Save The Date (A Drarry FanFiction)

Chapter Forty Two (XIV)

XIV

After a few hours sat hunched over the stack of books she'd hauled over from the library, Hermione uncurled her stiff limbs with a groan and stretched out her arms. It didn't help much with the nausea in her stomach, but as her joints clicked she felt she could maybe walk around for a bit and see what Ron and the Aurors had discovered.

From what she could tell, McGonagall was right. People's belief in a holiday did indeed give the celebrations a sort of magic of their own, and tree rings like this were how that magic was channelled. It seemed like a holiday had most power on the day it was being celebrated, and she felt it wasn't a coincidence that the boys had been discovered by Pansy near the Halloween icon.

But as to what that 'power' actually was, she still wasn't clear. And she had also come across several references to 'channelling souls' and 'absorbing a person's essence' which she did not like the sound of at all. However, she had to admit that the idea of it unfortunately tied in very neatly with Harry and Malfoy being comatose but their minds being active. Their bodies may be sleeping up in the castle, but were their conscious selves up and about somewhere else?

And if so, how did they reunite the two back together?

She sighed and pulled herself to her feet. Darkness had fallen, but the Aurors were doing a good job of working despite being restricted in using any magic in the vicinity. They had set up a whole host of jam jars at regular intervals containing bright blue flames, so the glade was much better illuminated than it had been before with the regular torches. They had also discovered that potions did not set off the images like wands did, so were using a variety of concoctions to analyse the different rings of tress and test the strength of their magic.

They had managed to coax several of the pictures to open in the same door-like fashion as the vegetables had for Ron, but in a controlled manner. No one had been in danger of being dragged through by an unnatural wind, but when they had tried to see what lay beyond the opening, they had found nothing. Literally nothing; the absence of anything but a black void that McGonagall had forbidden anyone to touch. Instead they were currently experimenting sending different probes through (in the form of charmed paper airplanes) to see if they could receive any readings back, but so far they had had no luck.

Whilst she'd been reading, Ron had been working on creating a complete list of all the images painted on the bark, using the book she had checked out to cross-reference and work out which holidays they potentially related to. Pansy had been doing the same, sketching copies of the icons with extreme speed and accuracy that Hermione had to respect. She had to say, she was impressed with the lack of animosity between the two of them; one of the aims of integrating their 'Eight Year' when they had returned to school two months previous was to break down some of those old hostilities between houses, and she was proud to see that being put into action by Ron under such difficult circumstances.

It was also refreshing to see another side of Pansy as well, whom she had always steered far away from having been subjected to many girls like her in the past at her Muggle school. Rich, privileged girls who made themselves feel better by putting girls like her down. But the past year had changed a lot of people, and now Pansy Parkinson seemed more mature, more measured.

And, it wasn't like she was being nice to Hermione, but she wasn't being mean either. It was a sort of teasing Hermione couldn't quite wrap her head around. She shrugged to herself as she slipped between the trees and went to go find Ron. If Harry and Malfoy were getting along better now (Why else would they have come out here by themselves?) perhaps they could all be a little bit friendlier to each other in the future? Hermione would prefer that, she thought, rather than the tedious animosity that had dogged their previous school years.