt him.
Carefully, he lifted the more delicate of the two rings from Evanie's palm. "I attended a wedding or two when I was younger," he said, smiling at her astonished look of joy. "Let me see if I can remember how the vows went."
I've broken enough promises in my life.
It's time to start keeping them again.
Aletha withdrew her magic delicately from within the shattered prisms of Ron's vision, waiting until she was fully disengaged to indulge in a shiver. If I never have to come in contact with another Death Eater's magic, that will be quite soon enough for me…
"Find anything out?" Ron asked, rousing from the half-trance she'd given him with her relaxation spell.
"Yes." Aletha blew out a breath, wondering how to phrase her findings. "Why don't I put it in the standard format? I have good news, and I have bad news."
"Bad news always goes first." Ron sat back in his chair, his face closing down. "You can't fix it."
"I can't put it back the way it was, no." Aletha sighed. "You must have given Master Dolohov quite a look to get him this angry with you. His intention when he threw that spell, as far as I can make out, was to destroy both your physical eyes and your powers of sight, to keep you from ever seeing light again. Your eyes can be rebuilt—Meghan did most of that when she repaired your visible injuries, and I've done the rest—but your brain won't acknowledge the signals they send, and that I don't dare meddle with. I could cause serious damage if I tried."
"Worse than what I was born with? That would be bad." Ron gave her a half-smile. "I'm not just making light of things, Professor, I swear. But what you said is about what I expected to hear, what I've been learning to live with these past couple weeks, and you said there was good news too. So you have to have found out something new."
"As it happens, I did." Aletha let her answering grin bleed into her voice. "Dolohov was very destructive, but he was also very specific, and one or two things Meghan's been showing me have come together with an old memory of mine to create something I think is worth a try for you…"
"Viktor, hello!" Hermione got to her feet as Charlie opened the French door for her visitor, who was clutching a bag filled with books in front of him. "It's…" Her voice stalled on "lovely to see you," and she coughed once and tried again. "Thank you so much for coming."
"You're welcome." Viktor set aside his bag and smiled at the surprise on her face. "I have been practicing my English since we parted, hoping for this day—the accent is better now, no?"
"The accent is better now, yes." Hermione summoned a smile and hoped it didn't look too false. What is wrong with me? I thought I was over these stupid irrational fears… push through it, that's all I can do now, just push through it… "How have you been?"
"Busy." Viktor shrugged. "Training, travel, games, more training. The life of a professional is not an easy one. But I hear you have been busy yourself. Was there not a giant attack on London a very short time ago?"
"Yes, but I didn't have much to do with that." Besides helping direct traffic. "Some friends of my parents, who travel about trying to contact werewolves and help them live with their problem, stumbled across the giants where one of the larger werewolf camps had been. B—they're quite broken up about it, apparently that p-pack had made a lot of progress in relearning how to live like humans, and the giants killed them all when they moved into the valley…"
Get a hold of yourself! she scolded silently as Viktor nodded at this. You almost gave Brian's name away, and stumbling over the word "pack" isn't much better! What are you so upset about anyway? Viktor knows how you live, you told him back in your fourth year…
"You seem upset, Hermione." He pronounced her name easily and correctly, as though he'd practiced it a great deal since they'd last spoken. "Is everything all right with you?"
"It's… hard to explain." Hermione forced herself to breathe deeply, in through her mouth, out through her nose. "Don't mind me. I'll be all right. I just had a… difficult experience over this past winter. But I'm getting over it."
"I see." Viktor nodded again, his hand resting on his pocket. "Are you well enough to see a new invention I have discovered, and perhaps to show it to your… friend? Guard? Whatever he may be, I think he should see it as well. It could be important."
"All right." Freeing her fingers from their twisted grip on one another, Hermione waved at Charlie, beckoning him closer. "Viktor has something he says he wants us to see," she said when Charlie opened the door. "A good thing, I hope, Viktor?" She held back a grimace at the nasty taste on the back of her tongue and switched her breathing pattern. In through the nose, out through the mouth…
"I think it is good." Viktor smiled. "I do not know yet what you will think."
He brought his hand out of his pocket and crushed the tiny glass ball it contained.
Hermione screamed.
"How does that feel?" Aletha asked, taking her hands away. "Any discomfort, any pain at all?"
"No, and… wow." Ron turned his head back and forth, blinking rapidly. "I didn't know if that would work, but it really—what was that?"
"What was what?" Aletha frowned. "I don't hear anything."
"It wasn't hearing. Not exactly. More like—" Ron froze. "I have to go," he said, scooping his pendants out of his robes and moving unerringly to the window. "There's trouble at the Den. Something's gone wrong."
"At the Den? How do you know?"
"Because it's Hermione." Ron flung the window open. "I have to get to her. I promised her that this wouldn't happen again. That I wouldn't leave her alone again." He turned back, his face set in determined lines. "I promised."
"Hold still, then." Aletha crossed the room in three strides, only now starting to feel the burn of the heat through her pendant chain. He must get it first because they've been so interlinked these past few months. "Let me make sure this won't fail on you halfway there."
Laying a hand against Ron's face, she solidified the experimental work she'd done, binding it off and informing his body that this was the way it would conduct normal business from now on. "There. That should hold. Go, we'll be right behind you."
"Thanks." Ron backed up two steps, ran at the window, and dived headfirst out of it.
"I am never going to get used to that," Aletha muttered, and bolted for the door, snapping the Imperturbable Charm off it as she yanked it open. "Molly! Boys! Trouble at the Den, we need your help!"
Author Notes:
Next time, Ron kicks butt, we find out an unpleasant truth or two, and possibly the story ends.
That's right, we may be within one chapter of the end of Facing Danger! I might need another one, but I really think I've covered everything that I needed to and laid all my groundwork for sixth year, so how does 60 chapters sound? Good? Let me know if I've left any plots dangling!
I will most likely take a couple weeks' break from fan fiction after FD ends to work on some originals. There's going to be another HHH collection from the fanficauthors crew, this one with sci-fi stories, and JBern has also asked if I will contribute a story to another project of his (he has a new book out, by the way, called Confessions of a D-List Superhero). More news on that subject either here or on the Facebook page. But don't worry, Surpassing Danger will be along very soon, and I might also take this opportunity to write that sequel to Be Careful I've been wanting to do!
Now, as for the semi-secret project I hinted at last chapter. Since next chapter may be the last chapter of FD, I think it fits better there, especially as it is a thing of endings and beginnings. So it shall be on chapter 60 that I reveal my project to those of you who either don't do Facebook or haven't hit my page up yet. (Yes, that does mean it's on the FB page, facebook (dot) com (slash) annebwalsh (dot) page, already. Go check it out if you're so impatient! Either that or ask me nicely in a review. I can't resist being asked nicely.)
Thank you, as always, for reading, and see you in a week! Happy Fourth of July to all my American readers! Well, happy Fourth of July to all my readers, the date is the same all over the world, but the USA's the only place it's an actual holiday…