Hermione slips outside, placing a disillusionment charm on herself as she moves along the darkened street. Wandlessly she dims a street lamp and disappears down an alley. She waits, anticipating Tom to have followed her, but beyond the laughter and music faintly in the distance there is nothing. She summons her patronus, realizing with a deep pain that it becomes more difficult to cast. She sucks in a sharp breath and closes her eyes to concentrate, letting her mind fill with thoughts of her parents fading faces, of birthday cakes and blown out candles, of Christmas pudding and knit jumpers, of dancing at Harry and Ginny’s wedding, the first time she stepped into Diagon Alley, watching Crookshanks asleep on a window sill illuminated in a perfect sliver of sunlight. 