A/N: So Saturday didn't happen. I rather think I should stop making promises, because they never work out. But here is the next chapter, which I worked hard on, and really quite like. I hope you do too. Thank you to all those who have reviewed so far, and I hope you continue to do so. It means a lot to know that people are enjoying this story. And the next chapter is well under way as well, so it shouldn't be too long before you see that too.
Love Will Come Through
Chapter Seven: Knots
Harry ran. In the periphery of his vision he saw people, but they were just flashes, blurs to him as he ran, heart beating fast, stopping him from thinking about her. He was desperate not to think of her, of all the guilt, of all the hurt and shock and distress deep within her eyes. All those memories he had watched, all the sights of her- but only now did he understand, did he believe that she loved him, and that he had loved her. Her eyes had told him that something in him was missing- a part of him was gone. He had been told this, of course, many times over- but it was not until then he had truly felt it.
In his blind run, he barely noticed where he was going, and, coming to a sudden halt beside a portrait of a particularly decrepit-looking wizard holding a plate of fruit, he wandered where he could go. He did not hear the portrait's creaky, wheezy voice droning on, nor a third-year's gracious thanks.
His stomach was growling obtrusively, but he could not go to the Great Hall- it would be full of questioning eyes, nosy whispers, cruel rumours. Who would give him safe haven? Hagrid, he thought- but the rain was still attacking the castle and it was dangerous even stepping outside for a second. But in Harry's confused, breathless state, he could think of no one else.
The portrait's voice wheezed on. "… now I don't like oranges, too sweet for my tooth- but pears, now those are a delicious fruit…"
Something in Harry's brain clicked. Suddenly the image of a tickled pear swam before his eyes. Dobby! He could go to the kitchens- food, and sanctuary, and someone who wouldn't stare at him sadly all the time.
"Thanks!" he said brightly to the portrait, which abruptly stopped speaking and looked at him in amazement, as if no one had ever said anything to it in its entire period of existence. Harry did not stay to hear any words the portrait might have said in response- he raced straight for the staircase, running down the flights of stairs to the ground floor, desperately trying to ignore the pointing students and loud whispers he produced as he passed through the entrance hall towards the thin passage to the kitchens.
A few curious Hufflepuffs raised eyebrows at the presence of one Harry Potter so near to their common room, but Harry quickly ran his finger over the pear in the portrait and impatiently waited for the door to open- slipping inside, he was met by a surprising sight.
He had never visited the kitchens during in a mealtime before, and thus had never really considered exactly what it would entail. What seemed to Harry's ambushed eyes like a thousand house elves, all wearing light-brown sacks over their wrinkled bodies, were buzzing around the kitchen, platters and bowls and deep dishes of all kinds of food hovering in the air as an elf levitated them across to the tables in the centre of the room, an exact replica of the layout from the Great Hall above. Every so often, a dish reappeared from above, empty, and an elf seemed to immediately refill it and snap it back to the room above. Around the walls, cookers steamed nosily; a barrage of dozens of delicious aromas wafted into Harry's nose, overwhelming him.
"Harry Potter, sir!" Dobby was at his side before he had even started to think about him again, hand tugging on Harry's robes, a wide grin on his face. He was clearly utterly delighted to see Harry.
"Hi, Dobby," smiled Harry. "How're you?" he asked kindly.
Dobby looked affronted. "So kind, so gracious, so powerful a wizard is Harry Potter, that he should think to ask after Dobby's health when it was he who defeated the darkest, most evil wizard Dobby has ever heard tell of!" squealed Dobby, snapping his fingers so a chair appeared, which he, wide-eyed, insisted Harry sit in. "Dobby is so thankful to Harry Potter, as are all the elves," he continued, bowing deeply. "They would thank you themselves, Harry Potter sir, but they are very busy," he said, looking pointedly at a passing elf, who was levitating an enormous platter of potatoes over Dobby's head.
Harry looked sheepish. He pulled at his collar. "Er… no problem, Dobby," he said eventually, and Dobby smiled again.
"But why is Harry Potter here, sir?" he asked with a deep frown. "Dobby hears tell of the dark wizard's final revenge over Harry Potter, sir- Dobby has been deeply concerned for Harry Potter, Dobby is so grateful-"
"Yes, okay, Dobby," said Harry, flushing as he cut across the elf's words. "I just needed to get away from people," he added lowly.
Dobby nodded wisely. "Dobby understands, sir. Sometimes Dobby cannot stand the taunts of his fellow elves, they still do not consider clothes fit for an elf," he said sadly, round eyes looking at the kitchen. His face quickly brightened again. "But is there anything Dobby can do for Harry Potter, sir?"
Harry cleared his throat, pulling at the top of his robes again. "Well, I am a bit hungry," he admitted.
Dobby grinned. "Say no more, Harry Potter sir," he said firmly, and Harry had barely blinked before a platoon of dishes was flying towards them; a group of potatoes fell sharply off their platter as the dishes careered to a stop in mid-air. "What would Harry Potter like, sir?" said Dobby. Harry stared in astonishment at the various foods surrounding his head.
"Um…" was all he managed to say. Dobby thrust a plate into his hands and Harry gratefully scooped some food onto his plate, and he nodded to Dobby when he'd finished, and the plates all zoomed back to where they'd come from. Harry heard a low muttering from the other elves, but they all got on with their work without another word. Dobby glared at them.
"They is unappreciative of Harry Potter; I shall tell them again, sir-" he said angrily, but Harry put a hand on his shoulder.
"Dobby, it's okay, I'm disrupting their work, they have a right to be annoyed," he assured the elf. Dobby did not look convinced, but said nothing else. He looked up at Harry as he ate, eyes brimming with tears.
"It is an honour, Harry Potter sir, to see you enjoying our work," he breathed. "Dobby must-" he broke off chokily- "must go back to work, sir; unless Harry Potter wants him to-"
Harry smiled. "Go, Dobby," he nodded, and Dobby, giving Harry one last gaze of wondrous rapture, ran away across the room into a cloud of elves, and Harry was left sitting alone in the corner of the room, watching the elves work their magic as he munched pensively on his warming meal, tucked away where no one would ever think to look.
*~*~*
Ron breathed heavily as he stuffed himself behind a wheezing suit of armour, eyes peeking over the metal shoulder to see the fleeting sight of Neville and Ginny passing by. They walked by in silence, not seeming to notice Ron, who smiled to himself at his apparent stealth skills. He noted with surprise that Neville's hand was resting unchallenged on the small of Ginny's back, but now was not the time to become fixated on his sister's love life.
It was a good few- and very uncomfortable- minutes before Professor McGonagall appeared, walking stridently past with Madam Pomfrey, face ashen, talking earnestly at her side, Professor Flitwick wide-eyed behind them. Ron did not listen to their words, but their footsteps, and, as soon as they faded from his ears, he awkwardly slipped out from behind the suit of armour, which moaned in annoyance as Ron hit its arm, and ran lightly back to the hospital wing.
He paused outside the door, swallowing nervously over and over- the saliva seemed never ending, and he suddenly felt incredibly apprehensive, the more sensible side of his brain suddenly screaming that this was a very bad idea. What if she didn't want to see him? What if she was still mad? What if he just upset her even more?
But all of these completely logical reasonings for not opening the door were overwhelmed by one overriding argument against them, and, before he could stop himself, he turned the knob and stepped back into the chilly medical ward.
Immediately two pairs of eyes swung round and bored into him. The sensible side of his brain was berating him. He ignored it. He strode as confidently as he could towards the two figures, barely recognising the presence of Tonks, whose hair changed from its fiery red to a disconcertingly pale yellow in the time it took him to walk over to her.
"Ron, I don't think-" Tonks said awkwardly, but Hermione's forceful voice cut over her.
"Get out."
Ron's face paled in a second, confidence collapsing beneath Hermione's deathly stare. "I… Hermione…"
Her face seemed set into a fierce glare; her eyes were daggers. "I mean it, Ron. Get out. I have nothing to say to you."
Ron felt his knees wobbling and he stumbled onto the neighbouring bed, which only seemed to intensify the power of Hermione's gaze. "Please, Hermione, I…"
"Tonks, I don't want to see him," Hermione said, though her stare was still directed at Ron.
Tonks stood up. "Come on, Ron, I don't want to have to report you," she said quietly, clearly rather confused by the tension she was suddenly caught up in. She walked over to Ron and tried to get him to stand up, but he gripped the sheets, refusing to move.
"Hermione, I'm sorry for what I said, I didn't mean it," he said in a rush, afraid she would cut him off again.
Hermione didn't blink. "Tonks, tell Ronald-" her enunciation was cutting- "that I have more important things to deal with right now than his idiotic mouth," she ordered smoothly.
Tonks frowned. "Hermione, for god's sake, I'm not an owl, tell him yourself," she replied, annoyance seeping into her voice.
Ron stood suddenly up, making Tonks jump. "It's okay Tonks, I heard her loud and clear," he said, voice suddenly full and bitter again. "I'll go, Hermione, but I wouldn't bother with Harry," he said, walking in thick strides to the door. "Ginny's been taking goooood care of him," he added with a victorious smirk, his slam of the door making Hermione's glare crumble.
*~*~*
"Where is he?"
"I don't know, do I?!"
"He can't have just disappeared!"
"Well, in that case he's a very good hider."
Ginny whacked Neville in the arm- rather harder than she'd meant to, for he let out a yelp in response and she looked up at him apologetically. "Sorry."
He rubbed his arm. "S'okay," he mumbled.
Ginny's face returned to its resolute determination. "Right," she said, rubbing her hands together and picking up the curling piece of parchment to look at it even closer. "He's not on the top floor," she said, eyes quickly roaming the top of the parchment again.
Neville sighed. "Obviously not, or he'd probably be being harassed by Peeves," he commented, watching the emblazoned name of the school's poltergeist zooming around the Astronomy classroom beneath the tower.
Ginny rolled her eyes and hit out lightly at the map. "God, I wish we understood how to use this stupid thing… I can't believe Fred and George never told me, I'm their only sister!" she grumbled, glaring at the parchment as if her brothers lay inside it.
Neville grabbed the map. "Well, they didn't," he said tersely, eyes searching the map. "He must be here somewhere," he murmured. They both went quiet as the searched the map, ignoring the multitude of dots roaming around the castle as they looked desperately for Harry's name.
Ginny's finger traced the hallways. "He's not in the library…" she said to herself, pausing when she saw Luna's name, alone among the bookshelves.
"Or the Charms classroom," Neville murmured guiltily, seeing the names of his classmates sitting in Professor Flitwick's room- Harry, Ron and Hermione's names were not among them.
Ginny glanced at Neville. "You can go, you know, if you want; I mean, I can look…"
Neville's head shot up. "No," he said forcefully, face so close to Ginny's that she went slightly pink. Neville went an even deeper red in response. He stared back at the map. "I'm staying," he said, more quietly, but the decisiveness in his voice still held, so Ginny looked intently back at the map.
"Right, we have to think logically about this," she decided, running her finger absently over the map. "If you were Harry right now, where would you go?"
Neville cleared his throat. "Hagrid's?" he suggested, gesturing towards the grounds.
Ginny peered at the map. "Nope," she said in disappointment. "Though in this weather, it'd hardly be a good idea," she said, glancing darkly towards the windows, which were rattling against the unstoppably violent winds still raging outside the castle.
She jumped as Neville's hand slapped the map. "There he is!" he said excitedly, pointing. Ginny squinted beneath Neville's fingers and her eyes widened.
"The kitchens!" she exclaimed. "Of course! Dobby!"
Ginny almost fell into Neville's cross-legged lap when there was an ear-splitting crack and Dobby himself appeared before them, his eyes wide.
"Miss Weasley!" he said in his high pitch. "Mr Longbottom, sir! It is an honour," he said reverently, bowing. "But what can Dobby do for you?" he asked when he'd straightened up.
Neville looked rather uncomfortable being treated so graciously, and Ginny, flushing from her intimate contact with Neville, spoke up.
"Hi, Dobby," she smiled, and Dobby bowed again. "We, er… didn't meant to call you," she said sheepishly; Dobby's ears drooped. "Not that we're not glad to see you, of course," she added quickly, looking pointedly at Neville, who nodded fervently. "But now that you are here, you can help us," she said brightly, making Dobby's face return to its beaming happiness again. "Is Harry in the kitchens with you, Dobby?"
Dobby nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, Miss, Dobby is giving Harry Potter much food, and safety from prying eyes, Miss," he said, protuberant eyes sparkling, as if Harry's requests were some kind of a sacred mission.
Ginny's lips twitched in amusement. "Good," she said, and Dobby looked incredibly pleased. "But we need to see him, Dobby; can you ask him to meet us outside the headmistress' office?"
Dobby nodded enthusiastically again and said, "Dobby will do so immediately, Miss!" He vanished with a crack.
Ginny looked at Neville. "Well, that saves us from-"
She almost fell over again at another deafening crack, and Dobby was suddenly standing before them again. He looked rather panicked.
"Dobby went to do as Miss asked, Miss, but Harry Potter was gone, Miss!" he said in a rush, looking incredibly guilty.
Ginny sighed, face falling rapidly. She looked kindly at Dobby, who looked ready to start hitting himself with a frying pan. "Don't worry, Dobby, it's not your fault; we'll find him, you go back to work," she said, smiling vaguely. Dobby nodded unconvincingly. "And Dobby," Ginny added quickly, "we order you not to hurt yourself because of this!" Dobby looked chastised and nodded, vanishing again with a final crack.
Ginny looked back down at the map, which Neville was already examining. "He's going up the stairs," pointed Neville, and they both watched the dot labelled 'Harry Potter' walking alone down the corridors and up the staircases. Both let out a gasp of surprise when they realized where he was going.
"The hospital wing!"
*~*~*
The knot in the wood was not quite a circle. It was like the moon when it was only a day away from being full- a perfect orb that had been shaved of the tiniest sliver, but that tiny sliver made it irrevocably imperfect, always inferior.
There was another knot in the wood to the first knot's left; this one was not a circle in the slightest, but a malformed blob, curling upwards and outwards in no discernible shape, cutting over the sleek lines of the aged chestnut, its dark centre almost black.
To Harry, who had been staring at the door for uncountable silent minutes, it was the second knot that he felt most fascinated by, for he felt, in some abstract way, that this knot represented himself. Like the knot, his consciousness was unwieldy, malformed; like the knot, he was cutting across the clean, ordered lines of other people's lives with his own misshapen feelings.
Of course, Harry was only pondering these strange thoughts because he could not seem to open the door; his hand had ventured to the knob repeatedly, but each time it retracted almost of its own accord, something within him recoiling from the distressing scene it knew would result from the door opening.
Sometimes he could hear faint voices on the other side of the door, indistinguishable murmurs, but no one came to the door, and no one seemed to pass behind him either; this area of the castle was deserted. Somewhere behind him, he heard the howls of the wind, and, at one point, the laugh of someone he didn't know- or couldn't remember.
He took a deep breath. Now or never, he told himself, forcing his hand out to the doorknob again. His hand gripped it, shaking. It was cold and hard, and his sweaty palm almost slid off the brass. Before his brain could convulse and stop him again, he pressed his other hand over his first and turned the knob.
The door creaked open with a painful slowness, and so it was with an almost staccato visual that she swam into view; for the first few seconds she wasn't even facing him, her body turned away to where Tonks, her hair a vivid electric blue, was sitting tightly in a chair, leaning towards Hermione and whispering intently at her. Her lips suddenly snapped shut and her eyes widened when she saw Harry, and Hermione's head swung around in a blur.
It was in that moment that Harry understood how he had loved Hermione: she was beautiful. Her shining, bushy hair framed her smooth cheekbones, which glistened in the bare, harsh lights of the hospital wing; her eyes, a liquidy chocolate brown, sparkled bewitchingly. She was, he noticed with a slight flush, still wearing only her thin cotton pyjamas, which clung closely to her curved form. Harry realized he was gaping, and shut his mouth quickly, desperately hoping she hadn't noticed.
She was staring back at him, though; her mouth was shut but her eyes looked frightened, unmoving from his frozen form. His immediate thought was to run away again, but he knew that, apart from his legs seemingly being glued to the floor, she did not want him to. The fright in her eyes mingled with undeniable love- she had not, could not give up on him.
So he moved, suddenly unglued again, and sat awkwardly down on the neighbouring bed, looking briefly at Tonks, who smiled warmly at him, before his eyes returned to Hermione.
The silence that followed was almost unbearable for all three; Tonks looked nervously between the young couple before her. Hermione's face was turned away from her but Harry's seemed to almost be shaking; a vein in his cheek twitched and his fingers were drumming soundlessly on the sheets, but his eyes were gazing intently at Hermione.
"Are you okay?"
Hermione's soft whisper broke the tension; Tonks immediately looked away, as if the whisper had been too intimate for her to be witnessing. Harry could tell she was itching to leave, but having her there felt to him like a safety net- situations would remain calm as long as she was there.
"Yeah," he said quietly back, voice rather flat. Her eyes seemed to pierce him, lovingly but fiercely set on his own.
"Good," she replied. She blinked slowly, carefully.
"Are you?" he asked, almost perfunctorily.
She gave a small, ironic smile. "Yeah," she said, echoing him.
Silence fell again; both were considering what to say, whether they could manage to say what they knew they needed to. Tonks brushed her hair nervously over her shoulder and suddenly stood up, making both Harry and Hermione jump.
Tonks bit her lip. "I'll leave you two-"
"No!" They shouted in unison, making Tonks sit down again in alarm; they looked at each other, and, despite the tension and nervousness, laughed.
Harry's fell away rather quickly, and Hermione's followed soon after; once again the uncomfortable silence settled over them, an invisible mist dividing them.
Hermione picked nervously at a hole she had made in her sheets as she spoke, but her eyes burned deeply into Harry, amplifying his oxymoronical feelings of distance and closeness. "So you… don't remember anything?" she asked, voice limp with hopelessness.
He sniffed slightly. "Well, I saw Ginny's memories, but they-"
"Are just images, not feelings," Hermione finished. Harry's lips cracked into a smile despite himself. Hermione, however, remained drawn and depleted. "But what about this thing Luna did? McGonagall said it was dangerous, but…"
Harry frowned in surprise. "It was?" he said, almost rhetorically. "Luna obviously didn't know that."
Hermione snorted. "Obviously, Harry- Luna may be weird, but she's not reckless… well, not always," she said, a strange kind of thin wry smile playing on her lips. Her eyes glinted. "But what happened?"
Harry paused. "It was… we made a circle, and all the-"
"Who's we?" Hermione broke in.
Harry smiled briefly again. "Me, Ginny, Luna, Neville, and Ron."
Hermione started. "Ron?"
"Ginny threatened him."
Hermione sighed but said nothing. Harry took this as a sign to continue.
"Anyway, we made this circle and all the wands had to be pointed towards me, and we each held the end of two wands, so it was an unbroken current of magic…"
Hermione almost jumped off the bed. "Merlin, Harry, that is dangerous! All that magic flowing straight into you…" Hermione bit her lip and looked away, blushing slightly. "Carry on," she mumbled.
"Well, it seemed to be working; I was shaking and I felt like it was all coming back… and then Ron dropped his wand and the circle broke."
Hermione suddenly looked incensed. "Ron did what?"
"He dropped the wand," repeated Harry tonelessly. He understood Hermione's reaction, even sympathized with it, but the part of him that cared for Ron seemed to be gone, or at least hibernating- he had no interest in the man.
Hermione, however, seemed livid with anger, and her hand was streaming vividly through her hair, her eyes flashing as she looked round at Tonks.
"Good god," Harry heard her mutter to herself; he noticed Tonks' alarmed expression as she heard Hermione's next words. "He really is a bastard. He really hates us, he really doesn't care…"
Tonks seemed to be trying to protest, but Hermione held up a hand to silence her, and Tonks fell back wordlessly, looking strangely humbled. Hermione chewed her bottom lip fiercely, and Harry saw tiny droplets of blood running along their delicate pinkness as she looked up at him, eyes beseeching.
"Ron isn't important right now," she said firmly, rather more to herself than to Harry. "Don't worry, Harry, we'll get your memory back; I can show you all the memories, the important ones, the ones no one else got to see," she nodded, flushing slightly as she said these last words.
She looked deeply at him once more through the silence, a silence which was no longer tense, but almost hopeful- Hermione's words hung over them as the last vestige of possibility; the final, yet the strongest, chance. Harry looked back, still feeling hollow and empty, still missing the thing she so needed.
She stood, pyjamas suddenly making her seem small and pale, her face still white in the grey light of the hospital wing. She walked over to him, sat herself beside him- he heard her slow, deep breaths blowing onto his neck, and he shivered. The entire world around them seemed to dissolve suddenly as she put her hands on his cheeks; her eyes burned into his, their rich, perfectly circular orbs piercing every part of him.
"You're still the same person, Harry," she whispered, so softly he could barely hear her; so gently, so delicately. "You're still the person who defeated Voldemort. You're still the person who loved me." She paused. "You are the person that loves me."
His mouth cracked open, he felt words, unidentifiable words bubbling up through his throat; in that moment all he wanted was to hold her, this woman he couldn't remember knowing, to tell her that everything would be alright- but it was not alright, and that was his fault, he was causing her all this pain-
And then the door flew open loudly, and Hermione jolted backwards from Harry, and the world appeared to him again; Madam Pomfrey strolled busily towards them, a haughty expression on her face.
"Miss Granger, you are supposed to be resting," she said disapprovingly, and Hermione, blushing, scurried back to her bed and slipped under the blankets, sitting up but looking embarrassed. Tonks immediately scraped her chair to the head of the bed. Madam Pomfrey nodded curtly. "That's better." She turned to Harry. "Mr Potter, I think that you are more than well enough to return to your dormitories," she said pointedly. Harry glanced at Hermione, whose eyes flitted away, and he nodded, walked over to his bed by the window, scooped up his belongings, and walked to the door, where, as he looked back over his shoulder at Hermione, he collided with someone.
"Ow!" the someone cried.
Harry turned his head back. "Oh, I'm sorry, Ginny," he said, as Ginny rubbed at her reddened forehead. Neville stood behind her, looking slightly breathless.
Ginny smiled warmly. "That's okay, Harry- did Madam Pomfrey kick you out?" she asked, gesturing at Harry's bag.
Harry looked sheepish. "Yeah," he replied.
Ginny glanced behind Harry and leant forward. "Is she okay?"
Harry sighed. "We talked… I told her about what we tried, and she said it'd be better now she can show me all the… private memories," he said carefully, and Ginny flushed slightly. "But she still thinks I'm someone I'm not any more," he said sadly.
Ginny shook her head. Instinctively, it seemed, her hand went to Harry's cheek, caressing it softly in comfort, reassurance. "Harry, no!" she said in a fierce whisper. "You are the same person," she said firmly. "I knew you too, you know, and you haven't changed from who I knew," she said, eyes twinkling as she smiled.
Harry smiled back, feeling the warmth spread from Ginny's fingertips onto his cold cheeks. "Thanks, Gin," he said. "I'm going back to the common room now," he said, and Ginny's hand fell from his face, immediately replaced by wind chill. "I'll see you both later?" he said, not really asking a question, but they both nodded, and he let them pass, closing the door softly behind him, looking once again at the knots in the wood; the unwieldy one seemed slightly less black.