｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐓

｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

Death doesn't discriminate

Between the Sinners and The Saints

It takes, and it takes, and it takes

·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐑 𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 wood once again forced Elara out of it's bounds. Frustrated, Elara groaned and pushed herself up off the armchair, moving to stoke the fire. She half-expected to hear Ron complaining about the cold as he usually did every morning. She was met with a disappointing and unfamiliar silence.

Unwilling to dwell on yesterday's events, Elara kept herself busy in the kitchen, preparing coffee and breakfast. Going on autopilot, she ran over every possibility of getting into the place Anya had mentioned to her. It was her personal mission to find the godforsaken answer and she kept coming up short.

Arms wrapped around her stomach. Startled out of her daydream, Elara jumped.

"Morning," whispered Harry hoarsely.

Elara hummed in response.

She, Harry, and Hermione ate breakfast in silence. Hermione's eyes were puffy and red; she looked a sif she had not slept. They packed up their things, Hermione dawdling. Elara knew why Hermione wanted to spin out their time on the riverbank; several times Elara saw Hermione look up eagerly, and Elara was sure Hermione had deluded herself into thinking that she heard footsteps through the heavy rain, but no red-haired figure appeared between the trees.

Every time Elara and Harry imitated her, looked around (for Elara could not help hoping a little, herself) and saw nothing but rain-swept woods, another little parcel of fury exploded inside her.

She could hear Ron saying, "We thought you two knew what you were doing!", and she resumed packing with a hard knot in the pit of her stomach.

The muddy river beside them was rising rapidly and would soon spill over onto their bank. They had lingered a good hour after they would usually have departed their campsite. Finally having entirely repacked the beaded bag three times, Hermione seemed unable to find any more reasons to delay: She, Elara, and Harry grasped hands and Disapparated, reappearing on a windswept mist-covered hillside.

The instant they arrived, Hermione dropped Elara and Harry's hands and walked away from them, finally sitting down on a large rock, her face on her knees, shaking with what Elara knew were sobs.

Elara watched her, supposing that she ought to go and comfort her, but something kept her rooted to the spot. Everything inside her felt cold and tight: Again she saw the contemptuous expression on Ron's face.

Elara strode off through the mist, walking in a large circle with the distraught Hermione and silent Harry at its center, casting the spells she usually performed to ensure their protection.

They did not discuss Ron at all over the next few days. Elara and Harry were determined never to mention his name again, and Hermione seemed to know that it was no use forcing the issue, although sometimes at night when Hermione thought the pair were sleeping, Elara would hear her crying.

Meanwhile Harry had started bringing out the Marauder's Map and examining it by wandlight. Elara had upped her attempts to break through the misty haze that blanketed her memories to three times a day.

Each time, she got closer and closer, exploring new and unfamiliar parts of the forest.

By day, they devoted themselves to trying to determine the possible locations of Gryffindor's sword, but the more they talked about the places in which Dumbledore might have hidden it, the more desperate and far-fetched their speculation became.

Cudgel her brains though she might, Elara could not remember Dumbledore ever mentioning a place in which he might hide something. There were moments when Elara did not know whether she was angrier with Ron or with Dumbledore.

We thought you two knew what you were doing. . . . We thought Dumbledore had told you both what to do. . . . We thought you had a real plan!

Elara could not hide it from herself: Ron had been right. Dumbledore had left her and Harry with virtually nothing. They had discovered one Horcrux, but they had no means of destroying it: The others were as unattainable as they had ever been.

Hopelessness threatened to engulf her. She knew nothing, she had no ideas, and she was constantly, painfully on the alert for any indication that Hermione too was about to tell her and Harry that she had had enough, that she was leaving.

They were spending many evenings in near silence, and Hermione took to bringing out Phineas Nigellus's portrait and propping it up in a chair, as though he might fill part of the gaping hole left by Ron's departure.

Despite his previous assertion that he would never visit them again, Phineas Nigellus did not seem able to resist the chance to find out more about what Elara and Harry were up to, and consented to reappear, blindfolded, every few days or so.

Elara was even glad to see him, because he was company, albeit of a snide and taunting kind. They relished any news about what was happening at Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus was not an ideal informer. He venerated Snape, the first Slytherin headmaster since he himself had controlled the school, and they had to be careful not to criticize or ask impertinent questions about Snape, or Phineas Nigellus would instantly leave his painting.

However, he did let drop certain snippets. Snape seemed to be facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny and Clover had been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape had reinstated Umbridge's old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students or any unofficial student societies.

From all of these things, Elara deduced that Ginny and Clover, and probably Neville and Luna along with them, had been doing their best to continue Dumbledore's Army. T

Indeed, as Phineas Nigellus talked about Snape's crackdown, Elara experienced a split second of madness when she imagined simply going back to school to join the destabilization of Snape's regime: Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at that moment.

But then she remembered that she was Undesirable Number One, that there was a twenty-thousand-Galleon price on her head, and that to walk into Hogwarts these days was just as dangerous as walking into the Ministry of Magic.

Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently emphasized this fact by slipping in leading questions about Harry and Hermione's whereabouts. Hermione shoved him back inside the beaded bag every time he did this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refused to reappear for several days after these unceremonious good-byes.

The weather grew colder and colder.

They did not dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost was the worst of their worries, they continued to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent was flooded with chill water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half buried the tent in the night.

They had already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows.

They had just eaten an unusually good meal: Hermione had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open tillas she left), and Elara felt happy on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears.

"Lara? Hermione?"

"Hmm?" hummed Hermione, curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

"Yeah?" answered Elara, opening her eyes from her latest attempt.

"I've been thinking, and —"

"Could you two help me with something?"

She leaned forward and held out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

"Look at that symbol," she said, pointing to the top of a page.

Above what Elara assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, she could not be sure), there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.

"We never took Ancient Runes, Hermione," said Elara, studying the symbol.

"I know that, but it isn't a rune and it's not in the syllabary, either. All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don't think it is! It's been inked in, look, somebody's drawn it there, it isn't really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?"

"No . . . No, wait a moment." Harry looked closer. "Isn't it the same symbol Luna's dad was wearing round his neck?"

"Well, that's what I thought too!"

"Then it's Grindelwald's mark," said Elara.

Hermione stared at Elara, openmouthed.

"What?"

"Krum told me . . ."

Elara recounted the story that Viktor Krum had told her and Harry at the wedding. Hermione looked astonished.

"Grindelwald's mark?"

She looked from Elara to the weird symbol and back again.

"I've never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There's no mention of it in anything I've ever read about him."

"Well, like I said, Krum said that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there."

Elara fell back into the old armchair, frowning.

"That's very odd. If it's a symbol of Dark Magic, what's it doing in a book of children's stories?"

"Yeah, it is weird," said Harry. "And you'd think Scrimgeour would have recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff."

"I know. . . . Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories have little pictures over the titles."

She did not speak, but continued to pore over the strange mark.

"Hermione? Lara?"

"Hmm?"

"I've been thinking. I — I want to go to Godric's Hollow."

Elara and Hermione looked up at him.

"I'm down," said Elara.

"Yes," muttered Hermione. "Yes, I've been wondering that too. I really think we'll have to."

"Did you hear me right?" asked Harry, astonished.

"Of course I did. You want to go to Godric's Hollow. Lara and I agree, I think we should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else it could be either. It'll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it's there."

"Er — what's there?" asked Harry.

At that, she looked just as bewildered as he felt.

"Wait — the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you'd want to go back there, and Godric's Hollow is Godric Gryffindor's birthplace —"

"Really? Gryffindor came from Godric's Hollow?"

"Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic?" deadpanned Hermione, amused.

"Erm," said Harry, smiling for the first time in a while. "I might've opened it, you know, when I bought it . . . just the once. . . ."

Elara snorted.

"Well, as the village is named after him I'd have thought you might have made the connection," said Hermione.

She sounded much more like her old self than she had done of late; Elara half expected her to announce that she was off to the library.

"There's a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait . . ."

Hermione opened the beaded bag and rummaged for a while, finally extracting her copy of their old school textbook, A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbed through until finding the page she wanted.

"'Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went into hidingfor good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical families, who banded together for mutual support and protection. The villages of Tinworth in Cornwall, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery St. Catchpole on the south coast of England were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles.

Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric's Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families, and this accounts, no doubt, for the stories of hauntings that have dogged the little church beside it for many centuries.'

"You and your parents aren't mentioned, Harry," Hermione said, closing the book, "because Professor Bagshot doesn't cover anything later than the end of the nineteenth century. But you see? Godric's Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor's sword; don't you think Dumbledore would have expected you oe Lara to make the connection?"

"Oh yeah . . ."

"Remember what Muriel said?" asked Elara eventually.

"Who?"

"You know," she hesitated: She did not want to say Ron's name. "Ginny's great-aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles."

"Oh," said Hermione.

It was a tense moment: Elara knew that Hermione had sensed Ron's name in the offing.

She rushed on: "She said Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric's Hollow."

"Bathilda Bagshot," murmured Hermione, running her index finger over Bathilda's embossed name on the front cover of A History of Magic.

"Well, I suppose —"

Hermione gasped so dramatically that Elara's insides turned over; she drew her wand, looking around at the entrance, half expecting to see a hand forcing its way through the entrance flap, but there was nothing there.

"What?" she said, half angry, half relieved. "What did you do that for? I thought you'd seen a Death Eater unzipping the tent, at least —"

"Harry, Lara, what if Bathilda's got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to her?"

Elara considered this possibility. Bathilda would be an extremely old woman by now, and according to Muriel, she was "gaga."

Was it likely that Dumbledore would have hidden the sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, Elara felt that Dumbledore had left a great deal to chance: Dumbledore had never revealed that he had replaced the sword with a fake, nor had he so muchas mentioned a friendship with Bathilda.

Now, however, was not the moment to cast doubt on Hermione's theory, not when there was a possibility this could be the truth.

"Yeah, he might have done! So, are we going to go to Godric's Hollow?" said Harry excitedly.

"Yes, but we'll have to think it through carefully."

Hermione was sitting up now, and Elara could tell that the prospect of having a plan again had lifted her mood as much as Elara's.

"We'll need to practice Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too, unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In that case we'll need to collect hair from somebody. I actually think we'd better do that, Harry, the thicker our disguises the better. . . ."

Elara let her talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there was a pause, but her mind had left the conversation. For the first time since she had discovered that the sword in Gringotts was a fake, she felt excited.

After Hermione had gone to bed that night, Elara took her usual place on the carpeted ground and once again began searching. Coming up short once again, Elara groaned and fell backwards on the carpet.

"Nothing again?" asked Harry, not looking up from the photo album Hagrid had given to him so long ago.

"It's so frustrating," grumbled Elara, "each time I feel like I'm so close, but I keep getting pushed away!"

Harry closed the photo album and joined Elara on the floor.

"Maybe that notebook Dumbledore left you has something to do with it."

Elara gasped.

"You're a bloody genius!" she whispered-yelled, bounding over to Hermione's bag, extracting her rucksack.

Inside was the journal. Elara quickly marveled at it's blue cover and gold etchings (like she did every other time she examined it) before returning to her spot on the floor. As she sat facing Harry, Elara placed a warmed hand on the journal, like she had done every time before.

Much to her surprise, the book emitted a soft glow.

"That's new," murmured Harry.

Excitedly, Elara flipped open the first few pages. Inside were instructions, diagrams, recipes, and spells Elara had never heard of before. After scanning the contents, she quickly came to the realization that these were specific to her. Everything had to do with extra levels of her ability Anya hadn't taught her. However, on the last page, lay detailed instructions of how to unlock this mysterious place Anya mentioned.

Elara's hand flew over her mouth as excitement ran through her body.

"This is so fucking cool!" exclaimed Elara, causing Hermione to shoot upright from her bunk.

"What?" said Hermione tiredly, albeit annoyed.

"I got the book open!"

Hermione gasped and just about fell out of her bunk rushing over to Elara and Harry. Quickly snatching the journal out of Elara's hands, Hermione began intensely poring over it's contents.

"Shaping fire. . . . Safely wield Fiendfyre — "

"Oh, fuck yeah."

" — create weapons of fire. . . . volatile force manipulation — "

"What's that?" asked Harry curiously.

Hermione sighed.

"It seems Lara can create explosions."

"I CAN BLOW SHIT UP?!"

Harry snorted. Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose, sighed loudly, and continued on.

"Firestorm creation, the ability to create such a powerful storm that would incinerate all beings touched. . . . That seems to be a one use skill, though. . . ."

"Who cares?!" exclaimed Elara, bouncing up and down, "I can do so much cool shit that I didn't even know about! Oh, Bitch Boy is so fucked — "

"Slow down, Lara," scolded Hermione, squinting to read what was probably smaller text, "while your usual abilities don't take much energy, these do. Especially the firestorm creation, using that will kill you."

"Does it say anything about building up energy faster?" Inquired Harry.

"Well, yes, but I don't know if I trust it."

"Whatever it is, I'm willing to try," said Elara.

". . . . If you are placed directly into open fire, you can regenerate energy quicker."

Elara gaped at Hermione.

"That's so cool."

"Lara!"

"What?!"

"It's terrifying!"