Thank you for the reviews. Please, please continue to review. This writer really needs the encouragement! This chapter got out more quickly than I'd anticipated thanks to some time being snowed in. Now, I'd just really appreciate seeing your reaction.
See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.
"You do make good eggs," Hermione said, as she rose to wash her plate.
"I've had a bit of practice," Harry responded as he took the plate from her and washed them both.
"Thanks," she said softly. "You don't have to do that for me."
He shrugged his shoulders.
Flipping on the light in the parlor, she took up the book that she'd brought downstairs with her. Slipped in between the cover and the first page was the broken slip of paper on which she'd written the inscription that had appeared on Harry's mirror. Curling up on a chair, she took a pen on the end table and began to write on the paper. She recopied the words and scribbled in little anecdotes as to what each one could mean. Harry settled onto the couch, watching her.
She could feel his eyes on her, burning into her. She brought her eyes up to meet his, resting her pen on the paper. She could see it again. He knew something.
"You know, Harry, this might be easier if you would just tell me what you know about the meaning of this," she said in a tone that she knew he hated.
His eyes flared. "It might be easier if Sirius was just around to bloody ask."
"Does everything need to become a guilt session for you?" she said, far more sharply than she'd intended. In fact, she hadn't intended to say it at all.
"Does everything need to be a guilt session? Is it my bloody fault that I live to be guilty? My existence, Hermione, is to cause people pain. Is it my fault that he died? Yes. Is it my fault that your parents were attacked? Yes." He was trembling with the attempt to maintain control, and was quickly losing the battle. "Did I ask for this life? No. But now I've got it and I've got to live it. I didn't ask to be the one. And because I'm the one, all of them... all of you... you're all pulled into this net, this horrible bloody trap that we didn't even set, but it's all because of me. And if all of you are lost, it's my fault. If I lose to this bloody monster, everything's lost. I didn't ask for this." He'd stopped speaking to her minutes ago. He'd lost track.
She stared at him, eyes narrowed. She knew he hadn't intended to say any of what he'd said in her presence. Somehow she knew that all of that was secret. "You didn't ask for what, exactly, Harry?"
I didn't ask to be the one who can either defeat Voldemort, or hand him the wizarding world on a silver platter, he thought. "I didn't ask for any of the attacks," he said bitterly.
"Excuse me?!" she asked sharply.
"I didn't ask for the bloody attacks, Hermione."
"Not that. 'I didn't ask to be the one who can either defeat Voldemort or hand him the wizarding world on a silver platter.' That. What are you talking about?! And you had better not try to dodge the question."
He looked up at her, his green eyes searing forcefully into hers. All of his power seemed to reside in those eyes. He silently cursed his new talent for thinking out loud. He'd never been one to do it before, and he wasn't sure what brought it about. But recently, he'd noticed that when he was around her, he tended to do it, and not notice until she commented after the fact. "This isn't the time," he said, slowly and forcefully.
She laughed bitterly. Looking at her watch-less wrist, she declared, "Actually, Harry, this is exactly the time." She looked back into his eyes with the same sheer force. She might not have the same powers coursing through her veins, but she was just as strong as he.
"It doesn't concern you."
"Somehow, I think it does."
"Why are you making this so hard? It's about me, not you, and there's nothing you can do, so why is it so important to you?!"
She got up quickly and crossed to him. "It's important to me because you're important to me. I will not let you close yourself inside again and push us out. Push me out." She paused. "Let me in, Harry," she said.
"There is no in, Hermione. Why can't all of you see that?" he shot, frustrated.
"It's not all of us, Harry, it's me."
"You and the bloody rest of England!"
Her voice was strict but still soft. "There is no one here but me. As much as you might think that you can, you can not fight this battle or this war alone."
His eyes flashed and he opened his mouth as if to say something, but he thought better of it.
"You can't."
Harry sighed and put his head in his hands, elbows on his thighs. He looked back up at her. His eyes were a vibrant green, possibly more vibrant than she'd ever seen them. It startled her, but seemed to pull her in. She couldn't look away.
"Hermione, I've got to... there's something you've got to know."
"Yes?" she asked, picking up on the slight tremor in his voice.
He paused for a long time. "I'm not sure how to tell you this."
"Try," she said.
"In the Department of Mysteries..." he stopped again. "That prophecy that they were trying to get from me."
"What about it?" her voice was growing quieter.
"They wanted it because it... it talks about the one thing that can bring Voldemort down. They needed to know what that one thing was."
"You broke it, though," she said, questioning. "They can't find it now."
"I broke it, yeah," he said, taking another deep breath. "But there's someone else who knew what it said. It... It was Professor Trelawney's prediction--"
"That brings her total of real predictions up to two," she sighed, recalling what Harry had told her Dumbledore had said after Trelawney had predicted the return of the servant to his master years ago.
"Yeah. Two. This was the first. Dumbledore heard it... but Wormtail did too, but he only heard part of it."
"What did it say, Harry?" she whispered.
He took a long pause, as if trying to gather his thoughts. Looking up at her, he began, scarcely above a whisper himself. "There would be only one person who had the power to vanquish Voldemort. Born as the seventh month dies, to parents who defied Voldemort three times..."
Hermione's eyes went still as she calculated in her head. "That's you and Neville," she whispered even lower than before.
His eyes met hers and he tried again to compose his thoughts. It somewhat surprised him that she'd known about Neville's birthday, but then again it didn't surprise him at all. She always knew when everyone's birthday was. She just cared that way. "Yeah, me and Neville... but then it also says that... that whoever it is, Voldemort would mark..."
Her eyes focused for what he believed was the first time on his scar.
"Right again," he said, defeated. "Mark him. I'm marked."
"So what does that mean?" she asked, not really wanting to hear the answer, afraid of what he might say.
"I'm the one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord. I... I apparently have some power that he knows not--"
Hermione's eyes went wide. "The message! That message... maybe it has something to do with that power. Maybe it tells you what you have that he doesn't have. A way to defeat him." She started to get up, but Harry's hand found her arm and firmly pulled her back down.
"If I'm going to tell you this, I'm going to tell you all of it. It's not just that I'm the one. It's... neither can live while the other survives."
She was trying to put two and two together in her head, but the pieces of the puzzle refused to assemble themselves in her head. She was just beginning to see the picture, but her mind blocked it out. "Neither can... no," she faded away as it finally clicked. "Neither can live while the other survives. That can't be... no... it's not--"
"It is. It means that in the end, either he dies, or--"
"Don't you dare say it."
"He dies or I do."
There was an extremely long, painful silence as tears welled in Hermione's eyes. "No," she said firmly.
Harry's eyes met hers once again. As she saw the honesty and pain there, she fell apart. "You can't die. I won't let you."
"I don't think it's really up to you," he said softly.
"It is," she said, her eyes shining now with determination. "I am not letting you die. And I am not letting you draw back up into yourself. Like I said, you can't fight this battle alone. I'm here alongside you. You are not going to push me away." With that, she stood up and walked, standing taller than Harry had ever seen her stand, over to where she'd left the book. Wordlessly, she took the broken sheet out of the book. Looking over it silently, she reached over Harry to retrieve her wand. "Engorgio," she said clearly, without the least hint of a shake in her voice. The sheet grew and unfolded, finally becoming as large as the coffee table before she stopped it. "Sutura entiro." The Standard Book of Spells, Chapter 9's Seamless Spell took effect and the cracks and torn lines disappeared. She was left with a large, whole, and perfect sheet of paper, with the inscription written in big, neat letters.
"Hermione--"
"Wait, this won't do," Hermione interrupted him, thinking out loud. "Accio mirror." The mirror came hurling down the stairwell, hitting several walls as it came. It finally settled onto the coffee table next to Hermione's paper. Bending over it, she frowned. She waved her wand broadly over the mirror, slowly repeating an incantation that Harry hadn't heard before. The inscription on the mirror glowed a bright orange and the letters on Hermione's sheet began to morph, as if they were mere liquid. "Handwriting transfer charm," she said to herself. "There might be some meaning in the handwriting." True to form, the letters on the paper soon became exact copies of the strange script that occupied the back of the mirror.
"Hermione?"
She wasn't paying attention. She was entirely focused on the oversize words on the paper in front of her.
"Hermione!" Harry half-yelled, turning her to face him with a quick hand on her shoulder.
Her eyes went wide in fear for a split second, but focused so quickly that Harry couldn't even be sure that he'd seen the terror in them. "What?"
"You were ignoring me."
"I was trying to interpret this."
His eyes narrowed. "I just told you that my chances of being killed in a painful and violent way, very soon, are very high. And you're ignoring me."
"What would you rather I do, cry? Fall apart?" she shot back tersely.
"I don't know, Hermione, but either of those options seemed more like what I was expecting from you."
Eyes narrow and fierce, she demanded, "What you were expecting from me? Why? Because I'm the delicate little girl? Because that's what girls do?"
"I didn't say anything about being a girl, Hermione."
"Why then? Because I'm weak? That's just what I do? Fall to pieces? I've got news for you. I've been there with you in every battle, every single one. I've put up at least the fight you have in every single one."
"I know you have," he said, trying again to control his temper.
"And I know there's no logical good in just sitting and crying over spilt milk--"
"My life is not spilt milk, and you've cried over it more than once."
"I realize that. But it's not exactly new... your life has always been in danger--"
"It's slightly different this time!" he fumed.
"No, it's not," she shot. Her voice grew more and more tense and louder until she was nearly yelling. "You're in danger, there's a chance of you dying, same as it always has been. And, unlike you, I am actually doing something to try to prevent you from dying. I'm not sitting around pitying you. I'm trying to decode this and maybe it would help you. If you'd rather have me sit here and cry, let me know." With that, she stormed out of the room, up the stairs and toward what Harry assumed was her makeshift room.
His fury finally boiling over, he grabbed once again for the closest thing to him-- the mirror-- and threw it, with as much force as he had within his young, powerful body. As he watched it shatter once again before his eyes, he fell backward onto the sofa, some foreign emotion within him pulling painfully.