Rating: PG-13 for angst and adult themes.
Title: A Vexation of Spirit
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters, settings, and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling as published by, including and not limited, to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. The use of these characters and settings is for entertainment purposes only; no infringement is intended or should be inferred. Additionally, locations in and around the United Kingdom are used as a basis for "historical reality" or in a purely fictitious manner.
Spoiler Alert: Books 1-5.
Summary: She wondered why it wasn't raining. With the moon cast in a bloody pallor by her sins, the sky should be crying as well.
Pairings: Harry/Hermione
Author's Notes: This is Harry and Hermione, though it is presented as a character study of Hermione Granger and the Second Wizard War. No comments or reviews are necessary.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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A VEXATION OF SPIRIT
[] AND FROM YOUR LIPS HE DREW THE HALLELUJAH
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The moon was red.
Stained crimson by the blood on the night.
Hermione Granger knew that wasn't so, she knew that it was only referred to as a "blood moon" and that it was the result of a lunar eclipse.
But it still felt as though the moon was bleeding from their actions.
Their deeds illuminated everything in her vision. The now and the past, through a scarlet hue.
They had done things, she and Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived was now The Boy Who Led. Together they had done such things. All of them. Their friends in the Order of the Phoenix, in Dumbledore's Army. Things that she had never imagined. That she had never dared to. Before the twilight, she had done more with her own hands than she ever thought she could accomplish.
They had done things she knew that she was too innocent, too good, to have ever done. That is why she could never think of such things. She wasn't dark enough. She hadn't suffered enough to know those black places in her heart, her mind.
Now that she had been to those dark places, she wondered how it was she would ever return to the light.
She had hardened her heart, had honed her skill, and used her intellect to inflict great damage that night.
She wondered why it wasn't raining. With the moon cast in a bloody pallor by her sins, the sky should be crying as well.
Hermione wondered why she didn't care. Why she didn't feel remorse. Regret. Guilt. Why she didn't feel anything.
"Please teach me how to live. Just once more. It seems I lost something..."
The words, carried by her breath to the windowpane, briefly coalesced into mist and then quickly faded.
It did bother her, on an intellectual level, that her words held little meaning for her. They had been as insubstantial, the intent as transient as the droplets on the glass.
Hermione wanted to stop thinking about what had happened that night. She wanted a distraction, but she was afraid to be around others. She wanted something, anything, some kind of release. She couldn't stop the memories tumbling through her mind.
She wanted to be empty.
She wanted to find some peace.
She wanted to become anaesthetized, to stop analysing everything, stop condemning and questioning herself.
But what would that make her, then? Wouldn't that be a lack of conscience? Wasn't it enough that she had lost her innocence?
She didn't want for her vulnerability or for her innocence back.
If anything, on this night, she wanted nothing of it. She wanted to be harder, to be colder. She wanted another revelation on the nature of her soul. She wanted to know that she was resilient and steadfast and capable of being the Eris to Harry's Ares. He needed her to be so. He needed her as his equal, as his twin, on the battlefield.
She needed to harden her heart. For him. How to do so without hardening her heart to him?
He seemed to be capable of segregating his emotions. He was able to narrow his focus on the field of battle. He had been able to dispatch several Death Eaters without a moment's pause. There was little time for considerations or second-guessing. Morality, spirituality, those ideals had been given short shrift over the course of the confrontation. The Death Eaters were merciless and so too had to be the Order and the Army. Harry was able to set aside the kindness and the love within him to act accordingly, to be the field general, to direct and protect. If it had not been for Harry's resolve, she would have fallen prey to Antonin Dolohov again.
How was it that Harry was able to compartmentalise his feelings, to protect his inner self from the fearsome warrior he had been? Was it something that he could teach? Would he show her how?
No. Hermione knew him, better than anyone else, at times better than Harry knew himself. He wouldn't teach her, even if it were something to be taught. He would tell her that he wouldn't, couldn't, because he didn't want to contaminate her with his crimes. Didn't want her to know those bleak places, that numbness, the anger and guilt that surged afterwards and made him tremble, made him cry.
"Just a little," she whispered to the window. "Won't you taint me just a little? That way, even if I get hurt, and lose everything around me, lose you..." She closed her eyes. "I don't want to know what that would feel like. I don't want to feel. Just a little, Harry. Just a little, so that, if you are hurt, if you are...lost...the memories will flow through my heart but I won't feel them.
I don't want to feel them if I lose you."
Hermione leaned forward, with her eyes still closed, and pressed her forehead against the pane. It was cool. The night was cool and damp.
She wanted to go and find Harry. She wanted to ask him to do that for her. To help her become stronger. To help her shed her weakness. For her. For him.
She didn't move.
She knew that if she did ask him, that the dispute would go on all night and into the morning, arguing over which was more precious, protecting them from the Death Eaters and Voldemort or protecting her soul from her duty to the cause.
The cause.
The term made her laugh softly. "I've become a rebel."
She opened her eyes and stared past the grounds to the edges of the Forbidden Forest.
She knew that she had gradually started to detach herself in preparation of this night. In expectation of the acts she would have to commit to save her friends, to save her love. To save herself. Since the Army's first confrontation in the Department of Mysteries, Hermione had started, subconsciously, to overlook things. Small things. Gentle things, to shore her resolve. To ensure, that, when the time came, she would be able to perform.
What manner of darkness was she trading her spirit piecemeal for?
When would it be enough? What distance, what length of time would be far enough and long enough for her to stop? Would it be an eternity?
When the pain vanished all together, would that be the end point? Or would that be too late?
Hermione knew that she was slipping further away. She knew that she was letting go of the things that kept her in place.
After the skirmish...no, the warfare that they had engaged in, that she had helped to shape and to lead that evening, Hermione found that she was starting to like it.
Her newfound consciousness. Her ability, her power.
The knowledge scared her to death. She knew that there was nothing there. There was nothing to be found in that feeling, the false feeling, of power and control. When it arose from pain and anger, it was hollow.
She knew this.
But still, she liked it.
She needed Harry. He was able to achieve a balance. He was able to maintain. She needed his help. She needed him.
If she told Harry of her thoughts, would he then comply with her request?
"If you know how far gone I am...if you know that I am afraid of slipping further...if I told you, that way, you shall taint me. You shall help me to become stronger. To become more like you."
Hermione was on the side of the Light and she knew it to be beautiful. But with the events...with the power...she felt darker than light.
They had been wonderful. The Order, the Army. She and Harry. They had been wonderful together, battling the Death Eaters. But the night, the moment, it had been Hermione's.
She had shone darkly under the blood stained moon. The fields of battle had been wet with the coming evening's dew, with blood, with tears. Hermione shuddered and sighed, afraid of the lingering taste of bitterness in her mouth. It was adrenaline. The bitter on her tongue.
She issued a controlled sigh and when her breath caught on the cool glass surface, she again watched it slip away to nothing.
"I have always looked to yesterday. To history, to records, to texts, to castles in the sky. I thought that I could be able to follow them, Harry, I thought that I could relive wondrous times and help to create them anew. I thought that truth and honour and intelligence would be my guides."
She blew onto the glass, intentionally, and quickly sketched a rune with the tip of her finger. It was the rune for Eolh. The elk.
"I'm older now. I don't know if I'm wiser, Harry. You are always telling me how amazing and smart I am. I don't know if I do know more or better than anyone else. I don't believe that I can if I want for some manner of darkness to temper the beat of my heart. If I want my pain and my fear to wane beneath a layer of callousness. But if you were the one to show me, to help me, to lend me some of your strength...I just don't have it in me, Harry. I don't.
I can't do this alone.
I can't do this without you.
I am always by your side. You are always by mine. I know it. But you are able to operate on a separate level in order to use the Dark Arts, to use the Unforgivables. Just...now, please, taint me just a little. Please, just taint me, only a little. I want you to be my guide."
"I can't offer you that."
She gasped and spun around, wand at the ready. She knew it was Harry's voice, but her surprise caused her body to act of its own accord. Her instincts had taken over.
He was half standing, half leaning against the back of a wing chair, hands in his pockets, his expression neutral.
"Harry..." she murmured. She hung her head and lowered her wand. "Why?" she asked quietly.
"I can't take you to...I can't give you the numbness that you want. I won't hand you over to it."
Hermione looked up from the stone floor and regarded him seriously. "Why?" she repeated, her voice a touch louder.
"I won't do that to you." He kept his gaze steady. "You feel lost right now, you feel changed, and rightly so. But you are not lost to the darkness."
"But I liked it, Harry, my God, I liked how it felt on that battlefield."
He continued to look into her eyes. "I know. So did I."
"How...how do you do it? How are you able to be so awful, in the old sense of the word, so awful in combat and so...you again here?"
He moved from the wing chair and took a step toward her, not breaking eye contact. "It's because of you, Hermione."
She recoiled and pressed her back against the window's ledge. "I don't understand."
He shrugged. "You know what my childhood was like. With the Dursleys. With Vernon and Ickle Diddykins. From them, all I had ever learned from love was how to hide it. How to ignore it. How to avoid it." He took his hands from his pockets and reached for hers. He took her wand and gently placed it on the windowsill and held her hands loosely in his. "Do you believe in God?"
She blinked and shook her head, not in response but in confusion. "I...I'm not certain. I think that I do. I…don't know, really. I was raised to."
He nodded wordlessly. "Well...I don't believe in God. But, there are times that I liked to think that, well, maybe if there's a God above, He's finally got around to balancing out the murder of my parents and my miserable childhood."
"How so?"
At that, Harry finally smiled. He clasped her hands tightly and laughed, "You already know the answer, Miss Granger. It's you. You're what keeps me sane. You're what keeps me grounded, makes me whole. Your friendship, your love, your everything. You. You are the reason why I am strong, you are the reason I come back every time we face the Death Eaters. I come back to you."
"Harry..." It was all she could manage after all of the things she had said and done earlier in the evening. His name was all she could say.
"You're not somebody who's turned away from the Light," he murmured to her, a crooked smile on his lips. "That you have been thinking about it all night, worrying about it, pondering it, wondering how to inure yourself to it…you are still good, you know. You've had to do things that no one should ever have to do. I am sorry for that. So very sorry, Hermione. I never wanted you to see such things. For any of us to."
Hermione took a step forward, closing the distance between them. "We would never let you go through this alone. I couldn't."
"It kills me to see you hurt," he whispered.
"I feel the same when you are hurt."
They stood in silence for a moment.
"I don't want you to know the kind of dark and cold I feel when I fight, Hermione. I don't want you to be subjected to the endlessness that I fear."
She regarded him with sadness. "I'm sorry...I never knew…"
"It's all right." He took both of her hands and brought them to his lips. His kissed them gently and then said, "You pull me from it. Falling off my broom in practice, Snape being a shite, hearing about another attack, having to look at Malfoy, all of the things that send my day downwards and make me think of those black times, you rescue me. You save me from the wreck of a bad day. If you can save me from my foul moods..."
She smiled at that and laughed as he continued to kiss her hands. "So you are saying I make things better?" she asked.
He nodded and gave her hands another kiss. "Yes. And I am saying that you make everything better."
Hermione laughed again. "Everything? Is that so?"
Harry was grinning at her, causing the familiar wrinkles to appear at the sides of his eyes. Those wrinkles she knew well. It meant that Mr. Potter had mischief in mind. "It is."
"Well...you make everything better, too."
He widened his green eyes in surprise. "I do? Me?"
"Yes." She pulled her hands from his in order to hit him on the shoulder. "And you know it." She put on a pout, just for him. "You have me completely distracted now."
He grinned again and waggled his eyebrows. "Is that so bad?"
She arched an eyebrow at him and sighed. "No." Hermione grabbed Harry by the wrist and started to drag him out of the Common Room.
"Where are we going?"
"I'm hungry," she muttered.
"Thinking makes you hungry?"
"Yes."
"Ah."
When they reached the Common Room door, Hermione paused and turned to face him. "Harry?"
"Hmm?"
"Thank you."
He started to say something, but smiled at her instead and nodded. "You're welcome." He reached for her and pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Harry placed his lips next to her ear and whispered, "Just please don't ask me again." He closed his eyes tightly and buried his face into the crook of her neck. "Because I can't do it," he murmured. "I can't."
"I promise, Harry, I won't ask it of you, ever. It's over with. I won't ask you to help me change. I don't want to change." She gave the side of his neck a kiss. "I don't have to change."
He pulled away from her slightly, just to see her face. "You're not just saying that to appease me, are you? You don't want to close yourself off? You do really mean that?"
Hermione smiled brilliantly and nodded. "I do."
Harry grinned. "Then you are still the brightest witch of your age." He laughed at the look on Hermione's face, gave her a quick kiss on the lips, and pulled her through the Common Room entrance. "Come along, then, let's get the brightest witch something to eat."
Hermione cast a glance over his shoulder at the window, catching a glimpse of the night sky. She set her thoughts aside and took his hand in hers. "Hallelujah and amen to that," she smiled, and turned her back on the blood moon.
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