Out of Time

Chapter 7

Hermione does her level best not to chew on her lip all through dinner. It's been thoroughly abused of late.

Voldemort and Horcruxes. They turn over and over, like two sides of a coin. Hermione wonders if she flipped it in the air, which would land face up.

Harry and Dumbledore did brainstorm some thoughts on what he might have used to make them. Voldemort was drawn to artefacts of significance, whether magical or historical. He showed Harry a memory of a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff, who'd obtained a cup owned by the original founder, and a necklace that was rumoured to belong to the Slytherin family.

The ring Dumbledore had found belonged to a Slytherin descendant, an offshoot of the core family called the Gaunts. He thinks Voldemort would have been drawn to a family antique, especially if it could have magical importance, too.

So; her mind rattles them off on repeat. Gone: Diary and ring. Possibilities: cup and locket. And the snake. And then, what?

No one knows. But that makes five, plus the bit in Voldemort himself, and Dumbledore thinks he'd be drawn to seven. The number may mean nothing at all, but it's supposed to have a mystical power in itself.

One is missing, at a minimum. Hermione still doesn't like the open-ended question of whether there are more. How could they ever know for sure?

Raucous laughter brings her back to the present, where Theo has engaged Cormac in Quidditch heckling. Hermione's entertained to see that a decent majority of the table appears to be siding with Theo about whatever is being debated. She wonders if Theo is just that likeable or if Cormac is just that disliked, even among his own house?

Cormac boasts that he's skipping the upcoming Hogsmeade weekend for extra practice and challenges the Gryffindors at the table to join him, all to make sure they beat Slytherin in the House Cup. Hermione recalls that Harry will not be playing in that game, so Cormac must be - as if he's not obnoxious enough.

She and Theo will be going to Hogsmeade, but so will Draco and Pansy. Hermione thinks that'll be a good initial place to be seen as all four of them together.

Harry will be in detention. Ron will be with Lavender, since he still hasn't ditched her. She's sitting in his lap right now, trying to feed him baby carrots one at a time from her fingers. How can Lavender not see how much Ron hates this? It's so obvious. Ron opens his teeth just far enough to accept each baby carrot, chews for an exhausting amount of time before finally swallowing, and reluctantly opens his mouth for the next one.

What will it take for him to finally break things off? Not a nineteenth baby carrot, it would seem. Oh, no, Lavender's swapped to celery. Ron's ingested all the carrots. Hm.

Whatever. Not her business. Other matters are more pressing, Hogsmeade plans among them. Hermione may as well begin incorporating herself into her new group, even though Theo is doing an admirable job of coming at it from the other direction.

And when's Harry's next meeting with Dumbledore? What will they do? Will Dumbledore tell him more about Horcruxes, even though he's plainly reluctant to share details? It's so contradictory, it makes Hermione want to scream. Tell the underage wizard all about a banned subject, then decline to share details that could prove extremely important.

But maybe he won't refuse to share them, she reasons. Maybe Dumbledore's figuring it all out, too. They need to find out how he destroyed the ring. Hermione has a sneaking feeling the ring is why Dumbledore's hand is dead and withered, resembling a black skeleton wrapped in a few tendons and some limp skin.

What worked in the Chamber of Secrets? How had Harry done it? Hermione hadn't been there. Fawkes had brought Harry the Sorting Hat, which had coughed up the sword of Gryffindor. That was probably it. It seems likely.