The mirrors turned out to be a bit of a mistake. A very embarrassing one.
On the first night, Hermione called me at eleven o'clock to ask if I'd finished the Arithmancy reading, which I don't even take.
By the third night, she didn't bother with an excuse at all. She just said, "Goodnight," went pink, and put the mirror face down before I could answer.
My mirror went dark. I said goodnight to it anyway, and then lay there grinning at the canopy of my bed like an idiot.
When I turned my head, Seamus was sitting up in bed, staring at me.
"Was that Hermione?" he whispered. "In a mirror?"
"No," I said.
"You just said goodnight to a mirror, Harry," Seamus said.
"I'm very polite," I said.
Dean rolled over and put his pillow over his head. From the bed by the window, Ron said, without opening his eyes, "Mate, you've got it bad," and went back to sleep.
By breakfast, Seamus had told half of Gryffindor that I said goodnight to a mirror. Hermione thought it was hilarious, right up until Fred leaned across the table and asked her, very innocently, whether she was the mirror.
_________________________________________
The other thing I did in March was finally get Infinity working.
I'd been at it since before Christmas, on and off, in between everything else. The idea was simple enough, but getting it to work wasn't.
For three months, every version I'd tried had been some kind of shield, and shields were boring. They took the hit, and sooner or later something hit them hard enough.
That was the mistake. What I actually wanted was for things to never quite arrive.
I worked it out on a Tuesday night in the Room, lying on my back on a pile of cushions and staring at the ceiling.
Somewhere around the fortieth crack in the plaster, it clicked. Stop building a wall. Stretch the distance instead. I sat up and tried it, and it worked the first time. Annoyingly, it usually does once you've got the idea right.
"Hermione," I said. "Throw something at me."
She looked up from her Charms essay. "What?"
"Anything. Throw it at my head."
She looked at the heavy library book in her lap, then back at me.
"If I hurt you," she said, "I'm not taking you to the hospital wing. You can explain it to Madam Pomfrey yourself."
"Deal," I said.
She threw it. Quite hard, actually.
The book flew straight at my face, slowed right down, and ended up hanging in the air about an inch from my nose.
Hermione frowned at it. "Why isn't it falling?"
"Because it hasn't stopped," I said. "It's still coming. It just isn't ever going to get here."
She got up and walked all the way round me, staring at the book from every side like it might be a trick. Then she poked it. It wobbled a bit and stayed exactly where it was.
"That's Zeno," she said. "Zeno's paradox. It was in one of my dad's puzzle books. Achilles and the tortoise. You're always halfway to somewhere, so you never actually arrive." She looked at me. "You've turned a maths problem into a shield."
"It's not a shield," I said. "That's the whole point."
She shook her head. "Harry, people don't just invent magic like this."
"Somebody invented every spell we've ever learned," I said. "Why not me?"
"Because it takes years," she said. "Proper research. Whole teams of people."
"I've been working on it since before Christmas," I said.
"That's three months!" she said.
I shrugged. "I'm a quick learner."
"That's not how it works," she said, but she didn't sound very sure anymore. In the end, she sat back down on the floor, still looking at the book. "Can you keep it up all the time?"
"Not yet," I said. "Give it a few weeks."
"Does it work on air?" Her eyes narrowed. "Because air's coming at you all the time. How are you breathing?"
That was a better question than anyone at Hogwarts had asked me all year.
"It's picky," I said. "It only stops what I don't want."
"That doesn't make any sense," she said.
"It's magic," I said. "It doesn't have to."
She gave me a look. Then she picked up her wand. "Can I try a spell?"
"Go on," I said.
She sent a Stinging Hex straight at my chest. It slowed down and hung there next to the book, fizzing.
"That was a Stinging Hex," I said.
"You said go on." She didn't look even slightly sorry. "It works on spells, then. Well done."
I flicked the hex away into the wall, where it left a little scorch mark, and let the Infinity drop. The book fell into my lap.
At some point, someone was going to point a wand at me and say the Killing Curse. I thought about how that would go now.
'Nah, I'd win.'
Hermione moved the book off my lap and shuffled over next to me, close enough that our shoulders touched.
"So it only stops what you don't want," she said.
"That's the idea," I said.
"Put it back up," she said.
I did. She reached out, very slowly, and put her hand on my cheek. It went straight through like there was nothing there.
"Huh," she said.
Then she kissed me, which the Infinity also didn't have a problem with.
"Good to know," she said when she pulled back, and went back to her Charms essay like nothing had happened. Her ears had gone bright red, though.
____________________________
Hagrid had finally run out of skrewts, so in the last week of March he brought out nifflers instead.
"Buried some gold in this patch here," he told us, beaming, and pointed at a big square of freshly dug earth. "Best niffler gets a prize. Off yeh go!"
The niffler Hagrid handed me was small and fluffy, with a long snout. It sniffed the air, ignored the patch of earth completely, and climbed straight up my robes and tried to get into my pocket.
The pocket with Hermione's ten Galleons in it.
"Hagrid," I said, holding it out at arm's length while it paddled at the air. "I think mine's broken."
"Nah, he's jus' clever," Hagrid said happily. "Knows where the real gold is, that one."
Hermione didn't even try to hide her smile. "Even the niffler thinks you won that bet unfairly."
"The niffler is a thief," I said. "It doesn't get an opinion."
Ron's niffler found the most coins, and for about five minutes Ron was the happiest I'd seen him all year.
Then Hagrid mentioned, very cheerfully, that it was all leprechaun gold and would disappear in a few hours. Colin Creevey should have been there with his camera.
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The thing about being basically untouchable is that it makes you start thinking about where you'd actually want to use it.
I'd been thinking about the ring for weeks.
It was sitting in the ruins of the Gaunt house, about a mile outside Little Hangleton. It had been there for decades.
Apart from Voldemort, hardly anyone knew it was there, and nobody was guarding it except whatever nasty protections he'd left on the place.
And the man himself was holed up in the Riddle house on the other side of the village, with Wormtail and a snake for company.
The Easter holidays started in two weeks. Most people would be going home or sleeping in. Nobody would notice if two fourth-years disappeared for a morning.
I'd promised Hermione I wasn't hiding things from her anymore. So I told her.
We were in the Room again, sitting on the floor in front of the blackboard. It still said PLAN across the top in huge letters.
The locket box had a big tick in it now, and Hermione had added a little drawing of Kreacher next to it, which I thought was a nice touch.
I pointed at the ring box.
"Easter," I said. "I want to do that one next."
Hermione's eyebrows went up.
"That one's next to him," she said.
"About a mile away," I said.
"A mile, Harry," she said.
"He can't feel them breaking," I said. "We know that. The diadem and the locket both went, and nothing happened. He hasn't moved, and he hasn't sent anyone." I tapped the box. "And from that dream, he can't even get out of his chair without Wormtail. He's not exactly in a state to come running."
She didn't look convinced. "What about the ring itself? You said it was cursed."
"Rule number one." I pointed at the board, where NOBODY PUTS THE RING ON was still underlined three times. "I'm not touching it. I'll pull it into the orb without ever laying a finger on it."
"And the house? He'll have protected it."
"Probably," I said. "So I'll be careful. And now I've got this." I put my hand up, and the Infinity snapped into place around it. "Nothing gets to me if I don't want it to."
Hermione looked at my hand for a while.
"How would we even get there?" she said. "You can't Apparate out of Hogwarts. Nobody can."
"Wizards can't," I said. "Elves can. Their magic works differently. Dobby showed me how, back in December."
"You're not an elf," Hermione pointed out.
"No," I said. "But magic's magic. Elves just don't bother with wands. Once I'd watched Dobby do it a couple of times, I could see how it worked."
"A couple of times." She looked genuinely horrified. "Do you know how many wizards have ever managed elf magic?"
"Probably none," I said. "Most wizards don't think elves are worth studying."
That stopped her. I could see her trying to decide whether to tell me off or agree with me, and the house-elf rights part of her brain was clearly winning.
"I've been practising inside the castle," I said, while she was distracted. "It works outside too. I checked."
She stared at me. "You checked?"
"Just to Hogsmeade and back," I said. "Once. I was very careful."
She crossed her arms. "When was this?"
"Thursday," I said.
She looked like she wanted to have a whole separate argument about that, and decided to save it for later.
"Fine," she said. "Then I'm coming. If you're going somewhere stupid and dangerous, I'm going too. That's how this works."
"Is that a rule?" I asked.
"It is now," she said.
I'd expected that. I'd also already decided I wasn't going to win this one, so I didn't try very hard.
"You stay behind me," I said.
"I'll stay next to you," she said.
"Behind me," I said. "Inside the Infinity."
She thought about it. "Next to you, inside the Infinity."
"Fine," I said.
"And afterwards," she said, "we tell Dumbledore."
"Afterwards," I said, "we can talk about telling Dumbledore."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's not the same thing."
"I know," I said. "That's why I said it."
She glared at me. I smiled at her, which only made it worse. Eventually she gave up, sighed, and picked up the chalk.
"If You-Know-Who had to argue with you every day, he'd have given up years ago," she muttered, and wrote EASTER next to the ring box. She underlined it twice.
_________________________________________
I nearly missed the next thing.
At dinner, about a week before the holidays, I looked up at the staff table and saw Karkaroff rubbing his left forearm, like it hurt and he didn't want anyone to see.
Two seats down, Snape had his own left arm tucked very carefully under the table.
I knew what that was. The Dark Mark was getting darker. The stronger Voldemort got, the darker it would get on everyone who'd ever taken it.
In the books, Karkaroff had panicked about it for months, and Snape had told him to stop being ridiculous, and then at the end Karkaroff had run.
I didn't really care where Karkaroff ran. But it did mean Barty wasn't the only one running out of time.
I'd be ready anyway.
Next to me, Hermione nudged my plate with her elbow.
"You've stopped eating," she said. "What is it?"
"Karkaroff was a Death Eater," I said quietly. "He's been rubbing his arm all week. I'd bet the Mark's getting darker."
She went a bit pale and looked up at the staff table. "Which means he's getting stronger."
"Slowly," I said.
"And you want to go and sit a mile away from him," she said. Under the table, her hand found mine and held on.
"Easter's in a week," I said. "He's not going to be doing star jumps by then."
She didn't laugh. She did go back to her shepherd's pie, though, which I counted as progress.
______________________________
On the last day of term before the holidays, Hermione dragged me into the Room after dinner and made me go through the whole plan again from the start.
Then she made me go through it a second time, in case I'd missed anything the first time.
Then she asked me roughly fifteen questions about the orb and the Infinity, and one about whether house-elf Apparition was the kind of thing that could leave bits of you behind.
"No," I said. "Elves don't splinch."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Have you ever seen half a house-elf?" I said.
She thought about that. "That's not proof."
"It's pretty good evidence," I said.
She folded her arms. "Then show me. I'm not doing it for the first time on the day."
That was fair enough. I held out my hand, and after a second she took it.
"Don't let go," I said.
"Why?" she asked. "What happens if I let go?"
"Nothing," I said. "I just like holding your hand."
She rolled her eyes, but she held on tighter.
Elf Apparition doesn't feel like the normal kind. I'd read about wizards Apparating, and every description made it sound like being squeezed through a hosepipe.
This was more like a door closing behind you and another one opening in front, with nothing in between.
One second we were in the Room. The next, we were standing on top of the Astronomy Tower, and the wind was trying to take Hermione's hair off.
She grabbed the parapet with her free hand and stared out over the dark grounds towards Hagrid's hut.
"Oh," she said.
"Still in one piece?" I asked.
She checked. Actually checked, patting her arms and looking at her feet. "I think so."
"Told you," I said.
"That was..." She turned round, a bit pink. "That was actually quite nice."
I grinned. "Better than a broomstick?"
"Anything is better than a broomstick," she said.
We stayed up there for a while. It was freezing, so I unwound a couple of feet of the scarf she'd knitted me and wrapped it round her as well.
There was plenty to spare. She leaned into my side, and for a bit neither of us said anything at all, which for Hermione is basically a declaration of love.
"This is nice," she said eventually.
"Yeah," I said.
She tipped her head up and kissed me, quickly, with her cold nose squashed against my cheek. Then she shivered, and I took us back down to the Room. She still wasn't happy about Easter, but she was a lot less worried.
She looked up at the blackboard, at the word EASTER underlined twice.
"We need a name for it," I said.
She shook her head. "We do not need a name for it."
"Every proper mission has a name," I said. "Operation Gauntlet. Because it's the Gaunt house."
She didn't even turn round. "No."
"Operation Put a Ring on It?" I tried.
That made her turn round. She'd gone bright red. "Absolutely not."
It took me a second to hear how that had sounded. Honestly, I didn't mind.
"Not yet, anyway," I said, and grinned at her while she went even redder. "Operation Lord of the Rings it is, then."
"Fine," she said, trying not to laugh. "But only because it's better than the last one."
It was the first name she'd ever said yes to. I decided not to push my luck.
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