Chapter Text
It was a typically cold winter day, and as Harry walked back into the tent from his shift ensuring that the wards held, a particularly strong gust of wind blew the falling snow against his back, pushing him along slightly. Shivering, he finally stepped inside, wrapping his coat around himself tighter.
Once he was fully inside, he saw Hermione looking disapprovingly up at him. “I’ve taught you the spell to keep warm, why don’t you use it?”
Harry mumbled that he had forgotten about it, as he pulled off his coat, and slumped down into the spare armchair, exhaling. Hermione was sitting in the other one, with a stack of books on the table beside it. “What are you reading?” He enquired, leaning over for a glance.
“Everything I brought with me,” Hermione sighed, “Anything that could help us find the Horcruxes, or at least get closer to finding them.”
“Why don’t I help?” Harry offered, hoping to show Hermione, who had been rather down ever since Ron had left during that fateful day with the locket, that he could alleviate some of her self-imposed burden.
Hermione looked up at him briefly, and grabbing a book at random, and eyeing it, passed it to him. “How about this one? I’m not sure what it is, but it would definitely help if you read over it. It’s one of the ones I took from Dumbledore’s office.”
Harry took the book and glanced at the cover. It was a worn hardback, yet its title, ‘The Collected Proceedings of the Pan-European Symposium on Magical Properties, 1946’, subtitled ‘Delivered at the University of Aberdeen’, was still clearly visible; Harry assumed it was enchanted. He opened the book and began reading.
It was nearly a hundred pages, and two hours later, before he found something interesting, after slogging through various lectures about magical phenomenon that he found both dull, and useless in practical terms, he came across the next chapter, titled “An Analysis of Magical Geolocation, Based on Soul Fingerprinting”, but it was the author (or speaker, as Harry reminded himself, this was a series of transcribed lectures), Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
“Hermione, look, this chapter is by Dumbledore!” Harry called out to her, prompting Hermione to set her book down and scrambled up to lean over his armchair.
“What about him?” she pressed, to which Harry tilted the book in her direction so she could see.
“A lecture, of course. He did quite a lot of those back before he became headmaster. But this one... it seems really interesting. Magical Geolocation? Fingerprinting? Harry... that could help us find the Horcruxes!” Hermione exclaimed, her brown eyes lighting up with genuine excitement. “Come on, let’s read it together.”
Harry nodded, and started to shuffle over in the chair, making room for Hermione to sit beside him. She shook her head, smiling, and flicked her wand, stretching the chair out into a small sofa. “Much better,” she said, but still sitting down right next to him, and Harry suppressed a grin at her enthusiasm, and a warmth at the closeness of her presence.
They began reading, and Harry found the language rather difficult to follow, the language was dense, and he didn’t understand many of the words; Hermione on the other hand was reading as quickly as always, and Harry found himself struggling to keep up.
It took Hermione just half an hour to finish the whole chapter, and she smiled wider than she had in weeks. “Harry, this is amazing! Dumbledore talks about how magical geolocation can be used to track any person via their soul, and how all you need in order to track it is to access a person’s soul to locate their magical signature. He says it’s really obscure, and not many people know about it, so it’s highly likely that You-Know-Who didn’t know and forgot to set up protections against it!”
Harry nodded, Hermione’s infectious enthusiasm was hard to resist, and he found himself getting excited too. “We have the locket, we could get the signature from that... but how do we do this?” he asked, looking at Hermione. “You know the theory now, but how do we actually use it? I didn’t see the spell named in the lecture.”
Hermione’s face fell slightly, but she looked at him determinedly, “Well, Dumbledore delivered the lecture at the University of Aberdeen, so surely someone there knows how to do it. All we have to do is go there and ask around, and someone will surely know. Maybe he even planned for us to find this, maybe this was his secret to help us find the Horcruxes!”
Harry turned fully to face her, staring at her, slightly dumbfounded, “But isn’t that a muggle university? We can’t just show up and start asking about magic!”
Hermione shook her head, “You are right, it is a muggle university, but there is a secret magical department there, which is nearly as old as the university itself. It’s one of only a few such departments in the UK, and they do quite a bit of research into deeper magical theory, and teaches students who want to continue their studies after school. I wanted to go there after Hogwarts, surely you remember me talking about it?”
“I must have forgotten,” Harry admitted, “But if you are sure, then we can go. But where will we apparate so that we aren’t detected?”
“There is a wooded area nearby, we can apparate there, and then walk. No one will be suspicious, we’ll look just like a couple of students walking to the university,” Hermione said, her eyes shining with determination.
Hermione’s choice of words could have made Harry blush, but the potentially groundbreaking implications of the lecture kept him focused. “Tomorrow then? It’s getting late right now, the university is probably closed.”
Hermione nodded, “Of course. We’ll leave at around eight, that will give me time to prepare everything, and we should arrive before there are students everywhere.”
Dinner was a quiet and quick affair, as Hermione insisted they both retire to bed early, so that they were well rested for tomorrow’s journey. Luckily, despite Harry’s excitement, he managed to fall asleep quickly, much quicker than usual in such situations, but he wasn’t complaining.