Here we go, a note on the italicized colors, as normal Italics are thoughts and or particularly emphazied words, both in dialogue and text. The color are for the most part character specific, black-Harry, blue-Hermione, orange-Ron/Ginny, etc. AS usual I still don't own anything...Kristin, if there are any screwups, it's my fault, please berate me.
Chapter 5: You Can't Go Home Again.
***************************Godric's Hollow, Wales*************************
July 11, 1997
5:15 am
A raging storm was washing over the tiny, Muggle village high up in the hill country on the seashore. The early morning was dark, with nary a streetlight or porch lamp in sight, the power had gone out several hours ago, and no one from the local co-op had yet appeared to fix it. CRACK, Three figures appeared in the middle of the empty street on the very edge of town, carving out gaps in the sheets of water falling from the skies with their bodies. "Bloody Hell, Harry." Ron snapped as he glanced over at his friends, "you didn't say it would be raining."
Hermione rolled her eyes as she dropped her arm from Harry's and stepped away from their Side-Along Apparition arrival spot. She swept suddenly sodden hair from her eyes and didn't even bother to raise the hood on her cloak. "Like he checked the weather on the wireless before we left Ron." She turned on him, "we weren't making any noise, remember?"
"Come on you two." Harry sighed as he started to walk down the lane. They walked almost a mile in the pouring rain before arriving at a wrought iron gate, rusted shut and overgrown with ivy. Harry's wand flicked and the gate opened with a loud, squelching sound. A brief grin crossed his lips as he heard Hermione's muttered "reparo" on the gate as she passed through. It closed much quieter than it had opened when Ron closed it from sheer habit.
A crack of lighting illuminated the sight of a torn and shattered, once whitewashed, house and Harry stopped abruptly. He looked up at the burnt and shattered top floor, the blown-in front door and gulped. Behind his back, Ron and Hermione shared a glance and came forward as one, to stand at Harry's shoulders. He gave each of them a small smile and together they stepped forward. A slight tingle of static ran down their skin and danced in the small hairs at the back of their necks. Harry glanced at Hermione, she shrugged; there shouldn't be active wards after all of this time with no occupant.
His hand was shaking slightly as he placed it on the empty doorframe and looked into the torn and shattered front room. A large indentation was visible on the stained plaster on the far wall, and a dark smear of, something, was on the carpet at his feet. He stepped inside and felt the eyes of both of his friends on him as he stepped around an overturned and ripped couch. Hermione's boots made a slight crackling sound as she tread over some broken glass to stand at Harry's side as he stood at the foot of the stairs looking upward. Her eyes flicked back to Ron and he nodded, mouthing, "I'll look around down here." He was already pulling his wand and muttering a charm that Hermione had hurriedly taught the boys this morning, one that would detect aberrant magical signatures. Of course, if it would even work here was a good question as Harry's own signature, as indeed those of the other two, weren't quite normal for seventeen year olds, or almost seventeen years in Harry's case.
Harry didn't question the soft tread behind his as he eased up stairs that had last seen the heavy tread of frantic rescuers, terrified that all was lost.
Harry didn't make a sound as he walked into his parents' bedroom. A stained and age darkened coverlet in Gryffindor colors was laying crumpled at the foot of the bed. The large, four poster bed itself was broken and shattered as it sat under soot colored walls. A large hole in the wall at one corner of the room revealed a black, rolling, stormy sky. Harry walked silently over to the broken, bay window at the back of the room, that the bed had once looked out over commandingly. In the gradually lightening early morning, vague shapes of miles and miles of hills and forests could be made out, while off to the side something else, maybe the seashore, was slightly visible. Hermione stood at the entrance to the room, her hands covering her mouth as tears threatened to come forth.
She stepped aside quickly as Harry hurried out of the room and her back hit the wall, hard. She leaned against it for a long, long moment before following Harry.
She found him, standing in the middle of the floor of the room next door, and the tears did come. He was bent over slightly, in front of the remains of an old, broken crib. A small, blue blanket was clutched in his fist and tiny, gold snitches could still be seen as they swept around the cloth. Faded, moving, murals of Quidditch pitches, unicorns and happy hippogriffs and other magical creatures cavorted around the walls. "Mum..." he whispered and Hermione bit her lip until it bled slightly to keep from saying anything.
His eyes turned to the doorway, and somehow she knew he wasn't seeing her. "NO!" He screamed, "NO, you fucking bastard stay away." Hermione dove to the ground as Harry's wand appeared in his hand and a blue bolt snapped over her head and out through a broken window at the end of the hall into the storm. Ron thundered up the stairs, to stop out of sight at Hermione's frantic motion. She eased around behind Harry, and with a deep breath, ran to him and threw her arms around his chest from behind.
"Harry...calm down, l...calm down, its ok, no one is here except me and Ron." She cooed to him, and barely caught his weight as he staggered backwards, his wand falling from suddenly limp fingers. "Shhh, calm down." They eased down to the floor together.
His eyes slowly regained focus behind water stained lenses. His lip trembled as he turned and saw her. "Mione...he was here, mum was here...he..."
"I know, Harry, I know." She shook her head as Ron appeared at the doorway behind his wand. He nodded and left as quietly as he had come. Her hands slowly swept wet bangs from Harry's forehead as they sat on the soggy carpet. She kissed his forehead softly as he rocked in her arms, sobbing silently, just like the Dursleys had taught him.
Hermione walked into the kitchen an hour later. Unlike the rest of the house, this part was mostly clean and dry. Nothing sullied the kitchen save a few cobwebs in the corner. The evidentially remaining, though weakened, house wards had apparently been sufficient to keep any errant flora and fauna out of the house. Ron was sitting with his elbows on a large butcher-block table, under a still hanging rack of pots, nursing a cup of conjured coffee. He summoned one for her as she sat down across from him. "Is he ok?" Ron asked in a small voice.
"No" Hermione replied, truthfully. "But he'll survive."
Ron nodded, "Yeah, that seems to be the case with him...with us I guess." He played with his cup and dug in his pack. He pulled out a paper-wrapped sandwich and pushed it across to her, "here Hermione, eat, we left before breakfast."
She took a bite of the sausage and egg sandwich and eyed him suspiciously, "What about you?" She asked after she swallowed a bite.
"Already did." Ron admitted with no trace of self-consciousness." He took a deep breath, "Hermione, I would have never been jealous of him, had I..."
"I know Ron." She gave him a tired smile, "I know." She reached across and patted his hand for a second before reaching for her sandwich again.
"I guess you saw how the Dursleys treated him?" I never really did, I mean when I did Dad and Gred and Forge were there..."
"I even saw that fucking cupboard Ron...I laid down in it, and I'm like half his size and I barely...fit." She whispered, her eyes were haunted as she looked over at him, "I didn't know, I mean I had heard from him a little and from you and the twins, but...Ron if I had known, really known, the entire Order wouldn't have been enough to keep me from taking him from there. Why the bloody, fucking hell Dumbledore kept him there I don't understand."
Ron snorted softly, "the blood protections...what else Hermy?" She didn't have the heart to glare at him for the hated nickname. "You ever wonder..." Ron got up and walked to the door to the kitchen. He glanced out into the living room to make sure Harry wasn't there. "That if Dumbledore wasn't trying to harden him? To get him ready?"
"And a wonderful fricking job he did of it Ron." She snapped, and gave him an apologetic look; this wasn't his fault. "He couldn't even cry properly for her, Ron. The bloody Dursleys have beaten that out of him."
"I could let you two go onto Grimmauld when we leave and I could stop by Privet Drive on the way back?" Ron asked hopefully, with a slightly hungry look.
Hermione snorted softly, "No that's desert after we kill Voldemort." Ron nodded and didn't even flinch at Tom Riddle's alias. She finished her sandwich and got up to go explore the house.
"Hermione?"
"Yeah Ron?"
"You know, I'm glad that Harry didn't let Ginny come along...not because she's my sister, and we all have about a fifty, fifty chance of getting killed, but..."
"But what Ron?"
Ron took a deep breath and stood back from the table, he paced to the back window overlooking the sodden grounds and his shoulders fell tiredly, "She couldn't have taken it Hermione. Or rather she couldn't have taken Harry, not like this." Hermione gave him a silent nod and left to go check on Harry, "not like you." Ron finished in a whisper.
Hermione was growing slightly frantic, as she could not find Harry in the house. Desperate, her path led her out into the still raging storm. The sheeting rain instantly soaked her to the bone as she ran about. Looking. After another minute she paused and glanced up at a tall hill overlooking the house on one side, and the ocean on another. Her heart fell to her stomach as she saw the dark figure bent low over a pair of harsh white stones set under a tall beech tree.
She ran up the hill, casting a Silencio on her steps so as not to disturb Harry. He was kneeling in front of a pair of white, marble gravestones. The stones were simply marked with James Potter, and Lily Potter, 1981. A small lion was engraved under their names on each of the stones along with the words "only the strongest of hearts can give light to the darkness." A tall, beech tree crouched protectively over the stones, a comfortable looking bench was sat on one side of the tree, a quarter of the way around from the stones, under a carved heart in the bark of the tree with the initials J and L intertwined with a large P. Hermione covered her mouth to keep from weeping again.
"Sorry Hermione." Harry said as she came up behind him with nary a word, or sound to mark her presence. "I just had to..." Rain streamed off his glasses as he turned to look at her. He cleared his throat softly. "Mum, dad, this is Hermione...she's the main reason I'm still alive after all my screw ups." Harry continued to look at Hermione, and his voice faltered, "I wish you were here to meet her." Hermione gave him a small smile as she knelt on the saturated ground in front of him and watched him from about twelve inches away. Her hair was dark brown, almost black with water, and hanging in drenched ringlets around her face. More rain ran off her lashes and down her cheeks as she looked up at him slightly. "I...I guess you should a...ask Sirius, he knew her."
"Oh, Harry" Hermione whispered, and she crumpled into him, her resolve finally broken. For the second time today tears mixed with the rainwater. She could feel heavy drops hitting the top of her head as Harry held on to her for dear life. Her head was tucked under his chin, just like yesterday, but today her face was buried in his drenched jacket, as if she were trusting Harry, even as torn up as he was, to protect her against anything that came their way.
The time that the pair clung to each other under the falling sky might have minutes or hours...they never knew. Finally after that endless period, Harry pulled Hermione to her feet and led her back to the broken house, her hand clutched desperately in his the entire way.
For his part, Ron only handed them dry towels that he had acquired from somewhere and led them into a back room, maybe James' den from the age-tarnished and faded Quidditch posters and trophies on the wall. On one wall, set proudly in the exact center, a row of various diplomas and awards hung in two columns, one for Lily, and one for James. Copies of their Heads' papers, their NEWT degrees, an advanced degree for Lily from Stonehenge University, their Auror graduation diplomas and still others. Ron had already cleared a large space on the floor for their sleeping bags, and had rolled them out. Hermione's was between the boys.
Harry dried his hair, making it even messier than it had been before and started walking around the room. Like the kitchen and unlike the rest of the house, this room was oddly undisturbed. Small knick nacs cluttered shelves along with books on several subjects. An old, Wizarding chess set sat on a small table to one side between a cracked leather couch and a wingback chair. The pieces were frozen, not moving, looking just like a Muggle set. The enchantment had worn off years ago.
Harry walked around his father's desk, and looked down at a framed photo of himself in his mother's arms. He carried the picture with him as he sat down on the old couch next to Hermione.
Harry stared at the picture for a long minute as Hermione leaned over his shoulder to see it as well. Finally, he set it aside with a sigh and looked at his friends. "Thanks."
Hermione just nodded, as Ron replied, "Sure mate. Sure."
*************************The Burrow***************************
7:00 am
Ginny awoke from a rather...pleasant dream. She smiled slightly as a fleeting vision of messy hair slipped from her thoughts. She looked over at a cloud of blond hair spread out over a pillow. Luna was asleep on her stomach, and humming a soft tune. Ginny rolled her eyes as she realized it was "Weasley is our King." She laughed softly to herself as she thought of Ron and Luna together, Delusional.
Ginny looked down at an empty cot next to Luna's and sighed. Hermione was always an odd one...getting up early to go to class. She rolled her eyes once more and crossed to her closet, and selected a pair of short, cut-off jean shorts and a thin-strapped tank. Ginny peeled off her pajamas from the night before and slipped the clothes on, not bothering to put anything else on.
She left Luna humming the second chorus and padded up to the boys room. Carefully she eased the door open, just in case for some odd reason Ron was parading around naked. Of course if it were Harry... But she was disappointed. Ginny opened the door fully to discover neither Harry nor Ron sleeping off the effects of yesterday's revelry. She walked into the room, noticing immediately Ron's neatly made bed and the carefully folded blanket at the end of Harry's cot. She glanced around the room for a minute as some odd sense of something missing fought to come to the surface, and then as she looked around Harry's cot and at the foot of Ron's bed she knew. Ron's trunk was gone along with Harry's pack that he had seemed oddly protective of the other day. Her eyes looked over the room more carefully to finally notice an envelope lying on Ron's bright orange pillow.
She gasped and ran over to the bed and tore the envelope open. A single sheet of parchment fell to the bed and she frantically opened it:
If you are reading this, we have left. Please do not try to find us or to interfere, as we are doing something that we must. Merlin willing you will see us on September 1 at King's Cross, but if by some chance this is our last communication, know that we all love you very much.
Harry, Hermione and Ron.
"No" Ginny snapped loudly as she crunched the letter in her fist. She ran out of Ron's room and down to hers. She ran over to Hermione's cot, bumping Luna awake on the way, and noticed for the first time that Hermione's pack, the one that had made interesting sounds when she moved it the other day, was gone.
Luna rolled over on her back, and looked up at her with slightly bloodshot silvery-gray eyes. Her voice was slow, clear and distinct. "What the ruddy hells are you doing Ginny?"
"They're gone."
Luna nodded knowingly as she sat up and her normal dreamy expression settled back over her face. A small smile lit her features. "Yes," she breathed, "I had expected they would. I hope Ronald doesn't get infected by Cornish Ear Mites while he's out on his quest...it would make snogging...annoying."
Ginny didn't bother to hide her eye roll. "Luna my prat of a brother is..."
"Yes, he was very nice to me...he made up for his behavior last year...seemed odd then." She commented, and shrugged as she stood up and casually whipped off her t-shirt and started digging in her bag for a fresh one. Ginny sighed, exasperated, and left the room as Luna sat down in front of the dresser mirror, pulled a brush from the top of her bag and started to brush out her ponytail from last night, having forgotten, or just disregarded the whole shirt concept.
***********************Azkaban, North Sea*****************************
9:00 pm
The final defending Auror crumpled lifelessly at the feet of a dark, cloaked, tall man. A faint red glow leaked from under his hood as he casually waved an ebony, phoenix-cored wand and the massive gates of the prison ground open. Behind the man, a host of dark cloaked shapes slid through the night, passing him and giving him a wide berth.
Screams of utter terror filled the night as silver animals came into being, fought off the cloaked ones for a while, and then faded into nothing. New screams wafted on the damp night air as the Dementors fed on those few who had been able for a brief time to hold them off. The cloaked man passed a man whose very soul was being ripped from him and kept walking though the screams of the dying and soulless and the pleading of Aurors for mercy.
The tall man stepped over a body lying on the step and paused only a heartbeat at a locked, barred door that lead to the interior of the prison. He chuckled softly, an odd-high pitched chuckle, as more screams echoed off the ancient stones of the prison. The glow from under his hood provided more light than the few, meager torches that lit the way as he crossed into the high security ward of the fortress. He casually walked the entire length of a long, echoing passage under the prison to finally stop in a circular room with several, barred cells off of it. A red beam of a stunner shot out from the side and impacted the intruder to no effect other than to cause him to turn to that side, flick his wand, and watch disinterestedly as a green beam snapped across the room with a rush of sound and that Auror died. He fell to the ground, his eyes dead and fixed, his face frozen forever in a mask of instant death.
The dark wizard flicked his wand over the cells and the doors sprang open. Eleven men slowly emerged from the cells led by a tall, narrow-faced man with platinum, almost white-blond hair.
As one, the inmates fell to their knees and prostrated themselves. Long, skeletal hands came up and lowered the hood of a dark cloak. Narrow, cat-pupiled eyes glowed a sullen red as they mutely surveyed the gathered Death Eaters. Flat slits of a nose flared and he nodded happily.
"Do not fail me again Lucius...Antonin" Tom Riddle commanded in a flat, sibilant hiss. "Or I will not be as forgiving...next time." He looked over the gathered dark ones. "But as a reminder of Lord Voldemort's generosity...CRUCIO" A hated, putrid yellow beam fanned over the two at the head of the pack, and pain like the slashing of a thousand red-hot knives ripped through Lucius Malfoy and Antonin Dolohov.
**********************Godric's Hollow*************************
11:00 pm
Ron looked over the chessboard at Harry. His best friend, his brother in all but blood was fading fast. The emotional toll of this visit had so far proven wasteful in the grand scheme of the quest. After Harry had sat dazed for a bit, he had led them on a search of the house and grounds. The fresh memories, ripped from his subconscious into the fore of his mind had led them to follow Voldemort's footsteps that fateful night.
Ron had felt his heart tear as he watched Harry slowly, torturously, follow the path of the Dark Lord from the garden gate to the living room, where traces of his father's ultimately futile fight still remained, and slowly up the stairs to stand once more over the crib that had sheltered him for the first years of his life. He had physically felt everything and anything, searching in vain for some trace of familiarity, such as what he had felt from the diary. Nothing. Ron glanced over to the other arm of the couch, where Hermione was paging through a book of Lily's on Dark Magic Detection, trying to find something that could help.
Her sense of concentration was failing her tonight, however. Every line or two, brown eyes would flick over the top of the page to glance with worried depths at stooped, black haired boy...man. She let out a small sigh and closed her book with a snap. "Ron's right Harry, lets kip out; we can restart in the morning."
"No." Harry replied in frustrated, exhausted voice, "No, You're right Hermione let's go ahead and get some sleep, but we'll leave for Grimmauld in the morning. I don't think there is anything here for us to find any longer."
"I'll take first watch Harry." Ron announced.
"No Ron, I still can't sleep. Go ahead you two, I'll wake you in a few hours." Ron opened his mouth to argue, but stopped as Hermione shook her head. Ron got up with a sigh and stretched out on his bag, and a minute after Harry had nox'ed the lights, a soft snoring sound was coming from a bright orange sleeping bag.
He sat at the window, sitting in the moonlight from the now cleared sky looking out over the lawn for an hour, two. Large brown eyes continued to watch him silently from a bag next to Ron's. She watched as he paced slightly and took sips from a cup of coffee he had conjured in an attempt to stay awake as his exhausted green eyes scanned the landscape warily. Finally she had had enough. Hermione reached out and shook Ron's shoulder hard. Her hand went over his mouth before he could speak and she whispered frantically in his ear. He nodded. Ron yawned, stretched and climbed out of his Chudley Cannons sleeping bag and approached Harry. "Go on Harry, kip out, I have it from here, I'll handle Hermione's shift too." Harry didn't move so Ron physically pushed the smaller teen to his bag next to Hermione. "I'll be fine, I'm going to go fix myself something in the kitchen."
The sound of Ron's footsteps on the hardwood floors faded as he retreated towards the kitchen and his midnight meal. Harry sighed and rolled over on his side to face Hermione. "I know you're awake Hermione."
"Harry you have to go to sleep." Hermione commanded softly. "Please for me. You won't be any use to anyone if you fall asleep on your feet."
"It's just that I keep thinking Mione." Harry replied, darkly. His inky hair looked as if a mad baker had spilled frosting on it as he wrapped his arms around his pillow. "What it was like for mum and dad when he came for them...for me. I just don't want that to happen to you and Ron. To be startled some night by the door being blown into the living room and you throwing your lives away needlessly." Hermione reached out and thumped him on the forehead. "Ow, what was that for?"
"You're being stupid, Harry. It would never be needlessly or uselessly if we stopped or slowed him from getting you. You would do the same for us without a thought, why can't we for you?" She frowned slightly.
"I can't lose you...or Ron, not now." He sighed as she communicated her response with a glance, "yeah I know. It's just that...Hermione, what if I am the seventh Horcrux? I mean he came for me to make the Horcrux, he was going to use the deaths of me and my parents to make it...what else could it be, I mean..." he looked beseechingly at her. "Hermione if you have to, please have Ron do it, I don't want..." he stopped suddenly as Hermione laughed, loudly. "Oh I guess that you find the possibility that you or Ron will have to kill me or I will have to kill myself to destroy Voldemort funny?"
"No, silly, Harry." Hermione replied quietly as her hand reached out and pushed strands of hair out of his eyes, she jerked her hand back quickly as she realized what she was doing. "Harry, Voldemort in his body right now, is the soul that was there when he attacked you as a child correct?"
"Yeah as far as I know." Harry replied, bemused.
"Then you aren't a Horcrux Harry." Hermione replied with utter conviction. Her eyes locked with his in the night, "If you were, then he wouldn't have tried to kill you so many times, it would kind of be defeating the purpose, don't you think?" Harry looked at her in amazement, and a sudden, terrible weight fell from his shoulders, leaving behind only the normal, weight of Atlas he carried around every day.
"Go to sleep Harry." Hermione smirked at him and closed her eyes.
Four and a half hours later Ron watched the sun begin to crest the horizon in the east. It was dawning a clear, perfect day and he took a sip of his enhanced coffee in salute. He wasn't feeling tired at all right now, rather wired in fact, especially after he had used the espresso spell the twins taught had him last fall.
Ron turned around and leaned back against the window frame and regarded his friends. Sometime during the night Harry had half woken, muttering fiercely, until a small hand found his arm in her sleep. I wish Neville or I could calm him that fast from a nightmare I'd have made sleeping in the same room as him for the last few years easier. Ron mused as he took in his former girlfriend for all of three weeks. He grinned to himself as he noticed that sometime after the nightmare, Hermione had rolled in her sleep until she was almost, but not quite sleeping on Harry's shoulder.
Ron looked back out the window and indulged in thoughts of silver moons, and lunar cranes. He let his friends sleep as he walked over to James' desk and borrowed a piece of parchment from Hermione's pack. His tongue hung out of the corner of his mouth as he started writing:
Dear Luna,
A/N: There we go, another chapter down. Next Chapter: a return to Grimmauld Place, Grim discoveries, and realizations.
Or something like that.