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Chapter- 51 : Trapped Part - 2

April 26

"You mean the farmer who spent a night bowling and drinking with magical creatures and woke up forty years later? Isn't that a fairy tale? I mean, it goes directly against Throckmorton's seventh law!" Hermione recoiled.

Harry resumed a smile. "Yes, Hermione. Throckmorton is correct. Space can be altered by magic, but time cannot be. However recall you own words: Fairy tale. Do not think that means to wizards what it does to muggles."

Luna also seemed amused. "Time travel is impossible by magic, yes. However didn't I just tell you that fairies routinely perform magic that is impossible by the laws as we know them? It may be impossible, but fairies do it all of the time. It seems almost a game to them, and one they play very well."

Hermione opened her mouth to answer, but Harry cut her off. "The Time Turners you and I use. Yes, I know that's going to be your next question. Do you know what makes up the dust they use in Time Turners? Powdered fairy wings. Around seven hundred years ago it was observed that fairies can move through time in ways that mortals don't. Five hundred years ago that was quantified, to an extent, and someone had the bright idea: Hey, you know WE can't do this, but THEY can, so what if we find some way of harnessing their ability, like horses to a plow? And around four hundred years ago those experiments succeeded in inventing the Time Turner."

The boy gave his friend a very sober gaze. "That discovery kicked off a 'Gold Rush', so to speak for fairy wings. Everyone wanted some and went out to find what fairies they could to harvest their wings."

"That led to the virtual extinction of their race outside of sanctuaries like this one," Luna completed softly.

Harry inhaled deeply and sank back against a cushion of moss. "The Ministry came back in the seventeen hundreds with a law passed to make it illegal to hunt fairies or traffic in their wings. That at least stopped the poacher incursions into the Forbidden Forest, and other preserves. But even so it took a while to really take effect. The race has never really rebounded."

Hermione sat back on her hands, humbled by that information.

"So it is entirely possible," Luna conjectured, "For us to get out of this place after what seems like months to us, and discover when we reach society that no time has passed since we entered, or that five hundred years have, or watch ourselves led to this cave by whatever creatures put us in here, or to go so far back in time that we become our own mothers or father. It all depends on whatever games the fairies are playing with us. Now we are within one of their places of power it would be impossible for them to resist doing something to us to amuse themselves."

"So we might be forced to build our own school and rename ourselves Godric, Rowena and Helga," Harry offered with a wry smirk.

"The fey are prone to playing games such as that," Luna softly agreed. "But it is equally possible for us to grow to a ripe old age and after a long and fulfilling life here exit this place on the day after we entered; or to leave it regressed in age to children and find ourselves going to school with the kids or grandkids of the people we saw just yesterday. Unpredictability is one of the unique... charms, of the fey." She finished with a wry grimace, focusing her gaze on Hermione. "And time has virtually no meaning around them. It can flow backwards or forwards, fast or slow, or even sideways sometimes."

"But they do play by rules, even if they are obscure or hard to understand for mortals like us," Harry observed, getting up to his feet and going to the cave mouth over the naiad lake. "And one of the things I'd like to avoid is going asleep in here again. They work most of their mischief on mortals as they are sleeping. So the more times we do that, the more drastic whatever change we eventually face is going to be - Probably."

"Probably?" His brunette best friend stiffened.

"It really is hard to tell for sure," Luna agreed. "Fairies are many things, but do not count predictability among them. Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', was practically a documentary. Misfired love potions, transformation and so on are light entertainment for the more powerful fey."

"Which makes me very eager to get out of here," Harry admitted.

"Especially before we eat anything," Luna nodded firmly.

Harry perked up at this, checking his potions belt, before sitting down before the two girls and regarding them seriously. "Ok, Luna has just brought up a very real danger. One of the rules fairies live by is that their worst tricks all wait upon some kind of 'agreement' on the part of the recipient, and I use that term very loosely."

"Any kind of acceptance, whether of food, trinket or token qualifies," Luna frowned at herself. "Which meant I was very foolish for having picked a flower, as I now almost certainly qualify. I should have been more careful."

Hermione scooted a little further from the walls in fright.

"However," Harry admitted with a downcast face, before raising it to them again in determination. "I told you both before that I carry many potions. I even gave you a partial list of my medical and weapon-like potions."

"Your other two categories were enhancement and utility potions," Hermione remembered, as if from a favorite teacher's lecture.

Harry was honestly flattered.

"That's right," he nodded. "I don't have much in the way of enhancement potions on hand just yet, as I'd been planning on doing most of those in the form of Everlasting Elixirs that don't wear off."

"What were you going to have?" Hermione interrupted.

He gave her a smile. "Oh, the usual. Memory potions for making it easier to recall things, potions for stimulating mental agility, strengthening solutions for our bodies and wit sharpening potions for our minds. Any great witch or wizard does some measure of that. I'm lucky in that I could add re'em blood for truly impressive strength. But I was also going to sneak in a beautifying potion for each of us. If you make it in an everlasting elixir, then take only a drop or two a day while you're a growing teenager like us, it takes effect so gradually people think you are just blooming into your own natural beauty."

Chapter- 52 : Trapped Part - 3

April 26

The two females stared at him in shock, so impressed they couldn't speak.

Hermione blinked several times. "Mother always said the best makeup job is one where no one can be sure you're wearing makeup."

Harry shrugged, but could hardly take credit. That was one of Tom Riddle's tricks, only it had gotten overwhelmed by later dark rituals. "Beauty has a strong effect on the human mind," he agreed. "Pretty people get away with things that ugly people don't. And because this is an 'everlasting' elixir, it grants the kind of beauty that only gets dignified with age."

Both girls turned their heads away to avoid being caught drooling. The sad fact was that most pretty girls went to pieces as they got older, and didn't look very good at all. It was something that no one looked forward to, yet happened far more often than not. Just about any girl could expect to lose her looks sometime around middle age; some sooner, some later.

Harry inhaled to sigh. "But that was something I was working on, not anything I happen to have with me." He leveled a serious look at them both. "However, in my 'utility potion' supply I do have some polyjuice."

Luna gasped. "Harry! That..!"

"It's not that big of a deal," the bushy haired one reassured the blonde. "We took some last year. It worked out fine for Harry and Ron." Then she made a face. "Of course, I made a mistake and took a hair from a cat. Polyjuice was never intended for non-human transformation."

"And that is exactly what scared her," Harry supplied, looking straight at his best friend. "Because transforming into each other isn't going to get us out of this mess. However, if we pluck a hair or two from some fairies we can use their own exit to get out of this place."

Now it was Hermione's turn to go pale. "But! Madam Pomfrey said... it took her WEEKS to undo the partial transformation from me last time!"

Luna swallowed heavily, looking quite distressed. "Let's save that for our last resort, hm? It's better than staying in here for months or possibly centuries, and definitely better than getting drowned by naiads, but not so safe that I'd risk it before checking all other options."

"Agreed," Harry nodded, to both girls' immense relief. But then he brought up a separate issue. "And I'm doubly reluctant to use it, because fairies like to taint food they find on your person. My potions will probably work, but the likely side effects are... well, we could be more than weeks having Pomfrey return us to normal if we choose to get out that way."

The boy leaned back. "Actually, I have enough polyjuice to charge some with doses of our own hair. So, theoretically, we could change into fairies, fly out the long but narrow main entrance they use, then return to normal quickly by drinking the potions charged to change us back into ourselves."

"It reduces our risk somewhat, but it's still risky. Considering that each dose would cross the human/non-human boundary, one going, one coming, stress on our bodies might be more than we could bear. I'd prefer to keep that as an option of last resort," Luna hesitantly allowed.

Harry leaned forward, crossing his legs and sitting Indian style. "Fair enough. But we'll probably want to charge some to return us to ourselves in any case, just as precaution against any other transformations."

"Agreed, but you sound like you had another point?" Hermione asked hopefully as she and Luna both separated out stray hairs to hand to Harry.

He inhaled deeply. "Yes. I do. It's not so much a full option as a possible route to discover one." He reached into his belt and produced two hard candies that looked very much like cough drops - if cough drops could be as brightly and brilliantly colored as the fairies constantly flitting about them.

"Language lozenges?" Hermione asked in puzzlement.

"Fairy language lozenges," Harry agreed. "I have two: my own, and the one I was going to give you on your birthday. But the spells are strong enough on them we could cut a third off of each and each take two thirds of one. The magic could take slightly longer to activate, but we'd all achieve full fluency. The reason I suggest this is because of that passcode I tried to use to open the door earlier. The fey can be tricksters, but they do leave clues about. In our current state we are unliable to recognize them. But if we can read their system of writing we have a much increased chance of finding the new code or solving whatever puzzle could get us out of here intact."

Hermione was about ready to jump for joy, but Luna was already frowning. "The trouble with that course is they are still something edible, thus likely to have been changed as a form of trick." Seeing the other girl slump, hopeless, she quickly added, "Oh! They'll do what they're designed to do, but we could easily get donkey ears out of ingesting them."

"Donkey ears are easy to fix," the bookworm petulantly scolded. "So that's worlds better than being released from this place thirty years into our pasts and becoming our own parents."

"Which the fey are all too liable to do." Harry nodded, wincing. "They've got memory charms that could make it easy to arrange, and that's exactly the sort of thing many of them think is funny."

Luna was also nodding gravely. "I love my father... just not that way. I agree that taking the risk is better than going to sleep in here again, which would tempt our hosts almost beyond bearing into mischief of that sort."

"The longer we stay here, the more extreme their tricks are liable to be," the bushy haired one quoted from cautions her friends had already given her.

Chapter - 53 : Trapped Part - 4

April 26

"Actually, strictly speaking, the ordinary variety of fairy surrounding us now is just what I said before: obsessively vain, but not out to do anyone harm." Luna corrected. "It is the stronger sorts, larger, more human-like that we have to fear. But a refuge in a sanctuary is exactly the sort of place to find them, if they could still be found anywhere."

"The words of the guy who wrote Peter Pan come to mind," Harry grinned, getting down on his hands and knees by the lake entrance. "He said Tinkerbell was too small to have more than one feeling at once, and when she was good, she was all good. But when she was bad, she was all bad."

"Honestly, most fairies are stuck on 'conceited' rather than good or bad, but you do make a valid point," Luna allowed.

"What are you doing?" Hermione pressed around to see what Harry was up to.

He'd drawn a sword from a concealed sheath on his body, and was extending the bare blade outside of the large cave entrance, just above the surface of the naiad-populated water. "Trying to see some of what is around this cave, using the blade as a mirror - I figured they won't grab bare steel."

Moments later he withdrew the sword and sat down heavily. "Bad news, girls. I can confirm the existence of wooden walkways and gazebos around the lake - the broad grassy lawn, the hedge, everything. There's even an overgrown island in the center of the lake."

"The Shrine of the Fairy Queen," Luna whispered, frozen in stark terror.

"That's bad." Hermione confirmed.

"I think I'd take being at the heart of a volcano, or raging tribes of cannibals just about any day of the week," Harry acknowledged, before his eyes went terribly wide. "And that only makes this development more chilling."

Pushing at it from below the surface of the water, the naiads had opened up the boathouse and brought forth a wide rowboat, which they guided to the mouth of the cave, grounding it on the sands there.

Luna went from paralyzed in fear to scrambling away from it in stark terror, pressing herself up flat against the far side of the cave from the water, her eyes bulging as she considered this offering.

Hermione had something else to occupy her. "Wasn't that Gryffindor's sword?"

"Yes," Harry nodded, resheathing the weapon where it had been concealed on his body. "And before you ask, yes, I'm still carrying the other artifacts I got from the Founders. Frankly, it had become habit, and I forgot."

Putting the sword away, his robes tore open along a seam, revealing the silver armor he wore concealed.

"That too?" Hermione asked, finding a moment of merriment in teasing him.

"Yes. Although this stuff really ought to have decomposed." Harry tapped his armor several times, yet still found it sound.

"That's because it's living silver," Luna supplied, still pressing herself against the back wall of the cave and staring in fear at the boat the naiads offered. "The ritual to create it is complex, but it involves ramora scales and occamy eggs, both highly magical biological silver."

"Oh?" Harry blinking in surprise at his own suit of armor.

"I thought I overheard someone calling that Goblin Silver?" Hermione mused.

"Goblins stole the techniques for creating it from the dwarves, who originally developed the secret process. There might be more, but I'm having trouble recalling it because at the moment I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought," the blonde girl stated calmly, still staring at the boat.

"Oh," Hermione murmured softly.

What sort of response was there to that?

"Luna, why are you scared of the boat?" she asked.

"It's not the boat. It's that naiads are offering it," she was answered.

Hermione looked back and forth between the boat and the blonde. "But that's good, right? You did say that boats were one of their weaknesses."

"Exactly." Luna nodded, still staring at the conveyance. "Hermione, how many times have you had a vampire corner you, who offered you a cross and wooden stake to wield against him?"

Hermione froze. "That... wouldn't happen."

"Exactly," the blonde nodded, eyes still on the boat. "So if it does, you know that either the item is trapped to not work properly, or that normal rules have gone out the window."

Harry grew sober, and chimed in, "In which case you're even worse off than normal, as knowing the rules is the only kind of safety you can have with magical creatures."

"Uh huh," Luna nodded, still staring at the boat like it was some sort of dangerous wild animal that might leap out of the water and bite her.

Actually, in light of where they were, and Harry's last statement, Hermione spent a moment examining it herself - it just might!

Another patch of cloth disintegrated under Harry's hands, as he gave an experimental tug on one of his sleeves. Grimacing, he intoned, "You know, I have good news and bad news."

"I'd like to hear some good news," Hermione chimed.

"Even bad news could only be better than that boat," Luna mumbled ominously.

"Right." Harry inhaled deeply. "Well, the good news is that I've identified the mischief that was worked on us last night, I think. Since fey creatures seem to stick by a rule of 'one prank per opportunity' if we can get out of here before we fall asleep again, we ought to be able to get out of here in our own time period, and not rub shoulders with King Arthur, or whatever."

"That's nice," Hermione agreed, feeling great relief over that problem.

"The bad news," Harry continued. "Is that our clothes are disintegrating."

Hermione jerked in surprise and one of her socks came apart, exploding into tatters under the pressure of staying around her perfectly normal leg.

"It seems they did not survive the ritual last night," Harry continued in a monotone. "Or rather I should say they suffered some overload damage, but even so they couldn't, shouldn't be decomposing this fast. So the time magic we've been fearing was probably used to speed up their decay. On the plus side, when you consider what they are capable of, the prank our last sleep session was something fairly mild. Embarrassing rather than debilitating."

"Humiliating mortals is sport for most types of fey," Luna almost seemed relieved by this revelation. Leaning forward she left a large patch of lint fluff where she'd pressed herself so hard against the cave wall.

Hermione pursed her lips. "Do you mean to say that if we stay in this cave any longer, say long enough to go to sleep again, that not only might we be joining Buck Rogers in the 25th Century when we do eventually escape, but we are liable to be NAKED!?"

"That does appear to be an accurate summation, yes," Harry acknowledged, before he met her eyes with a wan smile and repeated Luna's phrase. "Humiliating mortals is sport for most types of fey."

The daughter of dentists scowled fiercely, holding out her hand. "Gimme that language lozenge! We are going to spend a half an hour hunting for runes, and if that doesn't work..."

She reached out a hand and somehow yanked a small tuft of hair off a fairy when she'd never been able to catch one before. "You are going to charge some polyjuice, Harry!"

"Yes, Ma'am!"

Chapter - 54 : Enigma

April 26

"NOTHING!" Harry's outraged cry split the air of the cave. "That shouldn't be possible! Fairies are ALWAYS leaving clues about! It's part of their NATURE!"

Luna redirected her gaze to the rowboat held by naiads, still passively waiting for them to approach. "Yes, well, that does not appear to be the only rule that has gone out the window."

The boy blanched. "Good point." He drew in a deep breath. "Well, then are we out of options enough to use the polyjuice?"

They had called for Dobby, but either he couldn't hear or couldn't enter.

The pair looked over to Hermione, who'd calmed a great deal from her earlier bout of temper, and was sitting in a corner of the cave using a bone needle and strands of her own hair to sew flowers and leaves together into an apron to replace her rapidly disintegrating clothes. That she had given up on the search for hidden writings before them spoke more about the desperation of their search than any hope of success.

If she had given up that's only because there were no other options left to try. If there was still a chance to find written clues, Hermione would still be looking for them. Ergo, they'd exhausted all real possibility of finding any and were now running on sheer emotional energy.

"It seems so odd, but many aspects of this are incomprehensible," Luna agreed. "It grows curiouser and curiouser all the time."

Harry snorted. "Sorry. In that moment you sounded a bit like Alice."

The blonde looked around herself, finding in her terror a moment of amusement. "Well, we seem to have found our own rabbit hole."

He looked at her, shocked. "I'm surprised you know that book."

"Don't be. It was about my grandmother. Alice later married a Lovegood."

"Why am I not surprised?" the boy wondered.

Hermione had to stifle a giggle, proving that she was listening in.

Luna went on as though she wasn't aware of it. "Gateways to Other Realms do exist, but they have become scarcer and scarcer. Wizards blame muggles and the spread of their technology, but really it is the Ministry of Magic closing all of them they can find - too dangerous, they say. Not governable by them is the true reason," she quipped. "This area was once thick with magic lakes and streams, enchanted islands and fortresses. So many in fact that it was far more famous for its magic places than its magic people, except for Merlin of course. They have never been fully mapped. It's impossible, as too many of them move around, or are disguised or protected one way or another. But the Ministry of Magic has labored tirelessly since the creation of the Statute of Secrecy to shut down all the ones they couldn't control. What do you think they have a Department of Mysteries for?"

Hermione stopped what she was doing to look at her seriously. "I was under the impression they had it to research new magic. That's what is says in..." she looked at the blonde's expression and paused. "Was that not the case?"

Luna shook her head. "No. Sadly not. The purpose of that department is to isolate and contain all of the things our current Ministry of Magic cannot control or understand. Research is a side goal, but the only publicly admitted one. They don't want most of the magical public to know they are effectively working to reduce the amount of magic in the world. But to their minds if it cannot be hidden from muggles, then it must be destroyed. And anything they do not control could, in theory, be found by muggles. Simple men have passed barriers seasoned wizards could not cross before."

"How do you know this?" the bookworm whispered, looking pale.

"My grandmother, Alice Lovegood? They have her in there."

Harry blinked at the hard undertones to Luna's soft voice. "You mean she is an Unspeakable? I thought they had oaths to stop them from talking about their work."

Now Luna looked angry. "No. She is not an Unspeakable. She is their victim. Once they'd finally heard of her story as one of the last recorded travelers to return from a journey to an Other Realm they sought her out and took her from her family to isolate and imprison her, presumably so they can study her - meaning, of course, performing all sorts of gruesome experiments."

She turned a hard gaze to Harry. "The acts they perform there are simply horrid, or, to put it another way, unspeakably vile. That is where those who work there get their name - not out of any great secrecy, but because what they do down in those secret chambers is so revolting and ugly no one would dare to speak of them. You ought to know, Voldemort was one for a while."

"Yes, I do." The boy nodded, looking guilty. "And sadly that is where he picked up most of his more vile habits. That's why I was shocked when you admitted they had your grandmother there. I thought you were saying she was one, and I couldn't picture it of one of your family."

In answer to Hermione's wide eyes, Luna calmly continued to explain, "Look it up in any dictionary, and you'll find that unspeakable, in general, means either indefinable or atrocious. More often than not it is the latter one, granting the word a very negative flavor overall. Some examples where people might most often say 'unspeakable' are for things like: 'atrocious taste', 'abominable workmanship', 'an awful voice', 'dreadful manners', 'a painful performance', or 'terrible handwriting'; 'an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room', and so on. All those things might be defined as 'unspeakable'. And what they are doing to my grandmother are unspeakable tortures. But you do enough unspeakable things and you become an unspeakable person. And if enough people like you have your job, that becomes the job description."

Luna's voice was calm as anything even while her audiences' faces contorted in horror. She calmly raised an eyebrow and went on, "Then you make them stop telling people outside of the department what they do, and they forget why they gave you that name in the first place. Humans don't like to face things that are unpleasant, so they ignore or forget as often as they can."

"How do you know what they are doing to her?" Hermione whispered softly.

Luna sighed. "Because, among the many gifts she received on her many trips to Wonderland, my grandmother became a telepath. She is able to send us messages from time to time in her more lucid periods, between tortures."

Hermione looked soft and white and too scared to move.

Harry rubbed his brow underneath a conjured set of glasses. "It has long been my assertion that the ministry is filled, almost without exception, with incompetent morons striking for idiot and failing the tests. How they get ANYTHING done is beyond my understanding. But why is it that the only things they can do with any efficiency are all EVIL?"

Chapter - 55 : Enigma Part - 2

April 26

Luna looked at him oddly, yet directly. "Because Dumbledore is in charge there and it takes on the same pattern he has imposed here at school? The good and respected purposes that institution was brought about to fill it cannot because it is too busy performing the vile deeds he'd rather it do?"

"Yes, that's right." Harry smiled wanly at himself in unhappy mockery. "The same man who authored my childhood to be the stuff of nightmares, and who makes our education a sham, is also the one who is in control of our Ministry. How could I have forgotten?"

They all spent an unhappy moment pondering that.

"Laying all the treacheries of Dumbledore aside for a moment, we still have to get out of here," Harry reminded. "No matter what vulgar things he's got the Ministry up to, they won't matter to us if we're displaced by a century or two. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I am getting tired."

The girls looked at each other in shock.

Harry's last shoe finally gave up and fell off his foot in tatters.

By this point they were already wearing little more than rags. The slightest tug or pull would shred the clothes they were wearing, and most of them had acquired enough rents or holes the girls were in danger of indecency.

Harry wasn't, because he wore neck to toe armor, with the helmet in his pouches, but he wasn't looking forward to having the last of his wardrobe fall to pieces. Metal links might conceal, but they could also pinch tender flesh like nothing else. So once the last of the clothes he was using for padding inside came apart, he'd either bleed from pinching or submit to nudity.

Frankly he was not looking forward to being forced into such a situation.

"Under ordinary circumstances, the polyjuice experiment you propose doing is stupidly dangerous," Luna sighed, hefting a little shrug of her shoulders. "However these circumstances are far from ordinary, and considering our alternatives it may actually be our best option."

"How dangerous is it?" Hermione looked at her friends and asked quietly.

Harry sighed. "Well, you already know polyjuice is not intended for nonhuman transformations. When you used a hair from a cat you only partially changed because the potion didn't have the power to move you all of the way."

"But fairy magic is all about change," Luna continued softly. "Most of the art of Transfiguration as it is taught today is actually inherited from the Celts, who were far superior to the Romans in that area because of their study of fairies. About the most advanced Greco-Roman expression of that art was that performed by Circe, who changed men to pigs and back again - and even she was more a student of fairy lore on that subject than other Greeks."

"Flesh to flesh transfiguration is actually not as hard as some of the other materials they have us using, even as early students," Harry admitted. "To give you an idea, most magical cultures had examples of people who could transform themselves into animals and back again."

Luna fixed her with an otherworldly gaze. "But only one could teach students how to change matchsticks to needles and back again, beetles into buttons, or other lessons we have already performed. Only one culture had that deep a knowledge of change, and they got it from the fey. We are lucky to have inherited that skill from those Romans who were so impressed by them that after they defeated the Celts they then studied those arts from them."

Harry was rubbing his eyes again. "So you get an idea of what a powder keg it is we are igniting when we take something designed for change, and charge it with actual substance from the body of a fairy creature. It would not be too extreme to compare it to throwing sticks of TNT onto a campfire. There is no question it will work. There is also no question but what we are unleashing something far beyond our control here."

Harry paused before continuing. "The only matter under debate is 'can we survive this'. And the answer to that would almost certainly be 'No' if the fey weren't also so unpredictable."

"So there is definitely a very slim chance we'll survive," Luna confirmed, before halting herself. "As what is the problem."

Harry nodded. He started speaking, then stopped himself. A full and detailed account of their dangers was enough to turn hair white, and wouldn't be useful in any case. Scaring themselves out of their wits could only make their problems worse. Best to summarize.

He rubbed his temples. "It's like a strange game of Russian Roulette. We could be perfectly fine. There is also a chance that we'll die. However, as the fey are generally inoffensive it is not so much our lives on the line, although those are most certainly at risk, as what form our bodies eventually wind up in. To 'survive' in this context means getting out of here and back to school in a form that can eventually be returned to normal."

"And while that is far from impossible, it is not likely either," Luna supplied before rushing ahead to reassure, "Having polyjuice charged to return us to ourselves multiplies our chances for a correct resolution, to where it is not unlikely we will be able to return to our birth forms, and even more likely we will achieve at least a close approximation thereof."

"But it does magnify our other risks," Harry admitted, suppressing a groan. "The shock stands a decent chance of killing us if we try to return that way. However if we can arrange to do it in the hospital wing Madam Pomphrey can almost certainly save us from that."

Hermione visibly thought this over, and after several more moments to process what they'd just said, she looked up at them. "This is also the only way I'm ever likely to see my family again, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so, yes," Harry reluctantly agreed.