Back for Good

Summary: Hermione risks a part of her soul to bring Sirius back from the Veil. Will her sacrifice be for nothing? And what exactly has she given up, as Sirius finds himself amongst the living once more?

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Hermione was sure she could stay in the Black family library for the rest of her days. It was truly expansive, the variety unprecedented and the content… well, it was enough for the young bibliophile to forgo food and slumber for its more persuasive charm of knowledge.

However, Hermione Granger was not on a typical fact-finding mission, nor was she collecting research. She had a goal, an end to which she was striving and she was certain the answer lied within the maudlin walls of number twelve Grimmauld Place. The secret she sought was closer every day. She had only yet to crack the right tome, to peruse the exact sentence that would bring him back; but she had no doubt that he would be returning to them soon.

After the war had ended and life was supposed to go, Hermione could not fill the empty void within her that seemed to grow with every marriage, every birth, and every new friendship. Something was missing, someone should be here. The way Sirius Black disappeared beyond the veil was mysterious and unfair, and Hermione knew something was wrong with the picture. People don’t just vanish; the veil called Sirius for a reason, there was something more to this than just another death of one of their friends. There was no closure behind his death and if there was anything Hermione Granger hated, it was unfinished business.

Expansive though the library might be, there was not enough information on the veil to push Hermione in the right direction, though she had learned more than was previously known. For example, in modern wizarding folklore, the veil was considered to separate the world of the living and the world of the beyond, but in ancient times, the veil was a conduit between two dimensions and her research suggested that communication, if not direct travel, through the veil was possible.

Hermione sighed and closed yet another personal journal of a Black ancestor, having found little more than conjecture and speculation. She pushed the book back onto a space on the shelf, but something seemed to be in the way. The path was clear but the book would not slide into the space. She frowned, stared at the empty space on the shelf and raised a curious finger to see if something was actually there. To her surprise, her finger fell upon a book, invisible to her eye but tangible to her touch. This was more than a Disillusionment spell, which would make the cover of the book seem innocuous, or a spell to deter her attention.

She pulled the invisible book from the shelf and gazed upon it. She only saw her hands raised in front of her chest, palms forward, but she could clearly feel the somewhat tattered and leathery texture of the book. She tried every spell in her arsenal to get the book to reveal itself, even whispering in desperation, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good!” but to no avail. The book remained hidden from her sight and somehow she just knew it would have the answer she needed. She had to uncover its secrets.

After eating dinner and falling into bed, Hermione, as the current sole occupant of Sirius’ family home, pondered what the next step was. Obviously, more research was in order, but that was her answer for everything. The invisible book was perched on her bedside table, awaiting its undesired reveal, because for whatever reason, she had felt ill when she thought about putting it back on the shelf. She felt as though if she did, she would never find it again. She leaned over the caressed the cover, reassuring herself it was still there. She fell into a restless sleep.

She was tied again, always tied. She couldn’t see the ropes but she could feel them twisting, tightening. There was screaming around her and the smell of old blood assaulted her senses. She could see nothing in the darkness and her voice made no sound. She pulled ever harder against her restraints, her hands above her head and her feet tied together below her, but no relief was to be had. Her feet scrambled for purchase on the cold stone beneath her and found none.

Suddenly, all was silent and a faint whispering could be heard in the distance. It grew stronger until indistinct voices could be heard, voices that seemed to be pleading to her, but she was in no position to acquiesce. The voices grew louder until they were deafening her, they seemed to be inside her head and the noise grew to cacophonic levels.

Suddenly something cold and sharp touched the flesh above her heart. It sliced into her, drawing a silent scream from her lips as the knife drew over her skin. The would was inflicted quickly but the pain did not recede and she could feel the warm wetness spilling over her sides and down her stomach, too much blood for what felt like a flesh wound, but it was pumping out of her and onto the stone below and the noise in her head finally died away to silence as her blood poured out of a single wound. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, the blood pooling beneath her, slicking the stone and drenching her body. Too much blood.

She pulled her hands once more in vain against her restraints before her vision faded to black

Hermione woke up gasping, clutching at her heart to stop the blood flow. Dry, she was dry. There was no blood. Her hands were painfully clenched, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms bitingly. She tried to straighten her fingers but her nails were imbedded in her skin. She stretched them quickly and felt the blood pool in her hand. The dream had never been that bad before.

In the semi-darkness, Hermione reached over the bedside table, feeling for the book that she could not see. Once she felt it and was certain it was still there, she reached further and grasped her wand. Murmuring a healing spell on both her palms, she fell back into a blissfully dreamless sleep.


When Hermione awoke, it was with the feeling that she had not slept at all. She remembered her nightmare, as she always did, and was disturbed at its content but not afraid. After all, dreams are not reality! She stretched languidly on the bed and glanced over at the alarm clock to see it was early morning, her internal clock faithful as ever. Dressing quickly, she moved to the kitchen to get a pot of tea started. Toast and tea in hand, she retired to the overly large dining room, wondering what need there was for so much space, and feeling quite insignificant in the large wooden chairs.

She thought about what she would do today. She wanted to see Harry, but she could not tell him about the book she’d found. For reasons she promised she would examine later, she wanted to keep the book’s existence a secret until she knew exactly what it meant. After all, it could be nothing more than a family recipe album, she told herself. No sense getting excited over Grandma’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

She knew Harry had mourned Sirius and was not expecting him to come back any more than he expected Dumbledore or Remus to return. To everyone else, Sirius was as dead as the rest of them. But something told Hermione he wasn’t quite gone. And so she kept her plan a secret, knowing it would only hurt Harry more, getting his hopes up to have them dashed again.

Now that the war had ended there was no real reason for the Order of the Phoenix. They still existed in theory but the meetings were long over. Grimmauld Place became nothing more than a relic, a useful place for people to come and go. Harry let her stay here in return for her keeping up with the place, maintaining the wards and preventing doxy infestations. Sometimes other people stayed here as well; Lavender had stayed for the week before her wedding to Ron, and Ginny had done the same before her nuptials to Harry. Alastor Moody came and went, probably checking up on her, Hermione groused, used to being treated like a daughter by all her surrogate fathers in the Order. She sometimes liked having other people here, but Harry preferred his rebuilt family home in Godric’s Hollow, and Ron and his family remained at the Burrow. She was alone and mostly preferred it that way.

She and Ron had broken up after the war when they both realized, Ron with a little help in the right direction, that they were better as friends. Neither had felt passionately about the other in any romantic way, and Hermione, though bookish, was a passionate witch. She thought. She never really had the opportunity to explore that thought, however, since she had been a virgin when she and Ron split, and remained thus due to lack of viable options, and lack of general interest on her part. She went on dates, mostly set up by her well-intentioned friends, but preferred her self-inflicted exile.

She did have to go to work though, as much as she would love to stay and research the book a little more. She worked in the Ministry in administration, but it was a stepping stone and would lead to great things. She had been offered more prestigious titles but liked the extra time her job afforded her for her personal research which she published whenever possible. She had her own money from the Order of Merlin pension, and all in all lived a fairly contented life, except for the niggling thought that would not leave her, telling her that Sirius needed help.

And so she was helping the only way she knew how, by burying her head in tomes and reading until her vision blurred.

After she returned from work, exhausted and mentally weary, Hermione made a quick dinner and indulged in a bath. It was strange to be so alone, some days it felt like she didn’t open her mouth to speak at all. But that was somewhat true; once she Floo’d home from work, it was rare that she spoke aloud, and she knew she was grateful she had not begun to talk to herself, but fretted that day was not far.

Hermione wrapped herself in a towel and reached for her bedside table drawer for her moisturizer. Her hand froze in midair when she processed what she was seeing. The book. The book! It was there, plain as day, right before her eyes! She gasped, not daring to touch it, and sat upon the bed, drinking it in. What had happened?

Garnering courage, she stroked her finger along its cover and could have sworn she felt an answering finger brush down her spine. Shivering briefly, Hermione hefted the book into her lap. The title, to her eternal gratitude, was “Ancient Necromancing Rituals and Artifacts”. Scarcely believing her fortune, she carefully opened the book. Her breath was taken away by the page the book had, of its own accord, flipped to. The Veil.

But once she began to read, the words faded before her eyes. “No!” She cried out, watching the answers she had dared to dream would await her dissipate. Only the title of the chapter remained, a monument to how utterly she had failed.

She left the book open beside her on the bed, staring at it as she dressed, no daring to tear her eyes away lest the words return. What had made the book appear in the first place? She was sure this was part of the puzzle. Somehow, overnight, the book had deigned to make its presence known. Had she done something? Said the “magic word” in her sleep, somehow?

She closed the book, allowing herself to study the cover in more detail, now that the contents were absent. It appeared to be bound in human flesh, which disgusted her but did not surprise her. So many ancient Dark texts were made of flesh and written in blood, though this seemed to be written in magic instead, blood not having the ability to fade and reappear at will. She passed her fingers over the cover in a desperate attempt to appease it somehow, when her eyes were drawn to two small rust-coloured smears on the cover, beneath the title. It seemed the smears were as old as the book itself, but they felt almost moist beneath her fingers. Something tickled her memory: last night, she had grazed the book with her palm to ascertain its presence before healing her hand wounds. She had touched the book with her blood!

There was a reason wizards and witches did not go around doing blood magic to get whatever they wanted. It stole something from the person, demanding sacrifices in return for its delights, often after the fact and always more than the person was willing to give. But Hermione was determined, she would give of her blood to read the text, and she would bring Sirius back no matter what the cost to her. This was all she had cared about for the last three years since the end of the war; she would accept the challenge and Harry would have his godfather back.

Hermione found a ceremonial dagger among the items in the attic, and after checking it for its own Dark magic, for it would not do to bind herself to two masters, so to speak, she sterilized it and placed the book on the kitchen table, her quill and parchment at her right, dagger ready to press into her left hand. She opened the book.

Again, it flew to the page she most desired. She wasted no time and plunged the dagger in her fingertip, barely whimpering at the pain in her frenzy to read the words. She squeezed drops of her blood onto the page and the book absorbed them instantly. Slowly, word by word, the text appeared. She copied in a flurry, not taking the time to absorb what she was reading. Page after page she anointed with her blood until she had opened four fresh wounds on her fingertips and finally dragged the blade across her palm for a more free-flowing stream. The pain was barely registering in her vigor.

She turned the page yet again and saw the heading “In which what we desire returns to us”. This was it!

She dropped more blood onto the page, but though the book absorbed it, it was not revealing the words. She howled in frustration. There was more, she knew the answer was right there! Desperate, she dragged the knife deeper in the wound on her palm, but though it bled profusely and she began to feel lightheaded, the words remained unsurfaced.

Suddenly something cold and sharp touched the flesh above her heart. Hermione gasped. That must be the answer, then. Her dream had told her what to do, the book wanted blood from her breast, from above her heart, not her hand! The freshest blood, the purest! It was so obvious now, Hermione laughed to herself and tore the sweater from her body, leaving only a thin camisole. It was cold in the house but her body had a sheen of sweat covering it and she felt no chill but the one in her soul. She placed the blade over her heart and paused, knowing this was the moment she could not turn back from. Once she spilled this blood, the dark magic would have a hold on her.

She hesitated no more and drew the dagger sharply over her heart. She cried out, the pain much greater than that of her hand, almost too much; it felt like the wound was on fire and frozen at the same time, like it delved much deeper than the surface, like it went directly into her heart, into her soul itself. She stood up, wavering slightly, and leaned over the book. The blood dripped steadily onto its pages and the words appeared instantly, much faster than before. She copied two paragraphs of information, again not fully registering the words, and then turned the page, her blood still dripping, and her camisole morbid in its anointment. This page was a recipe for a potion. As she wrote, all but one ingredient was familiar to her, but she knew who indeed would find it for her. The last page before a new title regarding earthbound spirits was revealed was an incantation in another language, one she did not recognize—no words were familiar and she only hoped she would say it correctly when the time came. When she had copied the last word of the incantation, the book slammed shut and Hermione fainted.