Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Wheeeee!
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 28
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Voldemort's magic gave out with him. Snape's dark mark was not the only spell to undo itself; Hermione's prison dissolved as well. She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled numbly across the distance to where Harry lay, although by the time she made it he had already slumped to the floor. Snape moved away as she reached for him.
He was battered, badly, the closer she looked, but still breathing.
"Is he?" she asked softly, gazing up at Snape.
He looked closely at her for moment and then did not bother to misconstrue her words. "Alive? Yes. A squib? More than likely. It may not necessarily be permanent, however. There is a small possibility his own magic might recover; if it does not I have been working on a process to reignite the core of those who suffer magical…accidents, for some years now; he would be a perfect candidate for the procedure if he survives his injuries."
"That was no accident," Hermione said, her eyes returning to Harry and watching each shuddering rise and fall of his chest. "You lied to Voldemort, and gambled that the magic draining potion would destroy the horcruxes. You used him."
"Would you have preferred I not?" Snape asked bitingly. "Grow up. I am going up to see what is left of Hogwarts. I trust I can leave you to it."
Already raw, his words felt like acid against her skin. She said nothing, more anxious by nature to attempt to right the tilting axis than fight it. She heard him go.
She wished that she could ask him to enervate Ron so that she could remain by Harry, but knew as well that the last thing Ron needed to see now was Snape. She needed Ron to help her; she knew they needed to get Harry to Madam Pomfrey, assuming the Hospital Wing remained somewhat intact.
Awakened, Ron seemed thankfully to have no immediate memory of events just prior to being stupefied; all he wanted to know was the result. His eyes glued themselves to Hermione's face and the first thing he asked was "Harry?"
"Alive," she told him. "I need you to help me get him to the Hospital Wing."
"Voldemort?" was his next question as he scrambled, swaying slightly to his feet.
"Gone," she said, barely believing the words even as she spoke them. "Dead. Harry killed him."
Ron's unsteadiness abruptly fled. "But the horcruxes, the scar one and the others…"
"Voldemort tried to reclaim them by draining Harry's magic. It destroyed them."
They'd reached Harry now and he was still unconscious. Hermione saw Ron wince when he took in his condition as he dropped to his knees before his friend. She crouched down beside him and laid her hand gently against Harry's cheek; there was not even the slightest flinch although it was badly bruised. Only moving her fingers to his chest convinced her he was still breathing, still trying.
"Bloody hell, Hermione, what kind of spell…"
"They took his magic, Ron. It wasn't a spell. He fought Voldemort without magic, and he killed him. Look."
She pointed to where the body lay; the broken end of the Basilisk fang just barely protruding from one eye socket in the ruined face.
Ron's face paled and he swallowed. "Sweet bleeding Merlin, Hermione," he said; his voice starting out as little more than a whisper but building as his brain finally processed what his eyes told him. "He did that? He did it! He killed Voldemort, that's bloody Voldemort, and he's dead! Harry did that? Bloody hell!"
"Ron, we need to move him," she reminded. "I don't know if Madam Pomfrey can do anything for him, but we need to get him out of here."
"Too right," Ron agreed. "Do they know upstairs, about Voldemort?"
"Snape went up already," she said, listening intently for a moment after. "It certainly sounds quieter. We'll just have to go carefully. I don't know what Snape would say about Harry, but if any of the Death Eaters know he's alive and without magic they'll almost certainly go after him."
Ron nodded grimly and cast a mobile corpus. "We'll have to…"
Harry's body convulsed and his eyes flew open, lips forming a raw but mostly silent scream. It appeared for all the world as if Ron had crucioed him instead of trying to use a simple levitating charm.
Ron remained frozen for a moment, stunned by his reaction, until Hermione swatted his wand away and cast a finite. Harry's body fell the short distance it had risen and went slack but his eyes remained open and glued to Ron, breath coming in desperate panting gasps.
"Mate, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, we were just trying to move you up to the Hospital Wing. It was just a mobile corpus, really," Ron stammered. A cold wave rushed over Hermione.
She grasped Harry's hand and ran her wand along a small open cut on his forearm murmuring "curatio." His reaction was immediate and unmistakable; he jerked away from her as if she'd burned him, eyes shifting to her, watering and confused.
"It's the magic, Ron. He can't tolerate magic for some reason. We're going to have to get him upstairs ourselves without it, and make sure Madam Pomfrey knows before she tries to heal him."
Between the two of them they managed to help him ease into sitting up, but once he was upright things devolved into a sort of group hug as they clung to each other, slowly giving in to sobs as reality broke like waves.
Hermione knew that every little touch must hurt him, but she couldn't stop letting her fingers be the ones to reassure her that he was still alive. A small corner of her mind admitted that if he had been uninjured she might have jumped him and shagged him on the spot, Ron be damned. His hand tentatively pushed back her hair from her eyes, shaking fingers brushing her cheek and she realized his touch still sparked magic within her, whatever Voldemort had done.
"You're okay?" he managed, his ravaged whisper a shadow of the voice she craved. When she nodded, he persisted with "Really okay?" as if he had to hear her say it, as though a thousand times would still not persuade him to ever take it for granted again.
"I'm fine. Completely fine. Everything is going to be better now, Harry. You have to be alright too."
It moved her to tears to be part of the boys reacquainting as well; their private language more transparent to her now then ever before. Despite Harry's emotionally starved upbringing and Ron's youngest-of-the-brothers need for constant vigilance on the potential teasing front they managed for once to allow nothing but their abating fear and deep gratitude for the other's survival to come through, clinging to each other as if they would never let go. If Ron had doubts about any of Harry's actions he did not voice them, and she had well known Harry would never say a word about Ron's deeds under the imperius. She became aware, arms around them both as they struggled to regain control, that they might always be her boys but they had both made some invisible, irreversible journey into manhood this day. Neither would ever be the same.
And I'm pregnant. With child. I'm going to have a baby. How is that possible?
She knew how it was possible of course, knew the mechanics of it intimately, but it was never a possibility she'd considered for this point in her life. Except that life was changed now, opening up in a broad vista once Voldemort's shadowy stranglehold had been removed. She'd planned everything so carefully when she started Hogwarts. Top grades, prefect by Fifth year, Head Girl by Seventh. Graduate top of her class and decide between Muggle University or the Wizarding apprenticeship Professor McGonagall had encouraged her to pursue. Hermione had always nursed a secret desire to become an Unspeakable, to understand all that was behind that locked door in the Department of Mysteries. A child would change all that. Wouldn't it?
But it was Harry's child, too. Harry; unloved and unwanted for so long, never knowing what it felt to be part of a family. Harry, who had willing drunk from the cup that would claim his magic in a last desperate attempt to keep her and the tiny heartbeat within her safe. There wasn't a degree, wasn't a job anywhere in the world, wizarding or muggle, that could ever come close to having being loved with that kind of single-minded, pure-hearted devotion. She suspected the loss of Harry's magic, if not reversed, would be a painful absence that would plague him all the days of his life. If the child, if she and the child could in any way make recompense for that, no change in plans could be too great.
It was a slow trip above once all three finally regained the will to move. Ron and Hermione each laid one of Harry's arms around their shoulders and they made their way back to the entrance with him between them. Hermione could sense already his deep frustration at the weakness his injuries imposed; the subject of his magic remained unspoken. At the end of the tunnel Fawkes awaited them and offered to fly them out the same way Harry and Ron had gone second year. Hermione was afraid that touching the deeply magical Phoenix might be beyond Harry but in the end it did not seem to affect him at all. Interesting, that… perhaps it wasn't magic itself but the intentional bending of it to the purpose of a spell? She wished she had time to think. Whatever met them upstairs, the time until she could lay quietly next to him and begin to wrap her mind around what had occurred and what was to come seemed endless as an ocean.
She and Ron clung twice as cautiously to Fawkes and to Harry between them until the solid floor of Myrtle's lavatory was beneath their feet. There was no sign of her, and she did not answer Hermione's soft call. They made their way across the room and opened the heavy wooden door to a landscape as much like the Hogwarts they knew as the surface of the moon.
The halls seemed dark, many of the torches that lit them had been destroyed or simply gone out as the magic that illuminated them was destroyed by flying spells. There was grit and stone dust everywhere, lying like a layer of ash over everything unmoving. There were many "things" unmoving, too, lying where they fell; the lost of Voldemort's army were hardly less frightening dead than they had been alive. Hags, trolls, inferi, all manner of repulsive creatures for which they had no name lay stupefied, petrified or outright dead before them.
"Were they all evil?" Hermione wondered aloud, "or did they just follow Voldemort because Wizards treated them with revulsion?"
Ron muttered something that sound suspiciously like "I'm not joining any S.P.I.W. for inferius for Merlinsake. They're animated bodies, they don't bloody well care."
Once, Harry would have grinned at that.
Hermione saw his eyes take in the damage and ruin, skittering anxiously from shape to shape. So far all they had come upon were Voldemort's supporters; either their side had been lucky or they had already gathered their wounded home. Harry was clearly nearing the end of his rope. One leg was injured badly enough he could not manage to put weight on it at all and his limping slowed their progress significantly. She wanted to tell Ron to run ahead for he was clearly anxious about his family and Luna but she knew that Harry was anxious as well and would not let her help bear his full weight alone.
One more corridor brought them to the central staircases and a larger view of what the battle had wrought.
Harry gave a low, keening moan. Ron couldn't even manage a single `bloody hell'.
"The castle helped," came a voice nearby. All three started nervously and Hermione muffled a startled scream against her hand.
It was Neville, filthy and a bit worse for the wear but somehow radiant as well. "It was the most amazing thing; even Dumbledore's portrait and McGonagall were shocked. The staircases, the armor, the statues… even the doors all joined in. It was as if the whole thing was alive and determined to get Voldemort's army out right along with us. That's why it looks so bad. There really is magic in the walls of Hogwarts."
He seemed to fully take in the three of them then, as if for the first time, and gave a small involuntary wince when he saw Harry.
"Harry…what hap… never mind. Stupid, that. You did it, then, didn't you? Snape said he was dead."
Hermione saw Harry nod numbly, his eyes still ranging the visible halls and below.
"Where is everyone? Are they… who…" his voice gave out but Neville seemed to know just what he was asking anyway.
"Mostly in the Great Hall. It's in good shape and they did some buttressing charms," he said reassuringly. "The Hospital Wing was sort of questionable structurally so Madam Pomfrey's ruling the roost in there. And it's not so bad, really, lots of spell reversal and that sort of thing. Hagrid got hit with something a bit nasty but he's going to be okay when the exploding warts run their course. Might want to avoid him `til then though, nasty if you get hit with one."
"You didn't happen to see Luna," Ron asked in a hopelessly forced parody of casualness, his voice cracking on her name.
"She's alright. Brilliant to fight next to for all she's so, well, Luna, the rest of the time. I… I'm sorry to tell you, Ron, but Charlie was… he… I think it was quick, if that helps. He was bloody brave."
Ron made a strangled noise, and Harry a small, defeated moan. Hermione clutched at both of them.
"I'm pretty sure everyone else in your family is going to be okay," Neville went on quickly. "It was sort of hard to tell once your Mom found out about…. The twins are pretty hexed up and Bill took a couple of rough hits. Ginny was brilliant, and even Fleur came to help out. Your dad's sort of running things for Lupin, he sent us out looking for you."
"How are Remus, and Tonks?" Hermione asked, knowing Harry would want to know.
"Beat up a bit," Neville acknowledged. "Lupin… I don't think anyone could say that being a werewolf was anything to be ashamed of after that. He and Tonks and Moody were… amazing. Not many of us really knew how to fight creatures like that; it wasn't what we were expecting."
Harry staggered between them; Hermione knew they couldn't waste any more time getting him somewhere he could at least lie down. Ron was looking decidedly pale as well.
Neville seemed to follow her thoughts. "The main stairs are all gone; you'll have to spell yourselves down. I'll go ahead and tell Madam Pomfrey you're coming, shall I? Harry, well… I…" he trailed off, looking to Hermione as if for help. "Let me be the first to say thanks."
Harry's head shook, although most of him had started to shake now and it was sort of hard to tell if it was deliberate. He seemed beyond words. Hermione shared a glance with Ron, taking in the two story drop to the entrance to the Great Hall.
"Harry, mate, we're going to have to use a spell on you to get you down there."
"If I'm really your mate you'll just give me a shove instead," Harry groaned. "It'd hurt less, I assure you."
"We could stun you…" Ron offered, not thinking.
Harry shuddered. "Once again, that would mean a spell, wouldn't it?"
"Not necessarily. Just remember, who's your pal, then," Ron said nervously. And hauled back and punched him, a single, well-aimed blow.
Harry crumpled soundlessly to the ground, his nose bleeding profusely.
"Ron!" Hermione cried, dropping beside him.
"No, I'm not Voldemort's eighth horcrux or anything. It just seemed the kindest thing, Hermione. Let's hurry up and get him down there before he comes too."
Neville looked from one to the other, his eyes clearly worried that they'd all of them lost their wits in the battle.
Hermione wasn't entirely sure he was wrong.
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After the devastation elsewhere, the Great Hall was a sight for sore eyes. It appeared untouched, entirely normal but for the hospital beds and rolling curtains brought down from the Infirmary. The sky overhead was crystalline and full of twinkling stars.
Hermione held the door and Neville and Ron carried Harry in between them. All motion came to an abrupt halt and there was a moment of shocked silence followed by a heart broken wail from Mrs. Weasley.
"Not Harry too," she sobbed. "Not Harry too."
Snape rolled his eyes. "Not unless they've managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and killed him simply by transporting him. Do get a grip. I told you, he was alive."
Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey rushed forward and guided Ron and Neville to an empty bed. Hermione took in as much as she could as she followed them.
The worst injured were given beds, others who had more superficial or easily reversible spell damage ranged the room at the various house tables. The house elves were working tirelessly at providing bandaging materials and biscuits and tea. There were a great number of Aurors in Ministry robes but it seemed fairly clear to Hermione they had arrived only after the battle was mostly decided. Few wore near as much grit and stone dust as the Order Members, and fewer still were injured. Rufus Scrimgeour had set himself a war room of sorts at the Head Table, and a group that could only be Ministry advisors by the look of them was drawn close around him.
Ron and Neville eased the still unconscious Harry onto the bed Madam Pomfrey indicated and Hermione's attention was drawn abruptly back as the Hogwarts Infirmarian raised her wand to scan her most familiar patient.
"Madam Pomfrey, wait!"
The Head nurse's anxious eyes flew to her. "Miss Granger?"
"Harry… Voldemort drained him of his magic. There was a potion, Harry drank it to try and save me and Ron. When we tried to use magic to bring him here it really hurt him for some reason."
"He has no magic left?" Professor McGonagall asked softly. "None at all?"
Hermione shook her head sadly, the truth of it catching at her heart again. "No. I don't think so."
"However did he kill You-Know-Who, then?" came a quiet voice behind her, and she looked back to discover Scrimgeour there.
"With his bare hands," she hissed, well aware of Harry's feeling toward the Minister. "Where were you?"
Scrimgeour cocked a leonine eyebrow and made a tutting noise. "Really, Miss… Graber, was it?"
"Granger. Hermione Granger. I was with him, Ron Weasley and I saw everything. And there wasn't a single Ministry official to be seen while they beat him and mocked him and drained his magic. None around when he found a basilisk fang left over from the last time and drove it through Voldemort's eye with his own hand. He's still down there in the Chamber if you dare. So don't even try to play with the truth of this. Every witch and wizard has the right to know how close Voldemort came to running rampant through our world and what it cost Harry to stop it."
Scrimgeour's yellowy eyes gleamed. "Really. You wish that I should tell the world then that Mr. Potter is now what amounts to a squib? Tell me, how long do you think he would last - assuming of course he lasts at all. He does not appear… well."
Madam Pomfrey's head came up with a snap; she had been using her hands in place of her wand to categorize Harry's injuries and carefully lifted them before they might fall prey to her anger. "I have treated this boy for the wounds he has incurred battling that evil thing since he was eleven years old," she said sharply. "I will not let him suffer now if I have to take him to a muggle hospital myself, although I hope it will not come to that. Take your talk of death away from this bed, Minister." Two spots of color lit her cheeks.
Professor McGonagall jumped in after her.
"What exactly are you saying, Minister? Surely the only news that needs to be announced is that Voldemort is gone and the Boy-Who-Lived killed him for good this time?"
Arthur and Molly Weasley closed in on the circle around Harry's bed. Remus Lupin sat up in a bed two down, and Tonks moved round the foot of it, closer. The Minister held his ground determinedly.
"This is a delicate time for Wizards. Whenever a… great evil is removed from the world there is a vacuum, and a worry of what unknown will move in to replace it. We need to pull together and present a strong and unified front to the remnants of his supporters. Telling the people the truth about Mr. Potter's condition would result in panic and civil unrest and encourage the Death Eaters to greater acts of desperation to prove themselves the Dark Lord's successor. And yet… too many know now of Potter's habit of distancing himself from the Ministry to believe a sudden joining of forces. I feel it might be best - and safest - for all involved if the news of You-Know-Who's demise is reported as a… Ministry victory. As indeed it is a victory for us all."
There was utter, stunned silence in the Great Hall.
"How can you possibly claim to be responsible for everything Harry did down there," Ron wondered incredulously, "when you can't even bloody well say his name out loud? It was Voldemort. And now he's dead. And no matter what you rat arsed political wankers do, you'll never change the fact that Harry was the one who did it as long as I'm alive to tell the truth."
Mrs. Weasley was at once so scandalized by her youngest son's language and so proud of his brave defense of his best friends that the only sound she could produce was a sort of "Meep!" before remembering anew the loss of Charlie and dissolving into fresh tears. Arthur took her in his arms and said clearly, "Ron, I've never been as proud to call you son as you've made me today."
"Or me, to call you our friend," Hermione agreed, and found herself grinning despite it all at the blush that stained Ron's cheeks.
Scrimgeour glared at them.
"I must insist," Madam Pomfrey said clearly, her voice full of steel, "that if talk of this travesty of justice is to continue, it be done elsewhere. Mr. Potter is my patient, and from the looks of things he's going to have rather a lot to be going on with when he wakes up without taking on a pack of lies and manipulations as well."
She pointed her wand and motioned a curtain neatly between the bed and Scrimgeour, effective as shutting a door in his face. Other curtains neatly followed, forming four walls round the bed and leaving only herself, Minerva McGonagall, Molly and Arthur and Hermione and Ron inside.
"Can you help him, Poppy?" Professor McGonagall asked anxiously.
"Without magic it will be slow. First we must stabilize his condition and see to his injuries. Only time will tell if the sensitivity to magic is permanent. We can do nothing about even attempting to restore his own if it is."
"Restore it? Can you do that?" Ron asked hopefully.
"Not I, Mr. Weasley," Madam Pomfrey said with a sigh. "If there is any chance at all it will be Professor Snape that does that. He has been working toward something like it for years now."
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The next two days passed in a haze of exhaustion and numb waiting for Hermione. Harry remained unconscious and Madam Pomfrey fretted continuously about his care.
It appeared as if the only good news was to be Voldemort's death; the cost seemed to grow greater as time passed. Professor Flitwick chose not to join Professor Binns in an after life of teaching; the little Charms wizard was found dead and there was no sign of a ghost about the Charms corridor. Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hannah Abbott had both been killed by Bellatrix LeStrange, and Sturgis Podmore and Hestia Jones had fallen to Amicus Carrow in revenge for Lupin's disposal of his sister Alecto. Narcissa Malfoy was brought up to the makeshift morgue in the little room Hermione remembered Harry disappearing to after the Goblet of Fire spit out his name Fourth year. Professor Trelawney was still raving and sent for a visit to Gilderoy Lockhart's ward in St. Mungo's. Draco Malfoy was at first thought a casualty as well, but Madam Pomfrey luckily took a look at him and pronounced a particularly powerful stunning charm instead. A simple finite cured him, or at least revived him. His father had fallen to Tonks in the battle and he seemed far too diminished and lost to be deemed returned to normal.
She was vaguely aware of the Ministry Officials still hovering beyond the curtains like vultures waiting for Harry to live or die, not put off by Professor McGonagall as they might have been by Dumbledore. In fact, the only good thing so far had been Ron's reunion with Luna Lovegood. Hermione thought she would never forget his face when Ron spotted Luna entering the Great Hall behind Mad Eye Moody, or the enthusiasm with which he had caught her up in his arms. Their joy in rediscovering each other healthy and alive seemed somehow visceral to her and far beyond the pull of simple relief. She knew the old saying about love in wartime, but she felt certain that those two were headed for far more.
Voldemort was dead. She knew it was hopelessly naïve and immature, but she couldn't stand that all was still bitter and wrong. Seven long years she had worked and prayed for his defeat, and still his passing had left her world in tatters.
Hermione let her head down on her arms, folded beside Harry's still form on the narrow hospital bed, and gave in to the pull of sleep.
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Day three dawned brighter than she thought possible. She awoke stiff and sore from sleeping half slumped on the bed to the sense of something moving in her hair. Stifling a shriek she jumped back to meet Harry's open eyes.
"I go and kill Voldemort for you," he murmured, his voice still hoarse and strained, "and you let yourself go entirely to hell." Trembling fingers held up the bit of plaster and a piece of scarlet Phoenix feather he'd salvaged from her hair. "You need a good scrubbing, Hermione Granger."
"I've been waiting for you to do it," she whispered, hardly daring to believe her own eyes and ears.
"Might be a bit before I could do a decent job of it," he said with a brief rueful grin. "I'd recommend not waiting quite that long."
"I know you're going to get horribly sick of this question, so allow me to be the first to ask it. How do you feel?"
"Like it was a rough match and you're about to tell me I dropped the snitch," he told her, his eyes betraying him. "He is dead, isn't he? Really dead. I didn't dream it…"
"As the munchkins assured Dorothy in Oz, he's not only merely dead; he's really most sincerely dead," she told him, calling on their shared muggleness and hoping to see…
That smile. The one that reached his eyes and lit their lovely color from within, the one that had always reached her heart as well. It was still there, there was hope then that everything would be alright somehow.
She wanted nothing more than to take him home to Grimmauld place and hide him from everyone who would want something from him now, to tuck him into a big comfortable bed and feed him and shag him senseless, not necessarily in that order. She hated that they had worked so hard and risked so much thinking that they would free themselves when the brutal reality of the aftermath showed them how slow that freedom would be in coming, if it ever did.
He looked as if he was going to reply in kind with some sort of attempt at a joke, but his face seemed to somehow drain with the effort and he said instead, "I can't make myself believe that you're safe. My mind keeps replaying his voice, and I hear him saying, `Go on and die, Harry. Feel the despair of it. There's nothing there. And when you are gone at last I shall take your pregnant...'" His voice gave out altogether there.
"Your pregnant whore, and refashion my immortality," she finished for him. "I heard him, Harry. It's my fault he knew. I didn't really faint, I wanted you to think I was unconscious so you'd stop thinking about me and concentrate on what you had to do. He's a master legilimens, and I'm no Snape."
Harry's eyes dropped to where their hands lay clasped on the blanket near his hip.
"I am so sorry, Hermione," he said, his voice lower and rough enough to make her flinch at the sound. "I never meant for you, for that to happen. I know it's a lame excuse a million guys must have used before, but I can't believe I was stupid enough to screw up when it put you in that much more danger."
Hermione shook her head and laid her cheek against their hands where her eyes could still reach his.
"It takes two to do what we did, Harry. And I don't regret it for a moment, any of it. I…" She thought of the morning in the cave near Durmstrang when she had spoken with his mother, and all Lily had said. "I think this child is a gift. I think you fought so hard because of wanting and needing to protect us, that it may have saved your life. And that was all I ever wanted. To be a family with you is more than I ever dared to hope for."
"Even if I'm a squib?" he asked softly.
Words rushed to her lips but she bit them, forcing herself to consider what she said. `You don't know it's gone, Snape may be able to help you get it back, I can do enough magic for the both of us' all piled up and were swallowed down as not what he needed to hear. `You could never be without magic to me' and `we could run away somewhere no one's ever heard of magic' weren't right either.
"Even if you're a squib," she finally replied, liking the simple dignity of the way he put it best. "You'll be my squib, and that's what matters most to me."
If she was reading the look in those still beautiful eyes correctly, she'd made her point. She imagined for a moment an infant staring back at her with green eyes like his, eyes that would never know loss and sorrow until so much later in life. Still, there were no guarantees… and yet look at how much love Lily and James Potter had managed to instill in their small son, and how far that love had traveled into the future without them.
"The most important magic your Mum ever did didn't require a wand or a spell, Harry," she told him. "No matter how you explain it, it was her love for you that caused Voldemort's spell to go wrong. If all you ever do is love us, it'll be enough."
And dang, he could still move even without magic to heal him. He had her up on the bed with him in a heartbeat and all their tears combined didn't make the taste of him any less sweet.
Hermione took it as a heartening sign of their new standing in the Wizarding world that when Madam Pomfrey breached the curtains with her usual early morning briskness to check her patient's condition that she didn't let lose a horrified `Miss Granger! Mr. Potter!' as she once would have done.
Her simple `Feeling better Mr. Potter, are we?' and quick retreat without even a word of caution was music to Hermione's ears. From the undimmed heat of Harry's attentions she would have to doubt if he'd even taken notice.
Perhaps there was hope for the future after all.
"For your information, rutting like rabbits is unlikely to have any salubrious effect on depleted magical reserves whatsoever," came the unmistakable voice of Snape, who had evidently been behind Madam Pomfrey and remained undeterred.
Or, perhaps not.
She felt Harry stiffen - in the other, less enjoyable manner - and tensed herself for the battle to come. Why did Snape have to be the only one to offer hope for Harry's magic?
"Sure makes you feel better, though," Harry said over her shoulder, fingers continuing to gently trace a pattern low on her stomach beneath her shirt. It was arousing enough until her brain translated the seemingly random strokes and swirls into `hullo baby' and she found herself almost overcome by a wave of both tender love and lust. "D'you mind? We can always play pawns in another of your arse-covering little schemes a bit later, can't we?"
"Oh by all means," Snape sneered. He muttered a contraceptive spell quite distinctly and shuddered. "Merlin forbid the two of you reproduce. I am sure five minutes should more than suffice for you, Potter, but I have more important things to attend to. I shall leave it for you to come to me."
`Now why the hell was that so funny?' Snape wondered as he retreated to deliver the healing potions he'd managed to salvage from one of the storerooms to Pomfrey. What a pity if Granger lost her mind as well. She'd actually been reasonably bright… for a Gryffindor.
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A/N: Well, that one wasn't quite what I expected either… Hmmm. Have to see what the next one does. Thank you again for your reviews and comments on a very difficult chapter last time round.
My formal apologies are hereby extended to Particle Accelerator - I hope we've worked it all out, but I still feel I owe you one for the vehemence of my response. Thank you for your explanation and your kind words and I wish you all the best with your story. Thanks for reading, too.
Lynney
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