Chapter Text

Hermione Granger had long been used to hearing voices, not all of them her own.

For years following the end of the second wizarding war, she had been haunted by memories and recollections of her past experiences, both in her waking and sleeping hours. But as time passed, even the darkest of those memories at last quieted, their visits reserved for rare occasions.

Often she heard only her own voice, overactive in the distant reaches of her mind. Questioning the merit of her decisions on a convoluted, consistent loop.

And as an Unspeakable who had spent three years studying the origins and finalities of life in the Death Chamber, she was plagued with the voices of those ghosts, too.

The unceasing whispers echoing from beyond the veil had become an endless symphonic accompaniment to her daily tasks. The voices of those who had passed to the other side, calling out to her and begging her to hear their pleas.

Most of the time, Hermione was able to tune them out as background noise.

Invariably, they grew loudest at Samhain, when the veil between worlds was at its thinnest. So she had heard, strange things sometimes occurred in the chamber in the dead of night.

But every so often—so infrequent as to catch her attention when it happened—one of the voices would shift.

She couldn't say with any certainty why such a shift would occur, but it was one of the things she spent her time in the chamber studying.

And even rarer still were the threads—barely a filament—that would reach out from within the veil.

Blood tethers, the Lead Unspeakable had called them, when Hermione had first begun her studies in the Death Chamber, buried in the deep recesses of the Department of Mysteries. The faint, unknown element by which some transitory souls still clung to the mortal world.

No one knew why and how one would originate, often without any due cause, only that they were incredibly rare and signified one thing: a singular chance for the passed soul to be revived with a limited window. And if the opportunity were to be cast aside, the tether withdrawn, the chance would be lost.

Only twice had Hermione seen a blood tether in person. And twice, the opportunity had been missed.

So when there was a shift in one particular voice, accompanied by the faint shrill cry of a blood tether, Hermione's eyes snapped to the veil, her heart leaping into her throat even as she froze to the spot.

She was the only Unspeakable present in the chamber, the air around her stifling with the sudden imposition of such an unexpected occurrence. With caution, she crept closer to the veil, drawing her wand. If she were to startle the tether, it could retreat and be lost.

Sure enough, she could see the faintly glowing filament—barely wider than a strand of hair—and she ducked in, peering closer still. Casting a magnifying spell, Hermione observed the tether to be dark grey, almost black, and her gaze followed the meandering trail of it across the floor, and onto the steps leading away from the veil towards the chamber entrance.

From there, the process of tracking the familial link would grow more complicated, as a blood tether couldn't be physically sustained beyond the magical atmosphere of the Death Chamber.

Sucking in a deep breath, she cast several detection spells meant to determine the bloodline of the traveller.

"No," she whispered to herself, eyes widening as the results came through with a tremour to her wand. In several more attempts, the results coming back conclusive, Hermione grew faint.

The results etched themselves into the floor; her wand fell to the stone with a clatter.

"The tether is House of Black alright," Rocky Sullivan, the supervising Unspeakable in the Death Chamber, murmured, adjusting his glasses.

Hermione felt her heart jump into her throat at the confirmation, nerves fluttering in her stomach. "Where has it come from?"

"It's hard to say," Sullivan mused, carefully stepping away from the veil. "Sometimes there's no trigger for it. The most important thing to worry about for the time being is who the tether is reaching for. Because without knowing that, there's no sense in having a conversation about it at all."

Swallowing, Hermione nodded, retreating to her work station. "I've located a Black family tree." Pausing, she eyed Sullivan for a moment. "How long do you suppose the tether will stick around?"

"Days," Sullivan said, waving an idle hand, "weeks, sometimes months. Longest I've ever seen was four months. Shortest was twelve hours."

Urgency danced across her skin and raced as adrenaline in her veins as she nodded, gesturing towards the family tree. "Ten years ago, Sirius Black fell through the veil." Sullivan hummed, circling around to peer over her shoulder as she continued. "He has two surviving first cousins, Andromeda Tonks, and Narcissa Malfoy—"

"No," Sullivan interrupted, clicking his tongue. "The familial link between cousins isn't strong enough to produce a blood tether. It'll have to be an immediate family member."

Hermione frowned, a deep furrow rising on her brow. "His parents are both dead."

"This one," Sullivan muttered, jamming a finger onto the image. A youthful, scowling face, with scruffy black hair reminiscent of Sirius' before he had passed. "A brother?"

Hesitating for a moment, a flicker of memories chasing through the back of her mind, recollections of a cursed locket, Hermione shook her head. "Regulus Black—his brother—has been dead for over twenty years. Former Death Eater."

Silence descended upon the pair of them. Tapping his fingers on the bench, Sullivan shook his head. "Then there's someone else—or something you're missing. The tether can't lie."

Hermione's eyes lingered for a long moment on the hand-drawn sketch of Regulus Black.

R.A.B.

The boy who had joined the Death Eaters as a student at Hogwarts, and later came to regret his decision. Enough so that he had begun their work of dismantling Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes, years before they had even heard of them. A boy who had paid for his decisions with his young life.

A breath hitched in her throat and she corrected in a whisper, "He was presumed dead, over twenty years ago."

With a grimace, Sullivan met her eyes. "Maybe he's less dead than you thought." Tapping once more on the page, he added, "Find him, Granger. This is our first shot in a long time to activate a blood tether."

Although Hermione knew Unspeakable Sullivan's interest in the situation stemmed from the idea of the plethora of potential discoveries that would arise from seeing a blood tether through, she couldn't help the thought from jarring around her skull that it could be a chance to save Sirius as well.

Her eyes drifted across the chamber to where the faint ringing of the tether still echoed, its thread so thin she couldn't see it from a distance.

"Yes, sir," she whispered, "I'll do my best."

Spanning the years since the war had ended, Hermione often found the only constant in her life to be the presence of one Harry Potter.

Once the heat of the battle had cooled, she had been forced to come to terms with the fact that she no longer harboured any true romantic feelings for Ron—and in later years she had come to reflect that they had never really been well aligned—but it had left her on the outs with the entirety of the Weasley clan as a result. Even now, she often felt awkward when in the presence of the large and overbearing family.

Her own parents, while still alive and well in Brisbane, remained in blissful ignorance of the fact that they had a grown daughter. They'd adopted a child two years after the war ended, and it had been a difficult pill for Hermione to swallow when she learned from the healers who continued to monitor her parents' condition in Australia. It still was, some days.

At the time when she had cast the memory charm, she hadn't known whether it would be reversible.

She didn't regret the decision, but persistently questioned it more than any other she had made in her life. Periodically, she still checked in on them, though they would never remember her. And her heart broke more with each visit, watching the young brother grow up who would never know her.

Upon entering the Ministry of Magic, Hermione had floated, adrift, until she had settled on the Department of Mysteries and thrown herself into her work. Completing Unspeakable training had been one of the most challenging but rewarding tasks she had undertaken.

Mentally, emotionally, and physically, her job was demanding in ways she hadn't anticipated, but often it was the only thing she had.

Through everything, Harry had been at her side. He was the most genuine friend she had ever known, and had proven himself time and again since their first year at Hogwarts.

And this—the knowledge of a potential way to save Sirius Black—would be the most difficult secret to keep from Harry in particular. While he knew she couldn't speak about her work, and as an Auror he understood the sentiment, sometimes Hermione wished she could simply tell him everything at their weekly dinner dates.

But this was a path she would need to face without him.

Two days after her discovery of the House of Black blood tether, Hermione arrived at Grimmauld Place for dinner.

The house had felt different ever since Harry and Ginny broke up, but that had been two years ago already. She knew Harry was over his youthful fling, and in a way, it gave the pair of them a certain camaraderie, because Harry was no longer particularly welcome at Weasley family gatherings, either.

Hermione suspected he had been seeing someone, but he hadn't told her yet and she wasn't willing to pry. Not when he'd never pushed her, when she usually had no interest in casual, meaningless dating.

But now, knowing what she had learned about Sirius Black—and about the possibility that Regulus Black hadn't died in that cave after all—being in the house awoke a different sentiment altogether.

"Hermione," Harry said, tugging her into his embrace as soon as she'd crossed the threshold, and when he drew back, he wore a large grin. "It has been a week, let me tell you—I'm glad you see you."

"Same," she murmured, feeling an unexpected sting of moisture as she gazed upon the bright green in his eyes, and she pulled him in for another hug. "It's good to see you."

The next morning, she would make an effort at tracking the reaches of the blood tether, without any frame of reference for how it would go or what she might find at the other end. But if Regulus Black was alive and he'd somehow managed to keep his existence secret for so many years, it would likely be the only way to find him.

Even Unspeakable Sullivan hadn't known the details, since an accessible tether was such a rarity. But in principle the idea of it sounded simple enough.

Hermione had grown used to relying on her magic and her instinct—two things that she would need for this forthcoming task.

Something akin to mischief shone in Harry's green eyes as he drew back, staring at her. His lips twitched with a hint of a smile. "I have something to tell you—I hope it's alright that I invited someone else for dinner tonight as well."

Despite her surprise, Hermione offered him a grin. "I was wondering when this would come up." Scoffing, she added, "Of course it's alright. You know that."

The flush of colour in his cheeks was endearing.

From around the wall that led from the sitting room into the kitchen, a third joined them, rubbing at the back of his neck. Theodore Nott—a former Slytherin from their year, and someone Hermione had seen now and again around the Ministry, but didn't know personally.

Flashing the pair of them a grin, Hermione ignored Theo's proffered hand and pulled him into an embrace as well. While the man stood stunned in her hold, she drew back, and tossed over her shoulder at Harry, "It's like you thought I didn't already know."

With an uneasy chuckle, Harry slipped his hands into his pockets. "Alright then. Shall we eat?"

When she really focused, Hermione often found it easy to slip into the essence of her magic. It was one of the things she enjoyed most about her work as an Unspeakable—rarely did they work in formulas or spellcasting, but in the abstract and convoluted.

The tasks which required her to push everything else away were the ones she often coveted.

Dialing in on the magic of the blood tether, allowing it to infuse with her own, she followed it from the Department of Mysteries on level nine of the Ministry, up to the street above in Whitehall, and away.

She had no idea where the tether would lead, or how far, and all Sullivan had been able to tell her was that she would know when she arrived at the other end.

Which meant she could be following it for days.

Hermione had packed a small assortment of necessities into her old trusty beaded bag, hopeful it would be enough. The sun was warm in the sky as she followed the tether along the road, idly wondering how far she would be meant to walk, and she slipped a pair of sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose.

Her work had led her down stranger paths, to be certain.

After a while, she began to detect the distinct magical tone of the tether, and when she ducked between two buildings and attempted a short-distance Apparition, she was relieved to find the glowing signature still present when she reemerged.

For several hours, she followed the tether in this fashion, testing and stretching the limits of her own magic. It was almost enough to push her nerves to the back of her mind.

She had no idea what sort of a situation she was heading into. Regulus Black had been dead since she was a baby, and now, twenty-five years later, there was a chance he was still alive. It had been difficult enough to wrap her head around the idea of it alone, but now to consider the fact that she would have to attempt to persuade him to return to the wizarding world at long last.

As the tether broached the outskirts of London, Hermione felt a frisson of nerves. It was never likely that Regulus would have stayed in London, given the threat to his life that had existed so implicitly at the time. But decades had passed, and she could only imagine how far he had gone.

The magic drew her outwards into the countryside in a slight tug to the southeast towards the sea, and Hermione drew a map of England from her bag, utilising a quick charm to determine her location.

Cautiously, she tested the tether still further, stretching out her Apparitions to best account for distance while maintaining the connection with her own magic.

The sun bore down on her from high in the sky, indicating mid-afternoon, and she began to wonder whether the magic of the tether would still linger if she had to stop overnight. Furthermore, the issue began to weigh heavily in her mind that if he were overseas, she might not be able to track the tether any further than the coast.

But as she carried on further still, the map indicating she was in East Sussex, the magic began to gradually strengthen. At first she hadn't been certain, the tether still casting a delicate play of magic against her own, but when it began to intensify, a mixture of anticipation and nerves coiled within her chest.

Dialing in on the magic, Hermione continued to follow until she felt the hum of the tether as if it were within her, and she found she no longer had to focus on anything but the faint whisper dragging her along.

And all at once the magic stopped.

A slight breeze played upon the air, tempering the heat of the sun blazing overhead, and she could taste a hint of salt from the sea as it rolled in on the distant southern shores.

Her heart raced an anxious cadence within her chest as Hermione carefully folded her map and tucked it away, steeling herself with a long, deep breath.

Stowing her wand into her pocket within quick reach, Hermione took in her surroundings. The map indicated she was near a town, but she was clearly still in the countryside. But just within her view, towards the town, was a lone building.

Opting to travel the rest of the way on foot, she kept vigilant as she ventured towards the building—a cottage, she noticed as she drew near. A cobbled path led towards a white gate, its paint peeling in a few spots, but the landscaping of the front garden was green and lush, bright flowers in bloom.

It was quite lovely, and she found the enticing beauty of the property implicitly at odds with the warning in her spirit.

She could no longer hear or sense the tether, and she wasn't certain if it was a good thing, or if she had merely arrived.

"You lost?" a voice called, and Hermione flinched viciously, her gaze snapping to the sound of the voice. "I apologise—didn't mean to startle you."

Hermione could only gape as a man walked towards her, even as her heart sank. The man had dark hair and a several-days thick layer of stubble, but he couldn't have been much older than thirty. He was younger than Regulus Black would have been by at least a decade, and she found herself schooling her disappointed reaction with a thick swallow.

"Hello," she said with a sharp nod, proffering a hand. "My name is Hermione Granger."

It occurred to her in that moment, as the man's gaze swept her less than immaculate condition, that she'd been traipsing through the countryside for hours in the blazing sun.

"If you're looking for Heathfield, you're too far east."

Awkwardly allowing her extended hand to drop, Hermione fastened a smile to her lips. "Thank you. Actually, I'm looking for the owner of this property."

The man scowled. "It's not for sale, if that's why you're asking. You'd not be the first."

The cottage ahead of them was lovely as well, rustic but tidy, with dark wood panelling and large, airy windows.

Sucking in a deep breath, Hermione shook her head, attempting a different tactic. "Do you live here?"

His face twisting into an unfriendly grimace, the man's eyes bore into hers. "Why are you asking these questions?"

Something about the defensiveness in his tone spiked her adrenaline and her instincts, and she stared hard at him. "Will you please tell me your name?"

"Name's Roscoe." He folded his arms, the thick muscle of his biceps tightening below the sleeves of his t-shirt, and Hermione allowed her gaze to flicker only for a moment. "Tyler Roscoe."

"Of course," she breathed, attempting a thin smile. "I must be mistaken. Perhaps someone else used to live here?"

"Nope." He snapped the 'p' sound sharply on his lips, lifting a derisive brow. "Pretty certain you're just lost. Like I said, Heathfield is that way." As he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, the look on his face suggested he was through talking with her.

When the man began to turn away from her, panic lanced through her veins and Hermione froze in place, eyes wide. She couldn't believe she had followed the tether this far for nothing.

Frantic, she breathed, "I'm looking for a man named Regulus Black."

Roscoe stopped mid-step, swivelling his face back towards her, expression unreadable. "Never heard of him."

"Are you sure?" Hermione asked, a hint of desperation bleeding into her tone. "It's just—I was informed he lived here, and it's… it's imperative I speak with him."

As he circled slowly back to face her, Hermione was left with the distinct impression of staring down a predator. The man's eyes narrowed on her, his face dark, and if she were of a weaker constitution, she might have turned and ran.

"I don't know," he said, drawing out each word as if she were slow, "what the fuck you're talking about. I would highly suggest you get out of here."

A frisson of genuine fear chased down her spine, and she sucked in a breath with a shaky nod.

"Fine," she whispered, folding her arms across her front in a subliminal effort to protect herself. She had no desire to draw her wand unless she needed to. "I'll leave you alone. I'm sorry for the confusion."

Her eyes drifted from the tension in his shoulders, the slight clench of his hand, the tightness in his grey eyes.

Grey eyes, the exact shade of Sirius Black's.

Heart leaping in her chest, and a breath hitching in her throat, she continued to stare blankly at him.

At last she swallowed, and whispered, "R.A.B."

For a moment so long and so tense Hermione didn't know what to make of it, he only stared back, his jaw clenched and expression stoic. Finally his gaze flickered down towards her pocket where her wand was stowed.

He ground out, "What did you say your name was?"

Squaring her shoulders in an effort to strengthen her resolve, she returned, "Hermione Granger."

"And who sent you?"

"No one." Hermione hesitated, shifting on the spot. "It's… complicated." Watching his face closely for any hint of recognition, she added, "I'm an Unspeakable with the Department of Mysteries."

When no surprise or confusion flickered across his face at her words, she felt a stirring of hope. But his expression remained hard on her as he folded his arms again, his entire stance screaming outright hostility.

He bit out, "How did you find me? Ministry sent you?"

Despite the inferred admission that he was indeed Regulus Black, she couldn't understand how he looked so young. If he had cast any magic in the years since he had been presumed dead, someone would have picked up on it and detected his magical signature. So it obviously wasn't a glamour.

"I'm not here on behalf of the DMLE, if that's what you're asking," she hedged carefully, as if anything she said could spook him. "The Department of Mysteries doesn't care about your past." His eyes tightened, as if with pain. "I'm here to speak with you about your brother, Sirius Black."

Regulus' expression hardened once more, his upper lip curling with a sneer, and he released a sound of disgust from deep in his throat. "My brother is dead."

"I know," Hermione whispered, "I was there when it happened."

It was the first thing she'd said that truly sparked a reaction, tension mingled with devastation tearing across his face before it went blank once more.

With a sharp breath, she went on. "There might be a way we can help him. But I'll need you to come to London with me."

Regulus huffed a humourless laugh, cold and unforgiving. "Not a chance."

Hermione ground her teeth, glaring at his flippant dismissal of her. "His soul is reaching for you."

The man took a step towards her, so close she could see the hints of platinum and slate in his irises as he stared her down. The only concession to his age, despite his appearance, was a slight hint of silver in the dark hair at his temples. She felt a breath catch in her throat.

"Get the fuck," he growled, eyes searing with ire, "off my property."

The limits of her nerves all but expended, Hermione seethed at him for a long moment, heart pumping voraciously in her chest, before she spun on the spot and stalked away.