A/N: Hello Portkey, long time no see! Thanks very much to everyone who puts up with my snail-like updating, plus a special thanks to Cynthia Black, Dorotea, Lightgetsin, and Paracelsus for being wonderful betas.
*
Seventeen
*
"He's not here," Ron said. "And everything looks normal." He shuddered. "Creepy, but normal."
"Did I say he would be here?" Hermione said. She was cold, she was worried, and she was not in the mood for Ron to start telling her she'd got things wrong. "We're a day behind Harry at the least. The idea is to figure out if he's been here."
"I know that, I was just saying -"
But Dean had swung open the cemetery gate, and they had followed him inside.
There was a thought in Hermione's head that didn't belong. It was a loud thought, insistent, very determined to be heard, but Hermione knew it didn't belong because it wanted her to leave, and that was at odds with every other thought she'd had before stepping through that gate. Closing her eyes, Hermione very firmly told the thought to go away. It did.
She opened her eyes just in time to see Dean do the same. Ron's lips were moving silently; a second later he shook his head, hard, and opened his eyes as well. For a moment they were silent, looking at each other. "That's a Ministry spell," Dean said, "perimeter defence."
Hermione and Ron nodded, and they all walked on.
Some of the gravestones seemed fairly new, their marble shining in the sunlight, but most were old, darkened, and beginning to crumble. The Riddles' headstones were the largest, and stood out from the rest. Hermione's footsteps slowed. This was where Harry, younger and smaller, had been tied up; this was where he'd been cut; this was where Voldemort had killed Cedric in front of him and forced him to duel. And it was where Harry had reminded Voldemort that young and small had never meant weak.
Hermione began to understand what Ron had meant. It was creepy here, but not for the obvious reasons, the reminders of death. It was the history, the things they didn't see as they stood in this place, but had glimpsed time and time again as they looked at their friend. And that was the reason she'd insisted they try Little Hangleton first.
She had almost reached the spot.
What happened next was an invasion. No other word would do. For a few terrifying moments Hermione didn't have control of her mind or her body, that all belonged to the screaming inside her head - Harry needs you, leave here right now, Harry needs you! - it wasn't until she was all the way out of the graveyard that she was able to shout it down - But that doesn't make sense! That's why I'm here!
Hermione slowed her breaths, counting them, as her head pounded along with her heart and her hands shook. She'd thought, in an intellectual, abstract way, that she understood why Harry hated Occulmancy so much; she'd thought, too, that it was just something he needed to get past, that if he'd only try properly he couldn't possibly fail.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Ron was almost as far as the church, and still walking. Hermione yelled for him, then turned to Dean, who was standing nearby and looking a little like he'd been hit by a lorry. "The Ministry has no right to invade people's heads like that, whether or not it's for the public good," she said. "They need to find other ways."
Dean shrugged. "It's not like they could put up a wall. The Muggles would notice."
"Not," Hermione said tersely, "if it was invisible. It just takes a little -"
"Can we go look for clues, please?" That was Ron, back at her side, and he had a point.
It took far more effort than it should have to cross back over to those graves, and seemed to take far longer, too. Hermione's head felt thick and she had to work to think. She didn't like that at all.
"Shame it's so cold," Ron said. "Ground's too hard for footprints."
"Magical ones," Hermione said, "we need to be thinking about magical ones."
"On it," Dean said. He pointed his wand, murmured two words, and closed his eyes. There was a moment of quiet, of wind-noise and bird-chatter, during which Hermione held her breath. "Someone's done magic here, very recently," Dean said, looking at them again. "Not Dark magic. Just magic."
"Harry?" Ron asked.
Dean shrugged, slipping his wand back in his pocket. "Could be. It's a very strong trace. If it wasn't Harry, it was someone else with some real power behind them."
"I want to think about this out there," Hermione said abruptly. Dean and Ron nodded their agreement, and the three of them walked silently across the graveyard - so much easier to walk away - and back out the gate.
"I still think Hogwarts," Ron said. "It's the last place Harry met him, and all."
"Yes, Ron, we know what you think," Hermione said, closing her eyes, the click of her own thoughts now comfortably fast. If someone had been at those graves very recently, doing magic that wasn't Dark magic, what were the chances it had been Harry, doing the exact same spell Dean had done? And if Harry had been there, what had he found? Nothing? Or something?
"And there's the Chamber of Secrets," Ron went on. "And the time with the Philosopher's Stone. It's like, Harry and Voldemort and Hogwarts, they go together."
Hermione winced at his wording. "How can you say -"
"That's true, though," Dean said thoughtfully.
"We're not done here yet!"
"But Harry is, if he was even here to begin with, and isn't the idea to catch up?" Ron asked.
"But we need more information -"
"I'll give the church a quick look," Dean broke in. "See if I can learn anything."
"Good idea," Hermione said, feeling a little tension slip out of her. They couldn't leave yet, they couldn't. Harry might be here somewhere, they couldn't just assume otherwise and walk away. And even if he wasn't here, they needed to know everywhere Harry had been, what he'd done. She needed to know.
Besides, were they really going to walk into Hogwarts and say, 'Hello, we seem to have lost Harry Potter, have you seen him lately?'
Dean walked away, his shadow long in the early-morning light. Hermione resisted the urge to go with him; Dean knew what he was doing, and it would seem less suspicious if he did it alone.
"I still-"
"Honestly, Ron," Hermione snapped, "do you have no sense of self-preservation at all?"
They stood in silence after that, which was finally broken by the crunch of gravel as Dean walked back across the carpark, hands in his pockets. "I talked to the vicar," he said on reaching them. "Did a little fishing. Harry - or somebody who looked exactly like Harry - was here yesterday evening, around dusk. He remembers because it was the first stranger he's seen here in ages."
Hermione was looking at the house on the hill, falling to bits behind the bare trees. She turned back to Ron and Dean, making sure to give Ron a clear 'I told you so' with her eyes. "Well, come on!"
Together, the three of them went.
*
Hermione was starting to feel seriously aggrieved with her government. She could feel the words of a scathing letter to the editor building inside her, just waiting to get out. Another one of the Ministry's insidious bits of perimeter defence had kicked in when they squeezed through the gate onto the Riddle property.
As they walked, Dean fell into step with Hermione, leaving Ron a little ways behind. "Moody went spare before," he said quietly. "That night Harry took ill when we were out on the case. He could've blown the whole thing, and it wasn't like he'd been cursed or poisoned or something. He was sick and he knew it."
Looking at Dean, Hermione thought, And you were angry too, because it wasn't just the case he was risking.
"That's why he's done this," Dean went on. "He knew Moody'd lose it, and he said - he said that I'd be better off on my own." He shrugged a little, looking down at Hermione. "Just felt like you should know."
"Thank you," Hermione said, and wondered exactly what Dean saw when he looked at her and Harry.
They reached the top of the hill. The morning light was weak, especially in the shadow of the huge, crumbling house, but it was much, much better than the alternative. It wasn't just the look of the place, every bit the haunted house on the hill, that made Hermione glad not to be here after dark. Very logically, all looks and feelings and cultural wiring aside, she knew this house might actually be out to get them. The Ministry's games might be just the beginning. . . . She shivered a little, thinking of the traps that might lie inside, waiting.
She could only hope that nothing had caught Harry.
Dean's thoughts weren't far from her own. "Do you think. . . ."
"Think what?" Ron said.
Dean looked uncomfortable. "Well. I think that Harry's wrong about all this, but what do you two think?" He gestured at the house. "Is it empty, or is there someone in there that we'd really rather not see?"
Hermione wanted to say, You're right, Dean, and Harry's wrong. Voldemort's not here, he's not back, and there's no chance of us meeting the most evil wizard of our time this morning, none at all. But how could she? Harry was keeping things from her, important things, and Dean was too. . . She didn't know what breakthrough he'd made in the case that made him so almost-certain that Harry was wrong, she barely even knew what the case was. . . . For a moment, Hermione was blindingly furious at Harry and Dean both, for expecting her to think and act in the dark.
"I don't know," Ron said, "but it doesn't matter."
Dean glanced back and forth between them, frowning.
"If we think Voldemort is inside," Hermione explained, "then we've got no choice but to get in there as well."
She looked at the two of them, her partners in this. She already trusted Ron with her life; that was easy. She'd have to trust Dean, now. It shouldn't be too hard. Didn't Harry, every day?
"Right," Dean said, swallowing. "Of course. Okay then."
It soon became obvious that the doors and windows of the house were protected by some sort of translocation spell, spiriting away anything that touched them. Hermione wasn't surprised, but it didn't make her feel any less like screaming.
Dean craned his neck, scanning the upper storeys. "If we do manage to get past the spells on the entrances, the Ministry'll know. They'll come crashing down on us." He was quiet a moment. "'Course, if Harry's the one who's right, maybe the Ministry showing up wouldn't be such a bad thing."
"Actually," Hermione said, "it's not true that the Ministry would know."
Dean said, "Listen, Hermione, I think I know about -"
"I'm sure they'd be alerted if we broke the spell," Hermione interrupted. "But you said 'get past it', which doesn't mean the same thing, now does it? We got past a spell already, at the property line. We didn't break it. Same thing for the ones in the graveyard."
"If Harry went in, we have to reckon he did it without the Ministry knowing," Ron said. "If they'd caught him up, Dean would've heard, wouldn't you Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean said, "okay, you're right, you're both right. Question is, how do we 'get past it'?"
"If we can't get through any of the doors or windows," Ron said, forehead wrinkled, "then we. . . make our own door?"
"In a manner of speaking," Hermione said, drawing her wand.
"You're just going to blast a hole in the wall?" Dean said, looking as if she'd lost her mind. "Can't imagine that going unnoticed."
"No." Hermione turned the wand on Ron first. "Conficio!"
"Oi!" Ron said. Then, a second later, "Oh! Cool! I can walk through walls now?"
"Only ones built by Muggles," Hermione said. "If the foundation's laid with magic, forget it. But yes, you can. And now Dean can -" She waved her wand again. "And now -" one more flick - "I can."
Getting through the wall wasn't easy, though. There was a second when Hermione nearly panicked, afraid that whatever magic had been cast on parts of the house was enough to keep them trapped inside the wall forever, even though the book she'd read the spell in had been disgustingly proud of the fact that a foundation laid by Muggle means was always penetrable. But she made it, pushing her way, and so did Ron and Dean, and Hermione smiled a little to herself as she lifted the charm. She'd spent the past year living such a normal life, work and classes and books and friends. No sneaking around, no life-or-death. It was good to know she remembered how to do this sort of thing when she had to.
As if by previous agreement, none of them spoke, beyond Hermione's whispered Finite Incantatem. She realised they should have already discussed what sort of magic they'd allow themselves to do, what might be safe and what might alert the Ministry - or worse - to their presence. Once again, she and Dean turned out to be thinking along the same lines. He held up his wand meaningfully, then mimed putting it away. Hermione nodded, agreeing. Better to search with eyes and ears first; leave magic as a last resort, or until they knew what they were dealing with.
She took in her surroundings. They'd come out in a library, heavy with dirt and dust and the smell of old pages, the books strewn and flung about in a way that tore at some deep part of Hermione's heart. And nothing had happened, no jinx, no booby-trap, no sudden thundering arrival of Ministry officials. They searched silently for a while, through the clutter, until suddenly Dean stabbed a finger toward the floor.
Hermione and Ron gathered around. There were marks on the floor, cutting through the thick dust, some scuffed and incomplete, one very definitely a footprint. Careful not to disturb anything, Ron put his foot down beside the print. It was slightly smaller than his shoe.
Harry?, Hermione mouthed.
Ron gestured as if to say, Maybe.
They continued through the downstairs rooms. All were in a similar state of disarray and sported similar scuffs and prints here and there. Hermione might not be Sherlock Holmes and able to piece together a complete history from a footprint, but based on the amount of dust and grime everywhere else she knew that these must be fairly fresh, and she felt certain that they were Harry's, that he had walked these floors in the past day.
But he had to be gone by now. Like Ron had said, Harry was ahead of them, and this was a game of catch-up. Besides, if he were still here, he would certainly know by now that they were also, no matter how quiet they were being. He was good at that kind of thing.
Hermione pictured him for a second, standing just across the room, underneath the Invisibility Cloak, watching in silence because the last thing he wanted to do was speak.
She took a moment to be very, very jealous of the Harry in her imagination. If she could see that he was safe and sound without being seen, without having to say a word to him. . . .
They were in the front hall now, the ground floor completed without incident. Dean was already on his way up the stairs. Hermione thought that he was getting impatient, and that he probably had good reason to be. He should've told their boss straight away that Harry had gone off on his own, but he hadn't. He was risking his own job, right now, out of loyalty to Harry. She felt a sudden strong warmth towards Dean as she put a foot on the stairs behind him.
The steps were smooth, hard marble, and could easily be a death-trap if someone wanted them to be. Hermione kept a careful hand on the rail as she climbed. Either there was nothing in this house to harm them, or it was all waiting upstairs. . . .
By the time Hermione reached the landing, Dean was turning the knob of the first door along the corridor. She made to follow, Ron at her heels, but Dean shook his head and pointed at the next door down. Hermione understood, and nodded. She knew that Dean largely made the suggestion because he wanted to speed things up, but these rooms were smaller and closer together than those downstairs. As long as they were careful to move in a group, sticking to adjacent rooms, back up would never be far away.
She poked through one mouldy old bedroom after another and, like Dean, as each one seemed to be more of the same, began to find herself hurrying, her brain less and less concerned about the clues or dangers this house offered and more and more focused on what next? Ron was right, Harry would have gone on to Hogwarts if a search here proved fruitless, but did that mean that they should do the same? If Dean truly was right, and Harry was wrong, then maybe Harry was back in London by now. . . even hanging round Dean's flat, perhaps, wanting to see Dean before reporting back to work just as much as Dean wanted to see him.
And they would go back to work, Dean and Harry, and things would be back to normal, and the patterns would wear the same. This would be over; everything would be over. Except that nothing would ever really be over between her and Harry, not as long as she heard his voice, saw his face, said his name.
Hermione slipped through the door at the end of the hall.
Her heart nearly stopped.
The room was in a terrible state, even compared to the rest of the house, but that wasn't important, her brain threw the data away almost as fast as it registered. Because there, on the floor, amidst the clothes and knickknacks and upturned furniture, lay all that mattered.
Two people. Harry, and Ron.
Hermione made a sound that she tried to swallow. She dropped to the floor. Calling for help means attracting attention, you don't want attention - They were lying face-up, their eyes wide, glassy, staring, their skin cold. Whatever happened to your boys happened in this room, it's probably about to happen to you, whether you shout or not -
Hermione heard something. She turned, her knuckles white around her wand. If she were lucky, really, really lucky, it would be Dean. . . .
It wasn't. It was Ron.
Or, at least, something wearing Ron's face.
Hermione whipped her head back around, and now, instead of Ron and Harry, she saw something massive and black, something many-legged and many-eyed and many-teethed. She squeaked, scooting away, her heart pounding like mad even though she knew now what they were dealing with.
She and Ron yelled "Riddikulus!", almost as one. The boggart-spider exploded, becoming wisps of smoke on the air.
"Ha!" Ron said, looking pale and pleased. "We showed him!"
"Yes, and blew our cover as well," Hermione said, picking herself up. "Oh well, I suppose we're about finished searching the house anyw -"
"Hermione?" Ron said, into the silence.
She'd put her hand down for balance as she'd begun to stand, but there wasn't dusty wood floor under her fingers. She felt cloth and something solid, and as she looked closely she realised she wasn't just seeing old floorboards beneath her hand, but something made to look like old floorboards. She kept her left hand in place, pointed her wand with her right, and after a Finite Incantatem, there was Harry and she knew, this time, he was real.
Ron was saying something, but she wasn't listening. Pulse, thank God Harry had a pulse.
"- come round now that the boggart's gone?"
It was slow, but it was strong. Hermione counted it under her breath.
"It would've been a Dementor, right?" Ron stuck a hand in his pocket and began rummaging. "Good job I'm prepared. . . ." He must have looked at her face, because then he said, "What, you don't think a boggart would turn into a Dementor for him any more?"
"I don't know," Hermione said, "but I'm not sure this is as simple as a boggart."
"But what else could it be?" Ron said. "We've been all over this house and there's no-one here besides us and the boggart."
"Well, hurry up and find that chocolate, why don't you," Hermione snapped. She couldn't fault his logic and she couldn't agree with him either. A boggart was too easy. A boggart only answered the one question - why Harry was unconscious. And there were so many more that needed answering.
"Aha!" Ron displayed a mushed bit of foil triumphantly, then dropped to his knees at Harry's side. He peeled back the edges and waved the melted contents of the foil under Harry's nose.
It did about as much good as Hermione suspected it would.
"Stop," she said, after a moment, a long moment of looking at Harry's still face, "just stop, it's not working. Get Dean, and we'll get him out of here."
When they were alone, she and Harry, Hermione reached out and touched his cheek, briefly, then dropped her hand. Her head buzzed with a thousand worries and questions and fears, but a part that was deeper and more certain saw in front of her an unravelling, and knew only a very quiet triumph.
It wasn't nice and it wasn't pretty, but maybe that was what made it love.
*
Harry sat straight up, breaking the first rule of returning to consciousness (Be careful how much you move your head: it's probably going to hurt) as well as the second (Do not broadcast the fact that you've come round: it's never a good idea).
"Ron! Why're you -" soft pillows, clean sheets, cat fur - "why am I here?" Trying to think back was like trying to find his way through fog, all confusion and fuzzy edges. Had he Apparated here on instinct, then blacked out? Merlin, he hoped not.
"Brought you here, didn't we? There was a pub in the village, the Pointy Hat or something, and we borrowed their Floo."
"You were there? At the house?" Harry's head felt fat and thick and unimportant. "Hermione?"
"Don't worry, she's okay," Ron said. "We're all okay."
"But there was -"
"It was a boggart. Not a Dementor. A boggart."
"A boggart," Harry said dully. He had gone from sitting to propping himself up without noticing; his elbows shook now with the effort of keeping him upright. He gave up, trying not to make it look like a collapse, and fell back on the pillows. He remembered these pillows. That wasn't fuzzy at all, even though it had been so long ago now, months ago. . . . He'd woken up, and Hermione had been there, and something had started, then.
Harry gave himself a mental shake, focused. So who had levitated him? Kept him up like a puppet, all the way through the village? Who had dug the Cloak out of his pocket, who had been in charge of making sure it didn't slip?
"Yeah, a boggart, but don't feel embarrassed or anything. Hermione reckons there's something really wrong with you."
"Does she? Great."
"She went to see Remus. She should be back soon, expect she'll explain then."
"She went to see Remus," Harry repeated.
She really was still angry.
And so was he. Angry at Hermione for not letting him keep her safe, for taking that choice away from him. For finding him like she did. For proving he would never have been able to carry out that choice anyway.
"Listen, Harry," Ron said. His voice was shatteringly sincere, and Harry forced himself to pay attention. "I'm really sorry, okay? About Piers and everything. I should've known he'd turn up. And Sarah is too, she told me to tell you, but really it's just me who should be. If I had told her everything I should have -"
"Forget it," Harry said. Shutting up Ron, shutting up the voice in his head that heard those words and thought immediately of Hermione, and shutting up the most dangerous voice of all, the one that was saying, He'd help you leave if you asked him, you know he would, even if he knew Hermione would kill him afterwards.
It was so tempting, but Harry couldn't do that, and not just because it wouldn't be fair on Ron. There always came a time when standing up and dealing with things was all there was to do, and this, now, was it.
Or sitting up and dealing, Harry thought, and couldn't help laughing at himself a little. What did it say about him, that lying here and waiting to have a conversation was turning his insides over and over in ways walking into Voldemort's house had not?
"You okay?" Ron asked, his voice nervous, probably because Harry had done his laughing out loud.
Harry started to reply, but just then the door opened, letting in a whirlwind of brown hair and brisk determination.
"Ron, we need a glass. Dean, the first potion. Harry -" The first time he'd heard Hermione say his name in days, it did something to every one of his nerve-endings, and she wasn't even looking at him as she said it - "sit up."
Harry sat up. Hermione stood at the foot of the bed, and Harry looked beyond her, toward the doorway. Dean was in her wake - not all that surprising - but he appeared to be the only person there. No Remus. Harry didn't know whether to think that was Remus's idea of mercy, a little gift of dignity, or a sign that Harry had badly damaged yet another relationship in the past few days.
"Tell us about the potion," Hermione said.
She was looking at Dean, and so Harry focused on him as well. In Dean's hand was a bottle capped by a glass stopper. Something they'd got from Remus, Harry supposed, or maybe a fresh bottle of the potion he'd been given the last time he'd collapsed on the job. The problem there, of course, was that he hadn't been on the job this time around, and if Magical Law Enforcement had supplied the potion then chances were good that he didn't even have a job anymore.
Dean cleared his throat, and spoke as if he were stating something for the record. "Soothing Solution, purchased from Jenkins's Apothecary." He shot Harry a glance. "It's a lot like Pepto."
"Thank you," Hermione said. "Now, Harry," she went on, turning towards him, but looking somewhere over his head, "on a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest and one being the lowest, tell us how you're feeling right now."
Very, very, very low, if they were talking mentally as well as physically. Here he was surrounded by people he had walked away from - all supposedly to some degree or another for their own good - who had banded together, followed him, and rescued him. He knew he should feel sorry for the choices he'd made; he knew he should realise how futile it had all been; but part of him still refused to believe that wanting to keep these people safe was wrong, and the fact that the words I'm sorry didn't feel right in his mouth yet made everything that much worse.
Not to mention, it was all pretty bloody embarrassing.
"Er," Harry said. "Four?"
Hermione gave him a quick, sharp glance. "Four?" She'd probably thought he would inflate the number, try and say that he felt better than he actually did. He'd surprised her, in a good way, and he liked it.
He shrugged. "Worse than average."
"All right," Hermione said. "Four. Now, based on your current condition, what effect would you expect this potion to have on that number?"
Seeing as his insides felt full of squirming things, Harry said, "Make it go up?"
Dean stepped up to the bed. He looked straight at Harry, steady and strong, and Harry found that he couldn't return that look, couldn't keep his own eyes from sliding away. He focused instead on the bottle in Dean's hands, the bottle that did not contain the potion from work, which meant it was possible that Dean had covered his absence up. . . Had he? Had he withheld information from their superiors, even out-and-out lied? Harry swallowed. He hadn't meant to ask that of Dean. . . except for the part of him that had, the part of him that had left Knockturn Alley that night thinking that maybe, just maybe, he could do this and no-one would ever know. . . .
"Will you have a dose?" Dean asked.
Harry reached out a hand, granting permission without hesitation. Dean poured carefully, then gave Harry a glass one-fourth full of something brownish-orange. It went down thick and sweet, and Harry could feel it spreading through his body, faster than any Muggle medicine. He gave the glass back to Dean, knowing both Hermione and Dean were watching his hand as he did so. He mentally told it not to shake, but it didn't really listen.
"Number, Harry?"
He swallowed hard. "Three and a half."
Hermione had expected that, Harry could tell. "Ron?" she said. "The potion to your left? Over on the chest of drawers?"
Ron picked up the bottle and brought it over to the bed, turning it around in his hands. "Looks like headache potion, Harry," he said. "Two good chugs, that's what I usually give it."
"Charming," Hermione said. "Yes, it's headache potion, which is often taken in conjunction with Soothing Solution -"
"Yeah, especially after a good night out," Ron said.
"So," Hermione said, teeth slightly gritted, "there shouldn't be any complications strictly thanks to the interaction of the two."
But she did think there would be complications, Harry realised. Why? What kind? Complications could mean anything when magic was involved, from knocking him out to giving him spots to making him speak in Hungarian for a week. Harry looked at Hermione for a long moment, at the way her chin was raised, the way her mouth was set. Whatever she was doing, she was doing it for a reason. She was doing it because she thought it had to be done.
He knew her, and he knew that, and it was enough.
Harry reached out a hand towards Dean, and took back the glass. From Ron he took the bottle, and poured out what he supposed equalled two good chugs' worth. He knocked them back, swallowed, closed his eyes. Kept them closed until his head was done doing tricks.
"Three," he said then, unprompted.
Hermione didn't miss a beat. "Ron? Empty your pockets, please."
"What?"
"Do I really have to repeat myself?"
Ron screwed up his face and silently mimicked Hermione, like a student behind the teacher's back, but he followed directions too. Plundering his pockets, he threw all manner of stuff on the bed, some of it landing on Harry's legs. His wand, four pieces of chocolate, six Galleons, a mashed bit of sandwich, something in a yellow foil wrapper. . . .
"That," Hermione said.
Ron paused, hand half-stuffed in his pocket. "That? Why?"
Hermione opened her mouth, possibly to explain, possibly to bite Ron's head off, but Dean spoke first. "Because it's not medicine," he said. "Just magic."
Harry glanced at Hermione again, and this time, he caught her looking at him. He saw the worry in her eyes before they flicked away, and more than anything else, that made him reach out and take what she wanted him to have.
He unwrapped the thing with fingers that felt a little clumsy, a little disconnected. As the Soothing Solution had not soothed his stomach at all, it took will for him to put it in his mouth, chew and swallow.
Harry felt himself grow feathers, which was always a very strange feeling indeed; then he felt the world go spotty; then he didn't feel much at all.
*
It had been daylight, but it was night now. They were alone, just he and Hermione, in a yellow-white pool of light surrounded by dark. She was sitting in a chair by the bed, and as Harry blinked awake, she said, "Number?"
Her voice was quieter, now that it was meant for just him, and just her. Not quite softer, or more gentle either, but quieter, and definitely more hers. Except, of course, for the distance still in it; that was his, he'd put that there. Just like the space between them in feet and inches, between bed and chair, that was down to him too. He'd put some of it there when he'd scared Percy off her project, more - much, much more - when she'd asked a question (What are you protecting me from?), and he'd thrown up a wall. And left it up, and walked away. . . So much distance, and it wasn't something he could make disappear with a wand and a word. It was something to be crossed, carefully.
Harry sat up, and turned his mind to her question. His throat felt like it had been gouged, one long raw strip, all the way down. That wasn't good. But his head, oh, even sitting up his head was great, the lack of any pain or tension in it an exquisite shock. "Seven," he said. It came out as a croak, but that didn't matter. "No - eight."
"You're sure?" Hermione said, but Harry didn't reply. His eyes lit on a glass of water on the nightstand, and he grabbed it and gulped. It was wet and cold and perfect.
Hermione took a deep breath. "All right," she said, her hands tightening in her lap. "I think it's time I told you what we did. I think it's fair."
Yes, it was. Very, very fair that she should tell him now, when it - whatever it was - was done.
"But it would be best if you had another of these first. Will you?" Hermione held out her hand, another Canary Cream on her palm, showing the tell-tale signs of time spent in Ron's pocket - smushed in the centre, torn foil at the edges. Harry reached out, took it, and in the taking their fingertips brushed, and he felt her for the first time in forever.
A few minutes later, the feathers were disappearing, the yellow was fading, and Harry still felt pretty bloody good.
"Still eight?" Hermione asked, watching him closely.
"Yeah."
"Good," she said, and Harry saw the rush of open relief hit her, just for a second, as if he were peeking through a crack in a closing door. Relief and maybe something else - satisfaction? Pride? She deserved to be proud; looked like she'd fixed him. Saved him from something he couldn't even see, because she was Hermione and she was good at that. She continued, "We tested you for poison. You failed."
"What? Are you -?" Harry bit off his question, because there was no need to ask it. This was Hermione, and she was announcing something as fact. She was sure. Instead, he started thinking - amazing how much easier it was to do that all of a sudden, now that his head wasn't stuffed with pain. "You gave me a bezoar," he said, realising now why his throat knifed him every time he spoke, every time he swallowed, "and I got better, so I must have been poisoned?"
"That's the short version, yes."
He needed to hear the long version, needed to hear it right now, but he couldn't sound as if he was rushing her; he felt like every step had to be taken in her time if they were to get anywhere at all. But he could sound pleading. That would be okay. More than okay.
"And the rest of it? Please?"
Hermione leaned forward in her chair, shifting into explanation-mode. "Your body was working against magic used on it, like an allergic reaction. We proved that by giving you minor magical substances that should have been beneficial, which you indicated were just the opposite. Then we gave you a more complex substance that caused you to undergo a fairly large magical transformation. You reacted even more adversely to that one." She paused, letting him take it in. "So the options were, you suddenly developed an allergy to magic all on your own, or someone saw to it that you did. Thus, the bezoar."
"But where did the poison come from? The house?" Harry had to admit, that sounded better than the alternative - that he'd fainted from dealing with a boggart. "How? Was it in the air? Or something I touched? I didn't eat or drink anything. . . ."
"No," Hermione said. "Not the house."
He blinked. "Then. . ."
"Oh, think about it, Harry! Doesn't the pattern stretch further back than that? Dean told me that you'd had Polyjuice the night you got so sick at work. And it was when you'd stopped taking your potion and started with Muggle medicine that you really seemed to get better. That's right," she said, catching his expression, "I was paying attention. And remember that night you were cleaning the oven, and there were magical fumes everywhere? From dragon's blood, to be precise, which I know you've been dealing with at work lately, so no wonder you've been ill all the time. So you tell me, Harry. When did all this really start? Where did the poison come from?"
"I -" He should be thinking back, trying to connect a magical trigger to every time he'd felt sick to his stomach or nearly passed out or had a headache. He should be trying to find that very first time, so he could put a ring round it on a calendar, stand back and see what it told him. But looking at the past few months felt like looking at a house of cards; Hermione had just placed a new one, right at the very top, and now everything was a breath away from fluttering down. "I'm having a hard time with this, sorry."
Hermione frowned. "Like something's affected your memory?" She leaned forward a bit more, eyes searching as if examining an interesting specimen.
"No. Just. . . I've been thinking it was Voldemort." The words sounded strangely smaller out loud than they had living inside his head. Interesting, a detached part of him thought, has the name become something less powerful spoken than unspoken? "Everything that's been wrong for months now, I've been thinking was because of Voldemort. And it could still be, I reckon, I don't know. But this," he flapped a hand vaguely, "I never even thought of something like this, because I was too busy thinking about that."
There was a faint surprise on Hermione's face; at what he had said, or at the fact that he'd been honest enough to say it? The second one, he realised immediately, she'd gone to the Riddle House, she knew where his head had been. And she already knew how deep tunnel vision could take him, sometimes.
Harry looked at her, and suddenly saw her much, much younger; the two of them were far beneath Hogwarts, she'd just solved a logic-puzzle he never could have managed, won him a potion that would take him through black fire. In the room beyond he was expecting to find the Philosopher's Stone, and - he'd been so very certain, and so very wrong - Snape, the person trying to steal it. . . .
"More important things," he said. "That's what you said."
Her forehead knit in confusion. "What?"
She'd been taller than him, he remembered that, and he'd accidentally tasted her hair and the whole thing had been startling and suffocating, but in the best way, a way that had given him warmth when the ice-potion had brought the cold. . . .
"Never mind," he said. Too soon to follow that thought; he was still facing a roadblock on that path, and she would be too, from the other side.
"Well," Hermione said, after a pause, "Dean seems to think you're wrong about Voldemort. He's pretty desperate to talk to you, actually. I should -"
But Harry wasn't listening; he was busy marvelling at the way her brain worked. She had found him flat on the floor, a boggart in the room - a boggart that had never resolved itself into any form or any shape for him, wasn't that nice and psychological? - and she'd gone from there to poison, somehow, and she'd figured out exactly what the poison had been doing, devised a test, and proved it. "Why poison? I mean, what made you think of it?"
"Well - like I said, I've been paying attention, these past couple of months." Harry thought he caught a pinkness in her cheeks, at that. "So I started searching for a way to link together everything I'd seen without bringing Voldemort into it. And Dean sort of handed me the idea - while we were out looking for you, he happened to say something about it not being like you'd been poisoned or anything, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was exactly like that. Unexplained reoccuring bouts of illness that - well, neither Ron nor I have shown the first symptom," oh yes, she was definitely going pink now, "so it really can't have been down to a virus or bacteria."
"And Remus, he agreed?" Harry was probing now, to try and find out how much Remus knew about everything.
"He thought it was a valid theory," Hermione said. "He gave us the bezoar. I thought. . . I thought you'd rather we got it from him than if Dean got it from the Aurors."
Suddenly unable to look at her, Harry studied his hands instead. Here she was, after everything, still trying to save his job for him.
"I really should send Dean in now." Hermione got to her feet. "I promised him I'd only take a few minutes."
"Hermione. . ."
She stood by the bed with her face carefully unreadable. "Yes?"
And - he couldn't quite say it, couldn't quite push that block out of the way. Because didn't saying sorry mean he intended never to do it again? How could he say that, how could he promise that? He was sorry he'd hurt her but he wasn't sorry he'd tried to keep her safe, he wasn't. The fact that she meant more to him than maybe ever just meant that it was doubly, tripley, quadruplely his job now, and how could he be sorry for doing that?
"I'm glad you came." Because that was true, and it was a hard-fought truth inside him; he had not felt glad, when he had first awoken here. "Not just that you came, that you knew where to find me."
By her eyes, she understood just how deep that ran; she heard the That you know me that well, even if he hadn't formed the words. "Me too," she said quietly. They looked at each other for one moment more, and Harry couldn't quite breathe, and then she was at the door, her hand on the knob, turning.
Dean was there, waiting, on his way in as soon as the door began swinging open, but Harry didn't care. "Hermione," he said, before she could disappear, "I want to fix this."
A smile stole across her face, so real and true that Harry's heart flipped over. "Good," she said. "I'd like that."