Same Day.

Thursday, Sept. 12

Hermione’s staredown with the spider lasted quite some time, but the girl refused to yield.

Finally, right when her eyes were beginning to burn, the spider asked: “What’s your name, girl?” And Hermione blinked from surprise.

“Hermione Granger,” she said.

The spider scoffed, and Hermione tried not to retch from the concentrated blast of her awful breath she got. “Well, Granger, if you knew anything about us, then you would know that you were already speaking to the leader.”

That took Hermione by surprise. “But what about Aragog?” she asked. “I thought he was your leader.”

The acromantula looked insulted. “Unlike you, spell weaver, we are not led by our frail grandfathers,” the spider said. “Now, tell me why you’ve come here. And what’s so special about the two of you that a centaur escorted you.”

Hermione hesitated, not because she didn’t know what to say, but because everything she and Harry had planned had been geared towards Aragog, and the hope that he would dislike Tom Riddle enough, due to their history, to be willing to help. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Finding out now, however, that they would not be meeting Aragog, and that he didn’t even hold as much power as they’d thought he did, the girl wasn’t quite sure what to do.

The worst part was that she couldn’t take a moment to deliberate with Harry, she was scared to even turn at all to look at him, because that would require her to turn her back on the giant spider in front of her, and something told her that if she did that, it may very well be the last thing she ever did.

She knew it was probably just her fear speaking, but the eleven-year-old wasn’t at all willing to risk it.

Fortunately, Harry was his dependable self as always, and he came through for her now as Hermione was beginning to realize that he always would.

“Does the name Tom Riddle mean anything to you?” he asked, walking forward to stand beside Hermione; close enough for her to feel his presence, but not so close for it to look like he was providing her support.

A small part of Hermione noticed how she had paid more attention to body language in the last five minutes than she ever had before in her whole life.

The spider looked at Harry. “Yes,” she answered finally. “My grandfather has no love for him.”

“Then your grandfather would be unhappy to know that good old Tom, or Voldemort—as he now calls himself—is back,” Harry said.

“And you’re hoping we would kill him for you,” the spider stated simply.

Harry paused, and he and Hermione glanced at each other, before the girl said, “Well, no—”

“Not that we would refuse if you offered,” Harry quickly threw in.

Hermione ignored him; as nice as it would be to push this fight onto someone else, it wouldn’t really matter in the end, because in the unlikely event that the acromantulas won that fight, they still wouldn’t be able to stop Voldemort; he was a ghost.

“—we wanted to ask for your help in stopping him,” Hermione said. “Voldemort is coming to the forest.”

The acromantula tensed. “Why?” she asked.

“He needs unicorn blood,” Hermione said. “We don’t know when but—” and to her great surprise, the spider, as well as a few up in the trees, laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

“And how do you intend to make us help those pathetic creatures?” she asked.

“Well, before we met you guys, I was thinking we could appeal to the goodness of your hearts or something, but now that I’ve seen that it’s all darkness and edge in there, I suppose we could always trade,” Harry said.

“And what would two little spell weavers have that we would want?”

“Jeans and daytime TV?” Harry asked. “No? What about beer?”

Seeing the unamused looks he was getting from everyone, including Hermione, Harry raised his hands in surrender and kept quiet.

As unimpressed as Hermione was with his joking around however, she knew that Harry was right, they didn’t really have anything to offer the spiders.

The only way she could think of to make the spiders do anything, she was starting to suspect, would be to force them, and like the Herd-mother had said, she and Harry lacked the strength to do that. Although, Hermione wasn’t sure she would want to even if they did have the power; she didn’t want to become a bully.

As her thoughts spun fruitlessly, Harry spoke again: “Oh, I know. How about a basilisk?”

The acromantulas all hissed and recoiled as Hermione’s head whipped to Harry.

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A what!?

Is he insane? How would they even kill a basilisk? Especially one as big as he’d described this one to be.

But Harry wasn’t finished. “And that’s not all,” he said. “You know Myrtle? The girl Riddle killed and framed Aragog and Hagrid for? It was the basilisk he commanded to do it. In other words, there’s a basilisk under Voldemort’s control living in Hogwarts right now. Just waiting. And all you have to do to get rid of it, is promise to help us stop Voldemort.”

But for some quiet hissing here and there, the spiders were silent for a long time. Then finally, the acromantula said, “We will need proof; you will bring us the corpse.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “It’s a sixty foot snake,” he pointed out simply.

“Then you bring me to the corpse,” the spider said, undeterred. “We want proof.”

Harry looked at Hermione, seeking her input, she realized, and though the girl had no idea how they would even go about killing the basilisk, she nodded.

“Looks like we have a deal,” Harry said.

“We will be waiting, spell weavers. For your sake I hope you can do more than throw a little fire around.” And with those parting words, the spiders disappeared as quickly as they came.

“Say hi to your Grandpa for me,” Harry called after the departing creatures, then he and Hermione walked back to Arden, who turned without a word and began to head back the way they came.

The children followed.

By some tacit agreement, Hermione and Harry waited until they were far away from the border before saying anything.

“Well, that was terrifying,” Harry began. “Especially the part where you went all fire goddess of vengeful wrath.”

With dawning horror, Hermione realised how shocking that must have been for Harry. Her reaction was only worsened by the realisation that she hadn’t even considered it until he’d mentioned it.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she asked, looking him over for injuries, even though a part of her mind realised that she would know already if he’d been burned.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Harry said, waving away her concern. “Honestly, I’m mostly amazed. Your control over that spell was divine, Hermione. I felt the heat, saw the flames bend around me. I flinched and they moved with me. How did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” was all the girl could say, because she really didn’t. “I just didn’t want to burn anything.”

Harry let out a breathy laugh as he stared at her with amazement. “Books and cleverness,” he said. “Yeah, right.”

Uncomfortable, as she usually was whenever Harry complimented her, Hermione changed the subject. “Do you have a plan to kill the basilisk?” she asked.

“Of course,” the boy said, “I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise,” and Hermione felt a worry that she hadn’t even realised she was feeling slip off her shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, by the way,” Harry continued, “I just didn’t know how to with them there.”

Hermione admitted that she hadn’t known how to either.

“Too bad we haven’t mastered legilimency,” Harry said, “if we had we wouldn’t have had a problem communicating.”

Hermione’s eyebrows climbed as she realised that Harry was right, legilimency could be used like that.

It would require a level of skill with the art that neither of them currently possessed though, and considering they had a grand total of one-and-a-half sessions under their belts, they wouldn’t be attaining said skill level in quite some time.

Pushing that thought away, Hermione returned to more pertinent matters, like what Harry’s plan to stop the basilisk actually entailed.

“Well, since I’m not a parselmouth anymore, thanks to our ROB and master, I figured trying to control it was pointless, so I went for the next best thing; roosters.”

Harry’s plan was as simple and straightforward as Hermione should have expected it to be; get a rooster, figure out a way to broadcast it’s crow across the castle, cross their fingers and hope it works.

“That’s your plan?”

“What? Got something better?” Harry asked defensively, and Hermione had to reluctantly admit that no, she did not.

Back at the edge of the forest, Arden spoke for the first time throughout the return journey. “You will not need my help to find the spiders again, yes?”

Hermione and Harry looked at each other, and from the look on the boy’s face Hermione could tell that, like her, he didn’t really remember the way either.

Before they could decide on anything however, Hermione remembered something that made her to come to a quick decision. “No, we won’t,” she told Arden, and at Harry’s questioning look, she said, “We can use The Room of Requirement now.”

“Good,” Arden said. “Farewell.”

And with those parting words, the centaur walked away.

“Thank you for your help,” Hermione called after her to no response.

“You know,” Harry said as they watched the centaur leave, “I’m starting to get the feeling that she may not like the spiders very much.”

Hermione shot the boy a dry look, then glanced at her watch; it was 8:40pm. Dinner ended at 9:00.

“We missed dinner,” she said, after a bit of mental math told her that twenty minutes wasn’t enough time to make it to The Great Hall and still get anything to eat.

“We did?” Harry asked. “That sucks. I’m hungry. And we have Astronomy tonight, so we might also miss breakfast tomorrow.”

Hermione hadn’t thought of that.

No matter, she still had some snacks left in her trunk. It wasn’t much, but it was better than no—

“Wait, what am I thinking?” Harry asked rhetorically. “I have food.”

“You do?”

“Hm-mm,” the boy hummed affirmatively, as he pulled a box about the size of his head from his backpack.

“What’s that?” Hermione asked as she watched Harry place the box on the ground.

“This, Miss Granger,” Harry said grandly, “is a magical tent.” And he tapped his wand to the object.

Like a bouncy castle being inflated, the box unwrapped and swelled up to become a small, unimpressive tent.

It was so small, in fact, that if she didn’t remember Harry telling her that magical tents were much bigger on the inside, she would have wondered how they could both fit in.

From up in the trees, Hedwig swooped down and into the tent with full speed.

“Well, someone’s eager,” Harry said, then to Hermione: “Ladies first.”

Obligingly, Hermione stuck her head into the tent, and despite having an idea of what to expect, her eyes still bulged in awe.

There was a chandelier. A chandelier. It hung over the living room, which had a nice blue sofa next to a fireplace.

There was a huge bookshelf laden with books in a corner, and a gleaming kitchenette in another. Hermione caught Hedwig lying facedown on a large, purple, vibrating pillow.

The owl was purring.

No wonder she had been so eager.

Surprisingly, the air was warm and fresh, and the tent appeared to have air-conditioning based on the soft breeze she felt blowing from somewhere.

“Welcome to mi casa,” Harry said, walking in behind her. “You can pick your jaw off the floor now.”

*****

They made dinner.

Well, Harry made dinner. Hermione mostly just kept him company while he did.

It was quite the sacrifice for her; Harry’s bookshelf was just so alluring.

As they ate, Harry put on some music. Muggle music. And the next thing Hermione knew, he had pulled her up to dance with him.

It was nice. It was very nice. And Hermione didn’t realise how tense recent events had made her until she felt herself relax.

She felt Harry relax too, and she caught a glimpse of the tiredness he seemed to always carry but rarely show.

They sat on the sofa to rest afterwards, just for a minute. They were out in seconds. And there were no dreams for either that night.