Chapter 28: The Ritual
Starfox5
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Chapter 28: The Ritual
Black Lake, Scotland, Britain, October 6th, 2005
"There's one positive result of the whole debacle," Hermione commented as she connected another power cable to the quantum mirror cage.
"Hm?" Ron, checking - again - that the power was off, made the expected sound of inquiry when she didn't continue right away.
"I can start using magic in my experiments earlier than planned," she said. "Ah, finally!" She stood, dusting off her pants with a few pats, then stretched.
"Ah." Ron nodded.
"That means I can progress faster than I'd previously anticipated," she explained. "I can check the interaction between quantum physics and magic as I develop both parts."
"Ah." That sounded logical. "So you're going to do rituals here?"
"Yes."
He made a point at looking at the bare concrete floor, then at the machines and computers nearby.
"I still need to set it up - I wasn't exactly prepared for this development," she said, then frowned when she caught him grinning. "Oh, you!"
He chuckled. "Sorry."
"No, you're not."
He changed the subject. "So, you're doing a ritual." Which could be done without a wand. "How long will that take?"
"A few hours to set one up, a few more hours to conduct it. And a few weeks - at least - to create it."
"Ah. Have you created other rituals?"
"Not in this world," she replied, walking over to him and taking a seat on the bench next to him. "But it was a part of Arithmancy in school."
"So you did useful stuff in class, at least. We only ever did experiments and projects that had already been done long ago." He looked at her.
"Well, magic is dangerous, so we had strict limits and parameters. But we didn't just follow a recipe; we could design our own rituals. Most turned out to have been done before, though."
"Most?" He tilted his head a little.
She nodded. "A few were failures - one was a spectacular one. The student, Sue Li, spent three weeks in the infirmary."
"And yours?"
She grimaced. "I picked the optimal formula. Of course, that meant that someone else had done so before."
"So this is your first ritual?" He tried not to sound as sceptical as he felt.
"No. I've performed other rituals before, as proofs of concept," she replied.
"To prove that magic works?"
"Yes." She pressed her lips together, so he didn't prod further, but it was clear that she was in uncharted territory. Well, they had already known that.
"Well, first I have to test the physics." She stood and walked back to her computers.
He watched the cage, but there was no micro-portal forming. She was probably just testing the power flow or something, so he pulled out a novel from the bag next to him and started to read.
It was going to be a long day.
Black Lake, Scotland, Britain, October 7th, 2005
"We're going to do what?" Ron asked.
"Scrub the floor," Hermione told him. So he hadn't misheard her.
"For the magic ritual?" he guessed.
"Exactly!"
"Could contamination by dirt and dust ruin it?" Weren't rituals supposed to have been used before wands were invented? A few thousand years ago, people didn't have sterile environments, did they?
"Dirt and dust can affect the ritual circle," she answered. "Minimally, unless they actually cover up a rune, but it might influence the results."
In other words, this was mostly her being a perfectionist. And, of course, she couldn't let the trained staff do this because she didn't want them in her lab. Ron nodded anyway. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do, with the rest of their group training in the woods again.
An hour later, the laboratory was spotless. Reasonably spotless, anyway. If Hermione managed to claim there was still too much dust, Ron would mop her desk. Without removing her notes first.
"Alright, this should suffice. Time to prepare the ritual circle now!"
Now this was interesting. Magic. Runes. Rituals.
Ron took a step closer to where Hermione was kneeling and using precision machinery to mark a circle on the floor with chalk. "I guess you can't just write it on a carpet and unroll it when you need, then."
"You probably could. But it would be wasteful while developing the ritual since I'll be changing the set-up every time I do it anyway."
"Ah. And it could be stolen as well." Unless stored in her bag.
"Yes." She wasn't looking at him, but at the floor, where she was already tracing a symbol - a rune. And with obvious care and caution.
Ron looked at the chalk circle, then at the symbol, and sighed. It would take hours to complete it. Well, she had told him that, but still…
This was going to be another long day.
"And done!"
Ron looked up from his novel. "Already?"
She snorted. "It's past time for lunch. That must be a captivating story," she said, nodding at his book, "if you didn't notice the time passing."
"It is." He held it up for her.
"'Old Man's War'?"
"It's about an old man fighting various aliens in a gene-engineered young body," Ron explained as he got up. "A strong transhumanist theme, too. His new body has cat-like eyes and green skin, for example. So, you've got alien-looking soldiers fighting alien species to protect humanity." She winced, and he frowned. "Not to your taste? It's not glorifying war if that's what you're afraid of."
"It's not about that. But after a potion mishap, I was once stuck as a half-cat for several weeks."
He blinked. "A half-cat?"
She frowned, then replied: "A human body, but with fur, a tail, cat's eyes and ears, whiskers…"
A catgirl then. "Sounds cute," he said.
"I didn't feel cute. I was so glad when Matron Pomfrey finally managed to restore my body." She shook her head. "Worst case of body dysmorphic disorder you can imagine."
"Ah." She definitely wouldn't enjoy transhumanist stories, then. Or some Marvel comics. Not to mention a lot of manga and anime.
Well, Ron thought as they left the lab for lunch, I've always been fond of the classic science fiction novels, anyway.
He still wondered how she'd looked as a catgirl, though.
After lunch, Hermione re-checked the ritual circle. "Just in case someone smudged part of it," she told him.
"I guess that would be bad?" he asked, tilting his head to study the runes on the outermost part of the circle.
"Yes."
"How bad? All the ingredients and time wasted bad? Or getting cursed or killed bad?"
"The latter," she replied, moving to the inner line of runes.
He took a step back. Ron didn't want to be stuck as a half-cat or half-something in a world without wizards and witches experienced in dealing with such mishaps. "I see."
"Rituals are dangerous," she said, "if they aren't prepared properly. Or if you make a mistake."
"Well, I'm not doing the ritual," Ron said, grinning.
She flinched a little, though. "Right."
Oh. He almost sighed, but that would have made it worse. "So… what exactly is the ritual going to do?"
"It's going to create a modified Extension Charm, for testing," she said.
"Ah." Like her bag?
"It won't last long, but that doesn't matter - it's the spatial distortion effect I need."
He chuckled. "Spatial distortion? That sounds like Star Trek."
She rolled her eyes. "It's magic, not fiction."
He chuckled some more, which resulted in her frowning at him.
"Well, I know now that magic is real," he said. "But it still sounds funny if you contrast it with fiction."
"Oh." After a moment, she laughed as well, shaking her head. "I guess it does."
But she grew serious quickly - a little too quickly - and focused on her work again. On magic. On another step on the road back to her own world.
Away from him.
Ron forced himself to keep smiling. He really wanted to see the ritual, the magic. And he knew it was necessary - the best way, perhaps the only way, for him and his family to return to a normal life.
Yet part of him, a selfish, ugly part of himself, still hoped that she would fail. And he hated himself for it.
"Does it check out?" he asked as soon as she rose from where she was kneeling on the floor.
"Yes." She nodded slowly. "I can start the ritual. Ensure that no one damages the circle or disturbs me."
"Disturbs you?" He glanced at the door. It was locked, but would that be enough?
"Touching, pushing, yelling - in short, distracting me," she explained.
"Should I leave?" he asked, only half in jest.
"No." Her answer came quickly. "Stay," she added with a smile.
That made him feel good. Really good. He sat down on the bench. Far enough, he hoped, if things went wrong.
She started by placing candles at regular intervals around the circle. Followed by small ceramic cups. To burn ingredients, or to catch blood? She had mentioned blood magic, once. But she would have said something it if she planned to cut herself, wouldn't she? To warn him, at least.
When she placed several dried leaves in each cup, he felt a little foolish.
Then she dropped her lab cloak, slipped out of her shoes, and sat down, cross-legged, in the centre of the circle. "It'll take a few hours," she said. "Roughly three, I expect, but…" She grimaced. "I've been wrong before."
He nodded, which made her frown deepen. "Just be careful," he told her.
"Of course."
Then she closed her eyes and started chanting.
Ron didn't understand her words. They sounded a little like Latin, but not quite. At least in his opinion - he wasn't a linguist, and his knowledge of Latin was mostly related to that alternate history series he had read as a teenager.
But she was very focused, and her voice sounded deeper than usual. Weirder. And while it was probably just his imagination, Ron thought he could feel a growing tension in the air as the ritual continued.
A little later, he knew he wasn't imagining it - the hairs on his arms and on the nape of his neck were standing up. Static electricity - or magic - was building up. He wet his lips. Perhaps this bench wasn't a safe distance away. Perhaps nothing in the room was, if Hermione made a mistake. Well, she shouldn't. He knew her.
Although... he had never seen her like this - her hair was moving, more and more strands escaping her ponytail and floating around her head in a gust of wind that only seemed to affect her.
Magic. He had seen magic before - Hermione's beaded bag of holding. He had drunk potions, too. Several times. But this was something else. He could see and feel the magic being worked.
Suddenly, a candle lit up. Ron hadn't seen Hermione even so much as glance at it. It had just started burning.
Another one followed suit. And another. A few minutes later, all the candles were burning. Had the room grown darker in the meantime, too? It seemed like it, though the lamps were still shining brightly.
He took a deep breath, then gasped softly. Incense. That was burning incense. But where… there. There was a weak trail of smoke rising from one of the cups. That hadn't been the case a few minutes ago. But to fill the room, to reach him, quite a bit away from the circle...
He spotted another smoking cup. And smelt slightly different incense. Ah.
Hermione's eyes were closed now - she was mumbling rather than chanting - but one by one, smoke started to rise from all the cups. Even though... He checked his watch and gasped. An hour had passed already? He could've sworn…
He took another breath, but a shallow one. The air smelt and felt like smoke. If Hermione had to cough, would that ruin the ritual? She was sitting in the middle of all the cups, so she would be affected the most. Should be, he corrected himself. Perhaps she had taken precautions to deal with the smoke. Or the ritual protected her.
Ron didn't really care which was true, as long as she was safe and could continue the ritual without making a mistake and cursing both of them. Or worse - if this 'Extension Charm' twisted space, then what would it do to humans caught in the area of effect? Something like the theorised effect of a black hole?
Ron really didn't want to find out the hard way. Hermione's hair was now a halo. Or a whirlwind. It was whipping back and forth around her head, with visible sparks running up and down the strands. "Bloody hell," he muttered under his breath.
She was also chanting loudly again. And the candles were half-burned already. Although it didn't seem like the various cups would stop smoking any time soon. If anything, the air was getting thicker. If there were any hallucinogens in that incense… Well, he didn't have to worry about drug tests any more, did he?
Something moved inside the circle. Ron was standing and aiming his gun before he realised that it was a spark tracing a rune in the inner circle. If things kept to form, then there would soon be dozens of them covering the various runes.
As expected, more and more sparks appeared, lighting up the runes. First in the inner circle, then in the outer circle. And Hermione was covered by them - that her clothes hadn't caught fire yet was a miracle.
Ron eyed the fire extinguisher in the corner next to him. It would certainly 'distract' her, with potentially disastrous consequences. But so would burning. What could he do? Other than hoping that nothing would go wrong?
Not much, he answered his question. He couldn't do magic.
But, he added as he watched Hermione slowly stand up, looking like she was caught in a dry thunderstorm, he'd do his best anyway.
Hermione's voice grew louder and louder. She was now screeching - Ron had trouble making out individual words. And the sparks seemed to jump from rune to rune, and from rune to her clothes. And hair.
She'd have a devil of a time fixing her hair after this. He chuckled, despite not wanting to, at the stray thought before he froze at the sight of her arms rising above her head, fingers twitching. He wanted to check his watch, see how much time had passed, but he couldn't take his eyes off her.
She looked as if she was in a trance. Her eyes were closed, and she was yelling incoherently, but she was moving her body with grace and - or so he thought - the utmost precision. Her arms froze for a moment, then she whipped them downwards.
And the room changed.
Suddenly, Ron was in the middle of a giant space. It looked as if he had been shrunk again and left behind. But the bench was still the same size, and so was the door. It was just everything else that had been… enlarged. Stretched. Blown up. He couldn't tell.
A moment later, everything was back to normal. And Hermione collapsed in the centre of the circle, coughing.
"Hermione!"
Ron rushed forward but stopped before he stepped over... entered the circle. What if the ritual was still active? And if he broke the circle…
She looked at him. "Can you turn up the air conditioning? I didn't expect the incense to be this bad." She coughed again. "Merlin's beard! I should have expected this!"
Oh. "Sure." He turned around, relieved - and a little amused. Half a minute later, he had the air conditioning up and running. "I hope that this doesn't get sent into the rest of the building," he commented as he rejoined her.
"It shouldn't," she replied, still holding a hand in front of her mouth. "That would be very shoddy construction."
And Ron doubted that Dumbledore would accept substandard work on such an important project. On the other hand, mistakes happened.
"Well, the test was a success," she stated, then tried to stand on visibly shaking legs.
Ron took a step closer but hesitated again. "The ritual's over, then?"
"What?" She looked confused. "Oh, yes. It's safe to smudge the runes now."
He still tried to avoid stepping on the runes as he took her arm to steady her. "I'll take your word for it."
"Once I have the ritual ready, I might make a more permanent circle," she said. "It might not be practical to use for a portal otherwise."
"Except as a trap," Ron pointed out as they made their way over to her desk.
She frowned and stopped walking for a moment. "It would be a very obvious trap. And it wouldn't work without me performing a ritual."
"Right." He pressed his lips together. Obviously, he hadn't thought that through. "I blame the incense for my momentary lapse of judgement," he said with a grin.
That made her wince a little. "I should be safe," she said. "Though there have never been any studies about whether there are any effects of the incense used in magic rituals on bystanders."
"Never?" He let her go and sit down in her seat.
"Rituals aren't very common," she explained. "Some call them a dying art. And wizards don't really do many studies as a rule. At least not in accordance with scientific standards."
"Really?"
"Most experiment by themselves." She started checking several columns of data on her computer.
"That sounds a little… careless," Ron remarked.
"It is. But then, many wizards do seem to be quite reckless. A result of magic being able to easily deal with most wounds caused by accidents, I think," Hermione said with a snort. "You should've seen what my Harry and Ron got up to as first-years."
Ron shook his head. Hermione wasn't exactly overly cautious, in his opinion. What would she consider to be reckless? Just how bad was his counterpart? "What did they do? And how often were you involved?"
She blushed in response. "I usually tried to save them from themselves."
"'Usually'?" He raised his eyebrows at her.
"Sometimes," she said, raising her head and sniffing, "decisive action is required in a situation."
Ron snorted. After a moment, both of them laughed.
"I wasn't involved in all of their adventures," she said, shaking her head. "Especially not when it involved dodging cannonballs on brooms."
Ah, the wizard game played on brooms. He tilted his head. "But you were involved in most, weren't you?" he asked against his better judgement.
"Yes." She smiled, and he could see her eyes losing their focus as she reminisced about her past. And her wizard friends - like Ron's counterpart.
She looked so happy and sad at the same time.
"Hermione, it's time for dinner."
"In a moment."
"You said that five minutes ago," Ron pointed out.
"Mh." She wasn't even looking at him - her eyes seemed glued to the screen.
He shook his head and leaned closer until his lips were right next to her ear. "Hermione! You need to eat!" he snapped.
She gasped, startled, and he had to dodge her swinging ponytail as she whirled to glare at him. "Hey!"
He pointed at the clock on the wall. "It's past time for dinner. And no, you won't eat an MRE here."
"But…" she glanced at the screen.
"The data won't get corrupted while you eat," he told her. "Come on! Let's tell the others all about your breakthrough."
"It's not exactly a breakthrough," she corrected him. "It was merely a proof of concept. And it worked exactly as expected."
"Yes," he agreed. "But it's the first step towards combining magic and quantum physics, right?"
"The first step was the hypothesis," she objected. "This is merely an experiment." But she was walking with him, leaving the lab.
Success.
"...and that was a proof of concept. Now I have to modify the ritual and then combine it with the quantum mirror cage." Hermione finished her explanation about the same time as she finished everything on her plate. This time, the fare had been Italian, with a pasta buffet and a variety of sauces for the main course.
"How long will that take?" Ginny asked. She sounded casual, but Ron wondered if she wasn't getting sick of having to hide - her ranking was tanking, as a certain newspaper had put it last week.
"That's hard to say. The physics part is, except for the scaling up and the adjustments needed to combine it with magic, mostly done. But I'll have to extensively test the ritual and refine it - I was focused on the physics until now," Hermione explained.
"For good reason," Ron added, to remind his sister, just in case, why they were hiding here.
"Do you have a rough estimate of how long you'll take?"
Ron refrained from telling his sister that she sounded like Dumbledore.
"A few weeks to a few months?" Hermione shrugged, once. "Magic isn't easy to predict. Nor is research."
"Can we see the next ritual?" Luna asked, beaming at Hermione.
Ron saw her wince as she replied: "It's a very delicate experiment, and somewhat dangerous."
"If Ron survived it, then we should be safe," Ginny said. He frowned at her, but she smiled sweetly at him in return.
And Hermione chuckled. "As long as you don't touch anything - magic is dangerous, especially rituals. Mistakes can be fatal. Or worse."
Ginny looked slightly taken aback, Ron noted, but Luna seemed even more eager to watch the next ritual. He would have to check with Hermione whether a muggle trying a ritual was safe. Double-check, to be safe. "So, what did you do today?" he asked, to change the subject.
"Oh! I worked with drones!" Luna turned to smile at him. "Mr Dumbledore provided me with the latest models available on the market. I've been testing them, to set up a surveillance network."
"A surveillance network?" Harry asked.
"Yes, to cover the entire area around the laboratory," she replied. "I'm working on the drones as the mobile part."
"Won't that attract attention?" Hermione asked.
"Air traffic control might notice," Sirius added.
"Not if they only fly low," Luna said. "But with any luck, we'll be using small models which won't show up amongst the ground clutter. I'm still testing them."
"You said that those were the mobile part. What about the immobile part?" Ron asked.
"Ah, there's a sensor network already in place, though it has a couple of blind spots," Luna told him. "As we expected, they couldn't cover the entire forest."
"Hence the drones," Sirius said.
"Exactly," Luna replied, nodding emphatically.
"But you've got access to the entire surveillance network?" Harry cocked his head as he asked her the question.
"Well, to the one Mr Dumbledore showed me. I'm sure that he has at least two more - though I haven't found them yet," Luna replied.
"Two more?" Harry blinked.
"Yes, one serving as a decoy, for when I look for it, and then the real one he uses to keep tabs on us." Luna shook her head as if that was an obvious conclusion. "And he might have a fourth, to fool the Shadow Government's surveillance of him."
Ron slowly nodded. He didn't think Dumbledore had three, much less four, surveillance networks in the area. Two, though? The old man would keep an ace up his sleeve, Ron was sure of that. And he was a spymaster. Not to mention that a second surveillance network was just good planning - if one was compromised, you still had another while your enemy might think they were in the clear. Of course, the sort of enemies Dumbledore - and now Ron and his friends - were dealing with would expect that. So, perhaps, Luna wasn't wrong… "And what did you do?" he asked the others.
"We trained," Harry said. He didn't seem to be happy, in Ron's opinion. Well, Ron wasn't looking forward to weeks or months of inactivity, either.
But if it meant Hermione and the others were kept safe?
He'd do a lot more for that.
Then dessert was served - tiramisu - and Luna's gleeful reaction distracted everyone.
She really liked her sweets.
Black Lake, Scotland, Britain, October 9th, 2005
Ron frowned when he and the others returned from a long run around the lake. There weren't more guards or visibly increased security, but the guards at the door were just a little bit more attentive than usual. "Dumbledore's back," he said.
"Really?" Ginny asked.
"How do you know?" Hermione added.
"The guards are acting as if there's going to be an inspection," Harry explained.
"Yes. And do they need regular inspections!" Sirius commented. "What a sorry lot."
Luna, meanwhile, was checking her portable computer. Ron looked over her shoulder and saw that she was flipping through several recordings. "If he's on any recordings, then it's because he wanted to be," he told her.
"I know. But that's information by itself," Luna replied. "And it would be terribly impolite to ignore it if he took care to let himself be filmed."
Ron chuckled at that. "I guess so."
"Found him!" she exclaimed. "He arrived ten minutes after we left for our run."
"And I guess we will still have to wait until dinner to hear his new information," Harry said.
Ron glanced at Ginny and saw she was wincing. She would already know, of course, that Harry was getting impatient. "It's better to discuss things and plan on a full stomach," Ron said. Hungry people were more aggressive.
"Yes! And we need to shower anyway," Luna said, sniffing her shoulders before nodding emphatically.
Harry had the grace to blush, but he was still grumbling when they entered their quarters and split up to shower.
As they had expected, Dumbledore didn't start talking about anything more important than the weather, sports and entertainment before dessert was served. To Ron's surprise, Harry didn't broach the subject himself, though. Probably Ginny's influence - Harry was an old hand at sounding off to others, especially to their superiors.
Of course, whether or not Dumbledore counted as their superior was somewhat uncertain. As was the question of whether or not the old man thought he was or should be.
Ron dropped that line of thought as Dumbledore finished his dessert, to all appearances looking incredibly pleased at the taste of the tiramisu, and put down his spoon. "Now, I assume you have a good idea why I've come to visit."
"You want to see magic happen!" Luna replied before anyone else could say anything.
Chuckling, the old man inclined his head towards her. "That influenced my decision as well, although I also bring you news from Russia."
"And it's not good news," Harry said.
"I would say that the exact nature of the news is still in question," Dumbledore replied, "due to a lack of further information. Although I expect we'll soon know more, one way or the other." He pulled out a memory stick from the inside pocket of his jacket - Ron wondered if that was just for show, or if he really carried sensitive intel there - and placed it on the table.
Harry reached for it, but, once again, Luna was faster and grabbed it. "Let's see what you brought us!" she said, apparently not aware of Harry's frown, as she plugged it into her portable computer.
Dumbledore chuckled again, and his smile grew, as far as Ron could tell, more honestly amused. "Thank you."
"Thank you," she replied, already opening and closing several windows.
"Let me summarise," Dumbledore said. "We haven't seen neither hide nor hair of Mr Kirikov, but according to our analysts, and some of my former co-workers, there has been a shake-up in the Russian intelligence services. Now," he went on, "after the 'invasion by terrorists', as some news reports have taken to calling our little mishap in southern Russia, didn't lead to any arrests, it's to be expected that a few officers will be let go. To encourage those who remain to be luckier, I assume - it wasn't as if they were at fault. However, such a shake-up could also conceal a reshuffle inside the FIS or the creation of supposedly unattached 'former assets'."
"Do you think they're building up for a mission against us?" Sirius asked.
"I think we cannot dismiss that as a possible threat," the old spymaster replied. "Unfortunately, there is scant confirmed information, least of all actionable intelligence, available, so all I can offer are educated guesses."
"Or gut instincts," Harry said.
"Quite." Again, Dumbledore nodded. "And even in the best case - President Putin not believing Mr Kirikov's claim and blaming him for the incident and the resulting loss of face the Russian government has suffered - I have no doubt that he would go to some lengths to keep us guessing whether or not Mr Kirikov is still alive. And even if he dismisses the possibility of alternate universes, my own involvement, which he will have confirmed by now, will convince him that I consider your research extremely valuable."
"So all we can do is wait?" Harry asked with a scoff.
"And prepare for an attack," Dumbledore corrected him. "If the Russians are indeed moving against us, they will be faced with several logistical challenges as well as running a significant risk of facing a political backlash of international dimensions." He smiled, but it looked rueful. "I also have some news about the continuing mole hunt within the Phoenix Gruppe: A suspected mole has, apparently, committed suicide a day ago in Berlin."
Oh. "An actual suicide?" Ron asked.
"That is hard to tell at this point. Contrary to their reputation, not every one of Germany's coroners is as methodical and careful as their duties would require. And far less quick to finish their reports. So far, Gellert has refrained from using more direct means to acquire their files, though."
"Swell," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "At least I take it the mole didn't know anything about us?"
"They shouldn't have known anything, although our own investigation is still ongoing. But if the Russians are behind this, then it'll be difficult to expose them. They are very good at this sort of game."
Ron pressed his lips together. This wasn't a game. People were dying.
"Of course, they aren't unbeatable - I know that better than most, I believe. I've taken steps to create decoy sites to divert their attention, and a select few people in my employ are preparing missions to further distract them," the old man went on.
"How dangerous are those missions?" Hermione asked.
"Not any more dangerous than the missions you've undertaken, Dr Granger."
"That's not very reassuring," she retorted, frowning.
"As long as they're not suicide missions," Ron added, tilting his head to turn the statement into a question.
"I can assure you that everyone involved knows the risks, Mr Weasley, even though precious few of my operatives will know anything about the reasons behind their orders."
"But they know whatever disinformation you fed them," Harry said.
Dumbledore didn't deny that as he nodded at Ron's friend.
"Won't the Russians expect this?" Luna asked.
"They will indeed suspect such a ploy - they suspect everyone and everything - but they nevertheless cannot ignore it. Not that they would," Dumbledore replied with a sly smile.
The old man sounded almost nostalgic, in Ron's opinion. Re-living his best years, perhaps? He snorted.
"And what if the Russians have another mole in your organisation?" Ginny asked.
"He's probably using this plan to hunt for such moles," Luna answered before Dumbledore could. "If he spreads information about selected decoy sites and missions to suspicious employees, he can find the moles." She scrunched her nose and frowned as she added: "But it'll put his loyal employees at risk."
"As I said," Dumbledore repeated himself, "my employees know the risks."
"That feels like cold comfort," Luna told him.
"Well, some of your employees certainly wouldn't be missed," Sirius cut in. "Except by various police forces, of course."
That got a chuckle out of the old spymaster. "While I have standards and would never work with the sort of people with whom Kirikov used to work, there is a saying: 'Set a thief to catch a thief'. Certain backgrounds can be very useful in this business."
"Wellington would probably agree, eh?" Sirius shook his head. "You cannot trust criminals."
"I've found that every man has a price, Mr Black," Dumbledore replied. "Something or someone they value above everything and everyone else. Criminals might be more selfish but, with proper handling, are no more likely to betray you than your best friend."
Ron wasn't the only one to glare at the old man in response to that claim.
"I'd never betray my friends!" Luna exclaimed.
"Not even if it meant saving your father's life?" Dumbledore asked.
"Daddy wouldn't want me to betray my friends to save him - I would also be betraying everything that he taught me if I did that." Luna's frown grew more pronounced, but she still looked like she was pouting as she faced Dumbeldore. "Not everyone has a price!"
The old spymaster slowly nodded. "Perhaps I stand corrected. I hope we'll never find out."
But he didn't sound as if he believed his own words. On the other hand, that might just be a deliberate act.
"What about setting the Secret Service on the Russians?" Ginny asked.
"MI6," Harry corrected her.
"You know what I mean," she retorted.
"A tempting option, I have to agree," Dumbledore acknowledged, rubbing his beard. "However, while I wouldn't cast doubt on my former colleagues' skill and experience, I fear that they would expend as much or even more effort on uncovering the Russians' objectives in Britain as on countering them."
"While I don't doubt that the British government would be preferable by far to the Russian one, I fear I would end up a prisoner either way," Hermione said. "Based on past experiences with said government, they would be as likely to shut down my research as to try and abuse it to revive colonialism."
"I think you are on the mark, based on my experience as a former government employee," Dumbledore told her with a wry smile. "Although I also expect MI6's best and brightest to pick up on any suspicious activity among the Russians. Sooner or later, at least."
"At which point they'll investigate themselves and find out about us anyway." Hermione shook her head. "Damned if we do, damned if we don't?"
Dumbledore cocked his head. "Quite. I think our best hope to avoid such entanglements is a timely breakthrough in your research."
Hermione pressed her lips together before replying. "Such research cannot be rushed. A single mistake could be disastrous."
"In that case, we can but hope for you to get lucky, then," the old man said.
"No pressure, huh?" Ron asked with a scoff.
"I've suffered worse," Hermione told him.
And Ron saw her eyes lose their focus.
She heard screams as she ran through the familiar hallways. Distant screams, but that was a faint consolation when she knew all too well what those screams meant: People - students, children - dying under the Death Eaters' curses. Hearing the sounds of desperate, bloody battles filling the school made her feel like a coward for not joining the ranks of their allies.
But they couldn't. Their own mission was too important. If they failed, all the deaths and suffering would have been in vain. Voldemort would win.
And she wouldn't let that monster win.
She was breathing heavily by the time they reached the tapestry with the dancing trolls on the seventh floor.
"Let me do it!" Harry snapped, rushing ahead.
She clenched her teeth but stopped. The Room of Requirement tended to get confused if multiple people needed something - even if they thought they needed the same thing, the Room usually disagreed.
Granted, she didn't think that that would be a problem this time. All of them wanted the exact same thing: to find Voldemort's last Horcrux. But still, why take the risk?
Harry finished passing the tapestry three times, and a door appeared. He looked at them, a faint smile on his face before he winced. "Let's go."
She nodded, biting her lower lip several times as she followed him, Ron at her side, into the Room.
It was worse than she had expected - the room seemed to be larger than the Great Hall, and it was full of all sorts of stuff. "Can you sense it?" she asked Harry.
"With Voldemort so close? No," he told her. "The moment I open my mind, he'll know where we are."
"You'll have to do the ritual," Ron told her.
She looked at him - he was guarding the door - and nodded.
"And hurry," he went on. "I think some of the fighting's moving towards us."
Black Lake, Scotland, Britain, October 6th, 2005
"There's one positive result of the whole debacle," Hermione commented as she connected another power cable to the quantum mirror cage.
"Hm?" Ron, checking - again - that the power was off, made the expected sound of inquiry when she didn't continue right away.
"I can start using magic in my experiments earlier than planned," she said. "Ah, finally!" She stood, dusting off her pants with a few pats, then stretched.
"Ah." Ron nodded.
"That means I can progress faster than I'd previously anticipated," she explained. "I can check the interaction between quantum physics and magic as I develop both parts."
"Ah." That sounded logical. "So you're going to do rituals here?"
"Yes."
He made a point at looking at the bare concrete floor, then at the machines and computers nearby.
"I still need to set it up - I wasn't exactly prepared for this development," she said, then frowned when she caught him grinning. "Oh, you!"
He chuckled. "Sorry."
"No, you're not."
He changed the subject. "So, you're doing a ritual." Which could be done without a wand. "How long will that take?"
"A few hours to set one up, a few more hours to conduct it. And a few weeks - at least - to create it."
"Ah. Have you created other rituals?"
"Not in this world," she replied, walking over to him and taking a seat on the bench next to him. "But it was a part of Arithmancy in school."
"So you did useful stuff in class, at least. We only ever did experiments and projects that had already been done long ago." He looked at her.
"Well, magic is dangerous, so we had strict limits and parameters. But we didn't just follow a recipe; we could design our own rituals. Most turned out to have been done before, though."
"Most?" He tilted his head a little.
She nodded. "A few were failures - one was a spectacular one. The student, Sue Li, spent three weeks in the infirmary."
"And yours?"
She grimaced. "I picked the optimal formula. Of course, that meant that someone else had done so before."
"So this is your first ritual?" He tried not to sound as sceptical as he felt.
"No. I've performed other rituals before, as proofs of concept," she replied.
"To prove that magic works?"
"Yes." She pressed her lips together, so he didn't prod further, but it was clear that she was in uncharted territory. Well, they had already known that.
"Well, first I have to test the physics." She stood and walked back to her computers.
He watched the cage, but there was no micro-portal forming. She was probably just testing the power flow or something, so he pulled out a novel from the bag next to him and started to read.
It was going to be a long day.
*****
Black Lake, Scotland, Britain, October 7th, 2005
"We're going to do what?" Ron asked.
"Scrub the floor," Hermione told him. So he hadn't misheard her.
"For the magic ritual?" he guessed.
"Exactly!"
"Could contamination by dirt and dust ruin it?" Weren't rituals supposed to have been used before wands were invented? A few thousand years ago, people didn't have sterile environments, did they?
"Dirt and dust can affect the ritual circle," she answered. "Minimally, unless they actually cover up a rune, but it might influence the results."
In other words, this was mostly her being a perfectionist. And, of course, she couldn't let the trained staff do this because she didn't want them in her lab. Ron nodded anyway. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do, with the rest of their group training in the woods again.
An hour later, the laboratory was spotless. Reasonably spotless, anyway. If Hermione managed to claim there was still too much dust, Ron would mop her desk. Without removing her notes first.
"Alright, this should suffice. Time to prepare the ritual circle now!"
Now this was interesting. Magic. Runes. Rituals.
Ron took a step closer to where Hermione was kneeling and using precision machinery to mark a circle on the floor with chalk. "I guess you can't just write it on a carpet and unroll it when you need, then."
"You probably could. But it would be wasteful while developing the ritual since I'll be changing the set-up every time I do it anyway."
"Ah. And it could be stolen as well." Unless stored in her bag.
"Yes." She wasn't looking at him, but at the floor, where she was already tracing a symbol - a rune. And with obvious care and caution.
Ron looked at the chalk circle, then at the symbol, and sighed. It would take hours to complete it. Well, she had told him that, but still…
This was going to be another long day.
*****
"And done!"
Ron looked up from his novel. "Already?"
She snorted. "It's past time for lunch. That must be a captivating story," she said, nodding at his book, "if you didn't notice the time passing."
"It is." He held it up for her.
"'Old Man's War'?"
"It's about an old man fighting various aliens in a gene-engineered young body," Ron explained as he got up. "A strong transhumanist theme, too. His new body has cat-like eyes and green skin, for example. So, you've got alien-looking soldiers fighting alien species to protect humanity." She winced, and he frowned. "Not to your taste? It's not glorifying war if that's what you're afraid of."
"It's not about that. But after a potion mishap, I was once stuck as a half-cat for several weeks."
He blinked. "A half-cat?"
She frowned, then replied: "A human body, but with fur, a tail, cat's eyes and ears, whiskers…"
A catgirl then. "Sounds cute," he said.
"I didn't feel cute. I was so glad when Matron Pomfrey finally managed to restore my body." She shook her head. "Worst case of body dysmorphic disorder you can imagine."
"Ah." She definitely wouldn't enjoy transhumanist stories, then. Or some Marvel comics. Not to mention a lot of manga and anime.
Well, Ron thought as they left the lab for lunch, I've always been fond of the classic science fiction novels, anyway.
He still wondered how she'd looked as a catgirl, though.
*****
After lunch, Hermione re-checked the ritual circle. "Just in case someone smudged part of it," she told him.
"I guess that would be bad?" he asked, tilting his head to study the runes on the outermost part of the circle.
"Yes."
"How bad? All the ingredients and time wasted bad? Or getting cursed or killed bad?"
"The latter," she replied, moving to the inner line of runes.
He took a step back. Ron didn't want to be stuck as a half-cat or half-something in a world without wizards and witches experienced in dealing with such mishaps. "I see."
"Rituals are dangerous," she said, "if they aren't prepared properly. Or if you make a mistake."
"Well, I'm not doing the ritual," Ron said, grinning.
She flinched a little, though. "Right."
Oh. He almost sighed, but that would have made it worse. "So… what exactly is the ritual going to do?"
"It's going to create a modified Extension Charm, for testing," she said.
"Ah." Like her bag?
"It won't last long, but that doesn't matter - it's the spatial distortion effect I need."
He chuckled. "Spatial distortion? That sounds like Star Trek."
She rolled her eyes. "It's magic, not fiction."
He chuckled some more, which resulted in her frowning at him.
"Well, I know now that magic is real," he said. "But it still sounds funny if you contrast it with fiction."
"Oh." After a moment, she laughed as well, shaking her head. "I guess it does."
But she grew serious quickly - a little too quickly - and focused on her work again. On magic. On another step on the road back to her own world.
Away from him.
Ron forced himself to keep smiling. He really wanted to see the ritual, the magic. And he knew it was necessary - the best way, perhaps the only way, for him and his family to return to a normal life.
Yet part of him, a selfish, ugly part of himself, still hoped that she would fail. And he hated himself for it.
"Does it check out?" he asked as soon as she rose from where she was kneeling on the floor.
"Yes." She nodded slowly. "I can start the ritual. Ensure that no one damages the circle or disturbs me."
"Disturbs you?" He glanced at the door. It was locked, but would that be enough?
"Touching, pushing, yelling - in short, distracting me," she explained.
"Should I leave?" he asked, only half in jest.
"No." Her answer came quickly. "Stay," she added with a smile.
That made him feel good. Really good. He sat down on the bench. Far enough, he hoped, if things went wrong.
She started by placing candles at regular intervals around the circle. Followed by small ceramic cups. To burn ingredients, or to catch blood? She had mentioned blood magic, once. But she would have said something it if she planned to cut herself, wouldn't she? To warn him, at least.
When she placed several dried leaves in each cup, he felt a little foolish.
Then she dropped her lab cloak, slipped out of her shoes, and sat down, cross-legged, in the centre of the circle. "It'll take a few hours," she said. "Roughly three, I expect, but…" She grimaced. "I've been wrong before."
He nodded, which made her frown deepen. "Just be careful," he told her.
"Of course."
Then she closed her eyes and started chanting.
Ron didn't understand her words. They sounded a little like Latin, but not quite. At least in his opinion - he wasn't a linguist, and his knowledge of Latin was mostly related to that alternate history series he had read as a teenager.
But she was very focused, and her voice sounded deeper than usual. Weirder. And while it was probably just his imagination, Ron thought he could feel a growing tension in the air as the ritual continued.
A little later, he knew he wasn't imagining it - the hairs on his arms and on the nape of his neck were standing up. Static electricity - or magic - was building up. He wet his lips. Perhaps this bench wasn't a safe distance away. Perhaps nothing in the room was, if Hermione made a mistake. Well, she shouldn't. He knew her.
Although... he had never seen her like this - her hair was moving, more and more strands escaping her ponytail and floating around her head in a gust of wind that only seemed to affect her.
Magic. He had seen magic before - Hermione's beaded bag of holding. He had drunk potions, too. Several times. But this was something else. He could see and feel the magic being worked.
Suddenly, a candle lit up. Ron hadn't seen Hermione even so much as glance at it. It had just started burning.
Another one followed suit. And another. A few minutes later, all the candles were burning. Had the room grown darker in the meantime, too? It seemed like it, though the lamps were still shining brightly.
He took a deep breath, then gasped softly. Incense. That was burning incense. But where… there. There was a weak trail of smoke rising from one of the cups. That hadn't been the case a few minutes ago. But to fill the room, to reach him, quite a bit away from the circle...
He spotted another smoking cup. And smelt slightly different incense. Ah.
Hermione's eyes were closed now - she was mumbling rather than chanting - but one by one, smoke started to rise from all the cups. Even though... He checked his watch and gasped. An hour had passed already? He could've sworn…
He took another breath, but a shallow one. The air smelt and felt like smoke. If Hermione had to cough, would that ruin the ritual? She was sitting in the middle of all the cups, so she would be affected the most. Should be, he corrected himself. Perhaps she had taken precautions to deal with the smoke. Or the ritual protected her.
Ron didn't really care which was true, as long as she was safe and could continue the ritual without making a mistake and cursing both of them. Or worse - if this 'Extension Charm' twisted space, then what would it do to humans caught in the area of effect? Something like the theorised effect of a black hole?
Ron really didn't want to find out the hard way. Hermione's hair was now a halo. Or a whirlwind. It was whipping back and forth around her head, with visible sparks running up and down the strands. "Bloody hell," he muttered under his breath.
She was also chanting loudly again. And the candles were half-burned already. Although it didn't seem like the various cups would stop smoking any time soon. If anything, the air was getting thicker. If there were any hallucinogens in that incense… Well, he didn't have to worry about drug tests any more, did he?
Something moved inside the circle. Ron was standing and aiming his gun before he realised that it was a spark tracing a rune in the inner circle. If things kept to form, then there would soon be dozens of them covering the various runes.
As expected, more and more sparks appeared, lighting up the runes. First in the inner circle, then in the outer circle. And Hermione was covered by them - that her clothes hadn't caught fire yet was a miracle.
Ron eyed the fire extinguisher in the corner next to him. It would certainly 'distract' her, with potentially disastrous consequences. But so would burning. What could he do? Other than hoping that nothing would go wrong?
Not much, he answered his question. He couldn't do magic.
But, he added as he watched Hermione slowly stand up, looking like she was caught in a dry thunderstorm, he'd do his best anyway.
Hermione's voice grew louder and louder. She was now screeching - Ron had trouble making out individual words. And the sparks seemed to jump from rune to rune, and from rune to her clothes. And hair.
She'd have a devil of a time fixing her hair after this. He chuckled, despite not wanting to, at the stray thought before he froze at the sight of her arms rising above her head, fingers twitching. He wanted to check his watch, see how much time had passed, but he couldn't take his eyes off her.
She looked as if she was in a trance. Her eyes were closed, and she was yelling incoherently, but she was moving her body with grace and - or so he thought - the utmost precision. Her arms froze for a moment, then she whipped them downwards.
And the room changed.
Suddenly, Ron was in the middle of a giant space. It looked as if he had been shrunk again and left behind. But the bench was still the same size, and so was the door. It was just everything else that had been… enlarged. Stretched. Blown up. He couldn't tell.
A moment later, everything was back to normal. And Hermione collapsed in the centre of the circle, coughing.
"Hermione!"
Ron rushed forward but stopped before he stepped over... entered the circle. What if the ritual was still active? And if he broke the circle…
She looked at him. "Can you turn up the air conditioning? I didn't expect the incense to be this bad." She coughed again. "Merlin's beard! I should have expected this!"
Oh. "Sure." He turned around, relieved - and a little amused. Half a minute later, he had the air conditioning up and running. "I hope that this doesn't get sent into the rest of the building," he commented as he rejoined her.
"It shouldn't," she replied, still holding a hand in front of her mouth. "That would be very shoddy construction."
And Ron doubted that Dumbledore would accept substandard work on such an important project. On the other hand, mistakes happened.
"Well, the test was a success," she stated, then tried to stand on visibly shaking legs.
Ron took a step closer but hesitated again. "The ritual's over, then?"
"What?" She looked confused. "Oh, yes. It's safe to smudge the runes now."
He still tried to avoid stepping on the runes as he took her arm to steady her. "I'll take your word for it."
"Once I have the ritual ready, I might make a more permanent circle," she said. "It might not be practical to use for a portal otherwise."
"Except as a trap," Ron pointed out as they made their way over to her desk.
She frowned and stopped walking for a moment. "It would be a very obvious trap. And it wouldn't work without me performing a ritual."
"Right." He pressed his lips together. Obviously, he hadn't thought that through. "I blame the incense for my momentary lapse of judgement," he said with a grin.
That made her wince a little. "I should be safe," she said. "Though there have never been any studies about whether there are any effects of the incense used in magic rituals on bystanders."
"Never?" He let her go and sit down in her seat.
"Rituals aren't very common," she explained. "Some call them a dying art. And wizards don't really do many studies as a rule. At least not in accordance with scientific standards."
"Really?"
"Most experiment by themselves." She started checking several columns of data on her computer.
"That sounds a little… careless," Ron remarked.
"It is. But then, many wizards do seem to be quite reckless. A result of magic being able to easily deal with most wounds caused by accidents, I think," Hermione said with a snort. "You should've seen what my Harry and Ron got up to as first-years."
Ron shook his head. Hermione wasn't exactly overly cautious, in his opinion. What would she consider to be reckless? Just how bad was his counterpart? "What did they do? And how often were you involved?"
She blushed in response. "I usually tried to save them from themselves."
"'Usually'?" He raised his eyebrows at her.
"Sometimes," she said, raising her head and sniffing, "decisive action is required in a situation."
Ron snorted. After a moment, both of them laughed.
"I wasn't involved in all of their adventures," she said, shaking her head. "Especially not when it involved dodging cannonballs on brooms."
Ah, the wizard game played on brooms. He tilted his head. "But you were involved in most, weren't you?" he asked against his better judgement.
"Yes." She smiled, and he could see her eyes losing their focus as she reminisced about her past. And her wizard friends - like Ron's counterpart.
She looked so happy and sad at the same time.
*****
"Hermione, it's time for dinner."
"In a moment."
"You said that five minutes ago," Ron pointed out.
"Mh." She wasn't even looking at him - her eyes seemed glued to the screen.
He shook his head and leaned closer until his lips were right next to her ear. "Hermione! You need to eat!" he snapped.
She gasped, startled, and he had to dodge her swinging ponytail as she whirled to glare at him. "Hey!"
He pointed at the clock on the wall. "It's past time for dinner. And no, you won't eat an MRE here."
"But…" she glanced at the screen.
"The data won't get corrupted while you eat," he told her. "Come on! Let's tell the others all about your breakthrough."
"It's not exactly a breakthrough," she corrected him. "It was merely a proof of concept. And it worked exactly as expected."
"Yes," he agreed. "But it's the first step towards combining magic and quantum physics, right?"
"The first step was the hypothesis," she objected. "This is merely an experiment." But she was walking with him, leaving the lab.
Success.
*****
"...and that was a proof of concept. Now I have to modify the ritual and then combine it with the quantum mirror cage." Hermione finished her explanation about the same time as she finished everything on her plate. This time, the fare had been Italian, with a pasta buffet and a variety of sauces for the main course.
"How long will that take?" Ginny asked. She sounded casual, but Ron wondered if she wasn't getting sick of having to hide - her ranking was tanking, as a certain newspaper had put it last week.
"That's hard to say. The physics part is, except for the scaling up and the adjustments needed to combine it with magic, mostly done. But I'll have to extensively test the ritual and refine it - I was focused on the physics until now," Hermione explained.
"For good reason," Ron added, to remind his sister, just in case, why they were hiding here.
"Do you have a rough estimate of how long you'll take?"
Ron refrained from telling his sister that she sounded like Dumbledore.
"A few weeks to a few months?" Hermione shrugged, once. "Magic isn't easy to predict. Nor is research."
"Can we see the next ritual?" Luna asked, beaming at Hermione.
Ron saw her wince as she replied: "It's a very delicate experiment, and somewhat dangerous."
"If Ron survived it, then we should be safe," Ginny said. He frowned at her, but she smiled sweetly at him in return.
And Hermione chuckled. "As long as you don't touch anything - magic is dangerous, especially rituals. Mistakes can be fatal. Or worse."
Ginny looked slightly taken aback, Ron noted, but Luna seemed even more eager to watch the next ritual. He would have to check with Hermione whether a muggle trying a ritual was safe. Double-check, to be safe. "So, what did you do today?" he asked, to change the subject.
"Oh! I worked with drones!" Luna turned to smile at him. "Mr Dumbledore provided me with the latest models available on the market. I've been testing them, to set up a surveillance network."
"A surveillance network?" Harry asked.
"Yes, to cover the entire area around the laboratory," she replied. "I'm working on the drones as the mobile part."
"Won't that attract attention?" Hermione asked.
"Air traffic control might notice," Sirius added.
"Not if they only fly low," Luna said. "But with any luck, we'll be using small models which won't show up amongst the ground clutter. I'm still testing them."
"You said that those were the mobile part. What about the immobile part?" Ron asked.
"Ah, there's a sensor network already in place, though it has a couple of blind spots," Luna told him. "As we expected, they couldn't cover the entire forest."
"Hence the drones," Sirius said.
"Exactly," Luna replied, nodding emphatically.
"But you've got access to the entire surveillance network?" Harry cocked his head as he asked her the question.
"Well, to the one Mr Dumbledore showed me. I'm sure that he has at least two more - though I haven't found them yet," Luna replied.
"Two more?" Harry blinked.
"Yes, one serving as a decoy, for when I look for it, and then the real one he uses to keep tabs on us." Luna shook her head as if that was an obvious conclusion. "And he might have a fourth, to fool the Shadow Government's surveillance of him."
Ron slowly nodded. He didn't think Dumbledore had three, much less four, surveillance networks in the area. Two, though? The old man would keep an ace up his sleeve, Ron was sure of that. And he was a spymaster. Not to mention that a second surveillance network was just good planning - if one was compromised, you still had another while your enemy might think they were in the clear. Of course, the sort of enemies Dumbledore - and now Ron and his friends - were dealing with would expect that. So, perhaps, Luna wasn't wrong… "And what did you do?" he asked the others.
"We trained," Harry said. He didn't seem to be happy, in Ron's opinion. Well, Ron wasn't looking forward to weeks or months of inactivity, either.
But if it meant Hermione and the others were kept safe?
He'd do a lot more for that.
Then dessert was served - tiramisu - and Luna's gleeful reaction distracted everyone.
She really liked her sweets.
*****
Black Lake, Scotland, Britain, October 9th, 2005
Ron frowned when he and the others returned from a long run around the lake. There weren't more guards or visibly increased security, but the guards at the door were just a little bit more attentive than usual. "Dumbledore's back," he said.
"Really?" Ginny asked.
"How do you know?" Hermione added.
"The guards are acting as if there's going to be an inspection," Harry explained.
"Yes. And do they need regular inspections!" Sirius commented. "What a sorry lot."
Luna, meanwhile, was checking her portable computer. Ron looked over her shoulder and saw that she was flipping through several recordings. "If he's on any recordings, then it's because he wanted to be," he told her.
"I know. But that's information by itself," Luna replied. "And it would be terribly impolite to ignore it if he took care to let himself be filmed."
Ron chuckled at that. "I guess so."
"Found him!" she exclaimed. "He arrived ten minutes after we left for our run."
"And I guess we will still have to wait until dinner to hear his new information," Harry said.
Ron glanced at Ginny and saw she was wincing. She would already know, of course, that Harry was getting impatient. "It's better to discuss things and plan on a full stomach," Ron said. Hungry people were more aggressive.
"Yes! And we need to shower anyway," Luna said, sniffing her shoulders before nodding emphatically.
Harry had the grace to blush, but he was still grumbling when they entered their quarters and split up to shower.
*****
As they had expected, Dumbledore didn't start talking about anything more important than the weather, sports and entertainment before dessert was served. To Ron's surprise, Harry didn't broach the subject himself, though. Probably Ginny's influence - Harry was an old hand at sounding off to others, especially to their superiors.
Of course, whether or not Dumbledore counted as their superior was somewhat uncertain. As was the question of whether or not the old man thought he was or should be.
Ron dropped that line of thought as Dumbledore finished his dessert, to all appearances looking incredibly pleased at the taste of the tiramisu, and put down his spoon. "Now, I assume you have a good idea why I've come to visit."
"You want to see magic happen!" Luna replied before anyone else could say anything.
Chuckling, the old man inclined his head towards her. "That influenced my decision as well, although I also bring you news from Russia."
"And it's not good news," Harry said.
"I would say that the exact nature of the news is still in question," Dumbledore replied, "due to a lack of further information. Although I expect we'll soon know more, one way or the other." He pulled out a memory stick from the inside pocket of his jacket - Ron wondered if that was just for show, or if he really carried sensitive intel there - and placed it on the table.
Harry reached for it, but, once again, Luna was faster and grabbed it. "Let's see what you brought us!" she said, apparently not aware of Harry's frown, as she plugged it into her portable computer.
Dumbledore chuckled again, and his smile grew, as far as Ron could tell, more honestly amused. "Thank you."
"Thank you," she replied, already opening and closing several windows.
"Let me summarise," Dumbledore said. "We haven't seen neither hide nor hair of Mr Kirikov, but according to our analysts, and some of my former co-workers, there has been a shake-up in the Russian intelligence services. Now," he went on, "after the 'invasion by terrorists', as some news reports have taken to calling our little mishap in southern Russia, didn't lead to any arrests, it's to be expected that a few officers will be let go. To encourage those who remain to be luckier, I assume - it wasn't as if they were at fault. However, such a shake-up could also conceal a reshuffle inside the FIS or the creation of supposedly unattached 'former assets'."
"Do you think they're building up for a mission against us?" Sirius asked.
"I think we cannot dismiss that as a possible threat," the old spymaster replied. "Unfortunately, there is scant confirmed information, least of all actionable intelligence, available, so all I can offer are educated guesses."
"Or gut instincts," Harry said.
"Quite." Again, Dumbledore nodded. "And even in the best case - President Putin not believing Mr Kirikov's claim and blaming him for the incident and the resulting loss of face the Russian government has suffered - I have no doubt that he would go to some lengths to keep us guessing whether or not Mr Kirikov is still alive. And even if he dismisses the possibility of alternate universes, my own involvement, which he will have confirmed by now, will convince him that I consider your research extremely valuable."
"So all we can do is wait?" Harry asked with a scoff.
"And prepare for an attack," Dumbledore corrected him. "If the Russians are indeed moving against us, they will be faced with several logistical challenges as well as running a significant risk of facing a political backlash of international dimensions." He smiled, but it looked rueful. "I also have some news about the continuing mole hunt within the Phoenix Gruppe: A suspected mole has, apparently, committed suicide a day ago in Berlin."
Oh. "An actual suicide?" Ron asked.
"That is hard to tell at this point. Contrary to their reputation, not every one of Germany's coroners is as methodical and careful as their duties would require. And far less quick to finish their reports. So far, Gellert has refrained from using more direct means to acquire their files, though."
"Swell," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "At least I take it the mole didn't know anything about us?"
"They shouldn't have known anything, although our own investigation is still ongoing. But if the Russians are behind this, then it'll be difficult to expose them. They are very good at this sort of game."
Ron pressed his lips together. This wasn't a game. People were dying.
"Of course, they aren't unbeatable - I know that better than most, I believe. I've taken steps to create decoy sites to divert their attention, and a select few people in my employ are preparing missions to further distract them," the old man went on.
"How dangerous are those missions?" Hermione asked.
"Not any more dangerous than the missions you've undertaken, Dr Granger."
"That's not very reassuring," she retorted, frowning.
"As long as they're not suicide missions," Ron added, tilting his head to turn the statement into a question.
"I can assure you that everyone involved knows the risks, Mr Weasley, even though precious few of my operatives will know anything about the reasons behind their orders."
"But they know whatever disinformation you fed them," Harry said.
Dumbledore didn't deny that as he nodded at Ron's friend.
"Won't the Russians expect this?" Luna asked.
"They will indeed suspect such a ploy - they suspect everyone and everything - but they nevertheless cannot ignore it. Not that they would," Dumbledore replied with a sly smile.
The old man sounded almost nostalgic, in Ron's opinion. Re-living his best years, perhaps? He snorted.
"And what if the Russians have another mole in your organisation?" Ginny asked.
"He's probably using this plan to hunt for such moles," Luna answered before Dumbledore could. "If he spreads information about selected decoy sites and missions to suspicious employees, he can find the moles." She scrunched her nose and frowned as she added: "But it'll put his loyal employees at risk."
"As I said," Dumbledore repeated himself, "my employees know the risks."
"That feels like cold comfort," Luna told him.
"Well, some of your employees certainly wouldn't be missed," Sirius cut in. "Except by various police forces, of course."
That got a chuckle out of the old spymaster. "While I have standards and would never work with the sort of people with whom Kirikov used to work, there is a saying: 'Set a thief to catch a thief'. Certain backgrounds can be very useful in this business."
"Wellington would probably agree, eh?" Sirius shook his head. "You cannot trust criminals."
"I've found that every man has a price, Mr Black," Dumbledore replied. "Something or someone they value above everything and everyone else. Criminals might be more selfish but, with proper handling, are no more likely to betray you than your best friend."
Ron wasn't the only one to glare at the old man in response to that claim.
"I'd never betray my friends!" Luna exclaimed.
"Not even if it meant saving your father's life?" Dumbledore asked.
"Daddy wouldn't want me to betray my friends to save him - I would also be betraying everything that he taught me if I did that." Luna's frown grew more pronounced, but she still looked like she was pouting as she faced Dumbeldore. "Not everyone has a price!"
The old spymaster slowly nodded. "Perhaps I stand corrected. I hope we'll never find out."
But he didn't sound as if he believed his own words. On the other hand, that might just be a deliberate act.
"What about setting the Secret Service on the Russians?" Ginny asked.
"MI6," Harry corrected her.
"You know what I mean," she retorted.
"A tempting option, I have to agree," Dumbledore acknowledged, rubbing his beard. "However, while I wouldn't cast doubt on my former colleagues' skill and experience, I fear that they would expend as much or even more effort on uncovering the Russians' objectives in Britain as on countering them."
"While I don't doubt that the British government would be preferable by far to the Russian one, I fear I would end up a prisoner either way," Hermione said. "Based on past experiences with said government, they would be as likely to shut down my research as to try and abuse it to revive colonialism."
"I think you are on the mark, based on my experience as a former government employee," Dumbledore told her with a wry smile. "Although I also expect MI6's best and brightest to pick up on any suspicious activity among the Russians. Sooner or later, at least."
"At which point they'll investigate themselves and find out about us anyway." Hermione shook her head. "Damned if we do, damned if we don't?"
Dumbledore cocked his head. "Quite. I think our best hope to avoid such entanglements is a timely breakthrough in your research."
Hermione pressed her lips together before replying. "Such research cannot be rushed. A single mistake could be disastrous."
"In that case, we can but hope for you to get lucky, then," the old man said.
"No pressure, huh?" Ron asked with a scoff.
"I've suffered worse," Hermione told him.
And Ron saw her eyes lose their focus.
*****
She heard screams as she ran through the familiar hallways. Distant screams, but that was a faint consolation when she knew all too well what those screams meant: People - students, children - dying under the Death Eaters' curses. Hearing the sounds of desperate, bloody battles filling the school made her feel like a coward for not joining the ranks of their allies.
But they couldn't. Their own mission was too important. If they failed, all the deaths and suffering would have been in vain. Voldemort would win.
And she wouldn't let that monster win.
She was breathing heavily by the time they reached the tapestry with the dancing trolls on the seventh floor.
"Let me do it!" Harry snapped, rushing ahead.
She clenched her teeth but stopped. The Room of Requirement tended to get confused if multiple people needed something - even if they thought they needed the same thing, the Room usually disagreed.
Granted, she didn't think that that would be a problem this time. All of them wanted the exact same thing: to find Voldemort's last Horcrux. But still, why take the risk?
Harry finished passing the tapestry three times, and a door appeared. He looked at them, a faint smile on his face before he winced. "Let's go."
She nodded, biting her lower lip several times as she followed him, Ron at her side, into the Room.
It was worse than she had expected - the room seemed to be larger than the Great Hall, and it was full of all sorts of stuff. "Can you sense it?" she asked Harry.
"With Voldemort so close? No," he told her. "The moment I open my mind, he'll know where we are."
"You'll have to do the ritual," Ron told her.
She looked at him - he was guarding the door - and nodded.
"And hurry," he went on. "I think some of the fighting's moving towards us."
*****