Voiceless

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: So, this is the long one. You guys have no idea how nervous I am about posting this. The mood here is different to my other little stories, it’ll seem bleak at times, but I promise, me being me, there’s light at the end and plenty on the way too. So make of it what you will. I foresee around six or seven chapters, some still being written, some being beta’d. I hope to post fairly regularly (that is, if no one’s run away screaming!).

And once again, many, many thanks to my beta, miconic, without whom the whole thing would be a veritable convoluted catastrophe. (If it still is, it ain’t her fault!)

*

Prologue.

“And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are fragments of my mind and nowhere I have ever been.”

Jeanette Winterson, ‘Sexing the Cherry’

It’s cold inside the castle, so cold. Wind darts in through every crack, gloom digs nails into every corner. And these stone walls and open pillars, draped with cobwebs and the dust of a thousand years- these are meant to be worn and smooth.

They’re not.

They stand coarse and unsympathetic at her attempts to hide among them.

So, so cold.

She’s been wandering around for nearly half an hour now, and the Healer waiting in the hospital wing would probably be pacing the floor in forced patience. They haven’t yet come swooping down on her with their pitying eyes and frustrated pleadings, not because they don’t know where she is, but because once they find her, they wouldn’t know what to do with her. She doesn’t blame them, not really. If she turned a corner and came face to face with herself, she thinks she too would be flummoxed.

What do you do with someone who has silence rammed in her throat like shards of glass?

What do you do with Hermione Granger when she will not, cannot speak?

Would she still be Hermione Granger?

She doesn't think so.

She doesn't think that this living thing crouching inside her skin is Hermione Granger. How can it be, if what it does all day is drift about in the castle in a careful path that circumvents places previously inhabited by Hermione Granger?

This is someone else. Someone who definitely would not be found in the library anymore, who frequents the squashy armchair in front of the Gryffindor fireplace increasingly less, who’s rapidly becoming a mere fleshly blur between the sharpening shadows of her two best friends.

Ever since her wanderings began--very early in the term--she has found places within the castle she’s never known existed. She thinks she’d soon be a formidable rival to the Weasley twins’ reputation for knowing the castle better than its founders. Unsurprisingly, some of the places she found were sinister. Narrow, unremarkable corridors leading off the main hallways would end up in dark crannies full of cobwebs and objects that seemed at home in Moody’s drawing room. Or tiny doors tucked into the corners of spacious corridors would lead to high-ceilinged halls like the one she is in now, empty in a strange, deliberate way, as if they were condemned to be kept bare of all their purposes.

But in some of the places that she discovered she felt peaceful. She found an old stone ledge on the far side of the lake facing the castle, half-covered in moss and riotous weeds, some of which sprouted tiny yellow daisies. Insects and moths constantly trilled and scuttled inside the green tangles, and the lake sighed a few meters from it, fingered by the wind. The stone was shaded by the tree that stood beside it, dying, choked by a parasite with large, glossy leaves. When she sat on the stone, her feet didn’t reach the ground. She remembered being eight years old, sitting on the swing in the front-yard of her parents’ house, both content and excited by the fact that soon, her Dad would lift the latch on the front gate and stride in, his face breaking into a smile, his arms lifting towards her. The afternoon sunlight, liquid gold, would linger on the creases of his laugh lines--perhaps the reason why the translucent amber of afternoons always instilled in her a sense of complete security--and she would hop off the swing with a shriek and jump into his arms. Soon.

She found so many of such hidden or neglected places and noted them carefully. It doesn't escape her notice that she’s applying herself to this task with a diligence and method characteristic of Hermione Granger, but she prefers not to dwell on it.

Some things just hurt too much.

Things that catch like metal hooks midway inside your chest every time you take a breath.

**

Sometimes at night, lying wide awake in her bed, twisted around her sweaty form with arms, legs, chest like a body of water around a sinking vessel, he wonders what shape these hooks are, what’s reflected in those shards of glass.

What sounds would her screams make if ever they broke out?

**

Now, drifting about in the looming, empty hall, she leans against a pillar, feeling satisfied by the way its rough surface grazes her flesh. The sky-light gleams feebly and the cold--out of which the stone seems to be hewn--pushes its needle-like fingers into her. She shifts on aimless feet and treads on something alive that squeaks and scampers away. She stumbles, turns around and dives into the stone. Her eyes sting and a wail flares in her throat, aching for sound but never finding it; a feeling that’s become horribly familiar in the past weeks. She feels around for a place to sit, sneezing from the unsettled dust and suddenly something gets caught underfoot again. Her arms push out to grab hold of something to keep herself from falling. But instead of cold stone, she finds her hand pushed into someone’s chest.

“Your shoelace's undone.”

He removes her hand and leads her to a ledge a few feet off. In the gloom, she cannot see his expression, but she resents her body for the way it rises to the comfort of being near him.

He tugs her hand to make her sit and kneels in front of her, pulling one foot towards him. She watches the top of his head while he re-ties her shoelace and gives a testing tug to make sure it’s tight enough.

“There, all done.”

He looks up and she can make out the faint shape of a smile on his lips. She waits for the reprimand she knows will never come. She’s supposed to be stronger than this, smarter, she’s not supposed to cower in dark places when he has the world to save. She’s supposed to be by his side, helping him to become the best he is. But look at her now; she’s failed him. He should despise her with all his being, avoid speaking her name, turn away whenever she’s in sight, forget about her and find other friends, more powerful, useful allies, but he doesn’t.

Instead he plays the game with her, the game she wants to play.

“We’d better get back,” he says softly, apologetically.

She nods and gets to her feet. He turns, his hand finding her wrist, and she lets him guide her out of the labyrinth of stone. Because while no one knows what to do with her, Harry does. Even when she doesn’t know, he does.

She wonders when that happened.

As they walk slowly towards the hospital wing, where a Healer would be waiting to do her dreaded, weekly check-up, armed with the latest set of spells to try and lift the curse that’s made her voiceless, she thinks that he seems taller and straighter somehow. The hesitation she always associated with him has fallen away. Instead, there’s an assured gentleness in the way he touches her and patience--oh, how she hates it--in the soft, still boyish lines of his face as he looks at her.

I love him, she thinks, I’ve loved him for a long time but I didn’t want to say it.

And now, you stupid, stupid girl, will you ever get to tell him?

**

He’s surprised but relieved that she came away from that monstrous stony place without protest, but it worries him too for a reason he can’t quite pinpoint. May be it’s because when she puts up a fight, she seems more like her old self. (More herself, not old self, he corrects himself). He doesn’t remember her being so small, as if there’s less of her to hold on to. When he takes up her wrist to lead her down the dark corridor, his fingers seem to slip through her skin, penetrating her bones and muscle, then meet the tip of his own fingers on the other side. He clutches her tighter. She looks up and wriggles her hand fully into his.

*

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: First of all, thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed the Prologue to this, as well as my other stories. And danielerin and victoria_tonks, I don’t know how to thank you; not only have you left such lovely reviews, you’ve been talking about the stories on PK boards and your own LJ’s as well. I’m still not convinced I deserve that much attention.

And of course, hugs to miconic for the absolutely thorough beta-work and for holding my hand when I have my panic attacks.

So, here goes Chapter 1, hope it’s up to expectations. If not, I hope you’ll tell me. And just a reminder that I’ve taken liberties with a certain Hogwarts ‘fact’ as you’ll soon find out, so bear with me.

****

Chapter One

She has been voiceless for a month and half. One morning towards the end of the summer holidays at the Burrow, they all woke up to find Hermione missing. The night before she had dozed off in an armchair with a dusty book on her lap until she was shooed away to bed by Mrs. Weasley. No one had seen her after that. Ginny straggled downstairs halfway through breakfast next morning and everyone looked at her expectantly. She stared blankly back.

Hermione’s bed hadn’t been slept in and her pillow was missing.

The Order was alerted at once and the Ministry express-owled. Dumbledore and Remus visited her parents; her mother clutched an embroidered table cloth tight enough to leave a rent and her father threatened that as soon as his daughter was found, she would be removed from Hogwarts, severed from the world of magic and kept safe in her own home, finishing off her education in a normal, respectable muggle college.

She was gone for two whole days. For two whole days Harry didn’t have a single meal, and only went to bed when Remus threatened to cast a potent sleeping charm. Once in bed he lay unmoving on his back, clutching his belly where the constant gnawing in his stomach wrangled with the rising salty scream just above it.

An army of wizards mobilized by Dumbledore scoured the wizarding neighbourhood. Hermione’s muggle haunts, of which there weren’t that many, were raked through. Many were questioned; muggle and wizard alike, and scores of memories searched with or without the consent of the person. Even Hogwarts was searched thoroughly. Mrs. Weasley’s protests about Harry and Ron joining the search died upon seeing the look on Harry’s face.

Harry’s nerves coiled tighter and tighter as the hours passed by. There were moments when he could feel the frenzied motion of blood in his own veins, bearing down on a point in his chest.

Useless you are, Harry, damn useless.

You can fight dragons and duel with evil wizards but what are you doing now?

Then, on the night of the third day, there was a knock on the door. They were all vegetating in various states of anguish in the living room, a fire roaring to pelt the sudden chill that descended with the heavy downpour outside, waiting for members of the Order to come straggling in with the results of the day’s activities. Hearing the knock, Fred, who was lounging on the floor closest to the door, strode towards it. When the door swung open, his mouth dropped open. He turned around, gesturing convulsively, unable to speak. The fire burning in the grate seemed to suddenly grow still, its flames paralysed, the shadows it cast on the walls arrested midway in their ghostly billowing.

Hermione stood on the doorstep, untouched by the summer downpour except for the muddied hem of her blue pyjamas. Her hair was still in the braids she wore to bed. Her feet were bare. Caught between the light from the doorway and the wet darkness outside, she looked wraith-like, pale and insubstantial.

Once movement and speech were regained, everyone pounced on her at the same time. Hands grabbed her and pulled her inside, questions flinging at her from all quarters, fingers digging into her flesh, insistent eyes peering into hers, and voices, voices, voices.

She stood in the midst of it all, hands pressed tightly over her ears, her face contorted while strangled, hollow sounds like those of a broken wind instrument tore from her throat. They were more the shape of a sound than a sound itself, the hollow shell of expression.

Finally, Harry managed to untangle her from the frantic knot and pushed her into the couch, dropping down next to her. Her pale face lifted to his for a moment, vertical blue veins standing out on her forehead. Then she twisted herself into his side, her hands trapped between her body and her drawn up legs, and pushed her face into his shoulder.

Barely aware of what he was doing, he encircled her with his body, hiding his own tears in the back of her neck.

***

She refused to raise her head or move from his side all night. Dumbledore arrived within minutes. For twenty minutes they coaxed, wheedled and questioned, and offered sweetened impatience and true concern, but she made no sound. Finally, Harry ignored everyone in the room and took matters into his own hands. He lowered his mouth into her ear, one hand stroking the back of her clammy neck. Her fear clung to his lips.

Soon he realised the reason she wouldn’t speak was because she couldn’t.

As dawn broke damply over a mother-of-pearl sky, they whisked her away to St. Mungo’s. Her nails left red crescents on his arm. He paced outside the door they had her cloistered in performing all sorts of tests and charms. All he could think of was that if it hurt, she couldn’t even scream. Once during the interminable wait, Ron gripped him by the elbow and pushed him into a chair, shoving a green and white hospital blanket into his arms, towering over him with his hands at his hips.

Two hours later, Dumbledore emerged from the room.

“Harry, Ron, I’m relieved to tell you that Hermione hasn’t been harmed physically in anyway. The Healers have examined her quite thoroughly.”

He cleared his throat.

“But I’m afraid she still cannot…speak”.

“Why?” Harry spat.

“Sit down Harry, you must stay calm.”

Ron pulled him back into the straight-backed chair.

“We cannot say for certain at this time, but it would seem she has been silenced with a powerful curse or a magical binding cast to stop her from revealing something.”

“I want to see her.”

“You and Ron can see her in half hour, Harry. We are still in the middle of some probing charms to make sure she is not… in any prolonged danger.” His glasses ducked imperceptibly.

Harry wasn’t fooled. He knew they were making sure that she wasn’t imbued with any magical devices that could endanger those around her, especially him.

He wondered why they insisted on getting it wrong every time.

He, Harry, was the danger; he was the curse waiting to be thrown, the dagger poised to be twisted in the guts of those he loved. Always.

***

That week at the Burrow passed in a swirl of strange faces sent by Dumbledore to try to uncover the splinter lodged in her mind. Inside Harry, the two heavily armoured urges of seeing her returned to normal and of yelling at them to leave her alone raged an endless, embittered battle. Hermione went through the sessions obediently but responded to nothing. Her condition didn’t change. For the most part, she sat between Harry and Ron and stared at her hands. Her responses to the occasional questions posed alternated between a nod and shake of her head, or a barely perceptible shrug.

But it wasn’t just her silence that unnerved Harry; it was the blank expression she wore for much of the day. He searched obsessively for expressions and gestures that he could read easily and instantly: the quirk of her mouth when she disapproved of something he did but didn’t want to say it, the faint lines in her forehead when she was stressed, and the upward slant of her eyes when she was frightened. He found nothing. It was as if she’d changed the rules of grammar to a language only the two of them spoke and forgotten to tell him.

A language spoken for years and years but noted only in its silence.

And endlessly, he wondered why. What did they do to her? What did she see? Why was she let go? When would she get her voice back?

***

One afternoon they sat on the kitchen doorstep, her bent head barely touching his shoulder. They were pretending to watch the Weasleys, out on their broomsticks over the meadow behind the house, trying to infuse some sort of normality into the summer.

Harry stared unseeingly at the figures swooping and hovering in the sky, aware only of Hermione’s stillness next to him. Is she in pain? Is she tired? Does she hate me? Does she want to go home to her parents? What will I do if she does? What is she thinking?

Hermione was trying to blot out of her vision the row of zinnias that lined the inside of the fence. They were too bright. They intruded upon the shadowy world she’d prescribed for herself, laid wall to wall with grey, motionless things. The fence with the brambles straggling over it, the old flower pots holding an assortment of herbs, the bird-bath, the clothes-line, the garden-gnome inching along the shadow of a spade – those were all bearable. In their bland colours they fit in very well with her insipid world. But the zinnias, a blinding scarlet blob pushed around by the wind, throbbed at the corner of her left eye. They upset her carefully maintained stillness.

The way Hermione saw it, being still was her only choice.

If she moved she might collide with what had been.

Why won’t you cry, mudblood, is it not painful enough for you?

Or she might topple over what would be.

You think I can’t touch you, you silly girl, but I’ll touch you where you’ll never be rid of me…

So, Hermione thought, keeping absolutely still was the only way. If she just sat here, looking no further than past her own feet and leaning into Harry like this, maybe life will just dribble out and away, without her having to do a thing.

“Harry? Hermione? Oh, there you are!”

Harry turned his head towards Mrs Weasley’s voice; Hermione appeared to not have heard. Mrs Weasley came through the kitchen, holding out several bulky envelopes.

“These just came through for all of you; they must be your new booklists.” She shuffled the envelopes and held two out to him. Harry took both and handed Hermione hers. He ripped his open, glanced at the contents and tossed it aside. When he looked up, a series of red-heads were straggling across the meadow towards the house, broomsticks slung over their shoulders. Mrs Weasley caught his eye over Hermione’s head and inclined her head; Harry shrugged.

Hermione just stared at her envelope, making no move to open it. Her thumb moved methodically over a raised spot on the thick brown paper.

Ron came up and dropped down next to Harry.

“Booklists!” he snorted. “Bloody exciting!” He glanced surreptitiously at Hermione but she remained silent. She smoothed her palms over the unopened envelope and laid it on the ground beside her.

“Are you and Ron taking the same classes again, Harry dear?”

“Yes, except for Advanced Potions, Mrs Weasley.”

“Very well then, I’ll take both your lists, I can buy all these at Diagon Alley tomorrow.”

“What? Am I getting new books this year?”

“Well, seeing as the twins’ copies of what you need are hardly in a state to be used for a whole year, and Percy’s are--well. So yes, I need to buy you new books. Ginny, what about you? Have you got your list?”

“Well, Ginny can have some of my books Mum, most of them are almost brand new; I’ve been taking good care of them.”

“Oh sure Ron, you only use them occasionally as pillows!”

“I do not!”

“That’s enough, you two! Hermione dear, what about you? If you give me your list, I’ll bring your books as well. ”

Hermione shook her head. Ron shuffled his feet and Mrs Weasley wrung her hands over Hermione’s head. The twins, who had come up to them after stashing their brooms away, lifted their eyebrows at Ginny.

Harry stared at Hermione, stunned by a sudden thought.

During the weeks since Hermione returned, Harry hadn’t looked further than each day before him, past each of her sessions with the Healers. No thoughts beyond her recovery entered his mind – not school, not Quidditch, not the prophecy, not even Sirius. But now, with just a few days to go before the term began, what were the chances of Hermione making a full recovery?

Harry sat up.

How could Hermione go back to school without her voice? How could she do her prefect duties, answer in class, cast spells, nag him and Ron to do their homework, carry out her SPEW work, cheer herself hoarse for him at Quidditch, when she couldn’t speak?

How can Hermione be Hermione without her voice?

Harry felt the blood surging in his ears. He felt enraged at her, sitting there serenely while her--his world splintered around them, doing nothing, not being the Hermione she was, the Hermione he was used to, the Hermione who would never let him down.

He wanted to seize her by the shoulders and shake her.

Barely aware of what he was doing, Harry reached over her lap for the envelope that lay at her side. Hermione glanced up at him, surprise shooting her eyes with an intensity that had been absent for weeks. Her hand shot up and gripped his arm. He pulled it out of her grasp.

“Harry, what are you doing?” stammered Ron.

Harry ripped open the envelope and pulled the contents out. Hermione stared at him, eyes bright, face pale. Harry was about to turn around and hand Mrs Weasley the booklist when Ginny gasped, her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, Hermione!”

She was staring at a point near Hermione’s feet, where something small and round lay glittering in the speckled sunlight.

“Merlin!” said one of the twins, Harry wasn’t sure which one; he’d suddenly lost the capacity to think. His stomach dropped right down to his heels.

On the ground near Hermione’s feet lay the Head Girl badge, shinier than a newly minted coin.

“Oh my! How wonderful – of course we all knew you’d be the one to get it,” Mrs Weasley blubbered on in a high-pitched voice, but no one was listening. Four pairs of eyes, round and anxious, were turned on Harry and Hermione.

Harry opened and closed his mouth convulsively. She knew; she knew when she held that envelope, that’s why she didn’t want to open it. But you, you daft, heartless, selfish git, you had to go and stuff it up, as if things weren’t already bad enough.

He felt her eyes on him like a rush of ice.

“Hermione, I-” he began, but Hermione jumped to her feet. She clamped a hand over her mouth and fled inside.

***

The cupboard under the stairs, Harry mused, had its uses. It used to be big enough just for him, so no matter how infuriated with him Aunt Petunia was or how evil Dudley was feeling, they couldn’t barge in and drag him out. In a way, it was a safe place to be; once he crawled inside, they had to leave him alone. And huddled inside the tiny space, with only the shadows of cobwebs for company, he could hide for days despite whoever came calling.

Harry, Harry, come on mate, Mum says dinner’s ready; Harry – Where the hell are you?

He could hide there for days, even from himself.

He rocked against the wall of the Weasleys’ broom-shed, arms around knees, shivering in the night air. Maybe if I make myself so unhappy, as unhappy as anyone could ever be, perhaps then I’d be safe, and happy, because there’d be no room to be unhappier.

Once you hit the bottom, you can’t fall any further.

He decided to ignore Ron’s voice and swatted away an insect crawling up his arm. He stared at the ground between his feet, trying not to look up at the darkened window of the room where Ginny and Hermione slept.

***

Five long nails topping five snake-like fingers tap the wooden arm of the chair that faces the empty fireplace. Apart from that, there’s absolute silence. Ten hooded figures stand in a semi-circle behind the chair, breaths withheld. The room is dominated by the wine-coloured, decaying brocade curtains that hang at the tightly shut windows and the chandelier hanging low in the centre of the ceiling. The latter's tasselled with teardrop-shaped crystals. Ten hooded figures stare at the hand on the wooden arm of the chair, teeth gritted, silently willing for the tapping to stop. But the hand continues its steady rhythm, its knotted white flesh translucent like the skin of a house lizard.

Tap tap tap.

Tappety tap.

Then it stops.

Ten Death Eaters snap their eyes to the back of the chair.

“Well. My faithful Death Eaters have failed me again.”

Shuffle, swallow, silence.

“Lucius?”

“Master, the mudblood and the Weasley boy are the people closest to him. We were--I was certain one of them would know.”

“But you were wrong, Lucius.”

Lucius Malfoy wishes he was back in Azkaban.

“Not only were you wrong, Lucius, your carelessness nearly cost us our secrecy.”

The Dark Lord reaches for the goblet on the table next to the chair and takes a long sip. He relishes this languid feeling that comes with prolonging agony; Lucius Malfoy had always been a blundering fool despite his slick appearance.

Bellatrix Lestrange, glancing sideways, takes pity on Malfoy. The man can be useful at times.

“My Lord, none of us expected it. I cannot explain it myself. The girl must have been charmed in some way. Might it be that Dumbledore expected this and took precautions?”

“If she was protected with a spell, I would have detected it, Bella.”

“My Lord, may I ask--are you quite certain that you’re right about Potter?”

The pause drags on for longer than Bellatrix is comfortable with. When he finally answers, his voice is low, almost as if he’s talking to himself.

“Potter knows what was in that Prophecy. Dumbledore would have told him.”

Silence falls.

Then suddenly, the hand strikes out; the goblet on the table flies in a perfect arc and lands with a clatter near the Death Eaters’ feet. They stumble and jump back.

The hand returns to the arm of the chair.

Small red flames shoot up where the liquid from the goblet has spilled. Bellatrix swallows back a cough; the flames are putrid.

“Are you ready to make amends, Lucius?”

Malfoy swallows hard, fingering an old scab on his thumb over and over.

“Of--Of course, My Lord”

Hatred without strategy, Voldemort knows, only hastens failure. But right now, he craves to inflict pain. Fast.

“Very well then, bring me your son.”

Malfoy clamps down on his teeth.

“Draco? But--My Lord, Dumbledore--”

“--Will know nothing, Lucius.”

Cold sweat beading his forehead, Malfoy shuffles his feet. His voice is barely audible.

“Master, what do you propose to do-to do with him?”

A low chuckle issues from the direction of the chair.

“I will grant him his greatest honour, Lucius. Bring him to me.”

****

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: Once again, thank you so much all of you for reading and for reviewing; I’m sorry I haven’t been able to reply to any of the reviews personally. A question that popped up a few times in the reviews was how often I plan to update--the answer is once a week, hopefully, if RL doesn’t get in the way. Ninety percent of the story is already written, so I don’t foresee any drastic delays.

And of course, thanks to my wonderful beta, miconic for the support, the encouragement, the nitpicking.

****

Chapter Two

Early next morning, as soon as he heard noises in the kitchen, Harry made his way downstairs.

“Harry!”

The spoon stirring the porridge fell into the pot with a squishy clatter.

“Where were you all night? We were so worried! Arthur almost called the Order!”

Harry cleared his throat. Feeling guilty enough there, Harry?

“I–I was just outside for a while. I went to bed later.” He ran a hand through his hair, damp from the shower.

Mrs Weasley’s face softened.

“Harry, what happened yesterday wasn’t--”

“Could I have some toast, Mrs Weasley? I’m starving.”

She sighed. Harry looked away. “Of course you are, Harry. There, take this plate and sit down.”

He settled himself at the table. His shoulders ached and his eyes were heavy. He didn’t really want food, but he needed something to fiddle with. The kettle whistled querulously and the bacon spat on the stove. He nibbled his toast and spoke to Mrs Weasley’s back.

“Can I come to Diagon Alley with you?”

She turned around.

“Oh Harry, I’m not so sure if that’s such a good--”

“Please, Mrs Weasley, I promise I’ll be very careful. I just need to get out for a bit.”

Molly fingered her apron-strings thoughtfully, taking in his blood-shot eyes and hunched shoulders.

“Well, all right. But we’ll have to let the Order know and they’d probably send someone to come with us.”

She untied her apron and laid it over a chair. “I’d better wake up Arthur then, and Ginny too.”

As soon as she was out of sight, Harry dropped his toast in the bin and laid his head down on his arms. The sputters and hisses in the kitchen trickled over him and he closed his eyes. What happens after today, Harry? You’re going to have to think of some really good reasons to stay out of her sight.

And how long do you think you can stand it?

**

A tear falls. Then another and another. It feels like she has sand in her eyes.

She needs Harry.

She has sand in her eyes and blood beneath her feet. Look, it’s staining the tips of her toes. It’s not a clear bright red but a congealing black under the burgeoning shadow of the dimmed chandelier.

Ahh, there they all come, looking for you! How much is a mudblood worth?

Her feet slip and slide on it. She flings out her arm, looking for his hand to pull her up and over the lip of the cavernous dark. But she only thrashes against the bedclothes.

There he is, and the other one as well, and all the rest of them…

She runs down the stairs looking for him, his clear green eyes and warm hands, but only finds red hair. Then they lead her back upstairs, almost lifting her off the ground. Her nostrils fill up with the heavy smell of camomile. She pushes away the offered pillow and curls on her side. Her cheeks sting, her throat burns. And her eyes are still full of sand.

**

Harry spent the day trailing behind Ginny and Mrs Weasley, fingering the parchment in his pocket, watching his feet kick up stones along the cobbled streets of Diagon Alley. Ginny tried several times to start up a conversation but soon gave up. Tonks followed them from a respectable distance in a midnight-coloured coiffure with crimson highlights. Harry responded to Mrs Weasley only when she asked for Hermione’s booklist, and mutely picked up the shopping when they were done. For once he didn’t have trouble ignoring the endless looks that crossed his way; his mind was elsewhere.

**

They flooed home late in the afternoon. Ginny stepped into the fire at the Leaky Cauldron with Harry following. Under the folds of exhaustion that clung to him like wet wool, there was a quickening in his stomach as he stood amid the flames, waiting for the sooty swirl to carry him.

As the fire slowed, he braced himself, holding the parcels tightly. Moments later, he was spat out in a sooty heap through the Weasley’s fireplace. Harry stood up and straightened his glasses.

Ginny screamed.

A pair of arms seized him and slammed him hard against the wall. Harry’s feet gave way.

“WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GO?”

“Ron! No!”

“SHUT UP, GINNY!”

Harry stared at Ron’s face, a deeper shade than his hair, eyes bulging and forehead knotted.

“How could you just leave her like that? You--”

“Ron! What on earth are you doing? Let go of Harry NOW!” Mrs Weasley stumbled out of the fire, dropping her parcels all over the floor.

“--She was in hysterics, she wouldn’t stop crying! How dare you just--”

“Let go of him, Ron--”

Tonks, who had clattered in after Mrs. Weasley, tried to pull Ron away from Harry, but Ron swung his arm. It struck her on the face.

“RON!” Lupin sprinted down the stairs, the twins behind him.

“I will NOT let go of him, I’m going to--”

Lupin pointed his wand at the two of them. A dart of light flew across Harry’s blurred vision. Ron’s grip gave way and he skidded across the living room floor and fell in a livid heap. Harry slid down the wall, coughing.

“Hermione–what’s wrong with her?” he croaked.

“Are you all right, Harry?” Lupin kneeled next to him, peering into his face.

“Where’s Hermione?” He struggled to stand. Lupin pulled him up.

“She is here, she’s okay. Nothing to worry about.”

“She’s NOT okay--”

“Ron! That’s enough.”

“What happened?”

“She was a little distressed when she found you weren’t here--”

“A little distressed? She was bloody WAILING!”

“Ron!”

“Come on little bro, let’s go upstairs”. Fred and George pulled Ron to his feet and dragged him away. Harry stared after them, every nerve ready to spark. His head swam and his hands shook.

“Sit down Harry, stay calm.” Lupin led him to a chair. “George flooed in at Grimmauld Place fire this morning, after you’d left. Hermione had gotten upset–she seemed to be looking for you.” Harry clenched his shaking fingers. “But she’s okay now, I’ve given her a sleeping draught.”

Harry jumped up from his chair. Lupin restrained him. “Harry wait—she’s sleeping, not much you can do right now. But you look like you could do with a bit of Pepper-up potion”.

Harry sank back in the chair and put his head down in his hands.

Well done, Harry, well done..

**

The Pepper-up potion still stinging in his throat, Harry stepped out of the kitchen. If he had to think another thought, feel another thing, he would burst, but he still had to find Ron.

How could you just leave her like that?

Harry found him in the exact place he himself had huddled the night before. Ron sat against the wooden wall of the broom-shed, pulling at tufts of grass between his feet, his hair ablaze in the dying sunlight. Harry stood in front of him, hands in his pockets. Ron didn’t look up.

“Have you talked to her yet?”

“Err--no. She’s still sleeping,” Harry replied, surprised.

Ron looked up. “Why did you go, Harry?”

Thrown off by Ron’s candidness, he wondered what to say.

Because she hates me, Ron, at least I thought she did. Because this is all my fault, because I don’t know what I’d do if she never gets better, because I don’t know how to make things better, because I can’t stop imagining all the terrible things that they could have done--

“I had to get out for a bit.”

Ron snorted. His eyes devoid of the usual glint of hilarity, his face tense, he looked like someone Harry had known a long time ago, but had since then lost contact.

No, not you too.

“Sure mate, you had to get out for a bit, no problem. Ron’s there, isn’t he? He can deal with Hermione.”

“Oh, is that what this is about? You having to deal with Hermione?”

“No, Harry, this is about how you just left, knowing full well that she’s going to wake up in the morning and go looking for you!”

“I’m not the only one who can look after her!”

“No, but you’re the one person whose name she screams when she’s upset!”

Harry stared.

“Come on. Even you can’t be that thick,” Ron trailed off, his voice low. “She was going through something awful this morning, Harry. She was saying a whole lot of things, mouthing words, but all we could understand was your name, over and over again.” He swallowed. “And I had no idea what to do. She seemed so upset, but I didn’t know how to help her.”

Knees suddenly weak, Harry sank to the ground.

Even I don’t sometimes, Ron, I’m the last person who’d know what to do…

But you could’ve just hugged her; that usually helps. Or taken her outside to sit in the sun. You sit right next to her and let her lean against you–you can sense her relaxing then. Or talk to her. Doesn’t matter what you say, just keep talking, she finds it peaceful. Sometimes she even falls asleep.

You only had to distract her, Ron, that’s what you do when she gets nervous–discreetly, of course, or she'll have this sad look in her eyes...

“Harry? Harry!”

“Yeah? Sorry, I–I wasn’t listening.”

“Didn’t think so.” Ron looked away, throwing bits of grass haphazardly into the air.

“I said I’m sorry I almost strangled you.”

Harry looked up and sighed.

“That’s okay. I probably deserved it.”

A gaggle of geese passed screaming overhead, wings beating air down onto the top of the two of their heads.

“But if ever again you leave her like that, I will strangle you.”

“Okay, Ron. Deal.”

“I’m not kidding”

“I know you’re not.”

The sun had almost disappeared. Harry got to his feet, brushing down his jeans. “Come on, we’d better go in. I want to see if Hermione’s awake.”

**

An elegant, golden flame burst and turned into a lump of warm ash. A silver pendulum swung in random motion, pausing for long moments. Dumbledore sighed and regarded the man sitting on the opposite side of the large desk.

“I can tell you with perfect confidence, Tiresias, that we have applied every means available to us, and yet nothing has made the slightest difference.”

He tented his fingers under his chin.

“The most troubling aspect of the matter is that she seems completely unharmed, apart for her silence. I must say, I always feared something like this. If it wasn’t Miss Granger, it would have been Mr Weasley—but I always imagined the worst, for which I think I should be forgiven.”

The man in front of him inclined his head a little, as if he was trying to listen to something beneath the general register of noises audible to the human ear.

“And her silence seems completely inexplicable. We cannot find the slightest trace of a curse or any other magical binding and she hasn’t responded to any of the potions.”

“And I suppose she hasn’t shown any inclination to reveal anything?”

“I only wish she had. Our task would’ve been much simpler then.”

Tiresias stood up and walked over to the errant pendulum and stilled it midway with a finger. His motions were deliberate, as if all the objects in the room were strung to him with minuscule, invisible threads so that when he moved he had to make sure he didn’t tangle the strands.

“When you say silent, Headmaster, do you mean that she cannot make any sounds whatsoever, or that she is unable only to speak?”

“She’s unable to speak, Tiresias, that’s for certain. She can make certain kinds of noises, mostly when she’s distressed, but she has to exert herself.” Dumbledore sighed. “I myself have examined her, but my magic returned empty-handed. I’m afraid I’m running out of options.”

“Besides,” he tapped his chin with a finger, “all the intrusive magic we’ve been using on her is making her weary and somewhat resistant too.”

Tiresias straightened his head, turning his large pearly eyes towards Dumbledore.

“But you do have theory, don’t you Headmaster?”

Dumbledore smiled faintly.

“I do, Tiresias, but I claim no expertise in what I’m suggesting, which is why--

“--You hired me.”

Dumbledore looked into the unseeing eyes of the man before him.

“Yes. That and other reasons, as I’m sure you would have deduced the moment I owled you.”

Tiresias smiled and flicked the pendulum with one finger, making it swing in a slow arc.

“You think the reason for her silence may not be of magical origin. That’s why none of the magical cures have had any impact.”

Dumbledore shrugged.

“She may be a witch, Tiresias, but she’s still human, and still a child, if I may say so. Any means by which you can silence a human being would still be successful on her, especially if she didn’t have recourse to her wand.”

“You believe she may simply have been frightened into silence.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to hypnotise her.”

“Yes.” Dumbledore stood up and walked to the window.

“Pardon me for saying this, but why would Tom Riddle resort to Muggle torture methods when he is himself a walking repository of injurious magic? Why go to such trouble?”

“I wish I have the answer to that, Tiresias, it’s one of the many mysteries surrounding this.”

“And yet we are sure it was Voldemort behind this?”

“Yes. Severus found the pillow that was set up as a portkey.”

“And obviously he cannot tell us more,” muttered Tiresias, derision creeping into his voice.

“Severus walks a very thin line, Tiresias. He does what he can,” Dumbledore replied, without turning away from the window.

“You do realise, Headmaster, that this cannot be done straightaway—that I need to first spend time with her to gauge the damage? And it might not even be successful the first time.”

“As soon as it’s within your judgement, Tiresias. Of course, in the meantime we’ll continue magical treatment. I understand that according to muggle medicine cases like these often run their own course, but in this case there is too much at stake. We cannot simply wait for her to get better.”

“You’re worried about Potter.”

Dumbledore turned away from the window. “Harry has had to deal with too many losses. And there are many more things he must deal with in the future. Having Miss Granger returned to normal is imperative.”

Tiresias returned to his chair and sat down.

“Am I sensing more than what I’m told here, Headmaster? About Potter and Granger?”

Dumbledore smiled, tired eyes twinkling.

“Ah, the question the Prophet would pay a fortune to get an answer!” He, too, returned to his chair.

“If there is, I don’t think they are aware of it themselves. In any case, I’m sure you will formulate your own theory about that once you meet them.” He chuckled softly. “Indeed, I’ve been told that having a theory about that particular issue is a cherished pastime around here.”

**

Hermione was awake. But she didn’t want to open her eyes. What if she was still dreaming? What if she was still there and not at the Burrow? How could she tell what was real? How could she tell if she wasn’t still cut and bleeding on the blades of all those thoughts that night had thrust at her, thoughts she kept carefully blunt during the day?

When she could put it off no longer, she opened her eyes, blinking out the soreness. The taste of the camomile and passionflower compound Lupin had almost forced down her throat still clung to the roof of her mouth. Her arms and legs felt deadened. The room was dim, dust motes roiling in pale orange flutes of light pushing through openings in the curtain. And it was absolutely silent.

Almost.

Suddenly alert, Hermione held her breath. A lump gathering in her raw throat, she realised there was someone else in the room, someone whose breath fell in a steady, familiar rhythm next to her.

So this was real. It must be. He wasn’t here before but he’s here now.

She turned on her side, trying to stem the tears.

He was huddled on the floor, his legs tucked under the bed, his head pillowed on his arms on the bed. His glasses were off, his hair all over his closed eyes.

She reached out a hand and pushed the strands away. She meant to stop there. She didn’t mean to run her hand through his hair, over and over, she wasn’t planning to stroke his forehead, trace his eyelids, touch his cheeks and nose. She didn’t, but couldn’t help herself.

All these weeks she’d sought him out like a kitten seeking the sunniest patch on a cold day, but she’d never really looked at him. She’d just sat under his shadow, leaning into its inexplicable safety, following where he led, trusting his touch and his voice.

But now she took in the thinness of his cheeks and purple shadows under the eyes, and recalled the look on his face over the glinting badge the day before.

She wasn’t planning to slide off the bed and huddle next to him, her arms tight around his waist, her damp face at his back, but she couldn’t help it.

**

Tom Riddle’s skin crawled with satisfaction. The Malfoy boy was quite a catch, even more supercilious than his father. Just look at him, veritably salivating at the mark on his wrist.

Riddle looked sideways at Bellatrix and nodded. She advanced with a rag which she pressed on Draco’s wrist, blotting the blood that seeped around the mark. When she withdrew, the skull and two snakes gleamed in dark, silvery green against sallow flesh.

“Well, Draco, you are ready.”

Draco looked up, his eyes full of the murky light from the dusty chandelier. His hands were still shaking. His father nudged his shoulder from behind.

“Y-yes, Master.” Draco straightened his spine, a little breathless.

“Now, I don’t want schoolboy games, Draco. I have great things planned for you and you must prove yourself worthy.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I want flawless calculation, excellent strategy and I advise you to take your time. I do not want quick results, I want success. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

“I want a living hell created for Potter, but more than that, I want you to prove to me that you can.”

“Yes, Master. I--I will do my best.”

“Very well then, you may go.”

Draco covered his wrist with his sleeve and left the room with his father, fighting the nausea that had flared the moment the high-backed chair turned to face him.

Riddle tapped the arm of the chair and looked at Bellatrix. “He will do, Bella, he will do for now. And I can concentrate on my own plans.”

“How much does he know, Master?”

“Just enough to keep him occupied, and to keep his father on his toes.”

Bellatrix nodded, tight-lipped, and moved to clear out the rags and the bowl full of soiled water.

**

When Harry woke up, the room was completely dark. He lifted his head slowly, because there was something warm and breathing at his back.

“Hermione?”

She sat up and shifted away. He wished he hadn’t spoken. He fumbled for his glasses and wand and soon there was a serrated ring of light around them. He looked into her face in its clear glow.

Then he wished for the wooden floor to open up and swallow him whole.

Her eyes were swollen and her lips were chapped. Her hair hung in tangled clumps around her face and the neck of her t-shirt was damp. He wanted to touch her ashen cheeks but feared that his fingertips alone would make them disintegrate like something left out in the rain.

He whispered her name, not knowing what else to say, slid close and put his arms around her. She smelled of sleep and tears and stale fear. She tucked her face into his neck and clutched him tight.

****

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: So, once again, my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who took the time to read and to review--you guys make my day. And please remember that I’m always up for con crit too.

About this update, this is one of those chapters where nothing really happens, so I hope you don’t get too bored. And there’s a little detail here that might make you go ‘huh?’; it actually ties up with something mentioned in Chapter One.

And of course, thank you miconic, Grammar Nazi, Tense Police and Regulator of Errant Commas. I’d be lost without you.

****

Chapter Three

It was by far the longest train trip to Hogwarts.

The day started off well. She even smiled at him as he handed the box containing her knitting she had almost forgotten as they loaded the car with their trunks. She held out her right hand for it and cradled it in her left arm; the Head Girl badge gleamed through the clenched fingers of her left fist.

By the time they reached the platform, it was clear that all of Hogwarts knew that their Head Girl was mute. Temporarily, of course, she’s a brave, brave girl, the brightest in her generation, and absolutely the most deserving person for the badge. She’ll be back to normal soon. They’re doing all sorts of high-profile examinations on her. So what happened? Does anyone know? Well, just between you and me, it seems that You-Know-Who took her. Ohhh, you mean because of… ? Yes, yes of course, why else? My, how horrible!

Once they managed to secure a compartment, Ron and Hermione donned their robes and left for the prefect meeting, followed by Ginny who had also been made prefect. Ron pinned his badge on, but Hermione still had it in her fist. A quill and the corner of a parchment poked out of her pocket. Her eyes flitted over Harry as she left but she didn’t return his look.

Harry pressed himself to the furthest corner of the seat, his cheek glued to the window, ignoring Luna’s steady gaze and Neville’s fretful glances over his mimbulus mimbletonia.

Around midday, Ron stomped in. Harry straightened up.

“Where’s Hermione?”

“On the way. She and Ernie McMillan, the Head Boy--” he made a face “--are planning the next meeting.”

“And you left her there?”

“Bloody hell, Harry, Ginny’s with her, they were going to the bathroom afterwards, I can hardly hang out there, can I?”

“How was it?”

Ron shrugged. “Could’ve been worse,” he muttered without meeting Harry’s eyes and plonked himself next to Neville.

“Ron.”

“Well, Okay. I thought it went well--” he waved his hand, “--you know, considering. I mean, she had all these notes written out and Ernie was sort of speaking for her.”

Harry snorted. “And?”

“Well, it was all well and good until that git Malfoy opened his--”

“What did he say?”

“Sit down, mate. He didn’t say anything you can hex him for. Or I would have done it. He just kept asking all these bullshit questions about prefect duties and rounds and house points and all that. And Hermione--erm, she acted cool, writing out answers and passing them along, you know--”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing. That’s what I mean. Nothing really happened but she looks like she’s in a strop about something.”

The door opened and Hermione walked in with Ginny behind her. One look at her face and Harry knew not to open his mouth. He looked at Ginny, who shrugged. Hermione walked over to where Harry sat, and he shifted closer to the window to make room for her. But she pushed his legs aside and Harry had to shift back in the opposite direction. Then she sat down against the window, careful not to touch him, her head turned resolutely away from all of them.

She sat that way for the rest of the journey.

The train sluiced through the increasing gloom and Harry watched the raindrops turn the window into runnels. He was glad when she fell asleep, because then, her body slumped against him and her head drooped on his shoulder.

**

Hagrid beamed to see them. Dumbledore nodded at him. The Quidditch team had been reformed. He was captain. There would be tryouts on Tuesday. He can choose his new team. Dumbledore gave a solemn speech. The Ministry had finally accepted that Voldemort was back. There would be extra safety measures within Hogwarts. It was still the safest place. The Defence Association would be made official. It would be part of their Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. They had a new teacher. He was blind. Congratulations to the new Head Girl and Boy. Dobby twitched his ears and presented two pairs of mismatched mittens. A welcome gift. People chattered endlessly. Everyone tried not to look their way. The floating candles cast nervous shadows all over the hall. He couldn’t smell the food, only the wax. Sirius was dead.

And Hermione couldn’t speak.

“Harry, Harry, are you coming or what? We have classes tomorrow.”

**

Jorge Tiresias muttered a spell and touched the parchment before him, the names of his sixth-year Defense Against the Dark Arts class rising to meet his fingertips. It was his first class for the year. He half-wished he could see their faces; he might perhaps catch a glimpse of himself. But he had decided long ago that sight was a hindrance. The eye sees by distancing; it puts things in their place, it creates a vantage point at which everything else is always outside, nothing can ever get close enough. When something’s too close, you cannot see it. Hence the ancient spell, the years of preparation, the pearl grey eyes. Without the distancing of sight, the world lapped at his skin, bled through his flesh.

He began to call out the names, noting the emotions around him swelling like the ocean in a storm. Curiosity shot with indifference. Bravery inhibited by lack of confidence. Fear. Beauty hidden by a plain face. Intelligence and arrogance. Kindness. Stealth. Mistrust.

“Susan Bones”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Lavender Brown”

“Yes, Professor Tiresias.”

“Seamus Finnigan”

“Yes, Professor Tiresias.”

He paused, wondering whether to continue.

“Hermione Granger”

Silence.

How deep the abyss, how steep its walls.

She walks round and round its lip, her hands tight over her eyes. To look would be to fall.

She has courage, she has plenty of it, but it tastes coppery in her mouth. She has hope but it’s melting in her hands like a page from an old, precious book that’s been fingered too much.

Then a voice called.

“She’s here, Professor Tiresias.”

Weariness, trepidation. Fearangerconfusionhopeandhopelessness.

Then Tiresias sensed something else, something gentle and ferocious at the same time, roiling, rushing as if to fill the void before with the force of a cataract pounding down a precipice. It beat to the rhythm of blood pounding in a vein.

“Thank you, Harry.”

**

On the first Thursday back at school, before dinner, Harry shuffled to Dumbledore’s office for his first Occlumency lesson for the term. Over the summer he’d been informed that the Headmaster would be taking over; it had seemed like a good idea at the time, Occlumency, but now it was the last thing he wanted to do. Just as he raised his hand to knock, the Headmaster opened the door with a weary smile.

“Harry, come in. Have a seat.”

Harry sat in the chair drawn up and felt as if he was under a bright light in the middle of a room full of hundreds of people, all eyes turned on him. This was exactly why he didn’t want ‘Legilimens!’ shouted at him.

“How are you, Harry?”

“Fine, thank you, Professor.” Dumbledore would see through him anyway; what’s the point in telling the truth?

He expected more questions but the Headmaster got to his feet, wand in hand.

“Well, let’s begin, shall we?”

Surprised, Harry stood up, his wand half-raised. He glanced around the room, at various objects ticking and whirring serenely as if nothing was amiss in their orderly existence.

“Is anything the matter, Harry?”

“No, not really, Professor. Erm, it’s just that I haven’t been able to practise during the summer and--”

“That’s fine, Harry, I know.”

Harry nodded, resigned. At least he wasn’t Snape. He straightened and held his wand out.

Dumbledore called out the spell.

Harry teetered on his feet, nausea rising in him. It was as if he was in his very first Occlumency lesson. Dumbledore’s spell seemed to wrench and heave to the surface the emotions wrangling just beneath his conscious mind and Harry thought he heard someone cry out--surely, that wasn’t himself? All his nightmarish days from the past weeks began to thrash behind his eyelids and his whole body shook with their rage.

But then something else took hold.

It was as if a someone threw a bucket of water across a muddied floor; something swept through him and the chaos in his mind washed out, quicker than it had flared. He stared into the blank space beneath his eyelids.

“Open your eyes, Harry,” Dumbledore said, his voice shot with disbelief.

Harry blinked. Dumbledore was watching him with eyes narrowed, wand held loose.

“I thought you said you didn’t practise.”

“I didn’t, Professor.” Harry stared at the Headmaster, perplexed.

“Well, you just performed an excellent bit of Occlumency. I don’t think that would have been possible without practice, not just for you, for anyone.”

“You mean, you didn’t see any if that?”

“Any of what passed through your mind? No.”

He crossed his arms, his direct gaze both troubled and thoughtful. Harry turned away and watched Fawkes preen his resplendent feathers. There were flakes of ash clinging to him; he must have just risen.

What just happened? In the aftermath of Sirius’s death, Harry hadn’t had the heart to even think of Occlumency. His guilt needled him about it, telling him that at least now he should do as Hermione said and practise closing his mind before something else happened, even though Voldemort may have abandoned that route. Just in case. But every time he attempted it, Sirius’s face rose in his mind. And then, something else had happened.

“Well, Harry, let’s try it again.”

Startled out of his thoughts, Harry looked at Dumbledore, twisting a corner of his sleeve between thumb and forefinger. He felt drained but curiously alert.

“Yes, Professor.”

Dumbledore straightend his wand again, and called out “Legilimens!”

Harry swayed a little on his feet; the Headmaster seemed to have increased the strength of the spell, but Harry held on. There was the initial rush of images as he found his bearings, but then he felt a stillness, an assurance, as if suddenly a raging storm had cleared. He realised that although he was still held by Dumbledore’s spell, he could think his own thoughts without the Headmaster knowing.

Feeling relieved and triumphant all of a sudden, he decided to experiment. Without breaking eye contact with Dumbledore, he snatched the first thought hovering on the periphery of his veiled mind. He wondered what Hermione was doing.

The veil ripped.

Like wind rushing to fill a vaccum, all thoughts held at bay crashed back into his mind. His body shook and he collapsed against the table. His wand clattered to the floor.

**

When he opened his eyes there was a golden cloud hovering over his head. He blinked and Fawkes emitted a long high sound, flapping his wings.

“Harry, can you hear me?”

He struggled to get up, hand automatically reaching for his wand. Dumbledore picked it up and put it in his hand.

“What happened?”

“Your resistance snapped all of a sudden. And since my spell was stronger that time, your mind could not take it.”

Harry sat up, and Dumbledore pulled him up onto a chair, a glass of water floated in front of him. Then the Headmaster walked around the table and took his own chair.

Harry took a sip of water, heart hammering. He chanced a glance at Dumbledore.

“Why did it happen? You said I was good before.”

“You were, Harry. I’m afraid I’m quite puzzled myself.” It was as if Harry wasn’t in the room even though the Headmaster’s eyes were fixed on him. Harry felt something move through his hair, and realised it was Fawkes’s beak. Dumbledore smiled.

“Fawkes has been giving me unpleasant looks since you fell down, Harry.”

Harry attempted to smile, but his face wouldn’t cooperate. He set the glass on the table. Something strange was happening.

He held his forearms out and stared at them. It felt like he had ants crawling inside his skin, making their uninterrupted way through vein and bone.

“What’s the matter, Harry?”

“N-nothing, Professor. I--just had this funny feeling like I had something running inside my skin.”

Dumbledore pushed his glasses up and leaned forward in his seat.

“What do you mean, Harry? Are you feeling ill?”

“Oh no. I think it happens when I’m tired.”

“You’ve felt this before?”

“Er, yeah, just during the summer. A few times when Hermione was, was missing.”

Dumbledore gazed at Harry with eyes that vied the precision of the sharpest knife. Tense shoulders twitching, Harry rose from the chair.

“I should probably get going, Professor.”

“Yes, yes, Harry, You must rest now,” said the Headmaster, almost talking to himself.

Harry touched Fawkes’s glossy head with a finger and the phoenix inclined his head. He pocketed his wand and left.

**

He made his way to the Common Room and dropped to the floor in front of the fireplace, head against the couch. With dinner still in progress, there was no one else in the room. Crookshanks sidled up to him. The low-burning fire kindled his weariness and he fought to keep his eyes open.

Moments later, the portrait hole burst open, the Common Room rattling with voices and the sound of feet. Harry glimpsed Ron and Hermione at the back of the crowd and waved.

As soon as she got near enough to see him properly, Hermione’s eyes grew wide.

“Bloody hell, Harry, you look awful!”

“Thanks, Ron.” He glared at Ron and tried to smile at Hermione. She dropped to the couch, making agitated motions with her hands.

“I’m fine, really. I--Dumbledore’s spell was strong and I struggled a bit, that’s all.”

But Hermione wasn’t done asking questions. Harry sighed.

“It was a bit of a strange lesson, really. Dumbledore said I was doing pretty well for someone who, well, hadn’t practised much.”

Instead of flashing him the reproachful look he expected, she leaned back against the couch, brow furrowed, lip between teeth. His heart soared painfully; she looked almost normal. Almost.

He turned away.

“Well mate, we--I mean, Hermione brought you food.”

Hermione raised her eyebrows at Ron and handed Harry the covered plate she’d been carrying. Harry took it, grinning at the look on Ron’s face.

“Thanks.”

While he ate, Ron and Hermione spread out their homework. Ron sprawled on the floor next to the fire, and Hermione’s quill scratched above Harry’s head. A few glances flitted their way but for the most part everyone seemed occupied. Seamus and Ginny were having an animated discussion sitting on either end of the couch next to theirs. Neville was blushing under the attention of a fifth-year girl whom Harry had never spoken to. Neville had been one of the few people who hadn’t goggled at Hermione. He wondered if he should go over and thank him. Parvati and Lavender were bent over what looked like a Muggle make-up set of the kind he’d seen in Aunt Petunia’s possession. Dean was displaying something inside a neon yellow box to a group of fourth years. Harry vaguely recalled one of them from the Quidditch tryouts on Tuesday. He thought he had picked out a good team; he just couldn’t remember their names properly. He looked forward to their first practice although being captain was somewhat strange. He became tongue-tied sometimes. But of course, he’d get used to it; what in his life wasn’t strange at the moment? Food forgotten, he stared into the fire and wondered about what had happened during Occlumency.

It certainly seemed as if Voldemort could no longer get inside his head. But that was hardly a consolation; the damage being done, he might be hatching other plans. And he still hadn’t told anyone about the Prophecy. Dumbledore hadn’t said anything about it either, anything about how he might be able to prepare. And how come he was able to shut even Dumbledore out of his thoughts when he hadn’t practised one bit? As far as he was concerned, the special powers he seemed to sprout were not very desirable. Parseltongue nearly turned the whole school against him. What if his sudden success at Occlumency was another disguised curse? And what was that strange feeling, as if he could almost feel and hear the blood pound through his veins? Why did it come back? Did it mean anything? What if it had something to do with Voldemort? Hardly aware of what he was doing, he laid his plate aside and turned towards Hermione, the questions rushing past each other almost out of his mouth.

He stopped himself in time.

But his head was raised towards her, his mouth half-open, and she looked at him expectantly. Harry shook his head. As he turned away, a strange look passed over her face.

He pulled out his books. The fire was too warm. The quill struggled, the parchment protested. The second years over by the table in the middle of the room were too chirpy. He leaned his head against the couch and closed his eyes.

Something began to move through his hair.

Her hand moved so slowly that it was almost still, merely resting on his scalp. She moved from front to back, fingertips gentle on his forehead, thumb caressing.

It was almost normal, the comfort.

But in a strange way that he didn’t quite have the energy to understand.

He shifted a little on the floor and leaned his head sideways against her knee.

He missed the look on Ron’s face altogether.

**

The days lumbered by. In his head, Harry maintained a fretful catalogue.

The first to be struck off was the hand that shot up before the question was complete.

Then, highlighted in red, the gradual waning of the frenetic scratch of the quill.

Then the irritable sideways glances over homework: marked as missing.

Listed after that, the box of knitting that hadn’t even been taken out of her trunk.

Library books went unopened. But her bag was heavier than ever, like an anchor.

Essays became shorter. But scrolls of parchment multiplied, ink stains on fingers finally becoming permanent.

This was really not his thing, he had no idea how to keep lists, but it kept growing.

And of course, there was the voice, just the voice. Without the looping and spiralling that normally filled his day--exasperation, excitement, laughter, concern--he felt like he was in some other school, in another time, with people he’d never known in his life.

And he was someone else. Someone he didn’t know very well.

Hermione’s Head Girl duties became more and more onerous. In meetings she had to rely on Ernie’s translation of her notes; accuracy wasn’t his forte. And either Ron or Harry had to accompany her on rounds. On the days that Ron went with her, they both returned seething. To avoid having to put up with two equally foul moods, Harry volunteered to accompany her every time. Even then it wasn’t easy; people seemed to forget they were facing docked house-points or detention. They gaped.

He soon realised that there was no right thing he could do.

She became irritated when he spoke for her, flustered when he didn’t.

He tossed a sickle to decide which was worse; the wounded look or the trembling lip hastily hidden.

Sometimes he wanted to yell at them to stop asking her questions, to stop expecting her to answer. Couldn’t they see how tired it made her to be called upon to talk but not be able to get the words out? Or how defeated she looked when she reached for the wretched ink?

If he had the right spell he’d curse them all. But then of course, she’d hate him for it.

The sickle rolled off the table and vanished under a bookshelf.

He sighed and looked at her across the desk.

The ends of her hair flipped back and forth over a pile of books. She was fidgeting on her seat, her mouth opening and closing in increasingly exaggerated shapes desperate to make Ron understand what she was saying. Her hands flailed, becoming knotted in the formations into which she was trying to infuse meaning. Next to her, Ron looked nervous. The look on his face was almost funny were it not for--well.

Harry waited. He pretended to not hear the whispering around their table in a corner of the library.

Finally, she dropped her hands, her shoulders drooping in tandem. “I’m so sorry, Hermione, I… just… don’t,” Ron trailed off, one hand through his hair. She touched his arm and shook her head. Then she turned away, looking out of the window. Harry bit down a sigh.

“She just wants you to get the copy of Ten Thousand Magical Plants and Fungi which is on the shelf just behind you, but on the other side, Ron. And she wants the extended version. It’s got a dark blue jacket.”

Ron left the table. Harry turned back to his potions homework, trying hard to not look at the ink-stained finger twisting and yanking a strand of brown hair.

**

She hears them, smells them at night. The putrid potion, the blood, the tear-drop shaped shadows strung like a menacing necklace around her feet. The cadaverous voice. She wakes up, huddles at the head of the bed and waits for Harry.

He comes in with his half-smile as if this is something he’s done all his life, sheds his dressing robe and lights a candle.

It’s much easier now that being the Head Girl she has her own room. At the Burrow in the days after the nightmares began, he had slept on the living room couch, so that she could come downstairs and stay with him without waking anyone else up and having to endure their curious looks.

He straightens the bedclothes she’s kicked into knots and climbs onto bed to sit with her. For most of the night they sit like that, silent, her head against his shoulder. But sometimes, usually when he’s tired, he talks endlessly, inconsequentially, until his eyes droop and his words slur. Then he scoots down in bed and falls asleep with his forehead pressed into her thigh. She stays up, hand straying to his hair, listening to the candlewick sputter, watching its shadowed flame lick her wounds around the room; untouched homework, books bearing bookmarks on the same page for days, abandoned elf hats, banished pillows. Then she scoots down next to him, drawing the sheets over their heads. She curls as close as she can, tucking her hands beneath his chin. Then she falls asleep, one thumb resting over his lip, his breath warm over her cold knuckles. As the hushed, haggard morning climbs the window, his sleep-heavy arms reach over her waist and she straightens to fit herself against him.

****

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: Just to address a question that keeps popping up, yes, they are in sixth year, and yes, normally Hogwarts Head prefects are chosen in seventh, so I guess you could say I’m claiming writer’s licence. I did mention this in Chapter One, but hey, I can get terribly vague sometimes.

Second, for those who might’ve read Comma--when I uploaded it I forgot to change ‘In Progress’ to ‘Completed’ (Ack!) which had caused some understandable confusion--so sorry about that. Comma is just a one-shot that might have a sequel of sorts…one day.

So, onto this update. Thank you so much, everyone who continues to read and review, hope I’ve done a good enough job with this chapter. And of course, thanks to my beta miconic, who’s been very…pushy this week.

*****

Chapter Four

The Quidditch pitch was deserted. Practice had finished almost fifteen minutes ago but Gryffindor-hued shapes still darted across her vision. From where she sat, on the foot-high wall opposite the entrance to the changing rooms, she could see the Forbidden Forest, alight in the eerie glow that fell between bouts of rain. Hermione rubbed her eyes and pulled the Cloak firmly around her, trying to coax some warmth out of the silvery material.

Harry would have noticed it missing by now, she thought, although he hadn’t said anything. He wouldn’t. She wished he would.

Anything but wear that patient, calm look he now wore all the time. Harry wasn’t calm, never was. And he wasn’t patient. Not her Harry.

But you fall into him--the patience and the calm--like into a safe, deep sleep.

Who are you trying to fool, Hermione?

After she’d nicked the Invisibility Cloak from his bag one night, she’d hunted for the Marauder’s Map but was unable to find it. The paths within the castle were familiar but she didn’t want to venture outside without a guide, especially when her spells were unpredictable without sound.

She sighed and slumped against the stone wall.

“Hermione.”

She stiffened. The voice had a strange timbre; if you didn’t know who it was you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Hermione turned her head. Of course he would be able to ‘see’ through Invisibility Cloaks; that much she’d read from the book that later lay abandoned on the table next to her bed.

Tiresias sat next to her. Hermione glanced resentfully at his alert form, the hair that matched his grey eyes, the strange face that looked twenty years older than the rest of him. He turned to her and smiled. His eyes were fixed at a point near her forehead. Hermione lifted a corner of her mouth.

“So how did the new Gryffindor team do in their first practice? Up to usual standards?”

Hermione shrugged. The Cloak slipped off her shoulder and she yanked it back. How long had he been around?

“Well, I’m sure the new Captain will take good care of that. From what I gather, he seems more than capable.”

Hermione pulled the Cloak tighter. The players were beginning to straggle out of the changing room. Some of their faces were unfamiliar.

“You should let them know you’re here, you know.”

Purple clouds swelled like welts across the sky. Wind stirred the grass at her feet. She twined a thread hanging off her schooltie around a finger, tugging until the fabric crinkled.

“You are not the only one who is lost.”

Hermione stared straight ahead. That stupid lump in her throat, it was becoming a permanent fixture. Just like Harry’s patience.

Tiresias stood up and gathered the high collar of his cloak tight around his neck. Then he walked away.

She tugged harder and the thread snapped. She yanked the broken strand out and stared at it, blinking rapidly.

Her hand reached the clasp of the Cloak just as Harry emerged from the changing room, broomstick slung over shoulder. She bundled the Cloak and pushed it in her pocket. He was walking quickly, an urgent look on his face. When he was halfway across the courtyard, he saw her.

His face cleared.

“Hermione!”

Her breath stopped. She dug her heels into the wall. Has he ever smiled like that?

He walked over and sat down next to her, dropping the Firebolt on the damp ground. He was still in his Quidditch robes. The wind lifted his hair and his eyes were full of the light that barely seeped through the clouds.

“What’re you doing here?”

Hermione gestured at the hoops, hopelessly caught in his smile.

“Oh. Were you here the whole time?”

She nodded.

“So, what do you think? Are we doing well?”

She smiled. ‘Doing very well, captain,’ she mouthed, head dancing. He blushed.

“It’s weird, actually. I don’t know what to tell them half the time. It doesn’t help when Ron keeps telling me I sound like Wood with a sore throat.”

Hermione smiled and touched his arm, forming words on her lips again; ‘he’s just being a prat, you make a great captain’.

“Yeah, thanks.” He grinned, settling himself more comfortably on the stone wall. A little refrain had started in his head; she’s smiling she’s smiling she’s… Hermione shifted closer. The overcast sky was disappearing fast into the night. The air around them was growing sharper.

Harry bent to pick up his Firebolt and leant it against the wall. As he straightened he glimpsed something silvery hang out of Hermione’s pocket, elbowed by her ever-present quill and parchment.

He made a note to put the Marauder’s Map away in the safest place he could find.

If she was going to hide, he needed to have the means find her.

The door to the changing room opened again and Ron emerged. As he locked the door and turned around, Harry waved.

“Hey, Hermione! Did you see us practising?” Ron dropped down on her other side. She nodded.

“Did you see how far I hit that last bludger? It almost went straight into the Forest like a blasted Fizzing Whizzbee, and heavier than Hagrid it was! And Harry, mate, I’d rather stick knitting needles in my ears than listen to you one more time--Oy! That really hurt--I mean seriously, if Wood hears you he’d think he’d left himself behind at Hogwarts! Hermione, I’m telling you, you won’t be laughing if you heard him--arrrgh! Okay, okay, I’ll shut up but can we go inside now? I’m starving…”

They picked up their broomsticks and headed towards the castle, the glow of fires from inside the castle casting faint shadows under their feet. Since night had swallowed the clouds, the only remaining hint of rain was the sweet smell. Ron walked ahead of them. Harry looked surreptitiously at Hermione; her cheeks had colour and there was a smile on her lips. He felt lighter than he’d felt up in the air an hour ago and a weight like a warm hand lay over his heart.

**

Her homework piled up.

Her wandwork fell behind, her potions became unpredictable, she was no longer taking notes in History of Magic. Healers came and went.

Soon, she began to skip classes. The castle and the grounds were so huge, surely she could find someplace where she wouldn’t be stared at?

The Invisibility Cloak acquired the faintest of creases.

The Marauder’s Map became dog-eared, the parchment more veined and transparent than it ever was.

A couple of Tuesdays towards the end of August, the Gryffindor Quidditch team practised without their captain.

**

Ron had just about had enough. It was all wrong.

It was as if the earth had tilted a bit more and dropped off-centre, spinning the two poles around. And here he was, scratching his head, wondering exactly where he stood between them.

The two of them.

They both looked more and more like those birds that burst in through the castle windows and flapped around madly, flying into walls, tangling in cobwebs, trying to find a way out. And not knowing who to ask.

It made some nameless thing inside him ache to see them like this. And, and…he hated how he couldn’t do anything. Except crack jokes--but Harry laughed less and less. Or make sure Hermione got the quietest corner in the library--but she hardly ever went there anymore.

It was all very wrong.

Harry shouldn’t have to nag Hermione to do her homework and he shouldn’t have to remind Harry to go to Quidditch. He shouldn’t have to lie to his dormmates about why Harry’s bed is never slept in and he shouldn’t have to put up with their questions about the two of them.

The two of them.

Look at them walking along now, so close together, almost touching but not really. What was going on there? They were hardly seen apart now, well, except when Hermione disappeared on her wanderings. He wished somebody would explain it to him. He wished they would tell him what was going on. And he wished that everyone else would bloody stop whispering about it behind their backs.

Honestly, how can they be just friends? Bullshit! Do you reckon they’ve snogged already? Dunno--maybe even more. Merlin! Really? Well, I don’t know but that’s what everyone’s saying--I mean, look at them, they look pretty much like an item to me--

Ron swung around.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS IT TO YOU IF THEY ARE?”

Stunned silence slapped against the walls. The group of fifth years who’d been walking behind Ron stared.

“Ron?”

Great.

Ron turned towards Harry whose eyebrows had vanished under his fringe. Hermione’s eyes were wide.

“Err. Ahem, Harry, could you tell Flitwick that I--that I had to run back to the Tower to get my, um, quill? Right, then… I’ll be back.”

He turned and fled.

**

Harry walked into dinner one night after Occlumency to find Ron sitting next to Dean, a large plate of chicken in front of him. The Hall was filled with the usual chatter and candlelight.

“Where’s Hermione?”

Ron mumbled through a mouthful. “Fought she wash wi’you?”

Harry uttered an impatient noise and turned on his heel, pulling the Map out of his pocket. This was the moment he dreaded most, the moment of opening the Map. What if she didn’t show up on it? After a few frantic seconds, he spotted her inside McGonagall’s office. He glanced back at the staff stable; McGonagall wasn’t there.

Relieved, he made his way upstairs.

He reached the door just as Hermione stepped out, closing it behind her.

“There you are!”

She looked unsurprised to see him; she never did anymore. She seemed exhausted as she always did on the days when she had to see her Healer. He wanted to just hug her and stroke her hair.

He’d had to go hunting for her again that morning while the Healer waited in the Hospital Wing with Professor Tiresias. And again, he’d found her in that dank hall in a forgotten corner of the third floor--the hideous stony place over which the Map often displayed her name--tripping over her shoelaces, stumbling into walls.

She offered him the collapsing edges of a smile and shifted her bag from one shoulder to the other. Although she was skiving off classes and avoiding the library, her bag hadn’t become any lighter. He stepped close, slid it off her shoulder and slung it over his own, stifling a groan.

“Everything okay?” His eyes swept over McGonagall’s door.

She nodded. There was a strange, expectant look on her face, almost defiant. She seemed to be biting the inside of her lip. Harry shifted on his feet.

“Do you want to go to dinner then? There’s still time.”

She nodded and began to walk. Harry fell into step behind her.

They made their way down the dimly lit corridor, Harry thinking morosely about the pile of homework awaiting them. He wondered if she’d be in a mood to be wheedled tonight. One relief among all his troubles however, was that after that first night, his Occlumency had remained consistent. Dumbledore had hinted that he’d be able to move on to other things soon. And for a reason he didn’t understand, his wandwork had improved too. He was nowhere near Hermione’s standards (or what used to be her standards) but he no longer had to spend hours and hours to perfect a single spell.

They were halfway down the stairs when it hit him.

He stopped and dropped the bag.

“Hermione!”

She turned. He glanced at the front of her robes, heart in his throat. Surely, surely not--

“You handed your badge in.”

Disbelief echoed off the towering walls.

She looked at him, her eyes lit up, mouth set. She noted the edge in his voice with satisfaction. Finally.

The torches in the brackets along the stairs cast an oily glow. In their light his eyes were black.

Now he’d yell at me.

Now he’d scream that I should be ashamed of myself.

He’d scream until the veins stand out in his forehead, until I can’t bear to look at him for the loathing in his eyes.

He’d scream:

This is not you, Hermione, you never hang your head and give in.

Not you.

He’ll shake me and grab me by the elbow and drag me back upstairs.

You’re going to beg to have that badge back! I’m going to make you!

Now.

But he didn’t.

They were standing so close with her on the lower step and she could feel his body clench like a fist ready to punch. But he only stared. A vein throbbed in his jaw but when he spoke, his voice was quiet.

“Let’s go. Dinner’ll be over soon.”

He picked up her bag and walked down the stairs.

Hermione stared at his back.

A silent scream raked its vicious nails down her throat.

**

“Surely, Tiresias, they are too young!”

“Yes, Headmaster, but it’s not unheard of. We all know Harry’s powers are beyond his age.”

“Yes, but for something like this?”

“I’m aware it doesn’t explain everything, but it does explain the protection. It also explains why his magic has strengthened.”

“But how was it transferred? As far as I know one needs a carrier when the conditions are weak?”

Suddenly, Tiresias stopped listening. He stiffened and rose from the chair.

“He’s outside, Headmaster.”

“Tiresias--”

“Harry. He’s outside the door.”

He strode towards the door and opened it.

Harry burst in.

Dumbledore rose from his chair.

Harry’s hair was wilder than usual, his jaw clenched. His throat worked and he gripped his wand in white knuckles. His long, thin shadow lay like a whip behind him over the open doorway.

“I want to do something.” The portraits on the walls sat up.

“Harry, is anything the matter?”

“I have to do something! Anything. I am sick and tired of just waiting for things to happen--”

“Harry, calm down--”

“I WON’T CALM DOWN! SHE’S BREAKING INTO PIECES AND YOU’RE ALL SITTING HERE DOING NOTHING!”

“Harry!”

“SHE’S NOT GOING TO CLASS, SHE’S NOT DOING HER HOMEWORK, SHE CAN’T CAST HER SPELLS PROPERLY, SHE STAYS UP ALL NIGHT, SHE’S NOT--!”

“Harry, listen--”

“HERSELF! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH SHE’S HURTING? DO YOU KNOW HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO WATCH HER? I CAN’T SPEND ANOTHER DAY PRETENDING IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY WHEN I KNOW IT--”

“HARRY!”

His breath jammed in his throat. His eyes stung. He glared at Dumbledore.

“Listen to what you’re saying, Harry! You say you want to do something but you sound as if you’ve already given up!”

Dumbledore’s eyes glinted like ice under the sun. Harry dropped his head. His knees felt weak and a pit in his stomach had opened up. Tiresias reached out a hand and led him by the elbow to a chair.

Dumbledore silenced the portraits with a glance. Fawkes stood still on his perch. His feathers were haggard.

A glass of water was set in front of him. Harry stared at the droplets gathering on its surface.

“What happened, Harry?”

Maybe if I don’t say it, it won’t be true. None of it.

“She handed in her badge.” His head was too heavy to lift.

“Oh.”

Dumbledore’s blue robes swept past him towards the window. Harry tried to breathe evenly, counting the droplets on the glass. Each droplet gathered at the top of the glass, ran in a ragged line to the bottom and disappeared. Then a new one bloomed.

“Harry, look at me.”

He raised his head.

“I know this is very difficult for you. But you must know we’re doing everything, and more than what’s possible.”

Harry dragged his voice from the emptiness inside.

“Why isn’t she getting any better then? What’s wrong with her? Why haven’t any of those Healers been able to do anything? All they do is make her more and more tired!”

“I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, Harry, but it doesn’t mean we have given up. We won’t. In fact, this is why I hired Professor Tiresias.”

Harry reached for the water and took a sip. The slick surface and his own sweaty hand made him almost drop the glass.

“Professor Tiresias belongs to a very highly regarded group of international Healers. He’s known as a Sense.” Dumbledore leaned forward. “That means he can ‘see’ things the naked eye can never see.”

Harry felt feverish, he was hardly listening to Dumbledore. He glanced at the man standing over by Fawkes’s perch. Just as Harry wondered if Tiresias could now sense his gaze, a faint smiled appeared on the Professor’s lips. Harry looked away.

“Professor Tiresias is also proficient in certain types of Muggle medicine. In fact, he’s what’s known as a qualified psychiatrist among Muggles. So, we’re hoping he would be successful where magic has failed.”

Dumbledore slid his glasses up his nose.

“So, you see Harry, things are being done. There’s no reason to give up hope.”

Harry fingered the damp glass.

He felt tired. So, so tired.

“Harry.” The Headmaster’s tone was gentle. Harry swallowed.

“You are doing everything you can, and you know it. Hermione is hanging on because of you and Ron. You have to remain calm and strong like you’ve been so far.”

Harry sighed and pocketed the wand he still clutched in his hand. Then he stood up.

“I must get back to the Tower, Professor.” He could barely speak. “And--I’m sorry I yelled.”

Dumbledore nodded. Tiresias hadn’t moved from where he stood. Fawkes made a gurgling noise and Harry smiled faintly at him. As he turned towards the door, Dumbledore spoke.

“Harry, I shall arrange for Hermione to keep her room though she doesn’t want her position. That should be a relief for her, shouldn’t it?

“Er, yes. Thanks, Professor,” Harry stammered. Then he turned and left, trying not to drag his feet.

**

The next day, Harry sat next to Hermione in Potions trying not to scream.

Snape shouldn’t be allowed to teach.

While all the other teachers had shown sympathy at Hermione’s plight and had been lenient on her, Snape hadn’t budged one bit. He expected her to turn up to class and hand in her work. When she didn’t, he'd docked housepoints.

To make matters worse, Hermione seemed more agitated during Potions than at any other time. She dropped her ingredients and mixed up instructions. Her hands were unsteady and once she’d sliced her finger while cutting up roots. Most of the time, Harry ignored Snape’s glare and helped her, but today she was shunning him. She’d refused to let him measure her ingredients and now her cauldron was emitting strange noises and slime-coloured smoke. Snape stood next to it, arms crossed, a vile smirk on his face.

“Well, Miss Granger, I must say your work is spectacular either way--full marks or no marks at all. You certainly never do things halfway.”

Hermione continued to stir her potion, head bent. Whispers coiled around their table like the smoke from her cauldron and Harry thought he heard a few snickers. He wished Ron was taking Advanced Potions with them; he himself had no energy to create a distraction.

“Well.” Snape uncrossed his arms. “At least now you will have time to catch up on your work, I expect, since you no longer have the… burden of your Head Girl duties.”

Hermione’s head snapped up.

“Wouldn’t you Miss Granger?”

Harry felt sick at the look in Snape’s oily eyes. But his attention was soon taken up by Hermione.

She had straightened in her seat, head held high, eyes glinting. She reached for her remaining dried billywig and dropped it in the cauldron.

Snape’s eyes flashed. “Miss Granger?” his voice was dangerously low. “Your potion is a disaster as it is. If you--”

Hermione reached for her excess nightshade root and dropped them in the cauldron too. It shook on its spindly legs.

Snapes’s voice rose. “Continue doing that, I will have to put you in detention!”

She dropped the powdered occamy shells in the cauldron. Searing droplets splashed out.

“Hemione!” Harry hissed.

“Insolent girl! Did you not hear what I said?”

“Hermione!” Harry gripped her hand as she reached for the horned slugs, but she wrenched it away. People stared openly, some rising from their seats. She threw the slugs in. Foot-high flames shot out.

Snape thundered.

“Miss Granger! I will not tolerate such behaviour in my class! I have had enough of your disobedience! You will be in--”

Harry knew what was coming. He stood up and his chair toppled over. He yelled above Snape’s voice.

“Professor Snape, please don’t yell at her--”

“SIT down, Potter. Don’t make a scene in my class!”

His blood boiled hotter than the calamitous potion but he knew he had to play it right. He couldn’t afford to land himself in detention too.

“Please Professor, she’s just upset! Let me just talk to her!”

“Potter!”

But Harry had grabbed Hermione’s hand and pulled her up from her chair. The cauldron shook violently. He turned and rushed through the desks and chairs with Hermione’s wrist in an iron grip. He reached the door before Snape could react and kicked it open, almost tumbling outside.

**

He dragged her by the wrist down the corridor, his feet echoing loudly on the stone floor. She let herself be pulled along like a rag-doll; curly brown hair, large brown eyes and no voice. Her face set in a triumphant, adamant line, concentrating on putting all her weight on her wrist so that he had to make an effort to keep his angry pace while pulling her along.

This is her Harry.

This is her Harry, not the being of infinite patience who’s endured all her transgressions in the past weeks. That was all a mask, a mistake, one more landmark in a place all wrong and crooked. But this, this livid, out-of-control Harry is the real Harry, and everything will soon fall into place. Soon.

They reached the top of the stairs that lead to the ground floor and he ignored her stumbling on the last stair. The stairs led into an open corridor lined with a series of stone arches looking on the grounds sloping away into the Forest. The trees looked sombre and unaffected by the wind and the heavy grey rain.

He swung her by the arm and faced her. Green eyes flashing, jaw clenched.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he grated out.

She stared back. At least he can’t accuse her of being willfully silent.

“Snape could have landed you in detention for a month!” His thumb dug into the crook of her elbow and she bit the inside of her lip to keep her face from betraying pain. “What would you have done then?”

She refused to look at the worry lines etched into his forehead as of late, of which she knew she was the cause, and which now emerged from behind the blindness of his rage. She imagined herself sitting in Snape’s office, engaged in some menial, repetitive task. Crushing nightshade root into a fine powder. Cleaning oily toad-skin. Again and again and again, while Snape sat at his desk, his mean, satisfied eyes framed by his greasy hair.

And she thought of Harry pacing outside the dungeons, hands fisted, face drawn, counting down the minutes until her detention came to a close night after night, his anger at Snape twisted around his concern for her.

She did this to him. He has a whole life riddled with anxiety but she etched the furrows of worry in his brow. She, who was supposed to stand and fight at his side, who was supposed to make him stronger.

So you made him snap, Hermione.

Congratulations.

What now?

She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Nothing more painful in the world than trying to cry without sound. Almost.

The wind took a sudden sharp turn and a spray of cold rain shot over them both through the open arch. The anger left him in a sudden rush. He sagged, head drooping, hands raking hair.

“I’m so sorry, Hermione, so sorry. All this… all of it, it’s my--”

But he didn’t get to finish the sentence. Hermione’s eyes widened and something sharp-edged passed over her face. He was thrown off balance by a sense of familiarity as she stared at him, but before he could wonder what it meant, she lunged at him, her hands digging into his shoulders. Too surprised to act, he found himself slammed against the hard, damp stone wall. Her eyes were knife-points piercing his as she stared at him for a second. Then her mouth pressed against his ear.

“Don’t you dare, don’t you dare, Harry!” she hissed, her words no more than insistent, scratchy puffs of warm air desperate to push themselves into sounds.

“Hermione--”

“You will not blame yourself--I will not let you--”

“Too late, Herm--”

She pushed her palm over his mouth, her breath frantic just as much from the rage as from the effort of trying to speak. He was pinned beneath her shaking body, her hands pincer-like over his upper arms and one of her knees digging into his leg. His breath was constricted by her weight and her hand over the lower part of his face. His teeth cut into his lip. He felt something salty against his upper lip beneath her palm, and realized the tears belonged to him.

She made a strangled, squeaky noise and removed her hand, nervous all of a sudden. Her hand fluttered over his cheeks. She mouthed his name again and again and he tried to speak, to reassure her, but his mind was entangled in the way her waist pressed against his and the heavy warmth of her body that sighed into a hollow inside him.

Then she became still and he opened his mouth to speak in earnest.

She kissed him.

Icy wind, grey rain and warm skin.

Heated breath.

He kissed back.

It was a lost, misshapen kiss at first, lips unable to find their point of perfect, seamless contact, noses in the way. Then they both drew apart, gasping for air and pressed back in, unable to put up even a pretence of gentleness. Hands fisted painfully in hair, lips and tongues pulled, pushed, probed. Pleasure sparked at the pointed ends of pain, bones dug into flesh, the softest pressure leaving marks of neediness. Taste, taste and feel. Don’t think, not now.

Lips, jaw line, neck all etched with a hunger that’s only just glimpsed itself.

Ragged, they pulled apart. His glasses were knocked off--he was going to need his wand to find them--and his left hand was coiled in her long hair. She leaned even more heavily into him and he held her up with his right arm around her waist and one of his legs wedged between hers, his hips pushed into hers. If it weren’t for the stone wall at his back, they’d both be on the floor now.

“Hermione, oh god, are you okay?”

He removed his hand from her hair and touched her cheek, his thumb rubbing the corner of her bruised mouth. “I… I’m… I hurt you, I’m so sorr--” He stopped when she began to shake her head vehemently, her own hand over his.

‘Don’t ever be sorry Harry, never.’ She mouthed.

The rain fell steadily outside, and the grounds were awash in a greenish-grey haze. The wind had steadied too. It drifted in without any of its former ferocity, merely a drape of fresh air around their heated bodies.

He leaned his forehead against hers, breathing hard and tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear.

“Was that supposed to happen?” he whispered.

She smiled and lifted a shoulder. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter?’

“It doesn’t matter. I--it felt…”

‘Good Harry, it felt good. It felt right.’

She touched her nose to his and their lips met again, this time a mere touch, the lightest of breath. She felt a hundred miles away from the cold air, closeted and bundled safely in a warm, warm place.

She pulled her hands away from where they clutched his school-shirt and slid them around his neck, hugging tightly. He tucked his face into her shoulder. Her mouth found his ear: ‘I’m sorry, Harry, so sorry I made you lose your temper, so sorry I made you beg from Snape’.

“Shhh, don’t be sorry, never be sorry for this.”

****

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: Here’s where I go ‘oops!’ and tell you I made a mistake. In the second section of the previous chapter there’s a line that goes, “One Tuesday towards the end of August, the Gryffindor Quidditch team practised without their captain.” It should read September, not August. Sorry! And hugs to victoria_tonks who picked it up!

Now, before you read this chapter, it’s probably a good idea to call your dentist--but hey, they’re in love, so what can you expect?

As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing and I replied to most of the reviews, but if I missed anyone please forgive me, I’ll get to it soon. And thanks as always to my lovely beta miconic, you honestly are the best.

****

Chapter Five

He began at the hollow below her throat.

She was still breathing hard from her nightmare, her skin salty but her body beginning to cool. He pressed his lips lightly on her skin, nuzzling her neck, his touch a whisper, an entreaty and an endearment all at once.

Hermione, it’s okay, okay, just a dream..

He pressed upward along her neck and over her damp cheeks and back again, and she made soft noises low in her throat in response. They were much different than the choked gasps and sobs of her nightmares and he didn’t quite know what they meant yet, but he thought he would soon. He felt he existed only at those points where he touched her, his lips, fingertips, body covering hers. Her hands were tangled in his hair. Harry, she breathed out and her throat resonated under his lips.

Suddenly it didn’t matter that she couldn’t speak because she was telling him everything, always had, even through the gale of fear and guilt that thrashed and screamed through their day.

Harry Harry Harry

He paused to look at her, her head at an odd angle since she slept without a pillow, her pyjamas rumpled. Her eyes were heavy with interrupted sleep and tears and something else, something much sweeter but dark as well. Her lips were caught halfway between a teary smile and his name. He abandoned his slow path and reached up to kiss her. She angled her head for him, hands winding around his neck.

He hoped he was doing it right. But then, she was probably thinking the same thing herself. They were both probably doing it all wrong but it didn’t matter, it felt right. The one thing, the only thing that did.

**

He’d waited and waited. And he’d planned. He thought his plan was flawless. Smooth. By the time he was finished today, the Dark Lord would have a new right-hand man.

She was late this morning. He checked his watch and wondered if he’d missed her. He inched along the painting and poked his head around the mahogany doorway. The light inside was dim and slivered by swathes of cobwebs. He squinted; the ledge where she normally sat was bare. Satisfied, he settled back behind the painting. Although she comes in under that dratted Invisibility Cloak, she takes it off when she’s sure no one’s around. At least, that’s what she thinks. He tried to stop the smirk spreading over his face and failed.

Fifteen minutes passed. He poked his head around the doorway again; the ledge was still bare. He lit his wandtip green and drew an ‘S’ in the air. Two heavy forms emerged from behind two stone pillars a few feet off on either side of the ledge.

“You two all right there?”

“Yeah, but where is she?”

“Should be here soon, be patient.”

“You think you got the time right, Draco?”

“’Course I did, you great big sloth, now get back in there!”

He was damned sure of the time. He had followed her for weeks now, hadn’t he? The only other person who knew the mudblood’s whereabouts so well had to be Potter.

Filth, both of them.

He pulled out the timetable. Today she had Arithmancy first, so she should be here now; the Arithmancy classroom was the closest to the third floor. She doesn’t go far in the mornings. It’s only in the afternoons that she wanders off on the grounds.

He sat back. He’d wait a few minutes more. In his mind he mapped her afternoon haunts, wondering if it would be wise to switch plans. It would be a little more difficult out in the open grounds in broad daylight but hell, it’s not like she can scream, the slut.

He felt confident.

Do the worst you can, Draco, the worst you can imagine. But on one condition. She must be alive at the end of it.

Yes, Master.

**

Hermione pushed open her windows and leaned out. There was the sun and there was the blue sky. True, the light was a little wintery and the blue fingerprinted with grey, but still. She smiled and padded back to her dresser, reaching for a hairbrush. She tried not to look at herself in the mirror; that would just deepen the blush already on her cheeks.

She didn’t think her knees would hold her up until she finished dressing. She didn’t think she could wait till breakfast to see him.

She tied her hair up and went back to the window. She fingered the curtain, thinking that she might leave the window open in her room while she left for classes.

Her bed was made, he’d done that before he left while she was in the bathroom. But her room could do with a bit of tidying. She wondered where to start. Then she picked up her wand.

She had to flick and swipe really close to the books she wanted shelved, the clothes she wanted hung, the clock she wanted wound up but she didn’t mind. Her mind was elsewhere. A warm mouth whispering, whispering so close against her skin that she didn’t so much hear the words as feel them. Darkening eyes when she mouthed his name and those hands, hesitant and assured at the same time and so eager to finish the sentences his lips had begun.

Hermione surveyed her room, now dusted and straightened and swept, then picked up her bag. She pulled out the books she’d been carrying needlessly for weeks and floated them back to their shelf. No need for an anchor anymore.

True, her throat was still hollow of sound, she still had nightmares, she still wandered blindfolded inside her own head. And he was still keeping something from her, something important he thought he was hiding well, even from himself.

But there was the blue sky and the sun and her swollen lips sweetly aching to touch his again. And those hands.

She pulled out her timetable and filled the bag with the books she needed. Then she sat down on the bed to put her shoes on. Just as she tied up her laces, there was a knock on the door.

“Hermione?”

She straightened, not sure if she should stand. Surely her knees wouldn’t hold her up till she crossed the room to the door.

She was relieved to see he had the same blush on his cheeks.

“Hi,” he said. She smiled.

It was as if together they’d closed a door to themselves and entered through another. The same eyes but a different warmth, the same hands but a different touch. The same way he said her name but a different note that rolled off his tongue and nestled somewhere in her heart.

“Ready?”

She nodded, dropped her bag and stepped into his arms, lifting her face.

**

They look different. He is daft and clueless most of the time, but he’s not blind. They’re holding themselves differently, lighter, as if they’ve just set down something heavy they’d been carrying. They still sit close-but-not-too-close and their hands still only brush as they walk ahead of him now, not quite reaching for each other, but, but, there’s something.

They were acting really weird during dinner last night too. Harry had muttered something about a disaster in Potions but didn’t seem too keen to discuss the details.

Besides, that hardly explained why they’d both been smiling all through breakfast this morning. And Hermione’s actually going to class…

Something’s happened. And he had a fair idea what that might’ve been.

Why haven’t they said anything to him, then? Did they think he’d be mad?

Jealous?

Upset?

Left out?

Should he ask?

Ahh, there it is, that thing Harry’s doing now--oh…

No. He’d wait for them to tell him.

**

Harry turned around to say something to Hermione before she stepped inside Professor Vector’s classroom, but as soon as he looked at her he forgot what it was. She looked at him, questioning. He shook his head and touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb, shyly. She tilted her face into his touch.

**

She’d gone to all her classes, even Charms which she hated because of her faltering wandwork. True, in Potions she caused a minor fire, but still. And she’d staunchly ignored everyone who stared, walking next to him with her head held high.

Harry thought his heart would burst.

He was following her out of their Defence class with Ron ahead of them when Professor Tiresias called.

“Harry, may I have a word?”

Harry looked at Hermione and Ron. Hermione gestured that they’d wait outside and Harry went over to Tiresias’s desk. The Professor was collecting his books and rolls of parchment off the desk with deliberate hands, packing them carefully in his bag. His wand lay on the desk. He paused and smiled at Harry. Harry managed a hesitant smile.

“So, Harry, I hear that Hermione attended all her classes today.”

“Yes, Professor, she did.”

“Well, that must be a great relief for you.”

“Er, yes. It is”

Tiresias snapped the clasp and laid the bag on the desk. Close to, Harry saw that the Professor’s hands had a slight tremor, something he had never noticed before. He looked up at the eyes that always sat so still in the lined face, their gaze direct and without emotion.

“Did anything happen, Harry? Anything that you think might have caused this sudden change?”

Harry blushed and dropped his gaze.

“Er, n-nothing unexpected, Professor. I, erm, don’t know exactly why.”

Tiresias nodded. Harry thought his gestures were strangely agitated, devoid of their usual fluidity.

“There is something else I’ve been meaning to ask you, Harry. Professor Dumbledore mentioned that while you were at the Burrow, Hermione had a very unsettling nightmare.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “Yes, Professor.”

“And you weren’t there when it happened?”

“No.”

“What I want to know Harry, is whether she’s been having those nightmares since then.”

Harry thought of tear-filled whimperings and fisted hands and the salty dampness of fear, all merging in the dark that crowded around a low-burning candle.

“Yeah, she does. Every night.”

Tiresias tapped his fingers on the wood.

“I’m sorry to put you through this, Harry, but I need to know whether she’s revealed anything during those nightmares. It might be the only time when her mind considers what--must have happened.”

“She doesn’t really say anything most of the time, just--seems very upset. But a couple of times I thought she said something like--” He slid his bag off one shoulder and hoisted it over the other.

“What did she say, Harry?”

“I may have it wrong, it was dark, but she sort of mouthed, ‘you were there, why didn’t you say something’ or something like that. Or it might have been ‘why didn’t you tell me’, or both--I don’t know.” He pushed his hands in his pockets.

“Was she actually talking to you, or was the ‘you’ someone else?”

Harry shrugged. “I dunno.”

Then his head snapped up.

Was she talking to him? Because if she was, then she did have a good reason to say what she did, or what he thought she did.

Why didn’t you tell me?

“Harry?”

“Er, sorry, Professor, what did you say?”

“Has she said anything else?”

Harry shuffled his feet. “Sometimes she says that--that it wasn’t real and that she knew it. She says it over and over again.”

“What wasn’t real? Any idea?”

“No.” He suddenly wished he’d paid more attention to her nightmares. But when she was twisted into that horrible darkness all he wanted to do was uncoil her from it, not examine the shape of the twists and knots.

Tiresias moved from the desk. He paced past the cabinet behind his desk, pulling at his collar distractedly as if it was too tight. Abruptly, he stopped and swung around.

“Something else I’ve been meaning to ask you, Harry. Professor Dumbledore said that in one of your Occlumency lessons you had this strange feeling as if--” he made a vague gesture “--you had something inside your skin, running up and down.”

“Yeah, it was quite strange. Like I could suddenly feel the blood pumping inside my skin.”

“Have you felt it since?”

“It comes and goes. And sometimes I don’t even notice it. Professor, you don’t think it had anything to do with--the disappearance?”

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it? You felt it for the first time while she was gone, didn’t you? You haven’t noticed a pattern to it since then, have you?”

“No.”

Tiresias sighed and leaned his hands against the desk. Then he looked up.

“Very well, Harry, thank you. I’ve kept you long enough, you may go.” Tiresias smiled.

Harry turned and left quickly, trying to silence the clamour that had flared in his head.

You have to tell her, Harry. No excuse now, especially now. You have to tell her.

**

How could it go wrong? Where the fuck was she all day long? She’s been sneaking under that fucking Cloak for weeks and weeks, why did she stop now?

“Draco, where are we going?”

“Shut up and just keep walking, Goyle, or is that too much for your flabby legs?”

“Draco--”

“I don’t want to hear it, Crabbe!”

He swung round the corridor and mounted the steps in double strides. A mouse scampered across the topmost step. He kicked it. The creature bleated in pain.

“Miserable vermin!” He hissed and stepped over it. Crabbe and Goyle panted behind him, trying to keep up. He strode down the corridor, rounded another corner and stopped.

“There she is, the worthless mudblood!”

“Draco--”

“Shh, you idiot!”

He stepped back round the corner to conceal himself and peered out. She was sitting on the floor outside the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. There was no one else about. What’s she doing there?

Then, as he watched, the classroom door opened. He pulled back.

“Fuck! Scarhead’s here!”

“R-really? Then we’d better clear out, Draco!”

“Are you off your rocker?” He glared at Goyle. “And you, stop grunting like a pig!” He hissed at Crabbe who was clutching the wall, out of breath, face red. He waited a few moments, listening for footsteps. Then he put his head back out, trying to see what was happening.

“But, Draco--”

“Shut up, Crabbe, d’you think I’d let those two good-for-nothing--ohhhhhh!”

The words died in his mouth.

A grin spread across his face, glinting like a newly sharpened blade.

He straightened and surveyed the scene before him.

Perfect.

Better than planned.

“Draco, what’s happening?”

He chuckled under his breath and turned around.

“Boys, we have just hit gold.” He grabbed a handful of each of their hair and pushed their heads out round the wall.

“Have a good gawk you two, the Prophet will pay good galleons to hear about this!”

Such excellent timing.

New plans formed instantly in his head. He pushed out his chest and grinned wider.

It wasn’t going to be that hard to make life living hell for Potter. He didn’t even have to go out of his way. The blaze was right there, just waiting to be stoked.

Perfect.

**

Harry closed the door to Tiresias’s class behind him. Hermione was sitting crosslegged against the wall outside, her bag beside her.

“Sorry, did it take long?”

She smiled and shook her head, a question skimming beneath the smile.

“He just--he just wanted to know how you were doing.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I said you were doing very well.” He grinned and held out a hand to pull her up.

She stood up and looked at him, her hand still in his.

Don’t look at me like that, don’t look at me like you know there’s more to it than that. Because there is. There’s much, much more. Things--something--that might even make you change your mind--about this…

He dropped his bag and pulled her towards him, one arm around her waist. With the other hand, he traced her face. The urgency of their first kiss seemed far, far away. Now all he wanted to do was stretch these long, gentle minutes, feel her body grow heavier within his arms and wonder at this feeling that swelled beneath his skin, like a drop of liquid gold coursing in his blood, warm, glowing. He hardly understood any of it but she probably did, as she did with most things. He wasn’t sure where it would lead, what it would mean, for him, for her, for everyone else and everything else from now on but none of that really mattered. What mattered was him, her, here.

“You are doing well today, aren’t you?” He whispered against her lips.

She rubbed her cheek against his in reply and reached again for his mouth.

**

“So, where did Ron go?” Harry asked Hermione as they made their way to dinner after the Defence class.

Hermione shrugged. ‘Said he had something to do.’ She gestured. Then she touched his arm and mouthed, ‘He was awfully quiet today.’ Harry looked at her for a moment, trying to unravel the look on her face. Then he let out a breath.

“Oh. Do you think--he--us..”

Hermione lifted a shoulder, a worried look on her face. She slipped her hand into his and squeezed his fingers. ‘We should tell him, you know. Before he finds out some other way.’

“Yeah, we should.” Harry replied uncertainly. They were standing outside the Great Hall. People streamed past them, some shooting them curious glances, others preoccupied with their own conversations. Over the weeks, the general fascination with Hermione had waned, although the tide had picked up a little today because she was seen in all her classes. Harry winced to think of what would happen once the news got out that she, that he and she, that they were--

Hermione tugged at his hand, nibbling her lip. ‘It’ll be okay, don’t worry’, she mouthed. Harry tried to summon a smile, returning the pressure on his fingers.

“Yeah, yeah it will.” The image of Ron’s face rose in his mind and kept him from sounding convinced. They turned to walk through the door, letting go of each other’s hands.

The hall was filled with candlelight and chatter as usual. The staff table was still empty and food hadn’t yet appeared on the tables. Harry and Hermione pushed past people gathered in small knots. Harry could see Ron at the Gryffindor table, sitting next to Seamus. To the right of the main aisle the Slytherin table seemed more crowded than usual. He realised it was because Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were perched on the table, swinging their legs. The rest of Slytherin were gathered around them in a tight circle.

When he saw them, Malfoy’s mouth stretched into a smug leer. He said something to the other Slytherins. They all turned around. Harry moved to Hermione’s right side and kept walking, trying to get to the Gryffindor table as quickly as possible.

But it was no use.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s here, boys and girls.” Malfoy crossed his arms across his chest. A few snickers fizzled up from the crowd around him.

“So, Granger, I hear that you decided to grace our classes with your presence today. All of them.” He cocked his head and looked at Hermione with a mock appraising look. Harry’s ears began to ring.

“Must have been difficult, very difficult…”

He hopped off the desk. “I wonder what brought about this sudden change--”

“Get lost, Malfoy.” Harry hissed. Hermione had stiffened next to him. He stepped closer.

Malfoy shot his eyebrows up dramatically.

“Phew. No need to get nasty, Potter, I’m just making conversation.”

Harry glared and tried to step past them, his hand on Hermione’s arm. But Malfoy shot his arm out in front of them. The occupants of the other tables were beginning to stare. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw that most at the Gryffindor table had stood up too.

To make matters worse, Harry was distracted by the tingling feeling inside his skin which had suddenly flared.

“Hang on a minute, Potter. I think I’m speaking for the whole school when I say that we all have a vested interest in certain affairs of yours.” He waved his hands theatrically. “After all, you are supposed to be--what’s the word--the saviour of the wizarding world, so it’s only fair that we all become familiar with certain developments in your life…” He spread out his hands. “What do you say, boys and girls?”

The Slytherin table issued a chorus of ‘yeah’. Harry gritted his teeth. Hermione nudged him gently with her shoulder. He tried to heed the warning on her face.

“Developments such as this--”

Malfoy pulled out his wand and brandished it in the air, muttering something. A greenish cloud appeared in the air above their heads, in full view of everyone in the Hall. Harry barely had the time to register the shimmering, green-edged imprint of him and Hermione entangled in each other outside the door to the Defence class. The Hall erupted.

“Oh my!”

“Bloody hell!”

“When was that?”

“Is that for real?”

“I knew it!”

“Everybody knew it!”

“But that spell, you’re not supposed to use it!”

“Who cares!”

“YOU SICK BASTARD!”

A hundred pairs of startled eyes turned towards the Gryffindor table. Harry wasn’t sure what was happening. He pulled Hermione to a side. A flash of red hair incandescent with rage plunged down the aisle. People yelped and scrambled aside. Ron was heading straight at Malfoy. Malfoy looked alarmed, the swagger seeping out of him.

Ron pounced on him.

The Hall erupted again.

“Ron, let go of him!”

“Oh my god!”

“What the--”

Harry tried to reach Ron but he and Hermione were surrounded by gasps and screams and bodies. Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth, squashed behind Harry.

Plates clattered and smashed over the Slytherin table. Ron’s face blazed. Malfoy, or what little could be seen of him, looked white as death. A group of Slytherins pulled at him, while Gryffindors tried to pull Ron away. But Ron’s jaw was clenched, his fist landing clumsily on whatever part of Malfoy he could reach.

Ernie McMillan stood up on the table and yelled, waving his arms, but no one listened. Susan Bones, the new Head Girl, waved her wand, trying to find a proper aim for a spell to pull Malfoy and Ron apart.

No one noticed the door open.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?”

Tiresias stood on the doorway, hands at his hips. His still eyes flashed.

Everybody began to talk at once.

“Quiet!” He strode towards the Slytherin table. “Mr McMillan, Miss Bones, if you are here, could you kindly explain to me what’s happening?”

Ernie scrambled down from the table.

“Er, yes, yes, Professor. Er, just a spot of bother between Malfoy and Weasley, sir..”

The Gryffindors and Slytherins began to yell.

“Spot of bother my foot!”

“That prat Weasley tried to kill Draco--”

“If he kept his mouth shut--”

“It wasn’t even about him--”

“And that spell, no one’s supposed to use that spell!”

“Quiet, everyone!” Tiresias bellowed again. “What spell? And who used it?”

“Er, it was Malfoy, sir, he, er, he used the Imprimere spell to, to show the school Hermione Granger and Harry in--” Ernie went red in the face. Susan cut across him impatiently.

“It was a private moment, sir. Malfoy had made an imprint of it and he flashed it all across the Hall.” Disgust laced her voice. “That’s why Ron Weasley lost his temper.”

Harry looked at Ron. He was slumped on the Slytherin table with Seamus and Ginny bent over him. Harry glanced at Hermione over his shoulder. Her eyes were wide and she clutched his arm tightly. He wanted to get to Ron but his path was still blocked by bristling bodies.

“Well.” Tiresias pocketed his wand and his halting gaze swept around the Hall. For the second time that day, Harry thought the Professor seemed agitated, quite unlike his usual graceful self. His prematurely aged face, soft and wrinkled, was full of tiny movements in contrast to the usual stillness of his eyes, which also now seemed larger and more animated than he’d ever seen. “Shameful behaviour, especially from two prefects. There will be consequences--for both of you. I shall take you to your Heads of House.” He rubbed at a spot on his chin. “Mr McMillan, could you kindly accompany us. Miss Bones, could you please settle everyone down in here. And--” He paused and inclined his head. “--Is anyone bleeding? Either one of you hurt? I can sense blood.”

“Ron’s got a gash on his face, sir.” Ginny called out in a tremulous voice. Harry craned his neck but couldn’t see anything.

“Very well, to the Hospital Wing first then.” Tiresias swung around. People parted to make way for Ron, Malfoy and Ernie and Harry seized the chance to dive across the aisle to Ron, clutching Hermione’s arm.

“Ron! Are you okay?” Ron was trying to get up, leaning on Ginny and Seamus. He had one black eye and the skin below his other eye was broken, seeping blood. Harry put a hand on his arm.

Ron looked up.

“So. When were you going to tell me, Harry?”

It didn’t sound like Ron’s voice. Too quiet, too cold.

Harry stared. Ron’s eyes were shuttered. His mouth was set in a line Harry had seen only once before over the blue flames of an enchanted goblet. He withdrew his hand.

“Ron, we were--we were just about to tell you--”

“Oh yeah? After the entire school found out?”

“Ron--”

“Save it, Harry. It’s a bit too late for explanations, don’t you think?”

Hermione put her hand on Ron’s arm.

“I’m fine, Hermione.” He barely looked at her.

Ice slithered its way up Harry’s spine.

Ginny and Seamus helped Ron to his feet. Mouth dry, Harry watched as Ron hobbled off, leaning on Ginny and Seamus.

He didn’t hear the whispering anymore. He didn’t hear the hiss of spells and the chink of Slytherin plates being mended. He didn’t notice everyone shuffling back to their seats. He didn’t see the tatters of his and Hermione’s shimmering sickly-green selves drift above their heads and disappear gradually into air.

He stood rooted to the spot and stared after Ron’s receding form.

Tiresias walked out with Malfoy bristling ahead of him. Ernie pushed the door open wide to make room for Ron, Ginny and Seamus to go through at the same time. Ginny said something to Ron and he shook his head. Then the door swung close behind them with a heavy groan.

Harry didn’t hear Susan mutter at people to stop staring. He didn’t see the tables fill up with food, people turning away with only a few curious glances cast their way.

He only heard Hermione’s quickened breath next to him and blindly reached for her hand. He knew it would be clammy and white-knuckled, but he also knew it would curl tightly around his own.

****

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: I’m overflowing with beta-love today (not that there was a time when I wasn’t). Miconic has just returned all the chapters I sent her, which is better than good news because I’ll be going away this weekend. So, depending on what you guys have to say about this chapter, I might post the next two chapters within the next couple of days. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I’ll post them when I get back to Sydney. In four weeks. *grins*

Thanks as always for reading and taking the time to comment, you guys are the best lot of readers a girl could hope for. And please feel free to point out holes in the story as well. And of course, hugs to my dearest, sweetest beta miconic. Also, since people were wondering, my email is on the bio page now. It wasn’t there before because, um, I didn’t realise I had to un-tick the box. Feel free to say Hi.

****

Chapter Six

“I don’t know, Headmaster, I don’t know. It was bedlam in there and the signals were confusing. And I’m not a seer, I can’t predict the future. Besides, I--I was there only for a few minutes. But I know what I sensed. The intent was very strong--the intent to harm--very focused, but it felt like it was coming from very far.”

“And you would still put your galleons on Cariad too?”

“Yes. Yes, absolutely. Now more than ever. Absolutely. And those injuries Severus reported--classic signs, absolutely.”

“Tiresias, calm down.”

“You don’t understand, Professor! This--he’s interfering with my receptivity! I can hardly stay still. I could barely stand being near him today. That’s how I know it’s Cariad, without a doubt. I feel like--it’s like putting your hand on someone’s bare heart, you know, not on their chest, but their living, beating, bloody heart that’s just been pulled out of their ribcage!”

“But what about the rest of it, Tiresias? Any luck with Miss Granger?”

“No. There are places even I cannot encroach. Places like this. She refuses to look at it, blinds herself to it, so I can’t come up with anything. I can’t read minds. I can sense secrets but I can’t sense exactly what those secrets are.”

“But this is different.”

“Yes, I know, it’s not exactly a secret, but there’s one somewhere, I’m sure of it. Headmaster, this is why my--this ability is not accurate, it’s sometimes more trouble than is worth. And in the presence of strong magic like this, the strongest there is, things just go haywire! And Professor, surely you don’t think Malfoy is telling the truth about the Imprimere spell?”

“No. But it is not entirely an untruth either, which is why it’s difficult. I’m quite sure, as he said, that he found the Virtus potion for the spell among Lucius’s stockpile. But you are right, there is more to it. This is very serious, Tiresias, we are going to have to increase safety measures.”

“Yes, yes we must. And I think it’s time to launch our original plan with Hermione.”

“Hypnosis? Is she ready?”

“She’s in danger. How much, how soon, I don’t know. Sooner we find out what happened, the better.”

**

Hermione sighed and shifted in the chair as discreetly as she could. Everyone was under the impression that she’d dozed off, so it’s better to keep things that way. She opened her eyes a fraction. Professor Tiresias, Professor Dumbledore and the Healer were gathered near the door, talking in whispers. Tiresias’s arms were crossed, head bowed. Dumbledore was fingering his beard. The Healer’s back was turned towards her.

The last Healer she’d be seeing.

She closed her eyes.

She was supposed to undergo hypnosis with Professor Tiresias next week. She knew enough about it to realise that it was probably her last chance, the only way she’d be able to see inside her own head.

But did she really want to?

Did she really want to peer behind the tatters her nightmares presented every night and see what lay there?

And what if that didn’t work either?

She opened her eyes abruptly, hoping daylight would chase Harry’s fallen face rising behind her eyes, and met with a blue gaze.

“Ah, you are awake.” Dumbledore smiled. “Professor Tiresias went to fetch Harry to walk you back to your room. That must be them.” He turned as the door opened.

“Hermione?”

Harry strode to her chair and knelt in front of her, hands fretful on her knee. She tried to sit up, hoping to lessen the worry on his face but her limbs were lead. She tried to smile.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. He covered her hands with his own and squeezed her fingers.

“Want to go to your room?”

She nodded again. In a corner of her mind that wasn’t curling with a moan into the comfort of his presence, she registered that they were being watched intently.

He stood and pulled her up, sliding an arm around her waist.

“Make sure she gets enough rest, Harry,” Dumbledore said.

Harry barely nodded as they shuffled to the door. The corridor outside was deserted. She could barely keep her head up. They walked silently down the passage and mounted the stairs. Her glazed eyes caught the anxious glances he cast her way, and she rubbed her head against his neck hoping to reassure him.

“Hermione--” He paused and she looked up at him. He touched her cheek and looked as if he was about to say something, then changed his mind. Before she could say anything, he picked her up.

She gripped his shoulder and shook her head, mouthing misshapen words. ‘You can’t--I’m too heavy…’ He grinned faintly.

“You might have been. Not anymore.”

She sighed and pushed her face into his neck.

They reached her room and he kicked the door open. The room was much tidier than it had been a week ago, more Hermione-like. He laid her on the bed. Then he sat down next to her to pull her shoes off and loosen her schooltie. She lifted her head and he pulled the tie off. The curtain at her window was closed, so his face was half-hidden from her. She pointed her head at the window.

He went over, pulled back the curtain and opened the window a little. The afternoon was dragging its feet, although the days were rapidly becoming shorter and colder. Faint voices drifted up from the courtyard far below. He turned and bent to pick up her shoes and put them away. Then he picked up her tie and hung it in her wardrobe.

She watched him move around the room. He moved slowly, as if his skin was too large and too heavy for him. Ron had avoided them for days. He barely looked at them, but seemed to know exactly when they were in his vicinity; when they entered a room, he left. Harry had tried on several occasions to talk to him, to no avail. Her chest burned when she saw his dejected look but he didn’t say much about it. There was no need.

Harry returned to the bed and sat down.

“Are you hungry?” He stroked her cheek, brushing her hair away, fingers dipping in the skin below her ear.

She shook her head.

“Do you want something to drink then?”

She shook her head again.

“Anything else you want then?”

She looked at him for a moment, the faltering brilliance of his green eyes, the shadows, the shoulders that struggled to stay straight enough, broad enough for the weight heaped upon them.

‘You.’

He looked puzzled, as if he was waiting for her to finish the sentence. Then he smiled.

He pulled off his shoes and climbed onto bed. She shifted herself into his arms, his face next to her shoulder. She removed his glasses.

The minutes dropped into a slow oblivion on the clock beside her bed. The curtain heaved in the wind.

Suddenly, as she watched, his eyes filled with tears.

She frowned and lifted her head, peering into his face, her hand on his cheek.

“Sorry, I’m, I’m okay, I’m just…” The words, all the words he tried not to say, not wanting to add to her burden, tussled in his throat. Not wanting to add to her burden, and because she already knew anyway.

She hooked a leg over his body, pulling herself on top of him, drew his head into her arms and began to nuzzle his face. ‘It’ll be okay, we’ll be okay’, she mouthed into his lips, pale cheeks, eyes. Her hair fell all around them. He clung to her with both hands and tried to keep the brokenness out of his voice.

“What if it doesn’t? What if Ron never speaks to me again and you never, you never--”

He broke off, feeling frighteningly light. The weight of hope he’d lugged around for weeks was suddenly cast off, floundering in a future he didn’t think he could bear.

“Hermione…” He pleaded, tightening his arms around her.

If it wasn’t for her body pinning him to the bed, mooring him to himself, he felt he too might ebb away. She pressed her cheek to his, her voiceless breath incoherent in her urgency to soothe him. ‘I promise, be okay, we’ll be okay, I’ll get better, be okay, promise, promise…’

**

“Lucius, wait!”

“No, I must see him now! This has gone too far!”

“What has gone too far, Lucius?”

“M-Master, I--I didn’t see you there..”

“Of course not, Lucius, I excel in concealment. Now, what has made you so hotblooded this evening?”

“I--Master, Draco, I need to know what you plan to do with him. The truth.”

“Ahhh, concerned for your son, are you, Lucius?”

“Master, I have been faithful to you even through the worst times--”

“You have been faithful to yourself, Lucius, don’t think for a moment that I was ever fooled.”

“That’s not--that’s not…”

“But I forgave you. You still seemed keen to return once I myself returned, and I thought you might retain some of your old zest, so to speak, if not the loyalty you swore by. But you disappointed me.”

“I did my best, Master--”

“You failed to get me the Prophecy the first time, and the second time. And both times, you nearly destroyed us.”

“But Master, I was not the only one responsible!”

“There you go again, Lucius, making excuses.”

“Master, I deeply regret any oversights on my part and I swear to you--”

“Enough with your grovelling, Lucius!”

“Master--”

“What makes you think there’s more to my plans for Draco than the instructions I gave him when he received his Mark?”

“He--he let something slip about laying in wait for the mudblood and I tried to warn him, told him it was dangerous but he said he was doing your bidding.”

“He is, Lucius.”

“But Master, the mudblood--it’s dangerous! Just look at these arms, Master, the burns have still not healed! And Bellatrix still has trouble breathing--”

“I’m well aware it’s dangerous, Lucius, but what I don’t know is how dangerous. Don’t you think that I need to know my enemy as best as I could? Well, that is what your son is doing for me. I see you’re still confused. Let me put it this way, there is some kind of protection around that mudblood, I don’t know how or who’s responsible for it, but as you have so kindly pointed out, it was detrimental to us. Your burns, Bellatrix’s injuries, Dolohov’s paralysis.”

“But, Master, how does Draco--”

“Let me finish, Lucius! Now, I need to know exactly how strong that protection is, how far it will work. I have realised that the adverse effects the protection had for us are directly proportionate to the strength of each curse we used on her. To put it simply, Draco’s under instructions to do his worst--that way we can find out the worst the protection is capable of.”

“My Lord, he could--he could die!”

“Indeed he could, Lucius. But I have instructed him to keep her alive. Once I find out how the protection works, she will be very useful. So, I don’t think he would be using the Killing Curse in haste.”

“You are using my son as a--as a common pawn!”

“Now, now Lucius, no need to be dramatic.”

“He knows nothing about what happened here while we had the mudblood, does he?”

“Of course not, surely you don’t think I am that simple-minded?”

“He’s walking into your trap--”

“Well. Not the words I would have chosen myself but--Lucius? Can you hear me? Hmm. Bella, I think you can take him away now.”

**

“Oy, Ron! Where are you going?” Dean looked indignant. He had been in the middle of explaining the finer points of football for the benefit of several Gryffindors when Ron stood up and walked to the door.

“Er, just--for a walk.” He closed the door quickly.

The street outside the Three Broomsticks had a wet sheen over it, smudged with countless footsteps. Ron shoved his hands deep in his pockets and made his way slowly down the road, squinting in the cold sunlight.

He really wasn’t sure where he wanted to go. He paused and looked around. Maybe he should’ve just stayed in the pub with Dean, Seamus and Neville. He sighed. Maybe not. That might have worked when he was in fourth year, but it won’t work now. He began to walk.

He wondered where the two of them were. He’d seen them leave the castle with the rest of the crowd streaming to Hogsmeade, but hadn’t seen them since. He knew he really had no business feeling all wounded when really, all it would have taken was to look at Harry when he was trying so desperately catch his eye these past few days.

He passed various shops and little groups gathered on the side of the road, chattering and laughing. There were people everywhere. He paused at a shop that looked relatively deserted and walked in, not bothering to glance at the name.

He’d walked into a stationery shop. He wandered past shelves and stands filled with parchment and quills, picking things up and putting them down. Then he turned a corner and came upon Harry and Hermione.

Well. What a surprise.

Hermione was examining a set of quills while Harry looked over her shoulder. The hard, unyielding thing he’d hauled around in his chest for days, the thing that really didn’t feel right to him although he clung to it adamantly, buckled a little. For a moment he wished Harry would look up, see him and want to talk.

But then Harry said something to Hermione and stroked her hair away from her neck, hand lingering. Hermione smiled and kissed his cheek.

Ron was tired, so tired.

“Harry, Hermione.”

They looked up. Harry’s hand dropped abruptly from Hermione’s neck. Ron flinched.

He shifted on his feet, face burning. What should he say? It’s okay, mate, you don’t have to hide it from me? I’m really sorry I’ve been a prat all these days? Can we please put this behind us and be friends again? Because I know you both need me and I miss you? Can we please make things the way they were?

But the problem was, they couldn’t. Things would never again be the way they were.

Suddenly feeling foolish and enraged at himself, he dropped his gaze. When he looked up, they were still staring.

He turned and pushed past the shelves towards the door. Again he wished Harry would come after him. But the door slammed behind him and once again he was out on the wet, overcrowded streets.

Call yourself a Gryffindor, Ron?

He jammed his hands in his pockets and walked towards the end of the cobbled street. Beyond that, a dirt road sloped towards a sparse part of the village, strewn with openings among tall trees and clumps of bushes. He kicked a pebble down the slope. It rolled feebly down the wet road and fell in a puddle.

Why did it hurt so much? It wasn’t like he didn’t see it coming. He probably knew way before they did. Everyone knew. The way they always looked around the room and saw only each other. The way only he understood what her silent voice said, the way she would bother to open her mouth only when he was around. The million and one ways.

Then why? What exactly was his problem?

He rattled down the slope and came to the fence that overlooked the Shrieking Shack. A bird splashing in a muddy puddle near the fence flew away with a disgruntled squawk. He stared unseeingly at the tiny feathers floating in the cloudy water.

The problem was, it was… That suddenly he was alone.

The Shrieking Shack stood still, bramble palming its dank wooden walls. He thought of the faint scar on his leg and the three of them clutching each other’s hands inside a creaking, musty dimness. It all seemed so far away.

But the worst part were those hot, uncomfortable waves of guilt pushing against the hardness in his chest. They grew pushier, louder every time he saw Hermione with her head in her hands over the stack of missed homework, or Harry struggling to find the energy to last through a Quidditch practice.

He sighed. He couldn’t do it, not any more.

He turned around, steeling himself to walk back into the stationery shop.

Then he froze.

Harry and Hermione stood at the stop of the slope, their eyes on him.

Ron swallowed.

Hermione turned and took Harry’s hand. Harry shrugged and nodded. She began to walk down the slope. Ron stood rooted to the spot. When she was close enough to see him clearly, she smiled hesitantly. Without even thinking, he smiled back.

“Er, Hi. What--what are you doing here?”

She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a pen and notepad. She propped her bag on a bent knee, laid the notepad on it and scribbled something. Then she held it out to him.

Ron ran a hand through his hair and took the pad. I want to talk to you, it said.

He looked at her. Her mouth was set in a firm line. Ron dropped his head in relief; even if he wanted to, she wouldn’t let him run now.

“Yeah. Okay”

She smiled. Then she turned around and waved at Harry. He waved back, hesitated, then turned and walked back up the road.

Hermione hoisted her bag and looked around. She walked over to a large stone a few feet away, sat down and patted the space next to her. Ron walked over and sat down, handing her the notepad.

“So…Harry…er…” He tried to come up with words. Any words.

Hermione scribbled on the pad and lifted it up. He had to go, he has Occlumency.

“Today? Saturday?”

Hermione shook her head at him and scribbled some more. You have Quidditch practice on Thursday, remember? Because of the match next Saturday. So Dumbledore asked him to come today.

“Oh. Right.” Ron nodded and fingered a groove on the stone. “So he…er…he didn’t mind you staying with me?”

She rolled her eyes, pen over paper. Why would he mind?

Ron raised an eyebrow.

Hermione sighed and went back to her pad. Okay, maybe I had to persuade him just a teeny weeny bit. She grinned. He snorted lightly.

The bird that had flapped away had returned to claim the puddle. It turned a firm fluffy tail towards him and dipped its head in the water.

Hermione handed him the notepad again. Ron, why are you doing this?

He dropped his head. Sand had gathered in the hollows on the stone. He flicked at the grains and watched them fly out.

She sighed. The notepad rustled. She paused after a few penstrokes, then resumed. Okay, since you’re not going to just tell me, I’m going to ask. Is this because we didn’t tell you?Because if it is, Ron, it’s all a big mistake. Because we really were going to tell you, the first person we thought of telling, but Malfoy just messed it all up.”

Ron stared at the paper, her writing sitting neatly between the blue lines. She was waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t she pulled the pad from his hand.

Say something Ron, please?

Ron sighed. “I--okay, all right, I guess I overreacted a bit there. I suppose if I’d given you enough time, you’d have told me.”

Hermione nibbled the end of the pen and scribbled. Then she held the pad out to him hesitantly.

Are you mad at us?I mean, us?

Ron stared at the underlined word.

Was he?

He was mad at something. But it had nothing to do with Harry and Hermione.

It was about Harry, Hermione and himself.

About how his north and south had shifted, how he had slipped off orbit.

“No.” He had hoped to clear the look on her face, but it didn’t. She ran a finger around the edge of the notepad.

We miss you, Ron. And look at Harry, he’s miserable, he needs you.

“Not as much he needs you.” The words fell out of his mouth before he could stop them.

She gazed at him for a long moment and shook her head. Her shoulders slumped and she closed her hands over the notepad. Moments passed. The preening bird had been joined by a companion. The water was now the colour of the earth around the puddle.

Ron sighed. “I’m sorry, Hermione, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s all just--strange. I mean, I guess I did know you and Harry--well, everyone knew--but it just makes everything very different.” He took a deep breath. “I guess I’m wondering what I really am now, to you and Harry.”

When she handed him the notepad, the paper had faint holes etched along her penstrokes.

Ron, you are our BEST FRIEND

He ran his hand over his face. “Hermione, I know. Look, I’m no good at talking about these things but it’s like you and Harry--suddenly you have a different life. And I’m not a part of that. I know, I know, I’ll always be a part of anything you two do, but it’s not the same. I…I guess I need time to get used to it.”

Hermione nibbled her lip and stared at the birds flapping in the mud.

“Look…I, I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to make a big deal about you two but it sort of just happened.” He swallowed and took a deep breath. “And I miss you both too.”

Hermione looked at him and smiled, her eyes filling up.

“Er, but you can’t tell Harry that, okay?”

She grinned wider and gave his arm a brief squeeze.

“Is he mad at me?” He said in a small voice.

Hermione picked up her pad. No, not really. He just wants to talk to Ron. She smiled.

“Well, I guess I’d better not keep him waiting any longer then, eh? Merlin knows what he might do, he tends to become the Boy Who Lived when he’s pushed too far. Hmmm, I’d better prepare my speech carefully. What shall I say? Harry Potter sir, I beg of you, please find it in your generous heart to forgive your erring best friend—ouch! Fine, I won’t make fun of it then. Here, I’ll take your bag. What time does he finish his lesson? Oh that’s good, we have plenty of time. Shoo! Those two bloody birds! Splashing mud all over me, shoo! It’s not funny! Go find some other puddle, you stupid bird! Look--now I’ve got mud inside my shoe!”

**

He wasn’t good at waiting.

Patience wasn’t a virtue. It throttled him. And fury screeched in his blood all day. Detention on a Saturday, on a Hogsmeade Saturday. All because of the muggle-loving sod.

He had to act fast. But it was getting harder and harder. She wasn’t moseying about in filthy halls anymore. And Potter trailed her like a sick bloody puppy.

He marched through the Great Hall and out towards the marble staircase, robes whipping. Then he stopped.

Well.

He couldn’t believe his luck.

The mudblood, alone.

He leaned behind a pillar and watched her walk up the stairs. He checked his watch. There was still time till the Hogsmeade crowds streamed in. And Potter, where was Potter?

He’d take his chances with that.

He’d had enough of waiting.

He turned around. “Hurry up, you idiots!” He hissed at Crabbe and Goyle who’d been lumbering behind him.

**

Hermione skipped up the stairs, swinging her bag. The castle was deserted. Good thing too, the way she was grinning to herself. A portrait raised an eyebrow and pointed at her feet.

She looked down at the trail of twigs and wet leaves she was leaving on the stone floor. She turned, ran back down and stamped her feet on the enchanted carpet on the bottom stair. The carpet swallowed the dirt. Then she hopped her way up and stuck her tongue out at the portrait as she walked past.

“Insolence!” Its occupant muttered.

Ron had walked with her as far as Hagrid’s Hut. Then he’d been distracted by a group of second years who’d let loose a few Dr Filibuster’s catherine wheels in Hagrid’s pumpkin patch. Hermione watched for a while as he drew himself upto his full height and berated the cowering offenders, then left by herself for the castle.

Harry would be finishing his lesson soon. She really should stop smiling to herself like that. But it was hard when her mind was filled with the look he’d have on his face when he walked to dinner that night and saw Ron at his usual seat.

She walked past the passage that led to the Gryffindor common room and climbed two staircases up to the floor which housed Dumbledore’s office, planning to wait for Harry. At the top of the stairs the passages branched off.

Hermione was just about to walk to the far end of the left one where the gargoyle stood guarding Dumbledore’s door when she was distracted by the familiar path to her right.

A familiar, desolate path.

She bit her lip and slid her bag off her shoulder. The passage was dim but full of shards of light falling through grimy skylights, breaking against the glass panels over portraits. At the far end, a nondescript mahogany doorway stood next to a large painting that leaned against the wall. The door was dwarfed by the shadow of the painting; you could almost miss it.

That is, if you hadn’t walked down that passage, through that door day after day under the scant cover of a silver cloak.

Hermione glanced at the grotesque outline of the gargoyle at the other end and glanced at her watch. Then she turned and began to walk.

It had been little more than a week since she started going to classes but it felt like a long time. Her footsteps sounded odd, too loud against the stone floor. It was as if two people were walking inside her shoes. Twice she whirled around to see if there was anyone behind her. But there was nothing except vague shadows trapped between high walls.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside. The musty smell opened its arms. She left the door half-open, hoping to coax some light from the corridor into the hall. As if to protest against this insolence, the cold detached itself from the stone pillars and jostled her. She hugged her bag to herself and walked forward.

Cobwebs and dust.

Unseen scamperings underfoot as if the floor itself was alive.

How did she spend hours and hours here? She tread carefully, not wanting to stir up more dust than she could help. She walked over to the stone ledge along one wall and sat down. Then she shook her head at herself.

What are you doing here, Hermione?

Don’t know, don’t know.

She certainly wasn’t here to hide.

Then was she here to be thankful for being found on time?

A rope of dusty light dangled weakly through the small skylight in the high roof. She stood up and went over. What about those things that were still lost then? Those things she still couldn’t find, still couldn’t see, still couldn’t put right?

She stood under the skylight and squinted up. Through the panel that probably hadn’t been cleaned for at least five hundred years she thought she could see the faint autumn sky. And when she held her hand out into the light, she thought her fingertips felt warm.

Maybe she was here to remind herself of out there. Out there where the light and warmth waited. She may never find what she lost but--

She was still Hermione Granger.

And she had Harry.

And they had Ron.

Something swished behind her and she turned around, squinting. Nothing. She shook her head at her own jumpiness.

Anyone would think you’d never been here before. You know very well the place is full of funny noises all the time.

She sighed and tried to read her watch. Harry would almost be finished now. She pulled her bag over her shoulder and turned to go.

Somebody wrenched her bag off.

She jumped back. Her breath rammed in her chest.

A voice knifed through the cold dimness.

“Well. Fancy meeting you here.”

A muttered spell, a pinprick of faint green wandlight.

A sallow, pointed face. Gleaming blond hair.

Hermione took a deep breath. Bastard.

She crossed her arms and glared. He smirked.

“Here I was thinking you had given up your regular strolls around the castle. Good thing I kept a close watch. Almost missed my chance.”

Hermione continued to glare. The panic that seized her when he snatched her bag had turned to scalding rage. She held out her hand, gesturing at the bag.

“What? This? I don’t think so.” He tossed it sideways and Goyle caught it.

Great. All three were here. And her wand was in her bag.

“You see, the thing is, I have some business here. So why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?” He gestured at Crabbe.

A spell hissed. Before she knew what was happening, she was thrown against a stone pillar a few feet off, bound with gleaming green ropes. Panic flared in her chest again and sharp pain shot down her back. She bit her lip.

Malfoy swaggered towards her and crossed his arms, Crabbe and Goyle behind him.

“All right.” He twirled his wand. Hermione swallowed back revulsion. The slick hair, the blustering gestures, the cold eyes. She tried to breathe evenly, trying to remember if she told Ron where she was going. Even if she did, would they think to look in here? Would Harry have finished his lesson by now? How long would it be before they wondered where she was?

“Before I get down to…real business, I have a couple of questions. So, you had the good fortune of meeting the Dark Lord over the summer, didn’t you? Must have been very…overwhelming for a mudblood.” He cocked his head and smirked.

Hermione stared.

Mudblood mudblood

“Anyway, he was somewhat displeased. Apparently you weren’t very forthcoming with the information he requested.” He tapped his wand against his palm and paced back and forth.

“The Dark Lord had been keen to discover the exact words in the Prophecy about himself and Potter. But apparently you insisted you knew nothing about it.” He walked up and pushed his face close. But Hermione was far too distracted to feel anything.

Words raked through the dark undergrowth of her mind. They uncovered more words. She grit her teeth. The words, the words--they pulled and pulled at her memory and oh--

The Prophecy, mudblood, the Prophecy—WHAT DID IT SAY?

“Now I think that’s bullshit.” Malfoy withdrew. Hermione felt her breath struggle. Beyond that, she had lost all feeling.

The pointed face, light hair.

The sneer.

Under a crystal chandelier, a skeletal voice.

Take her away, Lucius, she knows nothing.

But Master--

I said she knows nothing, Lucius. I can see in her worthless mind. Potter hadn’t told her.

But we cannot let her go!

I did not say to let her go, TAKE HER AWAY!

“So now you’re going to tell me what was in it.” Malfoy was saying. He thrust his face close again. “Because I--” He pulled back. “--Plan to serve my Master in every way I can. He doesn’t expect me to come back with the Prophecy but I aim to exceed his expectations.” He pushed up his sleeve and thrust his arm at her.

Hermione stared at the black-green mark on his upturned wrist. The surrounding skin was still faintly bloodstained. Scabby flesh crowned the skull.

Her stomach heaved.

She pushed against the ropes, kicked, wrenched.

Her hands, her hands--

Pull them free to cover her eyes, to cover

The abyss of memory beneath her feet

She can see it, feel it, smell its putrid depth--

The pillow that betrayed.

The dark, menacing room, the curtains, the goblet, the high-backed chair

Hooded pain.

Faces she loved soaked in blood.

Her body strained against the ropes.

Something hurtled up her throat, tore through weeks and weeks of blindness, silence--

Hermione screamed.

****

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: Jeez, those reviews guys, like I said to one of you, I’m going to be a permanent shade of purple soon—I just don’t know how to say thank you any more. So, er, thanks. And thanks as always to miconic for her unbelievable beta work, much of the credit the story gets should go to her.

Okay, so here we go, proof of the pudding…While you all decide whether it was worth all the wait and the build-up, I’ll…just go stand in that corner and wait, hands sweating, knees knocking, biting my nails *is literally petrified and unable to say any more*

****

Chapter Seven

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

“Draco! Someone’s going to hear--”

“Shut her up--”

“I, I don’t think we should go near her--”

“YOU FOOLS! Where are your wands?”

“No, Draco--we should go!”

“Arrrrgh! You snivelling cowards--”

“Draco don’t--”

“We should just leave her--”

“SILENCIO!”

“Bloody--DRACO!”

“FUCK! Draco, are you all right? Crabbe--”

“Wha--why did--?”

“The spell didn’t work--”

“We should get out!”

“But what about Draco? He’s bleeding--”

“She’s screaming like a banshee you idiot, how long do you think before someone heard? LET’S GO!”

“But--Draco--”

“He’s passed out, he won’t know--”

**

Tiresias straightened in his chair, palms flat on the book he was reading. The afternoon was quiet. Students still hadn’t returned from the village. Through the open window, cold air rippled in. He was distracted. He sighed.

Distraction had become a constant state in the past few days. He must go away from the castle, from Harry, soon. Or he’d be swept away in this current that crashed relentlessly at his shores.

One thing and only one thing in the world felt this way, and though he’d never encountered it before, he knew. But what he hadn’t been prepared for was the sense of intrusion, both on himself and on them. As if he was forced to touch the deepest, most intimate part of a person’s being, as if he was trapped in there without their knowledge, unable to pull free.

Suddenly, he straightened. The air pulsed and sparked. He pushed back his chair and clung to the desk.

His ears began to ring. Cariad Cariad Cariad. It shot through his bones, raced through sinew. He staggered and groped around for his wand. He gritted his teeth and stilled himself long enough to discern the direction. Then he crashed through the door and stumbled up the stairs.

**

“Harry, what is it, what’s the matter?”

“Professor--I, I can’t breathe--”

“Sit down, Harry--”

“No, Professor, my blood--skin--I can feel it--something’s wrong!”

“Harry, take a deep breath, try and tell me what it is exactly.”

“I--I--Hermione! She’s in trouble! Professor I have to go--”

“Harry--”

“She’s in trouble, I HAVE TO GO!”

“All right, do you know where she is?”

“Somewhere nearby--”

**

His blood hurtled through his veins. Against its steady, furious motion, his limbs felt clumsy. He raced down the corridor, feet slapping hard against the stone floor, Dumbledore behind him.

“This way, this way--I know it!”

He didn’t know how, didn’t care. They came to the corner and he paused, recognising the gloomy corridor before him.

“She’s in that hall at the end!”

He began to run. As he got closer, he heard her scream. He didn’t even register that it was sound; after weeks and weeks of silence, sound.

He burst through the mahogany door.

At first he thought the entire hall with its stone pillars, ledges and walls had simply turned to dust. He coughed and swallowed a cloud of sticky air mixed with the smell of blood.

“Hermione! Are you in here?”

He pushed inside and suddenly saw the pillar bound with a rope of shimmering green.

“Hermione!”

He didn’t see the figures that gaped and froze. He didn’t see the blood that trickled from a fleshly heap a few feet away. He only saw her bloodshot eyes, misshapen mouth, her body slumping over the ropes that bound her.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!”

Dumbledore’s voice careened against the high walls. Harry reached Hermione and grasped her face in his hands.

“Hermione, are you okay? Hermione--”

She began to sob, straining against the ropes.

“It’s okay--you’re okay, I’m going to get you out of here, shhh--”

He pulled at the ropes, swore at himself and pulled out his wand.

“Harry! Is she okay?” He had no idea when Tiresias had appeared.

“I don’t know--have to get her out of here!” He hissed a spell and the ropes snapped. She fell forward and he caught her. She was shaking, soaked in sweat. “Oh god--Hermione, can you stand?” Without waiting for an answer, he picked her up.

“Dumbledore’s office, Harry. It’s the closest.” Tiresias stumbled through the hall. Dumbledore’s livid figure stood over Malfoy’s bleeding form. Crabbe and Goyle were frozen under a binding charm. A pair of golden wings hurled into the explosion of dust and light. Several figures burst through the door.

“Oh my! Dumbledore, what in the name of Merlin--”

“Potter--Tiresias--what--?”

“No time to explain, Severus. Someone get Madam Pomfrey!”

“Where are you going?”

“Dumbledore’s office. Harry, this way--”

**

Silver whirred, scarlet feathers twitched. Faint sunlight scrabbled at the high window.

“How strong was it, Tiresias?”

“Quite mild, Headmaster. We don’t want her to regress. Just strong enough to even her heartbeat.”

Harry couldn’t see Hermione’s face, she was slumped against him. He shifted on the sofa Dumbledore had conjured and tightened his arm around her waist. With his other hand, he brushed damp hair from her forehead.

Tiresias knelt in front of them. “She should be awake now,” he murmured. “Hermione, can you hear me?”

She stirred and moaned.

“Can you open your eyes? Harry, say something, she should respond to you.”

Harry swallowed. What could he say? He could hardly breathe.

He pushed her body gently forward and shifted to see her face. Her t-shirt was soaked. Her pale face was contorted, in pain or fear he couldn’t say. He took her face in one hand, thumb firm as if to stroke away the creases, the stiffness, the pursed mouth.

“Hermione, can you hear me? It’s me--Harry. Hermione?”

She remained still.

“Hermione?”

She stirred. She pushed her face into his hand and opened her eyes.

“Her--Hermione, are you okay? How are you feeling?” His heart threatened to pull free of his chest. She moaned and straightened her head, staring at him with an expression he couldn’t name. She opened her mouth and closed it, grimacing.

Madam Pomfrey bustled forward. “Here, drink this, it’ll ease your throat.”

Hermione took a sip of the potion and Harry handed it back to Madam Pomfrey. He turned back to Hermione to see her staring at him again.

“Hermione, what is it? Can you say something? C--Can you talk?”

She put a hand to her throat.

Sound staggered out of her mouth, hauling words along.

“You--Harry--”

She began to cough.

“Shh, it’s okay, take it slow--”

Face screwed up, one hand gripping his wrist, she opened her mouth again.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the--about the Prophecy, Harry?”

His breath left him. Silence spinned in the room. Fawkes flapped his wings once, tiny feathers bursting out of their ends.

Tiresias straightened. “Hermione, how much can you remember?”

She dropped her head. “All of it.” She gasped.

Tiresias raked a hand through his hair and turned towards Dumbledore. Dumbledore shook his head a little and spoke to Hermione.

“Hermione, Madam Pomfrey will give you a potion to help you sleep now, when you wake up--”

“He wanted to know what was in the Prophecy, Harry. He thought I knew.”

Her voice was no more than a prolonged rasp, halting and heaving. His own had fled. He mustered all his strength to haul it back.

“Hermione, you don’t have to do this right now--”

“I must--”

“There’s time later on--”

“Nooo--” She gripped his arm and straightened. Her chest heaved. “I want this over, please!” Her voice gambolled the span of the office, darted with resolve up the high ceiling and lay in the air, shuddering. Fawkes raised his wings and warbled, his quavering notes bouncing lightfooted behind her voice.

Harry wondered who was in his skin now, sitting up straight and holding Hermione because he, Harry, was curled into ball in a corner of his mind, sobbing with relief and pain.

Tiresias drew up a chair and sat down. Harry saw that his hands were shaking, his eyes veined with tiny red lines.

“Hermione, can you start at the beginning?”

**

“The pillow was a portkey, Professor, but you must already know that. It took me to a place--large house with furniture from fifty years back. Oh it smelled rotten--I only realised later why that was…All night they kept me in a room, then nothing. I had no wand, I had no idea what to do…Then hours later--must have been morning--there were noises as if someone had arrived. Then…they took me to a room, and…”

“Who were ‘they’, Hermione?”

“The Death Eaters. Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix, Dolohov, Knott…I--I can’t remember all the names…”

“That’s all right, keep going.”

“Voldemort was in that room. He was, oh--I can’t--vile, so satisfied that he found another chance to really hurt Harry again--that was all he kept saying--revolting…He didn’t look at me at first though…”

“Hermione?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to rest?”

“No…please--”

“All right, tell me about the room. What was it like?”

“Dark. There was a chandelier, a horrible, horrible thing with a flame inside it but that was dark too--I don’t know how to explain it, a dark light…And one high window with old, monstrous curtains. But the room was clean, so clean and gleaming. Lucius Malfoy cast a binding charm, he chained me to a chair in the middle of the room, and then oh...they wanted to know what was in the Prophecy...I was so angry…”

“Angry about what, Hermione?”

“At Harry, for never telling me. I thought the Prophecy was destroyed. I was furious…I kept telling them that I didn’t know, but Bellatrix and Lucius, they kept yelling, taunting--I hated myself…”

“Why was that?”

“For the tears. I just couldn’t stop, couldn’t...”

“What did they do next, Hermione?”

“Hm..Voldemort tur--turned around in his chair and I…I threw up…He looked at me for a long time and then he said I was telling the truth…he looked furious…and…and…Harry was there, he was…”

“What do you mean, Hermione?”

“I could feel him--you were there, Harry, you were!”

“Hermione, Hermione, take a deep breath. There, very good. Now, tell me exactly what you felt.”

“Harry…it was like when he goes under the Invisibility Cloak--I can’t see him but I can feel him, I know he’s there--it was like that. He was in the room. Any moment, any moment I knew he was going to do something to let me know he was there…and I waited…but he didn’t…Harry why didn’t you oh…”

“Shhh, Hermione, I’m sorry, I truly am, but I’m here now…”

“Voldemort was furious…He screamed at Malfoy and threw a goblet across the room and, and the potion spilled--horrible, putrid smell and I threw up again on Malfoy’s shoes and he threw a curse at me--I--I don’t know what it was…”

“Were you hurt?”

“No, no I wasn’t. I don’t know why. I wasn’t hurt, but Lucius Malfoy--his sleeves caught fire.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. He just yelled the curse, the next thing I knew he’d caught fire. There was mayhem. No one knew what was happening. Voldemort put the fire out but Malfoy’s arms were burnt…”

“What happened then?”

“They all crowded around me. And then, and then the ropes fell. The ropes binding me--they fell. They panicked. Bellatrix tried to bind me again and she was thrown against the wall--I don’t know how, I didn’t do anything. The other Death Eaters started throwing hexes at me but nothing touched me…I--can I have some water?”

“Take your time.”

“Voldemort came up to me and cast a few spells, like he was testing for something--but I felt nothing. But he didn’t get hurt like the Death Eaters.”

“How much time had passed then, Hermione? Could you tell?”

“I don’t know, it felt like hours and hours. Maybe it was noon, but I couldn’t tell.”

“What happened then?”

“They tried to grab me and push me back into the room but they couldn’t--Dolohov, he lost feeling in his hands…I could’ve got away but I didn’t know where I was and I had no wand...So I did as they said…and waited. I knew everyone at the Burrow would’ve realised by then I was gone. Voldemort ordered me back in the room they’d locked me in before…”

“Then what?”

“Nothing for a long, long time. I sat on the floor for what seemed like days and days and all that time…Harry, I know you were there, why didn’t come and talk to me? Tell me you were there--”

“Hermione, deep breath--good, good, all right, take your time…”

“Then Lucius Malfoy ordered me back into the room with the chandelier. And Voldemort was there, and the other Death Eaters…And Voldemort said…oh I can’t--”

“Do you want to stop now, Hermione?”

“No, no. I want this over…”

“All right, take your time.”

“He was…I knew he was going to do something horrible, he was gloating, saying he was a very resourceful person, always making the best of situations and then the Death Eaters crowded around me again…I knew they still couldn’t touch me but there were too many, they blocked my way. Voldemort poured a potion on the floor around me...The potion in the goblet he was drinking from…Talking all the while, sneering, telling me that everyone was looking for me and did I think they’d actually find me and then he pulled his wand out and screamed a spell and just then--”

“Hermione breathe! Get her some water!”

“I--I can’t…”

“Hermione, I need you to keep going now, you’ve come this far…”

“The potion went up in flames and there were lots and lots of smoke and I couldn’t breathe… and then all of a sudden everything went glassy…a bubble…I can’t…”

“Oh god--Virtualis--”

“Let her stop now, please!”

“Harry, it’s better if she gets through this now--”

“The walls burst open and people just began running in--people from the Order, people who were looking for me. They’d surrounded the house, broken through the door and the window and they saw me, called to me. And I was so relieved I just--sat down on the floor but--nooooo…”

“Just let her stop--she’s about to pass out!”

“They only got a few feet within me and the Death Eaters just pounced…”

“Hermione, can you hear me?”

“And killed them…”

“Hermione…”

“One by one, with spells I’d never heard of…I can’t…They fought back but they were surrounded and outnumbered…and the curses the Death Eaters cast, they were horrible! Not bloodless like the Killing Curse and not quick…I heard every scream and saw them fall right in front of my eyes and their blood, their blood just under my feet, every single person…bits of flesh flying everywhere…on my hands and face…”

“Who were they, Hermione?”

“Harry, Ron, Professor Lupin, Mr Weasley…oh I can’t…”

“It’s all right, take it slow.”

“The twins, Tonks, Moody, Professor Dumbledore, some people I didn’t know…everyone…everyone…just…dying at my feet…couldn’t do anything”

“Hermione? Can you hear me? Water--”

“Ohhh but I knew it wasn’t real…”

“How did you know, Hermione?”

“It was the Virtualis Charm, no one’s safe against that…”

“How did you know?”

“Because…because how could Harry be dead when I still felt him there…in the room… I screamed and screamed and my head nearly burst--”

“Hermione, we can stop now, do you want to--”

“I knew it wasn’t real, but it could be. I couldn’t stop thinking…it could be real one day…”

**

Her body heaved against his. The tears had passed but dry sobs still lurched up her spine. His arms were numb around her, his head heavy on the back of her shoulder. A film of sticky dust clung to them both. Her hair was plastered all along her face and neck. Just to postpone the moment when he’d have to look through the fog in his mind, he listened to the voices that rose and fell around him, urgent but soft, almost a mere variation of silence.

“The potion for the Imprimere spell--Lucius must have gotten it from Voldemort and stashed it somewhere, then the boy found it.”

“Not exactly, Tiresias. Severus is preparing Veritaserum right this minute, but even without that I have a fair idea that Draco got it directly from Voldemort.”

“What do you mean, Professor?

“Draco Malfoy has received the Mark.”

“Dear god! So that’s--that must be what I felt, the danger. The reason why it was so strong yet so distant--that would have been because the boy was doing Voldemort’s bidding--if only I’d sensed it earlier--”

“We cannot do that now, Tiresias, we cannot revert to ‘if only’ now. If anyone is to be blamed, it is myself. I should have known the moment we learned about the Imprimere spell--that and the Virtualis Charm are the only uses of that potion, besides of course, maintaining Voldemort’s human body. And I should have known what was happening among students in my care--the Mark seems several weeks old, a few weeks short of Hermione’s disappearance.”

For a long moment no one said anything. Harry turned his head slowly and pressed his cheek to the side of Hermione’s neck, pressing her even tighter, trying to feel her pulse beat at her back, against his chest.

“And it seems you were right all along, Tiresias, about Cariad magic.”

Tiresias heaved a sigh. “Yes, but I still can’t understand what the carrier would have been.”

“I have an idea, but we will wait until the Slytherins have been questioned. Right now, there are things to be taken care of. Poppy?”

Hermione whimpered a little and Harry tried to straighten up. He had no idea where his glasses were. Robes and whispers rustled and a pair of arms reached to draw Hermione away. He stiffened. Blue robes swept close.

“Harry, we need to take her to the Hospital Wing. Harry? She’s safe now, but she needs to rest, badly.”

Harry raised his head and squinted at Dumbledore. His eyes and cheeks stung.

“Harry, you must let Professor Tiresias take her to the Hospital Wing.”

Harry pulled away slightly. Tiresias came close carefully and lifted Hermione up. Madam Pomfrey held the door open. Then they were gone.

Her fatigued, soaked body removed from his side, he suddenly felt empty and insubstantial. He drew his legs up on the sofa and laid his face on his knees.

“Harry?”

His heart--it was too heavy, too painful to carry. He wanted to reach inside and pull it out.

“Are you all right?”

He lifted his head a fraction and looked at Dumbledore. Dumbledore held out a glass of water.

Harry straightened and took it in unsteady hands. With his other hand he groped around for his glasses and put them on. He stared at the trembling water.

“What’s the Virtualis Charm?”

“Harry, you should rest--”

“Just tell me.”

Dumbledore sighed. He sat in the chair Tiresias had emptied.

“It’s a very potent, ancient charm that has been used again and again for the wrong purposes. Casting this charm is like creating a miniature world which, while it’s not actual, not real, feels real. When things happen in that world you feel the pain, the horror, or on the hand, pleasure--all the sensations you would feel if all of it was real. There is no defense against it, your senses are manipulated to such a degree that you cannot help but believe and be affected by what’s taking place. You cannot differentiate between the illusion and the real. And the catch is, Harry, the illusion grows from what is actual.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Possibility, Harry. To put it simply, the Virtualis Charm feeds on possibility. What is actual right this moment has infinite possibilities extending from it. You could call it the future of this moment. What Virtualis does is call up those possibilities, make them actual for a short period of time. When Voldemort cast the charm around Hermione, what she saw wasn’t real and she somehow realised that--but remember what she said, Harry, she said it could be real. It could be real, given the reality of her life--all our lives--right now.”

“You mean, everyone…dying?”

“We are on the cusp of a war, Harry. There is nothing that affects you more deeply, nothing that alters your reality like the death of a loved one. But you already know that. And to see it happen like that, so cruelly, and to be helpless against it--that’s more than what anyone could bear. And no matter how much her mind told her it wasn’t real, she would have felt everything. Everything.”

His brain strained to take it all in but he was distracted by the anger skittering up his spine.

“Why didn’t anyone realise that? All those Healers and all that magic you used to examine her, how come you didn’t even discover a hint of what had happened?”

“Harry, that is exactly why this charm is dangerous. It cannot be detected. You see, it is not an incantation that is directed at anyone. All it does is create a space which, if you happened to be trapped inside it, seems every bit real. It doesn’t interact with you directly, it’s sustained merely on your response to it. The charm didn’t touch her, therefore it didn’t leave any trace to be discovered. The only way to find evidence of it would be to obtain the wand that performed it and put it through Priori Incantatum.”

Harry pushed his face into his hands and clutched his hair. Dumbledore stood up and walked to the window.

“So, you mean, she lost her voice because of that?”

“Yes. And her memory of it. Trauma does unimaginable things to people, Harry, their minds try to deal with it in ways that they themselves have no control over. Professor Tiresias would be better at explaining this, but…I would say that that was how Hermione’s mind dealt with it.”

“Because of something that wasn’t even real.”

“Her mind made it real. That everyone she cares for could die just like that is a very real possibility, probably something she thinks about every day. Voldemort would have realised that when he looked into her mind trying to determine whether she was telling the truth about the Prophecy. He manipulated that with the Charm. When he realised that--”

Dumbledore paused and dropped his head. Harry wondered vaguely whether he’d ever seen the Headmaster do that.

“When he realised that he and his Death Eaters couldn’t touch her, physically or magically, he found a way to cause harm without touching her.”

“In a way that was a hundred times worse.” Harry’s voice didn’t carry; it laboured in the air and disappeared.

“Yes.”

Harry straightened and leaned back. The window had darkened. Against it, Dumbledore’s gaunt reflection stared back into the room, dissolving around the edges. Fawkes stood with a drooping head at his perch.

“From very early on, Harry, we suspected that Hermione’s malady was not magical. But I was not discerning enough, I should have known, should have made the connection. It seems so simple now.” He almost seemed to be talking to himself.

“You see, the Virtus potion, which forms the base of both the Virtualis Charm and the Imprimere Spell, is the means through which Voldemort maintains his human body.” He paced to his desk and sat down. When he failed to say anything for a long time, Harry spoke.

“What do you mean?”

Dumbledore sighed, looking as though every word was being pulled out from the bottom of his tall frame. “His body, though substantial now, isn’t human the way yours or mine is. Its humanness is artificial. It needs to be maintained through external means. The only way to do that--apart from the Philosopher’s Stone--is the Virtus potion.” Dumbledore sighed. “This is dark magic at its very worst, Harry. You see, the main ingredient in the potion is human sinew.”

This information only lightly scuffed his already shocked mind. He thought that if he had a hundred years, he still would not be able to get past the image of Hermione huddled on the floor of some dark, unknown place, blood and particles of flesh all around her.

He pulled himself up from the sofa. Dumbledore gazed at him, chin on tented hands.

“Where are you going, Harry?”

“Where do you think?”

Dumbledore fell silent. Harry stood with his back to the Headmaster, staring at the the elaborate runic patterns etched to the door in front of him.

“So, Draco Malfoy is a Death Eater.”

“Yes.”

Harry gave a short bark of strangled laughter. “And you didn’t know. Let me see, what was it you said at the beginning of the term, ‘Hogwarts is still the safest place.’ Or did I not hear it right?”

Fawkes flapped his wings and burrowed his head under them.

“Harry, you cannot imagine how much I regret my oversights. All I can say is, I’m--”

“Oh, save your sodding apologies!” Harry swung around. Silver ticked and whirred unseen. No one had remembered to light the torches; the room floundered in dying daylight. Harry could only just make out Dumbledore sitting at his desk, hands clasped on the table. Against the quick-footed, broad-chested gloom, he looked so abnormally still and small, almost a trick of light.

He turned around and walked out.

**

Even if he had several lifetimes, he still wouldn’t be able forget.

He wished he could scrub his skin clean of himself. Of the scar, of his name, of his memories, of all the things etched to his life and tagged ‘destiny’. But most of all, he wished he could strip himself of his feelings. If only he could stop the longing, the intensity, the completeness that chained him to her, he could probably keep her safe. If only he could.

The gargoyle’s grotesque shadow loomed over the passage. Torchlight shivered. The walls were stepping close, the passage growing narrow. Dark reached out and snaked an arm around his shoulders.

He began to run.

****

---

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: Let me just say thank you once again to everyone who’s been reading and reviewing, especially the previous chapter; trust me, I was beyond nervous about that one. I haven’t got around to answering all the reviews, but I will, so in the meantime, thanks, you guys are awesome.

About this chapter; some of you have already figured some stuff out, so what happens here will not surprise. Still the same, hope you enjoy!

And thanks as always to miconic for the beta, for she is the best.

****

Chapter Eight

Ron shut the door to the Hospital Wing behind him and leaned against it. He took a deep breath and held it.

They said she could talk. They said she’d just remembered what had happened to her. The Prophecy, the Charm. They said Malfoy had tried to attack her. And now, she lay on a pale, pale bedspread under pale torchlight, sunk in the bedclothes, her face a pale grey.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. It was full of everything and nothing, racing at Firebolt speed but turning round and round in muddled, frantic circles.

They finally had all the answers but in his head a voice kept shouting why? why?

He pulled away from the door and set off down the corridor, planning to find Harry. Professor Tiresias had said that Harry was in Dumbledore’s office. He had just turned the corner to mount the stairs when he collided with someone rushing down.

“What the--Harry! Merlin!”

Ron felt the blood drain from his face. Harry hardly seemed aware of where he was. He clutched the wall, breathing hard, bloodshot eyes blinking against the sweat pouring down his face.

“Bloody hell, Harry!”

Ron dragged him to the first stair and pushed him down on it. Harry slumped with his knees pushed into his chest, hands clutching hair.

“For heaven’s sake, breathe!” To Ron’s surprise, Harry obeyed. He lifted his head and took a deep breath, then another. Then he looked up at Ron.

“Ron…” His voice was hoarse. “Ron…she…they--”

“It’s alright mate, I know what happened. Professor Tiresias told me.”

Harry dropped his head in a half-nod. His hands were shaking. Ron sat down next to him.

“Harry, listen to me, she’s all right now, that’s what matters. Harry, just…look at me.” Harry raised his head. Ron tried to summon more strength into his voice than he actually felt. “She’s okay now, she’s safe. Professor Tiresias told me what they’d done…and…I’m so sorry, Harry--” He swallowed, flailing for words. “But she’s okay now. I just saw her, she’s asleep. She’ll be okay.”

Harry buried his head in his hands again. Then he raised it abruptly.

“For how long, Ron?” He got to his feet. “How fucking long before she’s dragged away again and hurt or killed?”

“Harry--”

“How is she okay when she’s been shown exactly what would happen--”

“But it didn’t happen, Harry!”

Harry pounced on him.

“IT MIGHT AS WELL HAVE! NOW SHE KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE! AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN ONE DAY!”

They stared at each other. “You can’t say that, Harry, you can’t. No one can live with that.” Ron growled. Harry moved away with a hard laugh.

“Oh, yeah? Well, that’s exactly what I’ve been living with for the past four months.” He dropped back down on the floor.

“What’re you talking about, Harry?”

Harry didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he raised his head, looking ten years older.

“The Prophecy, Ron. According to it, I’m marked for death.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Harry clenched his jaw and recited the Prophecy in a single breath.

Ron stared at him.

For a few moments, he could think of absolutely nothing to say.

“That--that’s not right--you won’t just drop dead, you’ll fight.” He kept shaking his head. He began to pace up and down. “And, what did it say, neither can live while the other survives--well, Hermione will know exactly what that means, but it doesn’t say it’ll be you, does it? And, surely you idiot, you don’t think Hermione will just stand around and watch?” His voice became stronger. His errant hands punched the air. “And what about me? What about Dumbledore and Professor Lupin and, and my mum and dad and the twins and--do you think we’d just let you walk into--”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Harry’s voice came from far away.

“What?”

Harry sighed. “The war hasn’t even started properly, Ron, but they’ve already taken Hermione and hurt her. Imagine--” He swallowed. “Imagine what’ll happen once it does, imagine the danger you’ll all be in and, and it’s all because of me, because I’m Harry bloody Potter who’s going to die anyway!”

Ron made an impatient noise. “No, Harry, you don’t get it. Look, I’m not the person who knows how to say this best, but you’re more of an idiot than you look if you think we hang around you because you want us to. Mate, you’re our friend, not our keeper. You’re not responsible for what we choose to do. And you can’t just tell us to go away to keep us safe. We’re not cowards.” He scratched his head. “There, I think even Hermione would agree that’s a pretty okay way to put it.”

Harry snorted.

Ron sighed, slightly relieved. That’ll do, that’ll do for the moment. He sat down next to Harry and tried to stay calm, to pick up strand by strand everything he just heard and weave some sense out of them.

But when he looked at Harry with his head down on his knees, his shaking hands hugging his legs, his heart began to shout unfair unfair unfair until his ribs ached.

They sat quietly for a long moment. A few students walking downstairs stepped around them, dropping curious glances. Ron watched them walk past, chucking Chocolate Frogs at each other. Such a normal day. For everyone else.

Finally, he stood up. “Come on, we’d better get changed. And you’d better go see Hermione.” He brushed his jeans. Harry staggered up, clutching the wall. Ron shifted on his feet. “Maybe you should see Madam Pomfrey first.”

“No, no, I’m fine. I just need a shower.”

They took the shortcut to the Gryffindor common room that led through an empty classroom. Harry shuffled behind him. Halfway down the classroom, his footsteps stilled. Ron turned around.

“What?”

Harry looked at his feet for a moment, fingers drumming on a desk.

“Are you still mad at us?”

Ron dropped his head.

“No. No, I’m not.”

Harry nodded hastily. “Okay. Good. We, er, we did mean to--”

“Yeah, I know.” Ron shrugged. “Hermione said.”

Harry nodded again.

“Oh. Right.”

They turned and began to walk.

**

The colour of quiet was yellow. A lesson learned from all those days spent in the Hospital Wing since first year. A deep, dark yellow that sputtered and swayed and made him sleepy. Sitting up in bed after Ron and Hermione had left, trying to listen to the rest of the castle go about their business far, far away, he’d fall into the heart of that yellow and drift off almost peacefully.

But today, the yellow was singing. Quietly, of course, or she’d wake up.

She lay curled on her side, hair in tangles, mouth slightly open. Her pillow lay abandoned. There were many things that would take time. For the moment, he made himself a cocoon walled with the steady rise and fall her breathing and lit up with the sweetness of relief.

He drew a long breath and stroked her cheek. He paused just beneath her lip, at the tiny spot that wasn’t quite a dimple but which hollowed when she pursed her mouth just before telling him or Ron off for something.

Soon she would wake up and smile and say his name; properly, out loud.

Everything else could wait.

“Harry?”

He looked up, startled. Professor Tiresias stood on the other side of the bed.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. How is she?” He looked much calmer than he had before, although Harry thought he glimpsed a certain stiffness around the eyes.

“She’s still asleep.” Harry slid his fingers in her hair.

“Harry, I’m sorry about what happened. I know how hard it is for you. I really do.” Harry didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

“But that’s not all there is to it.”

The calm into which he had sunk more out of exhaustion than anything else, began to throb.

“What do you mean?”

Tiresias clasped his hands. “Harry, did you not wonder why all their curses and spells failed to touch her?”

Harry shrugged. “They still hurt her.”

“But they couldn’t hurt her as much as they wanted to.” Tiresias’s voice was soft.

Harry shook his head. He wished Tiresias would leave. He just wanted to be alone with Hermione.

“It was because of you, Harry.”

He raised his head. “What do you mean? I was nowhere nearby.”

“You didn’t have to be. You never will.” Tiresias sighed. He walked to the window and stared out. Harry vaguely wondered what he actually saw.

“There’s a rare kind of magic called Cariad, Harry, and it’s very powerful. I’ve only ever read about it, never actually…sensed it.” He paused and turned around. “You see, with us magical folk, the strongest force in our bodies is our magic. There are only two other natural forces that can--but not always--overpower the magic in your body. Those are death and love.”

Harry stared at Tiresias’s wide eyes, wondering where this was going.

“Cariad magic is when your love for someone is powerful enough to direct your innate magic to do its bidding. This magic usually happens spontaneously. It’s not a spell or charm, and so--” He waved his hands. “--It cannot be cast as such. It takes place without the witch or wizard having to do anything to initiate it, often without them even knowing.”

“So what does it do?”

Tiresias looked at Harry, flame-shaped shadows shifting in his eyes.

“It keeps the loved one safe, Harry.”

Silence fell. Harry glanced at Hermione.

“What--what do you mean?”

Tiresias paced back and forth along the bed. “The way it works varies according to the situation, no one can predict how the protection manifests itself.” He paused, eyes turned towards Hermione. “In your case, it formed a shield around Hermione to block curses and any other actions meant to harm her. That’s why the Death Eaters or Voldemort couldn’t touch her, physically or magically.”

Of course, he wasn’t hearing right. It went against the grain of everything he assumed about himself. Tiresias walked around the bed and stood in front of him.

“You kept her safe, Harry.”

Harry swallowed, looked at Hermione and shook his head. “That--that can’t be right. I put her in danger in the first place. It was because of me and that stupid Prophecy that they took her.”

Tiresias ran a hand through his hair, his voice low but urgent. “Don’t you see, Harry, it’s the part of you that you cannot help, that puts her and everyone else you love in danger. But where it mattered, you kept her safe.” He backed up and walked round the bed. “Yes, he did hurt her in a way that you couldn’t prevent, but you stopped her from possibly being tortured and used as a bargaining chip to get to you, and then killed--for that would have been his plan.”

Tiresias picked up a bottle of potion from the bedside table and put it down. Then he went to the window and turned around. “The strange feeling you had at the Burrow while Hermione was missing, as if you were suddenly, viscerally aware of your own blood flowing, that was part of your mind--perhaps still without your conscious awareness--realising what she meant to you. And the sharper the realisation, the quicker the magic activated. And Hermione felt it too--there’s no doubt that’s what she meant when she kept saying you were there that whole time. By the afternoon the following day, Voldemort couldn’t even get a simple binding hex on her. What’s more, all his minions were getting injured whenever they tried to touch Hermione. And he didn’t realise what was happening.” He smiled thinly. “As Dumbledore would have told you, Voldemort disregards certain types of magic that he derides. He thought that whatever was protecting her would also make it possible for the Order to track her down. So he had to let her go as soon as he could. That’s why he resorted to Virtualis, to have the last word.”

Tiresias laughed, a hard laugh. “What he didn’t know was that he was part of the protection.”

Harry stared.

“As I said, this is very powerful, spontaneous magic, and when I first mentioned it to the Headmaster, he was skeptical. I don’t blame him. Cariad has only ever been recorded in witches and wizards much, much older than you and who had been with their loved ones for many, many years. So, while the magic was powerful enough, since you both are still very young, it wouldn’t have worked unless it had a carrier. Some kind of connective tissue that allowed it to pass along to its target.”

Tiresias paused and drew a breath. “The Dark Mark was that carrier, Harry. You see, Voldemort is connected to you through your scar, and his Death Eaters are connected to him through the Dark Mark. That’s how the protection got transmitted.”

Harry swallowed and looked at Hermione. She seemed undisturbed by Tiresias’s urgent voice. He ran a finger along her jawline and rubbed her neck lightly with his knuckles.

“So--so how did Malfoy get that binding charm on her this afternoon? Dumbledore said he’d become a Death Eater.”

Tiresias spread his hands. “He didn’t, Harry. It wasn’t him who cast the binding hex. It was Crabbe. That’s why it held. When Malfoy tried to throw the Silencing Charm at her, he was thrown against the wall.”

Harry ran a hand through his hair and stared out the window. The wind gasped and heaved in dark, blurred shapes.

Tiresias stepped closer, voice soft.

“I’m sure you’re quite overwhelmed, Harry, believe me, I am overwhelmed myself, and I only just feel it through you.”

“You feel it?”

Tiresias sighed. “Yes, I do. I’ve felt it since your very first Defense class.” He smiled. “It’s every Sense’s dream--something so rare, so precious, something most of us know only from musty textbooks. But--” He made a vague, disjointed gesture with his hands.

“It’s wearing me down, it’s so powerful that it’s hindering my Sensing abilities. It’s gotten stronger and stronger. But I don’t need to tell you that.” He inclined his head. “And Harry, all your teachers have reported that your magical abilities have improved quite noticeably. Well, this is the reason. I wish there was another way to say this but love does make you stronger.”

Harry looked out the window again. He groped around for something familiar, something he understood, a familiar window out of which to look into this strange place.

“My mother--Dumbledore’s always said the reason Voldemort’s never been able to touch me was because of my mum’s protection. Is this--is this like that?”

Tiresias shook his head. “It’s different. Yes, it is still love, but a parent’s love is different. Between a child and parent the bond, the bond of blood is there from birth. But with Cariad, a bond has to be forged between two people who have no such connection. It grows from nothing. But--” He raised a hand. “It doesn’t grow in nothing. It has to be looked after, it has to be given time and space to grow. The right kind of conditions.” He slid his hands inside his pockets. “There will come a time, Harry, when you will not need a transmitter for Cariad. Neither of you. But of course, you have to make sure you’ve put enough into it for it to be strong enough to stand on its own, to work on its own.”

Harry sighed and hoped he’d remember those exact words by the time Hermione woke up. She’d know what they meant.

“Harry, once we had it all figured out, Dumbledore and I discussed endlessly whether to tell you or not. And how much to tell you. It’s something very difficult to grasp, to carry around. But we also know that you blame yourself for everything that happened. Well, now you know you shouldn’t.” He looked directly at Harry. “What you do with that knowledge is up to you, Harry. Whether you take it as a gift and ease your guilt, or whether you continue to torture yourself with something that’s not true--that’s your decision to make.”

Harry swallowed. The torches burned low. It was quiet, except for the faint hum of life outside the Hospital Wing and the shuddering wind outside the window. And of course, her breathing. He stroked her hair, caressed her temple and touched her lips with a finger. Her warm breath tangled around it. He wondered how something so frail as a single breath could hold him so strongly and make everything else weightless, making them fall away from his shoulders.

When he looked up, Tiresias was gone.

**

“Already preparing to leave, Tiresias?”

Tiresias turned away from his trunk and towards the door.

“I must Headmaster. You know I must. Or I’ll be useless. And I can’t afford that.” He ran a hand over his face. “There’s much to be done.”

Dumbledore stepped into the room. “I hope you don’t think I’m pressuring you, but when do you think you can return?”

Tiresias sighed. “The last time I felt this way was when I got caught up in the middle of a battlefield, in the last war. And that didn’t feel half as strong as this. I had to stay away for two months.” He ran a careful hand over the desk and picked up a quill. “I don’t know for how long.”

“I understand, Tiresias.” Dumbledore sighed. “How is he?”

Tiresias searched for one word to describe all he felt while in the Hospital Wing. He failed.

“He’s like someone who’d never known what it’s like to walk on solid ground. And now he’s almost resigned to it, always waiting for a fall.” He waved the quill absently.

“He’s finally found his solid ground, but he’s terrified to let go and just…stand on it.”

“You can’t blame him.”

“No. But it scares me.”

“What about her? What do you feel?”

“That’s my consolation. I have faith in her. She won’t let him drift.” Tiresias laughed softly. “It’s almost against her nature.”

Dumbledore smiled. “Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

“But she’ll need support. She probably will have nightmares for quite some time. And now that she remembers everything, she might begin to dwell on it, although she’s not the type to brood.” Tiresias sighed. “I will be back as soon as I can, Headmaster.”

He began to move around again, picking things up and laying them in his trunk. “So, what will happen to Draco?”

Dumbledore sighed. “I’m expected to expel him, of course.”

“But you won’t.”

“No.”

Tiresias turned towards Dumbledore.

“I believe the boy is in danger if he leaves, Tiresias. I am not quite sure of the entire scenario, but I have a feeling he was being used. From what he told me, he hadn’t been instructed to try and learn the Prophecy, that was his own initiation. He had only been told to ‘do his worst’, whatever that meant. Besides, he knew nothing of his father’s--or any other Death Eater’s--injuries.”

“You mean he was being used to learn more about the protection?”

“Possibly. I cannot be sure. In any case, I think it is appropriate to keep him in the castle, under strict supervision of course.”

Tiresias shook his head. “What I don’t understand is, say he was being used to learn more about the Prophecy, maybe to see how much damage it can cause, how were they going to get him back? I mean, surely Voldemort realised that if Draco tried to attack Hermione, he would be apprehended and discovered to be a Death Eater? Therefore giving the whole thing away?”

“That is what worries me the most, Tiresias. It shows complete confidence on Voldemort’s part that he could get to Draco before we could after the boy did whatever he was planning to do to Hermione. Get to him and whisk him away. He may have failed this time, but what it means is--”

“The castle isn’t as safe as we think.”

Dumbledore sighed heavily. “Yes.”

Silence tripped over objects scattered on the floor, clothing, shoes, books, a miniature globe, a skeleton packed neatly in a compact glass case.

Finally, Dumbledore spoke.

“I am old, Tiresias. I cannot see as clearly as I did.” He paused and glanced around the room.

“Or maybe nothing is clear anymore. Maybe nothing ever was. Perhaps my entire life I have been looking for explanations, for sense where there were none.”

**

She was very, very warm. But light. Like a cork on a body of still water with the sun on it. But if she moved, if she so much as turned her head, it might all change. The lightness might be pulled under where the sun couldn’t reach.

But she could feel him nearby.

She remained still for a moment longer, listening to the soft noises around her--the hissing torches, the wind far away--trying to separate the tiniest sighs and rustles in the room.

Ah, there it was. That was him breathing.

She stirred, her hands and feet pushing against the bedclothes. She felt him stiffen next to her. A warm palm touched her forehead, fingers skimming in her hair.

“Hermione?”

She opened her eyes and blinked. He ran his thumb beneath her eye and over her cheek. She opened her eyes fully and looked up at him. He looks tired, she thought, and his shoulders are aching. He’d probably been sitting here for hours and hours waiting for her to wake up. His eyes stood out in his face, so anxious but so hopeful, aching to smile but afraid to.

“Hi,” he said.

She lifted her arms and held them out.

He slid his own around her waist and pulled her up to sit on the bed. They looked at each other for a moment, faces so close, her arms around his neck. Then she pushed her face into his neck, his arms tightening around her.

She knew something was different, very, very different, but she wasn’t sure what it was. There was a taste at the back of her throat she kept swallowing down. It was as if something had been cut open, the way a wound is cut open to let the poisoned fluid drain away and heal.

She rubbed her face against his neck and shoulder, wanting to climb under his skin, to pull him up over herself like a warm, heavy blanket. She felt his mouth against her skin.

“Say something.” His voice was hoarse.

She drew back and smiled faintly. Then she opened her mouth to form the empty shapes of words as she’d done all these weeks.

She froze. Her eyes widened. He grinned.

“Yes, you can.” He touched the corner of her mouth.

She clutched his shoulders and opened her mouth again. Harry reached over and picked up a bottle of potion from the table nearby.

“Here, this’ll help.”

She took a sip and tried again.

“I--Harry--”

Memories marched behind her scratchy words, too insistent to be turned away.

She fell forward and clung to him, her heart beating fast. “H--Harry…I remembered everything, didn’t I?” He held her tight, his eyes filling up.

“Yeah, you did, but it’s okay. It’s going to be okay now.”

Hermione closed her eyes against his neck. She knew she was almost strangling him but she was suddenly caught weightless in a spinning gust of memory and she needed something to hang on to. She was frightened by the lightness but felt the sweetness in it, the freedom; if only she could find her footing she could let go. And only he knew how tightly to hold her, how to pull her so completely into himself with his hands and his whispers that she couldn’t possibly be blown away.

“Oh it was awful, Harry…”

“I know, I know…”

“I don’t want to remember it, Harry--I want to forget it all again…”

“But that won’t make it go away, Hermione. You tried, it didn’t work…”

“But I can’t walk around with it all day, it’s too much--”

“Then we’ll put it down, let it go, it’s in the past--”

“How can it be in the past, Harry, I saw what might happen…”

“You saw what might happen, not what will…”

Both their faces were warm and damp with tears and his throat worked with the effort to swallow down the sobs. She clutched him still tighter and slid her hands in his hair.

After what seemed like a slow, tremulous eternity she pulled back and ran a palm down his wet face. His hands drew muddled, urgent circles at her back. She touched her lips to his and whispered.

“What did the Prophecy say, Harry?”

He tugged at her lips and whispered back. “That I--that I must kill him or be killed myself. That it’s up to me. That--that there’s no other way…”

“Oh.”

Harry drew back a little to look at her. “You knew, didn’t you?”

She leaned her face against his. “I just…guessed it must be something like that. Who told you about it?”

“Dumbledore. He was the person who heard it.”

His voice had dropped beyond a whisper, his lashes glistening afresh. Unable to hold out any longer, she reached again for his mouth.

“We’ll find a way around it, I promise.”

Beneath his trembling breath, his mouth opened for her.

“Yeah.”

Minutes wound around them in a slow, heated dance, the steps to which were all their own.

“Harry?”

“Hmmm?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just…keep doing that.”

His lips shaped into a smile.

“Sure.”

The world slipped and sank into silence around them. Midnight struck in a distance, so faint that it might have been in a different universe. Droplets of rain flirted with the window, dancing up against the glass, now pulling away in the roguish wind. And after weeks and weeks of aching for sound she suddenly thought this silence--this silence was where things made sense. No matter how crooked or broken or imperfect, this was where everything always made sense, this quiet where neither of them needed to speak.

****

A/N: So, that was the final plot-related chapter. But there is an epilogue on the way, much shorter. So if you still have questions, chuck ‘em over, I’ll try to answer them in the epilogue, which will be posted sometime next week, hopefully. (No, I won’t keep you waiting for four weeks *grins*)

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.

A/N: I’m so sorry, I know I promised this much sooner than this. My only excuse--technology (Aaarrrgh!) Now that I’m finally here, let me warn you that this is teeth-rotting stuff. I just had to, needed to write them happy for once *smiles dreamily*.

So the journey ends here my friends: I don’t know about a sequel yet but there will be other stories. And I have a leftover scene from Voiceless that I might post later on if you want me to. You guys have been simply amazing, I can’t thank you enough for the kind words and encouragement, but most of all for reading and always taking the time to comment.

And a million thanks to miconic; much of the credit for the story must really go to her. If it wasn’t for her, I’d never have started posting.

****

Epilogue

“Come, we have been silent

Far too long.

Here’s the music; sing me

Another song.”

Mary Stewart, The Music Lesson

***

Hermione stepped out of McGonagall’s office and closed the door, her ears burning. She wondered what Harry would say when she told him. She bit her lip. She had reason to think he would be put out; she herself was quite disappointed.

And to tell the truth, somewhat scared.

But of course, the Professor was right; positions came with responsibilities. And responsibilities must be honoured. She sighed and pulled away from the door.

She opened her palm and looked at the badge, her heart fluttering. It glinted under the drooping torchlight along the deserted corridor. She pocketed the badge and set off towards the stairs.

It was very early, and since it was Saturday, the castle was even quieter. The muffled echo of her footsteps followed her steadily down the stairs. She reached the bottom and stopped. Professor Dumbledore was standing next to a portrait, deep in conversation with its resident. When he heard her, he turned and smiled.

“Up early, Hermione?”

“Yes, Professor. I had something to do.”

“Ah, I see. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“I hear you’ve been catching up very quickly in all your classes, not that it’s any surprise. And Professor McGonagall mentioned that she would like to see her Head Girl return to her duties, if she was willing.”

Hermione smiled. “Yes, Professor. That’s actually where I’ve been.” She reached for the badge and held it out. Dumbledore’s blue eyes crinkled.

“Very good, very good, Hermione.” He nodded. “I’m sure many of us are delighted to see you back in your position. Not the least of whom will of course be Harry and Ron.” His eyes twinkled. “In fact, I’m rather relieved. The way Harry responded to you returning your badge, Professor Tiresias and I both thought we might have to crawl under my desk for cover.” He chuckled softly. Weariness seeped through his laugh-lines. “Well, I’ll let you get back to the common room. I’m sure they will be waiting for you.”

He inclined his head. Hermione hoisted a smile up her face and walked past.

Harry had never mentioned anything about talking to Dumbledore about her badge. Or maybe ‘talking’ was the wrong word.

Wondering whether she should ask him, she stepped around a corner dark with the receding night and blown-out torches.

But before she could reach the stairs, she was grabbed around the waist and pushed against the wall. A flash of Gryffindor quidditch colours swished around. Then she was pinned beneath a warm mouth.

“Where have you been?” He wailed. “You know I can’t wake up fully without my good morning kiss.”

She beckoned his tongue and pulled back when he danced in to respond.

“What? You mean for the past six years you’ve been sleepwalking?”

He looked at her and smiled, his playful eyes suddenly serious.

“Pretty much.”

She leaned in. His mouth wasn’t shy anymore. He left imprints in crevices that had formed just for him, wandering in through doors opened because of him. She angled his head with hands tangled in his hair.

“You know--” She gasped. “We shouldn’t be doing this out here like this--mhhm--I, I have to set an example.”

He moved down her jawline. “Why do you suddenly have to set an--” He pulled back, eyes wide. “Oh.”

She took a breath and reached inside her pocket. The look in his eyes almost lifted her off her feet. She held the badge out.

“So this is where you went so early in the morning.” His voice was hushed. He picked up the badge and looked at it for a moment. Then he pinned it on her robes.

She held his face between her hands and kissed him softly.

“So.” He sighed dramatically. “This means ‘no’ to a lot of things, I suppose.”

She grinned. “Yeah, it seems so. In fact, erm--”

“What?”

She tried to ignore the blush rushing up her cheeks. “It’s just that Professor McGonagall mentioned I must be careful about having visitors in my room after curfew.”

He groaned and leaned his forehead against hers. “That’s unfair! It’s not like we were doing anything!”

“Yes, but that’s not the point, Harry. I have a responsibility and she has a responsibility to make sure that I’m clear about it.”

He sighed. He met her eyes hesitantly. “But what about your nightmares?”

She shrugged with more conviction than she felt. “They’ll pass.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “Besides, I can always come and find you.”

He smiled.

She laid her face in the crook of his neck and let herself be held, heavy with something light and radiant, empty but full of something clear and warm. After a long moment, she drew back.

“We’d better get a move on. You have a match to win.”

“Yeah.” He sighed.

“Nervous?”

“You have no idea.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“But what about my team?”

“They’ll be fine too. You’re their captain.”

They linked hands and walked down the stairs. A landing halfway down was set with two arched windows. The morning pulsed through them, still dark but dewy.

“You know, while I was talking to Professor Dumbledore, he mentioned something that made me very curious.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He mentioned that he had reason to be scared for his life around the time I handed my badge in. And he might have mentioned your name somewhere in that sentence.”

He stopped and looked at her. She bit her lip to stop grinning. His cheeks were pink.

“Oh. That.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Harry.”

“Well, he deserved it.”

“Harry!”

He dropped his head. His jaw worked. When he looked at her, his eyes burned with defiance and supressed shame.

“He could’ve stopped a lot of things from happening, Hermione. He’s always talking about how safe we are but look at what happened to you! And that Charm--he could’ve figured it out much sooner if only he tried hard enough and you would’ve gotten better much sooner!”

Hermione crossed her arms and glared.

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“I, I’m sorry. That was--harsh.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yes, it was.” She sighed and reached for his hands. “Harry. What happened to me…simply happened. You can’t go around blaming anyone for that. And you know Dumbledore did everything he could. He’s kept you alive all this time, hasn’t he? Given what could have been, we should just be thankful that--that we’re okay.”

Harry held on tight to her hands and shrugged. Hermione decided to change tack. “What exactly happened that day when I handed the badge in?”

He blushed again.

“All right. I was--I was quite upset about your badge and I sort of walked into his office and er, yelled at him. Just a little bit. But I didn’t mean to make a scene, I swear. I just wanted to do something. Anything. I was angry because you didn’t seem to be getting better, no matter how many Healers they had in. What? Hermione?” He touched her cheek.

She blinked hastily. “Nothing. Nothing. I…just--” She swallowed. “I was furious with you because you took it so…calmly, that day. I thought you were becoming totally resigned to the whole thing.” Seeing the look in his eyes, she grabbed his hands again. “I--I know that’s silly but it was the scariest thing.” She shrugged. “Well, now I know you weren’t.”

“I would never, I could never--”

“I know.”

She pressed his hand against her cheek. They stood there for a long moment, tranquil in that tiny moment between night and day where the only sounds were the quivers and murmurs of things slowly waking up.

Finally, she tugged his hand and skipped down a couple of steps. He stared after her.

“Come on, we’d better hurry.” She grinned.

They set off along the floor that housed most of their classrooms. The castle was filling up with a hundred faint noises all rolled into a series of muffled hums and thuds. Windows were half-open all along the passage. Cold air blew in. She wrapped his arm around her waist and inclined her head thoughtfully. He wanted to kiss her, kiss that particular look to make it stay with him always, cradled in the marks she left in him with every touch. But then, he didn’t want to interrupt the look and make it go away because then he wouldn’t be able to look at it. So he kissed the side of her head instead.

“You know, I should have asked Dumbledore, I’ve been wondering about why the Death Eaters’ curses didn’t work on me. I mean, it doesn’t make sense. I wonder if he knows. Did he mention anything to you, Harry?”

She turned to look at him. His hand dropped from her waist. She narrowed her eyes.

“He did, didn’t he?”

“Er, no, he didn’t.”

She quirked an eyebrow.

“Professor Tiresias did.”

She rolled her eyes. “So?”

He looked so serious and quiet and confused all of a sudden that her heart lurched. After a long pause, he spoke.

“It’s--it’s because of something called Cariad magic.”

For a few beats, neither of them blinked. Her eyes widened. Her arms fell at her sides.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“You mean, you…you and I…”

“Yes.”

“Are you--are you sure? I mean--how did they know?” He had to strain to hear her.

“Because I felt it. While you were missing and ever since then, I’ve had this feeling inside my skin, like I can hear the blood flowing inside me. Professor Tiresias figured it out.”

She couldn’t tear her eyes from his. His familiar beautiful eyes, full of hidden shades overlying each other, shades visible only up close, only when her face lay a breath away from his.

“So--you were there…”

“Well, yes. In a way.”

“Oh, I was so afraid to ask you about that again, because…because I thought that was just my mind…oh...you were there…”

“Yes.”

“But how--I mean, I’ve heard you need to have been…together for a long time for it to work.”

“The Dark Mark. The Dark Mark transmitted it.”

“Oh.”

One of her favourite feelings in the world was this feeling of everything falling into place, but right now she was too distracted to savour it. She stared into his eyes and felt like she was held in the middle of a bursting star, held by brightness and heat and a million jumbled colours which, at their heart was quite simply green.

“Hermione?”

“Yeah?”

“What does it…really mean? For us?”

She swallowed and stepped closer.

“I don’t know.” Her fingers fluttered near his, not quite touching. “But we’ll have years and years to find out, won’t we?”

Harry thought of all the promises waiting in that question, breaths held, eyes wide, holding out a hand for him to take. Were they promises he could keep? And he thought of how the question itself was a promise that she was making. Was it a promise he could accept? Because the ground was never solid beneath his feet, his path never clear ahead.

Hermione watched the emotions slide and slant across his face and waited. The grey dawn opened a crimson eye. Pearly light fingered the cold passage through a high window.

Harry smiled, a little hesitant. She almost reached for his hand but held back.

A long unblinking moment wound tightly around them. Finally, Harry let out a breath. He stepped forward and took her hand. Because it was so easy to stumble and get lost along the murky, shifting way ahead and there she was, offering him a hand.

“Yeah, we will.”

****