Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 4
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Harry and Hermione had established a pattern now of taking it in turns to make breakfast; the one who wasn't cooking had the job of climbing the five flights of stairs it took to check the post. The nature of the house being inhospitable at best to your average owl, they had devised a kind of drop box on the roof that Hermione had alarm-spelled to ring when an owl required personal delivery or a reply. The post-fetcher had the additional chores of cleaning and refilling water and treat dishes, but it was pleasant enough in the cool of the early morning, gazing over the still-sleeping neighborhood.
"You've had one from Professor McGonagall," Hermione said, sorting through the pile of envelopes she'd retrieved along with the paper.
Harry set a plate of toast between them and a mug of steaming tea in front of her before accepting the letter. He dropped into his chair and laid the envelope beside his empty plate, choosing his coffee instead.
"She's written you already, hasn't she?" he asked.
Hermione nodded. "A few days ago. Go on and open it."
He sighed. "At least it's not a howler."
"She wasn't angry, Harry. Not really. More disappointed."
"That was you. Her favorite student. Mine is going to be something else altogether, I assure you."
"She always liked you. You brought back the House Cup and let her gloat over Snape for a…" Hermione voice faded as she thought of the apparent defection of the Head of Slytherin back to the company of the Death Eaters. "Just open it."
He set his mug down and slit the flap of the envelope, his face still.
Dear Mr. Potter,
I am in receipt of your letter of the 26th of August. I confess that I have been reluctant to respond in the hopes I would receive another rescinding your decision prior to September 1st.
I am pleased to tell you, however, that as I sat down to write and question your sanity this morning a voice I have been greatly anxious to hear spoke out at last from the wall of my new office.
`For Merlin's sake, Minerva,' it said. `Leave the poor boy alone. He's got quite enough to be going on with and he knows what he needs to do.'
Yes, Harry, Dumbledore has spoken from his portrait at last. He seems very tired and immediately went back to sleep, but generally once the process has begun it does not take too long for portrait to become accustomed to it's new situation and keep more regular hours. I was certain that you would wish to know. Even though you have chosen not to attend Hogwarts this year I would be pleased to meet with you personally to discuss potential lines of ongoing study I believe might be of interest to you as you attempt to complete the task you mentioned. If I do not hear by return of owl that another time is preferable I shall expect to see you in my office at 10am on Monday September 20. I feel I should point out to you that this is the day after Miss Granger's birthday.
Yours sincerely
Minerva McGonagall
"Dumbledore's portrait talked to her this morning," Harry related to her.
Hermione's eyes widened. "That's wonderful news! Maybe this means there'll be a new leader for the Order soon as well."
"That would be a relief, depending on who it is," Harry agreed. "I think you're right about things picking up soon."
"Has your scar been troubling you?"
Harry shook his head. "No. I think he's pretty careful to block me right out these days. Much as he enjoyed how much it hurt me, he realized he was giving too much away with it."
"Harry," Hermione said carefully, "I think it may be time to tell someone else about what we're doing. Just in case something happens, you know. We don't want it all to go to waste and it would be a huge boost to Voldemort if no one else knew about it or they had to start all over again."
Harry snorted. "All over again? We've got one horcrux we can't even destroy so far."
"I think we should tell Lupin. And Tonks, of course."
Harry was quiet a moment, thinking, aware she was watching him through her lashes despite her casual gaze at the headlines of the Daily Prophet. He knew Hermione could probably read faster than that if the paper had been printed in Ancient Runes.
"Is that really fair to Lupin?" he asked. "He's got enough complications in his life right now, including Tonks. I can't see as he'd want to be in the middle of this."
`You can hardly call Tonks a complication!" Hermione said indignantly. "She loves him!"
Harry eyed Hermione dubiously, his feeling clear. At least he had the sense not to say it. "Look, Dumbledore told me not to say anything to anyone except you and Ron. Let's wait and see what his portrait has to say first, please?"
She nodded her acquiescence. "Alright. Did Professor McGonagall say when you could go and see it?"
"The twentieth of September. She erm… reminded me that it was the day after your birthday. Is there anything you'd especially like to do this year?"
Hermione's level brown eyes were watching him. He met them with his own, but felt the familiar sense of failing her somehow. What did she want from him? She was his best friend, he'd give her anything, if he only bloody knew what it was she was looking for…
"Surprise me," she said.
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Hermione woke abruptly to pitch darkness. The house was silent, but Crookshanks' head was raised, ears pricked, at the foot of her bed and she knew somehow that it was a sound in the house that had woken her; familiar as Crookshanks was he didn't share her dreams. That she knew of, anyway.
She heard it again then, an abruptly stifled cry that sounded like an animal of some sort. This time it was followed by the soft sounds of footsteps on the stairs and the muffled closing of a door. She sat up and slid from her bed, reaching for her wand.
"Lumos," she whispered, padding across her room and opening the door a crack, peering into the hall. Ron's door at the far end was closed but she could still hear the regular sound of his snoring. She was reminded more of a hibernating bear rather than the sharper sound she had first heard; clearly Ron wasn't the source. Checking the opposite direction she noticed a faint band of light under Harry's door. The house was quiet once more; there was no sign of an intruder, no movement above or sound from below. She crept across the hall and rapped softly.
"Harry?" She heard the soft sound of shuffling feet moving like something heavy was being carried and the muffled cry again, more urgent or pleading somehow this time. "Harry? Are you…" Footsteps came toward the door, lighter and more distinct, no longer dragging.
The door opened a crack and Hermione was met by the sight of Tonks, her bubblegum pink hair disheveled and her left cheek smeared with something rust-colored.
Hermione squeaked. She had opened her mouth to say something intelligent, like "Tonks! What are you doing here this time of night?" when her brain supplied the information that the rust colored something was blood and Tonks wasn't opening the door to Harry's room any further than she had to.
"He's going to be alright, I think," Tonks said, correctly interpreting the squeak. "'Lupin's gone to fetch a couple of potions. Why don't you go on back to bed and come see him in the morning."
To her eternal humiliation Hermione squeaked again, but this time it was with bitten back outrage at such a ridiculous dismissal.
"Open the door, Tonks," she managed on her second try.
Tonks shook her head. "Go on Hermione. You don't want… this isn't the kind of thing you saw in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts. It wasn't Voldemort, okay? He ran into a pack of Death Eaters dealing with Mundungus Fletcher. I don't think they even knew it was Harry until it was too late. Lupin and I will deal with it, you can hear all about it in the morning."
"Open the damn door, Tonks!" She managed it with some authority on her first try this time, and saw that Tonks understood she was serious. She stepped back slowly from the door with a sigh, and was saved from being knocked over by Hermione's inward rush only by the fact that she herself tripped on the edge of rug and landed unceremoniously on her bum.
Hermione made to fling herself at the bed but stopped short when her brain caught up with the image her eyes had already taken in; it felt for all the world as if her heart kept going and ended up in her throat, lodged behind her tonsils.
Tonks was right; Hermione was forcibly struck by the reality of the sort of danger they were facing now. No one at Hogwarts was capable of the kind of brutality she saw before her; Harry might have always been accident prone but these wounds were meant to disable, maim or kill. They were magical in nature, clearly the result of spells rather than physical altercation, and gave off a heavy, discernable echo of the forces used to wield them. In other words, highly unpleasant.
And they were all over Harry, who shifted uncomfortably on the bed and made again the sound that had invaded her sleep. His eyes were unfocused but Hermione sensed that he knew she was there; she moved slowly the rest of the way to the bed and dropped down to her knees beside it.
"Harry, I…" He turned his head, gazing intently at her as if from a long way away, then suddenly lifted a shaking hand to the back of her neck and arched up from the bed, his lips meeting hers. Hermione froze for a moment in shock and then just as abruptly melted; his lips moved anxiously across her own and when she felt his tongue slide along her lower one she opened her mouth to him without hesitation.
And felt his tongue carefully transfer some small, hard object from his mouth to hers.
Mission accomplished, she felt his hand disentangle from her hair as he slumped back to the bed. His eyes sought hers again and the words `don't tell… don't tell…' skimmed across the surface of her mind like a gull over waves, although she was certain his lips never moved. She was keeping a close eye on those now.
To borrow a phrase from Ron… bloody hell! The boy could kiss.
"I, uh… gosh, I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't know you guys were… I mean, I thought you were with Ron." Tonks stammered.
"I… we, um. Haven't told anybody." Hermione improvised, trying to speak as naturally as she could while her brain raced. She'd pushed the object under her own tongue but longed to spit it out; whatever it was, Harry was so intent on hiding it that she thought it must have something to do with the Horcruxes. The thought of having a seventh of Voldemort's putrid soul in her mouth, no matter how wonderfully it got there, was gag-making.
Tonks had her wand back out and she murmured an incantation over Harry; Hermione realized she was removing a muffling charm.
"Herms…" Harry said, his voice recognizable at last. "I tried to… son of a TONKS!" Tonks' name was followed by the unmuffled version of the sound that had first woken Hermione; this one caused the hairs on the back of her neck to prickle in sympathy.
His shirt was torn and charred and his chest and shoulders bore several unmistakable welts of varying sizes where spells had lashed their way across him. One in particular, running across his ribs, under his arm and round to his back seemed quite determined to bleed despite Tonks' best efforts to quell it so far. A long, jagged cut trailed up his wand arm from wrist to elbow and there was a still faintly smoking hole in the right hip of his jeans. What seemed to elicit the howl of protest was Tonks' probing of one of his shoulders; from the misshapen state of it Hermione guessed that he had either dislocated it, or lost some bones once again.
"No fears, Harry. Just checking to make sure it's all there. We'll have that fixed up in a jiffy."
Hermione took advantage of Tonks' focus on Harry to spit the small object into her hand and place it carefully in the pocket of her pajamas. She vaguely heard another incantation as she removed her hand from her pocket; there was a faint squelching sound and she saw that Harry's shoulder had returned to its usual shape and Tonks had moved on to look with interest at the cut on his wand arm. Unfortunately Harry's face over her shoulder was now somewhere between deathly white and overdue-to-be-ill green.
"I can tell you he looks better then Mundungus at any rate," Tonks said cheerfully. "Lost a bit of an ear, most of his hair and both eyebrows, he did. Harry yanked him down and a spell flew over his head. Owes Harry his life, according to Kingsley. You know how he's always got some dodgy bit of a deal on the side? Well, tonight, whatever he was selling was something a couple of Death Eaters just couldn't live without. According to Kingsley the DE's didn't get away with whatever it was, either. They're both at St Mungo's with a bad case of full body boils."
"Tonks?" Harry said. Hermione thought his voice was unnatural, even given the situation. She noticed he was starting to sweat as well, his fringe grown wet and sticking to his forehead.
"Remus was on duty with Kingsley when it happened. He Flooed me from the Leaky Cauldron and I apparated right over for Harry. I think we managed to keep the whole thing quiet as possible."
"Tonks?" Harry's teeth were gritted now.
There was a soft pop and Remus Lupin apparated directly into the room. He seemed taken aback to find Hermione there and looked reprovingly at Tonks.
"I though we discussed…"
"Hermione's with Harry now, Remus, I just couldn't," Tonks informed him. "You know how I feel about people in love being together throughout the good and the bad."
"TONKS! Take it back, just take it back or I swear to Merlin you won't live long enough to marry him," Harry howled.
Tonks looked puzzled. Hermione could clearly see that something was wrong, but couldn't put her finger on exactly what. Lupin glanced from his intended to Harry and sighed.
"Dissuo Incantatum," Harry's shoulder dislocated again with another squelch; to Hermione amazement his color almost immediately improved and the rapid breathing slowed.
"Tonks, my love, you are a menace. You put it back wrong, trapped a nerve or something. A good hint is when your patient threatens to kill you something's generally off."
"Sorry, Harry!" Tonks exclaimed, looking genuinely stricken. "You should have said something."
Harry muttered something in which the words `bloody' `word' and `edgewise' figured, the whole being thankfully unintelligible.
"We can't just leave it like that," Hermione protested, thinking longingly of Madam Pomfrey.
Lupin went to stand beside the bed. "James had a wonky shoulder that he could slip in and out of joint almost at will," he informed Harry. "Came in very handy more than once, convincing someone that he was hurt and then popping it back in and firing off a curse while their guard was down. Perhaps you've inherited the same sort of bone structure without realizing it up `til now. Will you let me try what used to work for him if he got it stuck out of place?"
Harry nodded reluctantly.
Lupin reached down and took hold of Harry's upper arm and elbow, placed one knee firmly against his side and without giving any outward sign of warning, pulled and twisted sharply. Unlike its magical counterpart the Muggle version of the operation emitted only a faint click; Harry's mouth opened for a moment as if to cry out but closed again without doing so.
"Better?" Lupin asked.
Harry nodded again and managed a "thanks, Professor."
Lupin laughed, a short, dry, barking sound. "Really, Harry, I taught you for less than a full year three years ago. How is it I still can't convince you to call me Remus?"
He removed several small potion bottles from the pockets of his robes and set them on the table beside Harry's bed.
"What if I help Harry here clean up a bit and you take Hermione and find us all something to drink. I highly recommend something at least slightly alcoholic for young Master Potter."
Tonks nodded her agreement and shooed Hermione out into the hall and down the stairs toward the kitchen. "You've lost that wretched elephants' foot thing," she commented as they went. "Oooh and look! No house elf heads!"
"Harry let Kreacher take them to Hogwarts for company," Hermione said. "Poor things."
"How did Sirius' Mum take that? I'd've thought she'd be screaming still."
Hermione pointed her wand toward the portrait of Mrs. Black; the velvet curtains parted and she heard Tonks catch her breath and begin to laugh.
Harry had carefully painted a thick patch of dull silver tape across the old hag's mouth with magical Portrait Silencing Paint from Fred and George's shop; her black eyes still snapped but little more than a muffled grumbling could be heard.
"Brilliant!" Tonks snorted. "Oh how Sirius would have loved that."
"That's what Harry thought as well," Hermione agreed, drawing the curtains again. They proceeded to the kitchen and Tonks collected glasses and a tray while Hermione found several butterbeers and a half bottle of Ogden's firewhiskey.
"I've brought an extra glass in case Ron wakes up," Tonks informed her as they climbed the stairs again. "So tell me, how long have you and Harry been together?'
Hermione stumbled and only just managed to right herself without breaking any of the bottles. "Er, .." she started.
"He's grown up a treat, Harry," Tonks babbled on happily. "Lovely bum. And those eyes…"
If embarrassment could just be channeled, Hermione thought that at that particular moment she could have blasted twenty horcruxes without blinking.
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