7th Year: Harry Potter and the Snares of Fate

WEIT UND BREIT

HERMIONE

“Allow me,” said Slughorn, sounding flustered. He tramped through the snow and silenced the burglar alarm with a flick of his wand. With expert care, he pried open the front door - “Learnt that trick from ol' Odil Oliphant.”

Germany. Hermione tipped her head back and drank in the wintry air. After the bone-chilling cold they had endured on their flight over the English Channel, it was refreshing and reaffirming to stand on solid ground.

“Feels good to be `on the lam,' doesn't it?” Harry asked, lingering on the threshold with one foot in the tantalizing warmth of the house and the other in the brisk outdoors.

“Are we criminals?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as light and carefree as possible. The charge was hard to deny - after all, they had broken into Azkaban, smuggled two prisoners to safety, stolen a flying motorcycle, and broken into a Muggle house all in one evening.

“Fugitives, maybe - criminals, no,” Harry said reassuringly.

“That's just a matter of semantics!” she said, but laughed in spite of herself. She was condemned to be in a good mood for as long as Harry was by her side and the Horcruxes far from her mind.

“Come on - before Slughorn suspects-” Harry steered the motorcycle into the entryway, and closed the door after Hermione came in.

By the time they'd taken a brief tour of their temporary abode, Slughorn had already shed his snow-dampened robes for something more comfortable from the Muggle owners' wardrobe…a lemon-hued muumuu with a frilly collar.

“Be thankful he's not Archie,” Hermione murmured and Harry doubled over with silent laughter at the thought of the nightgown-clad gent they'd encountered at the Quidditch World Cup.

“It could always be worse,” Harry admitted. “We'll do well to keep that in mind, I imagine.”

“Do we make him talk tonight?” she asked.

“Nah. It must be nearly midnight; I reckon we should get some sleep,” Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. “You take the second bedroom - just right of the stairs. Slughorn and I - well - I guess we'll take the master suite.” He shuddered. “I'd just as happily sleep on the couch, but someone needs to make sure he doesn't try to give us the slip.”

“Good night, Harry.”

“Good night.”

* * * * * *

Her remembrances of the night before were as jumbled as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that defied any attempts to be put together. The great flying motorcycle, lodged in the entry way, blocked the front door and obscured her view of the front paddock - blanketed in knee-deep snow. She edged around the motorcycle and pressed her bare palms to the icy panes of glass. Her frosty breath hung in the crisp air - hadn't anyone thought to turn on the heat?

Half-an-hour later, the clatter of pots and pans filled the small house as Hermione wended her way about the unfamiliar kitchen fixing breakfast. Once she had located three sets of cutlery and a few other essentials, she lit the stove and put a pot of water to boil. Today -- Christmas day -- she was determined to fix an all-Muggle breakfast for herself and her housemates.

She pulled a dog-eared cookbook off its shelf, forgetting that its contents would be foreign and indecipherable to her. “Tranlatis,” she muttered, tapping its grease-stained pages with the tip of her wand. She paged slowly through it, seeking a recipe for kippers, croissants, or bangers and mash, but only found spaetzles, sauerbraten, and hearty streusels. She opted for potato pancakes, as they seemed - to her - to be the simplest of the lot. As she peeled potatoes, she tried not to think of her mother and father waking to find her bed empty…to find the thoughtless note she had penned in her haste. Unwilling to imagine them spending yet another Christmas without her, she hurriedly resumed her baking. Harry padded into the kitchen as she whisked sugar and eggs. With a certain degree of pleasure, she detected a perceptible change in his demeanor; he was no longer distant and uptight as he had been at Hogwarts, but smiling and - dare she say it? - cheerful.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered in her ear, wrapping one arm around her waist while his free hand edged towards the bowl of sugar cubes perched on the counter beside her.

“Merry Christmas to you, too. Any signs of wakefulness?” she asked, prodding away Harry's wandering hand with a spatula; the dentists' daughter in her wanted to warn him about cavities and tooth decay, but such a reprimand would be laughable - the great Harry Potter, her Harry Potter, had much fouler foes than sugar and tooth rot.

“Nah, something tells me Slughorn's a deep sleeper. You won't believe this, but I think his snoring has a range of two octaves,” Harry replied laughingly, snatching a handful of sugar cubes while Hermione was busy sorting out what spices she could add to the batter to cover for her poor culinary skills.

“How does Mum do it without magic?” Hermione wondered aloud, glowering at the resolutely lukewarm pot of water.

“A watch-pot never boils,” Harry said sagely, a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes. “That's what Aunt Petunia always said.”

“Are you saying,” Hermione asked, sliding closer and permitting him to plant a line of kisses along her jaw, “that it'll boil faster if I'm otherwise occupied?”

Harry smirked slightly and Hermione, blind and unthinking, kissed him squarely on the nose. Never mind that they were seemingly half-a-world away from home, never mind that they were fugitives on the lam from the law…for one blissful moment, Harry's warmth and his close proximity were all that mattered.

It was Slughorn's shocked cry of “Oho!” that snapped her out of her lip-locked reverie and awakened her to the waves of boiling water now cascading down the front of the stove.

“Sorry, Professor!” Hermione gasped, scurrying to turn off the stove and right the now empty and upturned teapot. Harry stood stock-still in the middle of the kitchen, dazedly smoothing the sleeves of his Golden Snitch sweater and flattering his rumpled mop of hair down over his scar.

“Tergeo,” she murmured, feeling her face grow hot as Slughorn's pouchy eyes continued to bore into her. The puddles of spilt water vanished instantly and she quickly conjured three mugs of Earl Grey tea from thin air. If she was lucky, she'd still have time to fix toast the old-fashioned way.

* * * * *

HARRY

As morning faded into afternoon, Slughorn kept casting shifty looks at Harry and Hermione, awaiting the moment when they would demand that he fulfill his half of the bargain. Harry, however, was carefully bidding his time. He had unearthed a large supply of schnapps and authentic German kirshwasser in the liquor cabinet and was dispensing shots of each to Slughorn every time he showed signs of wanting to leave the room.

Finally, once Slughorn had twice expressed a hankering for a `long winter's nap,' Harry pounced.

“It's awful, isn't it?” he reached across the coffee table and clasped Hermione's hands in his. “All the casualties incurred in times of war? Dumbledore, Hagrid—” He stopped short; he still couldn't believe that Hagrid was truly gone.

“And that Quidditch champion, Vince Krum?” Slughorn said thoughtfully, following Harry's lead. “Cut down in the prime of his youth, as it were.”

“—Viktor,” Hermione corrected softly. A pall passed over her face and she stared determinedly at Slughorn's half-drained glass of kirschwasser. Harry desperately wished he could spare her the pain of thinking about Krum, but as he had only Muggle-brewed spirits and no Felix Felicis on his person, he could see no other way to persuade Slughorn to talk.

“And Trelawney vanished during in the raid on Hogsmeade,” Harry finished. “The life of a Hogwarts professor is not longer as safe and cosseted as it was in Dumbledore's day…why, you yourself were thrown into Azkaban, Professor!”

Slughorn shifted uneasily, but Harry reminded himself that it may have just been gas. Slughorn hadn't yet reached his breaking point.

“And to think,” Harry continued - he had nothing to lose now - “the course of this terrible war could be drastically shortened--”

At this, Horace Slughorn downed the rest of his drink in a single gulp and made a show of pouring himself another shot of liquor. In his haste to accomplish this task as noisily and ostentatiously as possible, however, his pudgy hand slipped and alcohol streamed down over the sides of the table and seeped into the rug.

“If only - but never mind all that, it's no use. We'll have to blunder on, I suppose, Hermione.”

Sweat was pouring down Slughorn's brow now.

“If we happen upon what we're looking for - well, we'll figure something out—”

“Alright! Enough!” Slughorn plunked his glass down on the table so hard that it shattered, but he took no notice of its demise.

“You'll talk?”

“Oho,” Slughorn harrumphed. “Not giving me much of a choice, are you, m'boy?”

Harry forced a smile and leaned back with an air of forced amicability. He was far too nervous about what Slughorn might be able (or unable) to tell them to be more accommodating.

“Ordinarily, I wouldn't have done—not without a little bottle of Felix—” Slughorn patted the breast pocket of his vest significantly and Harry wondered if he didn't have Felix Felicis on his person even now, “—but the boy - and by that I mean, Regulus Black - left Hogwarts during his sixth year, not unlike Mr. Malfoy…got in over his head, he did and came crawling back to me, wondering could I help him? He didn't have another soul in the world, not even that brother of his” - Harry bristled - “and young Mr. Black told me what he knew.” - Slughorn covered his ears and shook his head furiously, as though trying to unhear it. Slughorn went on to explain -- detailing a horrific journey not unlike the one Dumbledore and Harry had undertaken less than a year ago. Less than a year ago? Was that possible? It seemed to Harry that a lifetime had been encompassed in those eight months.

“And what about destroying the Horcrux?” Harry asked, the old desperation setting back in. What if Slughorn had nothing else to tell them? What if Regulus Black had destroyed the Horcrux on his own and taken the secret of its demise with him to the grave?

“Once a Horcrux falls into the hands of its enemy, it can be pitted against itself and thus destroyed,” Slughorn said, stroking his double-chin with a look in his pouchy eyes that could only be described as marginally thoughtful. “The tough thing is - well, surely you know, Mr. Potter - getting to the object itself. All the enchantments and entrapments! Horrifying. Utterly horrifying.” He shook his head dramatically and his chins wobbled. “And that is all I know,” Slughorn said with the air of a grandfather wrapping up an evening of storytelling by the family hearth. He yawned theatrically and lumbered up the stairs and to bed.

“That was hardly enlightening,” Hermione said tetchily. “As if we hadn't already surmised as much…”

“But it makes sense, if we use a Horcrux against itself, it will be destroyed,” Harry countered.

“That wasn't much of a revelation either,” Hermione replied darkly. “More a confirmation of what I was already beginning to suspect. After all, you destroyed Riddle's diary with the basilisk's fang…and the basilisk was the instrument unleashed by the Horcrux…and Slytherin's ring, elegant though it was, was never meant to be worn - not after Voldemort turned it into a Horcrux, and so, although Dumbledore must have injured himself terribly by wearing it, that was enough…”

Harry marveled at her, but Hermione continued on unfazed --

“If only we could milk more information from him…but we don't have time to waffle around…” She sat back crossly, folding her arms across her chest and glowering at some indeterminate point in space. Harry went over and knelt before her. He unfolded her arms and kissed her the palms of her hands, and when she did not pull away, he leaned in closer and kissed her on the forehead. “Be patient.”

She nodded and leaned forward so Harry could cradle her in his arms. It was impossible to say how long they sat in this manner as the clock on the wall ticked and tocked. As seconds melted into minutes, Harry felt his heart beating in sync with the movements of the swinging pendulum.

“Why did you leave, Harry?” she asked softly, bowing her head to hide the tears that were coursing silently down her face. “…after Hagrid died, why did you go?”

Harry sighed heavily, unready as ever for the moment when together they would confront those terrible days. “Everyone has a breaking point, Hermione,” he murmured. “But that's past, it's over. It won't happen again. I almost lost you and Lord knows I can't go through that again.” He knew instantaneously what he had to do, though she would hate him for it. “I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Do I have your word?”

She nodded solemnly.

And Harry recalled the very promise that Dumbledore had foisted upon him on the night of his death -- “Promise me this: if I tell you to run, you will run, and if I tell you to leave me, you will leave me.” With every word he spoke, her brown eyes flickered between indignation and forsworn fear.

“Harry, you know I can't—”

“You gave me your word,” he said firmly. He knew he could not bear to be in her presence a moment longer, not with those pleading eyes begging him to rescind on the promise he had forced her to make. He pulled away and turned his back to her, lest he relent and put her in harms' way once more. “Good night,” he said, trying to inject a note of confidence into his voice…trying to reassure her (and himself) that he would never need to fall back on that terrible promise - that he would never need to tell her to leave his side. “Good night,” he said again, his resolve strengthening as he climbed the stairs one-by-one.

Don't hate me for what I ask of you.

* * * * * * *

There's one promise Hermione Granger can't, won't, and shouldn't keep! She won't be left behind, a la Ginny in HBP; secretly, Harry knows he can't advance without her.

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