Chapter 7: The Invitation
The world outside the Vault chamber felt jarringly loud and bright. The murmur of Ministry workers, the clatter of typewriters, the cheerful, mindless buzz of everyday life—it was all an assault on senses still attuned to a silent, ancient grief. Hermione moved through her day on autopilot, filing reports, attending a mind-numbingly dull meeting on cauldron bottom thickness, but her mind was a million miles away, trapped in a dungeon, feeling the echo of a sorrow that wasn't her own.
And his hand. She couldn't stop thinking about the warmth of his hand.
It had been a clinical gesture, she told herself. A magical conduit. A necessary step in the research. But the memory of his calloused fingers wrapped around hers, the quiet intensity in his voice as he guided her, felt anything but clinical. It felt… intimate.
Shaking her head, she tried to focus on the memo in front of her. It was no use. The words "standardized floo powder distribution" swam before her eyes. With a sigh of frustration, she gave up and decided to call it a day.
She was packing her bag when an owl she didn't recognize landed precariously on the edge of her desk, a small, neatly folded parchment tied to its leg. It wasn't Cassian's eagle-owl or his speedy little brown one. This was a sleek, grey Ministry bird.
Frowning, she untied the note. The script was sharp and precise, unmistakably his.
Granger,
The resonance patterns shift at night. The 'heartbeat' slows. I'll be at the site from 8 PM until midnight to monitor the cycle. Given your… sensitivity to the Vault's nature, your observations could be relevant. Don't feel obligated.
—C.T.
Hermione stared at the note. It wasn't a request. It wasn't an order. It was an invitation. A grudging, professionally-framed, but undeniable invitation. Your observations could be relevant. And that single, loaded word: sensitivity. He was acknowledging what had happened that morning. He wasn't dismissing it.
A war waged inside her. One part, the sensible, exhausted part, screamed to go home, have a cup of tea, and read a book that didn't hum with existential sorrow. The other part, the part that had felt that tear track its way down her cheek, the part that was desperate to understand, was already calculating how quickly she could eat dinner.
She looked at the clock. 6:30 PM.
"Don't feel obligated," he'd written. As if she could possibly do anything else.
---
At 7:55 PM, she was walking through the quiet halls of Hogwarts. The castle at night was a different creature. Shadows clung to the corners, and the portraits dozed in their frames. The two Aurors at the dungeon door nodded sleepily as she passed, used to her comings and goings by now.
She pushed the heavy door open. The chamber was darker than during the day, lit only by the soft, blue glow of Cassian's floating orbs. They cast long, dancing shadows, making the room feel both smaller and more immense. He was there, his back to her, a silhouette against the pulsating, dark surface of the Vault.
He didn't turn around. "You're early."
"I'm punctual," she corrected, her voice echoing softly.
He half-turned, and in the dim light, she could see he had abandoned his robes again. He was in a simple, dark jumper and trousers. It made him look younger, less like the untouchable Unspeakable and more like… a man. A very focused, very intense man.
"I've been tracking the deceleration for the past hour," he said, turning back to the Vault. "It's gradual. Like a body settling into a deep sleep."
Hermione moved to stand beside him, maintaining a careful foot of distance between them. She could feel the shift immediately. The hum was lower, deeper, a slow, dragging cadence that felt heavy and somnolent.
"You're right," she whispered, not wanting to disturb the quiet. "It's different."
"For now, we observe," he said. "No instruments. No spells. Just… watch."
So they did. For the next hour, they stood in silence, two sentinels in the blue-tinged gloom, watching the slow dance of light within the Vault. The milky swirls moved with a lazy, hypnotic rhythm. It was strangely peaceful, a shared vigil.
The silence between them was no longer charged with competition. It was a comfortable, working silence, punctuated only by the soft sound of their breathing and the deep, sleeping hum of the Vault.
Eventually, her feet began to ache from standing on the cold stone. She shifted her weight, and the sound seemed unnaturally loud.
Cassian glanced at her. "There's a conjured bench over there," he said, nodding towards a shadowy corner where a simple, stone bench stood. "I got tired of standing."
It was such a normal, human admission that it took her by surprise. She walked over and sat, grateful for the rest. He remained standing, but after a few minutes, he walked over and sat on the other end of the bench, leaving a wide, respectful space between them.
They sat in the quiet for another long moment.
"Who do you think built it?" Hermione asked, her voice soft. The question felt right in the nocturnal hush.
"I don't know," he said, his own voice low. "Someone powerful. And someone who knew a grief so complete that the only way to survive it was to put it to sleep."
"Not to destroy it?"
"Some things can't be destroyed," he said, looking at the Vault. "They can only be… managed. Contained. This is a work of profound respect. Not fear."
It was the most he had ever volunteered about his thoughts on the matter. Hermione found herself leaning slightly forward, captivated.
"You sound like you admire them."
"I admire the craft," he corrected, a familiar defensiveness creeping back into his tone. "The magic is… flawless. It's a masterpiece of intent."
"But you don't admire the grief."
He was silent for so long she thought he wasn't going to answer. When he did, his voice was so quiet she almost missed it.
"Grief is just love that has nowhere to go."
The words hung in the cold air, simple and devastating. Hermione felt them settle deep inside her, resonating with a truth she knew all too well. The grief for Fred, for Lupin, for Tonks, for all the lives lost… it was just the love they all still had for them, with no one left to give it to.
She looked at his profile, etched in the blue light. The sharp nose, the stubborn set of his jaw. In this moment, he wasn't the arrogant curse-breaker or the reluctant colleague. He was just a man, sitting in the dark, understanding the language of a broken heart written in magic.
"You're different than I thought you were," she said before she could stop herself.
He turned his head, his eyes meeting hers across the space on the bench. In the gloom, they were dark pools, unreadable.
"Oh?" The single word was a challenge, but a soft one. "And what did you think I was?"
"A arrogant, condescending… genius," she finished, the last word leaving her lips almost reluctantly.
A slow, genuine smile touched his mouth. It was the first real, unguarded smile she had ever seen from him, and it transformed his entire face, softening the severe lines and lighting up his eyes. It was, she realized with a jolt, a very handsome smile.
"The feeling," he said, the smile lingering, "was mutual."
Hermione felt a laugh bubble up in her chest, born of surprise and a sudden, unexpected lightness. She stifled it, but a smile broke through on her own face.
The Vault hummed its low, sleeping song. On a stone bench in a dungeon, the space between two rivals felt, for the first time, not like a battlefield, but like a bridge. And somewhere in the quiet, a new, much more complicated resonance had begun to hum.