Harry raced away and vanished into his mother's embrace while Hermione was still dusting Floo Powder from her robes. She decided, there and then, that this was far too messy a way to travel for her liking. It was positively heathen. She crossly expected to be picking little green specks from her bushy tresses for the next couple of weeks.

But she had more pressing concerns than her looks right now. For Sirius had gently steered her into the curved kitchen, under the pretence of making tea while the Potters enjoyed a family reunion. But he had a blatant ulterior motive, and he hissed it out, just as the kettle was hissing the boiling water as cover.

"So ... where is he?" Sirius demanded lowly.

Hermione swallowed, hard and nervous as she turned to look at him. "I don't know who you mean."

"Yes you do," Sirius insisted. "Your dæmon ... where is he? And where's Lyra?"

"Please, Mr Black ... I can explain ..."

"Yes you damned well can ... and you will," Sirius growled. "But perhaps not here. There is one thing you're going to tell me though."

Then he faced Hermione straight up, towered over her imposingly so that she bumped her back against the countertop. His expression was blacker than his family name.

"Tell me, right now ... are you here to hurt Harry?"

Hermione was terribly frightened for about three seconds. But then she relaxed at the question.

"Hurt him! Oh no, you've got that all wrong!" Hermione whispered back animatedly. "I came here to meet him, to help him, to - well ... that's why I'm here, anyway. I only have Harry's best interests at heart, I swear it to you!"

"I am very glad to hear it," Sirius replied, easing a little but still looking wary. "And your dæmon?"

"We can Separate," Hermione disclosed. "But he is at Hogwarts with me."

"Just like Lyra," Sirius nodded, remembering. "And where is she?"

"I don't know, exactly," Hermione confessed. "We took a house in Oxford, but I don't know if she's there now. It was like being at home, if you know what I mean. But she's off doing the same thing I am - trying to help Harry, wherever she is. We all are."

"We?"

"There's my ... my father, Malcolm, too," Hermione began, then she stopped and took a deep sigh. "Oh well, I suppose you know that I've not been entirely truthful so far. So I'll start again. Mal isn't my father, we are just pretending while we are in this world. Lyra, too."

"What ... so she isn't your mother?" Sirius hushed, odd relief in his voice.

"No, but we have to say she is," Hermione clarified. "It prevents awkward questions, you know."

"I do, I do," Sirius nodded. "Thank Merlin for that ... for a moment there, I thought you might be mine!"

"How could I ... oh!" Hermione whispered, then she broke out into a little giggle. "You and Lyra were intimate, weren't you?"

"Within a few days of meeting!" Sirius smirked. "Phew! That's a weight off. You've probably noticed with Harry that my parenting skills are a little wayward! I didn't want to ruin two children in one lifetime!"

"I wouldn't agree with that at all," Hermione frowned. "I've not known Harry a month and I already know that he's the best thing to ever happen to me. You must have had a hand in that, Mr Black."

"You will call me Sirius, or I will get cross with you for lying to Harry!" Sirius warned with a grin.

Hermione smiled shyly back. "Okay, I'll try. You and Lyra are the same like that. She wont let me be formal, either."

"The Lyra Belacqua that I knew had very little when it came to propriety!" Sirius laughed lowly. "It was what attracted me to her in the first place. I'm glad to see she hasn't mellowed. I like my women a bit on the feisty side."

"I think you should know, she threatens to kill you, or cut bits off of you, at least once every couple of days," Hermione informed him. "And I'm not entirely sure she's being figurative! I think you should have waited until you were back in this world before taking another lover!"

Sirius chuckled deeply again. "Thank you for warning me! Now, this Malcolm you mentioned ... would he happen to be Malcolm Polstead?"

Hermione blinked in her surprise. "Y-yes? How do you know that?"

"Hmm. I think that there is more to this situation than we all realise," Sirius mused. "You see, Malcolm Polstead has met with Lily ... Harry's mother, you know. He said he was travelling with a young girl who shares a very special destiny with Harry. If that's anyone but you I wont just eat my hat, I'll gobble down my entire wardrobe!"

Hermione was frozen in her shock. Mal had met with Lily ... and didn't tell her? More importantly, what did he tell Lily? Hermione shivered as a bout of nerves covered her. Clearly, Sirius hadn't lost any of his extra-sensory skills, that would have come with his having a dæmon, for he stepped forward and placed a comforting hand on Hermione's shoulder.

"Dont fret, Hermione," Sirius soothed. "Lily is very keen to meet you. I don't know what it is she knows about you, but she's talked of little else but finding you for weeks. She will be stunned when she finds out who you are!"

Hermione wasn't sure how she felt about that, but she quickly began fussing with her hair, lest she had missed flecks of that bothersome Floo Powder, and now looked like some glittered-up floozy-witch.

That was not the impression she wanted to give to Harry's Mum at their first introduction.

By this time, Harry had noticed that Hermione has been missing for at least five minutes. So he scurried to the kitchen to investigate her disappearance.

"What are you doing?" Harry enquired. "You could grow tea leaves faster than you two are making a cup! What are you talking about?"

Hermione threw a pleading look at Sirius, who agreed on continuing the ruse for now.

"Just getting acquainted," Sirius replied breezily. "I wanted to know a little about the reason that you spent three pages of a letter justifying to me why I should practically become a silent partner in the magical world's biggest sweet-shop chain!"

Harry blushed as Hermione quizzically mouthed 'three pages?' at him, which - they both knew - was longer than his average homework effort. He found he couldn't look her in the eye just then. So he busied himself taking the tea tray to his parents and pouring his mother a cup.

"We have company?" James quirked, as Harry forgot to pour him a tea. "And who is this?"

Then several odd things happened. First, Harry saw Sirius fix Lily with a potent, charged stare. It was so charged, in fact, that Harry felt his hair stand on end as they locked eyes over his head, almost as if a spell had passed between them, which Harry was puzzled by. He'd never heard of magic like that at Hogwarts. But then, something even stranger happened.

His mother gasped aloud ... almost as if she'd been told a shocking secret.

Harry frowned at her. "What's the matter?"

"What? Oh, oh ..." Lily flustered, trying to recover herself. "It was the tea, that's all. It was very hot."

"Oh, sorry," Harry apologised. "I do that all the time. Auntie Min bought me a salve for it. It's in the bathroom, I'll just go and fetch it."

As soon as Harry had sprinted out of sight down the arcing passage around the kitchen, Lily beckoned Hermione forward imploringly.

"You? You're Hermione?" Lily whispered. It was as much a surprised statement as it was a question.

"What!" James hushed lowly. "Not the Hermione?"

Hermione frowned a little. "There's a 'the' Hermione? What does that mean?"

James smirked at her. "Please don't be affronted. We were told about a very special girl called Hermione, who would come to this world ... and that is destined to become ... well, very close with our Harry. And that's you, then?"

Hermione was suddenly very bashful and could only nod by way of reply.

"And you're friends with him already?" Lily asked softly. Hermione nodded again. "Well, at least that means our boy has made a good impression on you!"

"Oh, he has!" Hermione chirruped. "The best. He's so lovely, Mrs Potter, he really is."

"Best keep that to yourself," Lily quirked. "For if Harry is anything like his father, his ego is likely to grow at the slightest thing!"

"Hey ... I'm sitting right here!" James protested good-naturedly.

"How could we forget?" Lily quipped with a teasing wink. "Your head is so dense it has its own gravitational pull! We're all lucky not to be orbiting it!"

"How are you anyway, Mr Potter?" Hermione asked politely, as James made a face at his wife. "I hear you were injured?"

James and Lily exchanged an approving grin, which only deepened when Sirius added, "And if you ask Hermione very nicely, she might be able to suggest a potion or two to help with your recovery. She knew about the uses of ... er ... Thestral baby-making juice! Who knows what else might be stored in that impressive brain of hers!"

Lily looked at him pityingly, then she turned to Hermione. "Ignore Sirius and his childish inability to call a spade a spade. But that is very advanced Potion knowledge. How did you find that out?"

"Well, Harry recommended I read Hogwarts: A History," Hermione began. "And that's where I found out about the Thestrals pulling the carriages, and how they can only be seen by people who have witnessed death. But I was curious about how that worked, because they obviously were not actually invisible, so I looked it up. That's where I found out that they secrete a pheromone which causes their camouflage. It didn't explain how it stopped working, though."

"Once a person witnesses death, it produces a neuro-chemical in the brain as a coping mechanism," Lily explained. "This nullifies the effect of the Thestral pheromone, allowing a person to see them. Thestral fluids can be adapted to affect the brain in a similar way for other things, manipulated to make whatever the brewer wants to conceal essentially unseeable. It is used extensively by St Mungo's in mental spell trauma treatment."

"Like on Frank and Alice Longbottom?" Hermione asked cautiously.

Lily's face lost all its colour at once. "Frank and Alice ... you know them?"

"I spent six months with them in my world, preparing me to come here," Hermione replied. "I'm sure they'd be thrilled for me to tell you that they are totally fine there. They didn't say you were friends, Harry told me that. But they did ask me to keep an eye on Neville, their son."

"A proper little guardian angel, aren't you?" James quipped with a smile.

"Who's an angel?" Harry asked as he came skidding back into the room with the burn salve. "Or is Hermione boasting about her singing voice again?!"

"You sing?" Lily cried, delightedly.

"A bit," Hermione mumbled. "But I'm better at playing the Celtic Flute. My mother is Cymraeg, you see, and she plays so beautifully, so I tried to learn. I'm not as good as her, but I practice a lot."

"You didn't tell me that!" Harry whispered. "You'll have to do a little performance for me."

"I will play, but please don't make me sing," Hermione begged.

"If you like," Harry agreed. "But don't think I wont hold you to that promise!"

"Harry, where are your manners?" Lily admonished. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

"But ... I thought by now you'd have already met," Harry frowned, confused.

"We have," Lily replied. "But it is still polite to introduce us properly to your friends."

"Oh, right ... sorry," Harry mumbled guiltily. "Mum, Dad - this is Hermione Granger. We met on the train on the way to school and she's already my best friend. And she's the best in our year, and knows a little bit about everything, and we both like pumpkin pie, and she prefers liquorice wands to Bertie Bott's Beans - and so do I, after Sirius gave me an ingrowing toenail-flavoured one - and she is four foot one-and-three-quarters, and she doesn't like heights, and because of that she's not very happy on a broomstick, which is pretty much the only thing she's not good at that I've found so far."

Harry said all this very fast and without drawing breath. He looked at Hermione to see if he'd forgotten anything important. He thought he should have added that she blushed a lot, like now, because her cheeks were so red she looked like she was on fire. Harry felt immediately bad for embarrassing her, as she looked so meek and awkward now.

But the idea of fire and burning jolted his memory, so he hurried forward without looking at Hermione and passed the salve in his hand to his mother, who was just beaming at him.

"Sorry," Harry muttered, thought he wasn't quite sure who he was addressing.

James, sensing his son's adorably cute awkwardness, turned attention onto himself.

"So, your mother gets a salve for her burn and what do I get?" James cried in fake chiding. "Absolutely nothing. At least your ... er ... friend had the good politeness to ask how I was. My own son ... not even caring about his old Dad, eh? What is the world coming to? I always knew I'd have preferred a daughter."

"Stop teasing, or I might change my mind about making one with you," Lily told James firmly.

Harry snapped his eyes to her. "What!? You're doing what!?"

"The house is too quiet without you blustering around," James explained. "So we've been thinking about expanding the family, now we're sort of back in the world and everything."

That was too much to process just now, so Harry focused on the immediate situation.

"About that ... you were in the paper, you were seen!" Harry hissed. "What happened? And what's going to happen now?"

"One thing at a time," James returned, holding up a hand to stop another Harry-rant. "Lets start with what happened."

"You were attacked by Fluffy," Harry blurted. "Sirius said."

"I did not!" Sirius protested, spilling tea from his mouth in his shock. "When did I say that?"

"I heard you telling Auntie Min, about watching 'all three heads at once'," Harry explained. "What else could it be but that monstrous dog of Hagrid's?"

"Paddy! Really?" James chortled. "Some Unspeakable you'd make!"

"Hark who's talking!" Sirius volleyed back. "Spotted, just like Harry said! Didn't they teach you Concealment on your first day? Even Hermione, here, knows a Potion for that."

"Thanks, but given what's in it, I'll pass!" James rebuffed, going a little green in the gills at the idea.

"Is it real, then?" Hermione queried. "The three-headed dog?"

"Oh yes, very real," James moaned lowly. "And very three-headed."

Harry grinned widely at Hermione in a very 'I told you so' type of way. She simply wrinkled her little nose back at him. Harry hadn't noticed how little Hermione's nose was before. How peculiar.

"Three heads ... and not one of them of liked James!" Lily laughed, continuing on.

"On the contrary," James countered silkily. "I think they liked me very much, actually."

"Finding you tasty isn't quite the same as liking you, honey," Lily pointed out to him gently.

"Well ... it worked for you!" James quirked lightly. Lily just shook her head and sighed at him. "Anyway, we went to feed it ... and Fluffy was very hungry."

"What do you feed a giant dog?" Harry wondered aloud.

"A lot!" Sirius chuckled. "And it quite liked Idiot Wizard as a main course by the sounds of it!"

Hermione giggled cautiously and Harry just smirked at his father. "But what was Fluffy guarding? Sirius said it was the grubby package he took to Gringotts for Dumbledore."

Lily hissed dangerously at Sirius, who cowered back as though stung. "Is there anything you didn't tell him?"

"I ... well ... I, er ..." Sirius stumbled, rubbing the back of his neck guiltily.

"Yes," Harry stepped in at Sirius' defence. "He didn't tell me what Fluffy is guarding. But I expect one of you to. If you're going to practically get yourselves eaten, I think you should at least tell me what it's for."

"That's fair," James agreed.

"James!" Lily spat, warningly.

"It's fair, Lily," James returned firmly, standing his ground. "We kept enough secrets from our son, we promised we wouldn't do that to him again."

Lily went to argue, but forgot how to. So she simply huffed and permitted James to continue.

"Fluffy is guarding something called The Flammelian Ruby," James went on. "It belongs to an old friend of Dumbledore's."

"A very old friend," Sirius added with a cryptic smirk.

"Yes, well," James continued. "Anyway, he asked Dumbledore to look after it. And what better guard than a half-giant and his full-giant Cereberian Short-tail."

"Is the ruby in some sort of danger, then?" asked Hermione.

"Well sleuthed," James nodded approvingly. "Someone tried to steal it from Gringotts, as you know, but there was another attempt on it at the new safe location. Hagrid chased the would-be thief away. But they'll be back."

"If we're going to tell you everything," Lily took over, somewhat disapprovingly. "Then you should know that this has something to do with Voldemort ... and Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts?" Harry asked, a cold shiver crossing his skin. "How can it have anything to do with there?"

"Because the thief naturally assumed Dumbledore would keep the Ruby close to himself," James explained. "I understand there's a really big hole on the Third Floor right at this moment? Well, the thief was under the impression that Dumbledore had found the legendary Chamber of Secrets, deep beneath the school."

"There's a Chamber of Secrets!" Harry whispered excitedly. He turned to Hermione. "It didn't mention that in Hogwarts: A History, did it?"

"Well, it's not likely to, is it?" Hermione pointed out reasonably. "As it's a secret."

"Oh ... yeah. I didn't think of that."

"Good job you have someone to think for you then," Lily teased with a little smile at Hermione, turning her cheeks pink again.

"So, Dumbledore found this Chamber, then?" Harry pressed on. "And he's hidden this Ruby thing inside it?"

"No, it's a myth, Harry," James explained. "But the thief thought he might have. So he blasted a hole in the floor to try and get into the network of caves beneath Hogwarts."

"Ah, so that's why they cant close the hole?" Hermione cried in understanding. "Because it's dark magic!"

Lily and James grinned at each other.

"You really are exceptionally bright, aren't you?" Lily observed. "Yes, that's why. But the thief has searched that place, so Dumbledore thinks it might be rather clever of him to move the Ruby to somewhere in those caves now, and Fluffy, too. I'm not sure I agree, but ... I'm sure he'll put up other