Minutes passed. The Dark Lord donned an amulet from the heap of things beside the altar; also from the heap, Voldemort took four short wooden rods with straps upon them, and reached beneath his robes to attach them, it looked like they went on his upper arms and upper thighs. The Dark Lord rose into the air, moved left, right, up and down, seeming to wobble slightly at first; then his flight stabilized.
The chunk of red glass turned, slightly.
The Dark Lord Voldemort floated to the ground, and prodded Hermione Granger’s body with his wand.
“There iss an obsstacle,” hissed Voldemort.
In Harry’s mind the expectation of betrayal or other failure had already been so strong that the confirmation came only as a dull shock, not a sharp one. “What obsstacle?”
“Girl'ss body iss resstored. Ssubstance iss repaired. But not magic, or life… thiss iss body of dead Muggle.” Voldemort turned from the altar, began to pace. “The full ritual would solve this. But that would require time… time and the blood of Granger’s enemy, and I do not think Draco Malfoy still qualifies, nor can I take my own blood unwillingly… foolish.” Voldemort’s voice was a lower hiss. “Foolish, I should have foreseen this, and prepared. Her brain might awaken with an electrical shock, I know that much of Muggle medicine… but would her magic return to her? That I do not know, and I suspect if she awakens as a Muggle she will be a Muggle forever. Still, I can think of nothing better.” The Dark Lord raised his wand—
“Wait!” Harry blurted, feeling hope return. She needs a spark of life and magic, just a spark to get her started…
Voldemort turned and looked at him. The snakelike face showed some slight degree of surprise.
“Think I have ssomething that might work,” Harry hissed. “Needss wand. Have no intentionss to usse it againsst you.” Harry said nothing about expecting his intentions wouldn’t change; he’d simply blurted out the idea fast enough that he hadn’t formed any specific intentions yet.
“This,” Voldemort hissed, “I desire to see.” The Dark Lord reached into the heap of things by the altar, and picked up the wrapped form of Harry’s wand. It was thrown, gliding through the air and then dropping at Harry’s feet; and then the Dark Lord floated back, the heap of things moving smoothly backwards with him.
Harry unwrapped his wand, and moved forward.
We have our wand back, that’s step one, said the last voice, the voice of hope.
No part of Harry had any idea what step two might be, but it was still step one accomplished.
And Harry stood before the reformed body of Hermione Granger, who was still naked and dead, on a twilight-lit stone altar.
“Lord Voldemort,” Harry said, “I beg you, please give her some clothes.
It might help me do this.”
“Granted,” hissed Voldemort. The pain in Harry’s scar flared as the naked girl’s body lifted into the air, then flared again as dead leaves danced around her and she was clothed in the seeming of a Hogwarts uniform, though the trim was red instead of blue. Hermione Granger’s hands folded over her chest, her legs straightened, and her body drifted back down.
Harry looked at her.
Focused on her, now that she looked human again.
She looks like she is sleeping, not dead. It took a conscious effort to look for breathing, fail to see it, and make the deduction. So far as naked perception was concerned… Hermione might as well be alive, right now.
That Hermione Granger would not approve of this situation, taken as a whole, seemed beyond question. But it didn’t mean that she would rather stay dead than be alive, other things being equal, though they might not be.
Because you wish to live, because my best guess is that you would wish to live… Harry reached out his shaking left hand, and touched Hermione’s forehead. It was warm now, not the chill of five degrees Celsius; either Voldemort had increased her body temperature to normal, or the magic of the ritual had done it automatically. Which meant that Hermione’s brain was currently warm and without oxygen, come to think.
That did it, the sense of urgency rising in him.
Harry’s feet assumed the stance, his wand swung up to point at Hermione Granger’s dead body. The only thing wrong with Hermione’s body was that it was dead; everything else about that body was right, only one thing needed changing.
You don’t belong here, death.
“Expecto,” Harry shouted, feeling the magic and the life rise up into the Patronus Charm that was fueled by both, “PATRONUM!”
The girl in the Hogwarts uniform was surrounded by a blazing aura of silver fire, as the Patronus was born inside her.
Harry staggered, as he felt a dip, a bite. Intuition or Tom Riddle’s memory told Harry that the life and magic that had just flowed into Hermione would never return to him, either one. It hadn’t been all his life or all his magic, not by a long shot, there hadn’t been time to expend that much, but whatever he’d just expended was gone forever.
And Hermione Granger was breathing, just like she was sleeping, rhythmic inhalations and exhalations. The twilight sky had dimmed further, and Harry could not see if color was returning to her, but it should have been, it certainly should have been. She looked to be sleeping peacefully, and it wasn’t because being dead looked like sleeping, it was because she was asleep and her body was fine and nothing was hurting her while she slept.
Some part of Harry, that had somehow managed not to speak up earlier, quietly pointed out that they were still in a graveyard, the recently victorious Lord Voldemort was still in control of the situation, and that his guess about Hermione wanting to be alive was just a guess.
Harry was still smiling, as he slowly lowered his wand. The celebratory fireworks going off inside his mind were restrained, Harry wasn’t screaming and running around in little circles like Professor Flitwick, but that— That—
THAT, Harry said aloud inside his mind, THAT is what I call Step Two.
“Interesting,” said the cold high voice. “Your Patronus draws upon your life as well as your magic… I guessed that much, for it was too powerful for a first-year to fuel with magic alone. And yet there must be more to the puzzle, since not just any life-fueled spell would have done… was your happy thought the image of her returning to life? Was that all it took?” Lord Voldemort was again toying with his wand, a dark interest in those red-slitted eyes. “I suspect I will feel quite stupid when I finally comprehend that spell, someday in my eternity. Now step away from the girl. There iss more work I intend to do, to give her besst chance of continued life.”
Harry stepped back, reluctantly, the sense of tension starting to return to him. He almost tripped over one haphazard grave marker, as the Dark Lord continued to walk forward.
Standing before the altar, the Dark Lord laid one finger upon Hermione Granger’s forehead.
Then the Dark Lord tapped his finger upon Hermione Granger’s forehead, and said, in a voice so low Harry almost did not hear, “Requiescus.”
Voldemort waved his hand at an obelisk, which began to rotate, turning itself to lay flat upon the ground, pointing outward. “Fascinating indeed,” Voldemort hissed. “She is alive, and magical, and not another Tom Riddle as I feared you might have made her.”
The tension was rising again in Harry. He’d put his wand away into the back belt of his pants, he did not want to remind Voldemort that he still had the wand on him. “What are you doing to her now?”