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Keeping Watch
Chapter Two: Harry
I don't know what I thought it would feel like when I first set foot in the home that I could not even remember. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I didn't think it would hit me so hard. It was all the little signs of life…life that had ended so suddenly…life that had given me life, and I couldn't even remember them at all. All I had of them was some photographs, and the faux-reunion of Erised.
Hermione's arms had engulfed me, welcomed me, surrounded me, and I wished somehow that I could stay there forever. When I felt her tense up, I remembered… she didn't belong to me. She and Ron had obviously been working up to some kind of relationship all through the last school year. At Dumbledore's funeral, I figured they had finally settled it.
But then, Hermione had blushed red, and stammered, and avoided my gaze, and I wondered if I had misunderstood everything.
And even now, when the world I knew was in more danger than it had ever been, when everyone I turned to for advice and answers was gone, when I was as marked for death as if I had a target painted on me…. Even now, there was an elated pound-your-chest kind of happiness that surged through me when she told me that there was nothing going on between her and Ron.
She was my dearest and closest friend, and I had been content with that. I watched her and Ron headed on a collision course with each other, and I had remained calm. I had gone out with Ginny Weasley, and had enjoyed it. I had resigned myself to a platonic friendship with Hermione Granger, and had not even realized that I had done so.
And now, the possibilities spread out in front of me like a panorama.
I thought guiltily of Ron, but then realized that it really didn't matter. At this point, the very beginning of the impossible quest in front of us, there would be no time for romantic relationships for anyone. It could wait…if we survived… but for now, I was content with the potential.
I watched her for a moment, as I lay in the bed. She was hunched in a corner, wand at the ready, eyes probing the darkness. I was so tired; fatigue had leeched into my bones, my heart, my very soul. We were here in this ruined house, Dumbledore was dead, Snape had killed him, and we had to find the horcruxes when we didn't know where they were hidden or what they looked like. Thinking about it made my head ache.
I was at the underground lake again. The bowl sat on the rock in the middle of the shimmering water. It was emitting a faint green glow. Hermione was there, and she turned, a smile on her face.
"We found it, Harry!" and part of the sole of her shoe touched the water…
"No!" I screamed, but no sound came out. And then the water shuddered. Hermione stood, rigid with fear, as the Inferi emerged, hundreds of them, grotesque, twisted, blinded caricatures of that which had once been human.
"Hermione, come on!" I tugged on her arm, urgently, but when she turned to come with me, I saw greenish skin, lank, water-logged hair, and filmy white eyes. She was an Inferius too.
I backed away from her slowly, muttering denials under my breath, and I felt my foot slip. I was falling backwards into the enchanted water. Slimy arms were waiting to grasp me, pull me down, turn me into one of them.
"Wake up, Harry," Hermione said, shaking me. "It was a dream. It was all a dream." I gazed at her, relieved to see that she no longer looked decomposed. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to relax.
"Good news, Harry," Hermione continued brightly. "I found the last horcrux!"
"That's brilliant!" I said, enthusiastically. "Where do we go?" Hermione looked at me oddly, as if I should have figured it out by now.
"Why, right here, of course," she said, and suddenly her wand was leveled at me.
"Hermione, what the hell are you doing?" I asked, and then gaped in horror. Her eyes had turned red, with vertical slits for pupils. Her mouth split in a tight, mirthless smile.
"You are the last Horcrux, Harry. And now you must die." I thrust out my hand to stop her; this was a mistake…Hermione!
I sat up suddenly in bed, sucking in great breaths of stale air, and suddenly wishing that I was outside. Hermione was crouched beside me, one hand laid softly on my shoulder. I clung to her, briefly…she was so real, so alive. She was Hermione, and there was no one else like her.
I started to ask her, "If I make it - ?" She said yes before I could finish the question. I had not even been sure what I was going to say….can I take you to dinner? can we kiss some more? will you marry me? I had not known exactly what I was going to say, and maybe she hadn't either.
But she had accepted.
She had accepted. And I found that harder to believe than anything else, for some reason. I thought of Hermione as she had been since I'd known her, my mind spreading out an array of images. Hermione taking the blame for the incident with the troll, Hermione calmly figuring out which potion was needed to get through the fire, Hermione stiff and frozen, a small piece of paper marked "Pipes" clutched in her hand, Hermione looping the Time Turner around our necks and twisting it three times, Hermione patiently teaching me the Summoning charm before the Tri-Wizard tournament, Hermione clashing with me about the Department of Mysteries, but going with me anyway, Hermione lying prone and still in the floor, hit with Dolohov's curse. I wondered if she realized how much I needed her. I wonder if I realized how much.
I saw the way the moon had shifted in the sky, and knew after that eerie dream of Hermione as an Inferius, that sleep would be a long time coming.
"Get some sleep," I told her. "I'll take this watch."
She had not argued, and I watched her curl herself gracefully into the bed, next to an obliviously snoring Ron. We watched each other for awhile, eyes shadowed in worried, weary faces. Some of the care slipped from her face, as her eyes fluttered shut.
I sat in silence, thinking about the horcruxes, about Voldemort, about Hermione, about my parents. I wondered if they knew I was here. I thought of them as newlyweds, putting shiny dishes in the cupboards, Dad swatting Mum with a dishtowel, relaxing under the willow tree as twilight fell. I envisioned Hermione and I living in a quiet, neat little place, such as this had obviously once been, and the longing for that kind of domestic scene surprised me.
I thought about it wistfully, and wondered if it could ever happen between us, knowing what we were up against, knowing what the odds were that we would both come out of this alive. And if that weren't enough, there was still Ron to deal with.
Hermione had said that there was nothing official between them, but I'd bet my Firebolt that Ron didn't necessarily feel the same way. Ron was loyal to a fault, but still managed to be quick-tempered, over-sensitive, and too competitive. He would see this as some kind of contest…a battle for the affections of Hermione. It would end up being completely ridiculous, and ridiculous was something that we didn't have room enough for on our plate right now.
We would be too busy worrying about survival.
I looked over at my two best friends, sleeping in my parents' bed, and guilt attacked me once again, for even letting them come in the first place. They were an asset; they were a liability. Their loyalty and love would not let them remain behind; my guilt would not allow me to live with myself if they died.
People had been dropping dead around me since I was a baby. But these deaths, even in their hypothetical state, had me in a cold sweat. It was something that I didn't think I could handle.
I had reached a compromise with myself. I would let them accompany me to search for the horcruxes… I could certainly use Hermione and Ron, in trying to determine what and where each horcrux was. But as for the final battle, with Voldemort himself…that was for me alone. I would figure out how to separate myself from them when the time came.
When the time came…
There was, oddly enough, a sort of comfort in the certainty of it. No longer was there any doubt about whether or not I would have to face Voldemort. It would have to be done, and once I had gotten my head around that fact, the inevitability of it lessened the dread. It sounded fatalistic to say, "Let's get it over with," but the words really rose out of a hope that would not be squelched, a hope that maybe, just maybe I might be the victor in all of this…and then perhaps…
There would be Hermione…
She was my constant, my North Star. She had always been there when I needed her, even at the times when Ron had abandoned me. During fourth year, she had been one of the only people who believed me when I said I had not put my name in the Goblet. She had been right about Sirius in the Department of Mysteries; she had been right about the uncertain origins of the Half-Blood Prince's potion book.
She had not been right about Draco Malfoy. The look on her face when she realized that it had been Malfoy who had let the Death Eaters into Hogwart's through the Vanishing Cabinets flashed vividly into my mind. It was not disappointment that she had been wrong, but guilt that she had somehow failed Dumbledore, failed Hogwart's, failed me.
I had wanted to comfort her, to reassure her. I may have known that Malfoy was up to something, but I hadn't been able to stop it from happening. I had been on the tower stairs, frozen, invisible, helpless. And I'd watched Dumbledore die. I'd watched as every suspicion I'd ever had about Snape was vindicated in one fell swoop.
I remembered how I'd felt as I pelted across the grounds desperately trying to catch Snape, how I hadn't been able to make even one spell connect. My foolish hope sputtered a little… if I couldn't defeat Snape, how could I hope to defeat Voldemort?
At least we had the advantage of surprise. Dumbledore had not believed that Voldemort was aware of either destruction of two of the horcruxes, or that the locket had been removed from its hiding place, or that we were on the hunt for the others. And I figured we had yet a little more time.
When we did not show up for the start of term at Hogwart's… then he would know. He would know that we were looking for something, looking for him, and that we were no longer under the protection of the castle or of the Order.
We had a month. I had gone to the Dursleys' as I had promised Dumbledore, leaving only to attend Bill and Fleur's wedding. Ron and Hermione had remained with me, something that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had grown positively apoplectic about, especially after Hermione magically enlarged the tiny bedroom. Until I explained that Ron and Hermione were of age, and could perform any kind of magic they so desired. And until I promised that I would be out of that house forever the day I turned seventeen.
I had kept my promise. At 12:01 on July 31st, I had had my trunk packed and ready to go. We spent my birthday at the Burrow. On August 1st, I passed my Apparition test, and we traveled to London to visit with Hermione's parents. They were surprisingly calm about the whole thing, considering they were Muggles, whose magical daughter was dropping out of her last year of school, and gallivanting around England with a boy with a death warrant on his head.
And now we were here.
Here…in this ruined house, a place I had no memory of, where I had lived with people I had no memory of. Suddenly I thought of my earlier fantasy of my parents in this house, the one of idyllic domestic tranquility, putting dishes away.
That was inaccurate, I realized abruptly. Voldemort had already been amassing support; the danger had already been mounting. This house would have been warded securely; people like Lupin and Sirius would have had security questions, much like Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's rather embarrassing ones. There would have been secret meetings, Order meetings. They would have read the Prophet anxiously each day, wondering if anyone they knew had been killed. I wondered if perhaps Mum had been upset when she learned she was pregnant, worried about how she would keep a baby safe in a world like that.
I smiled then, just a little. She had kept me more safe than she knew. It was her love for me that had kept me alive, for seventeen years. And now…
Maybe soon I would be able to repay her debt.
I heard the wind rustling the long droopy branches of the willow tree outside. Branches that hung just above where my parents had been buried. Tomorrow, when it was light, I would go out and see them... say goodbye before we started out on our quest.
The old house moaned mournfully as the wind rushed through. Fatigued and splintered wood shrieked in protest, and it sent chills up my spine. The edge of the room, where the rest of the house fell off into blackness, looked vaguely menacing.
Anything could be down there. That brought back to mind the unsettling image of Hermione, milky-eyed and slack-jawed, an Inferius…dead, but yet not dead.
I stood abruptly, and dropped my wand.
The clatter rattled loudly over the whistle of the wind, and Hermione turned suddenly in her sleep, although she did not wake.
I picked my wand up, cursing myself under my breath. What was I going to do if Voldemort showed up, drop my wand and wet myself? And here I was, scared by some wind and creaking house.
Not Harry! Not Harry! A woman's shriek sounded a siren call in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, and pressed my forehead to one palm. The nightmares were bad enough; was I going to start having them when I was awake as well?
Not Harry! A baby wailed in protest. Someone was laughing.
Ron sat up quickly, sputtering with a mouthful of Hermione's hair. He brushed away the clinging hair, with a bewildered look on his face.
"I dreamt that Crookshanks was attacking me," he said, and then must have noticed my face. "Harry, what's wrong?"
"Nothing…nothing," I assured him quickly, shuddering involuntarily. "This - this house is just getting to me, that's all."
Ron looked around dubiously, "I can't understand why," he said sarcastically.
"I keep hearing…my mother screaming," I said. Ron gave me that look that he reserves for people who he thinks have gone nutters.
"Here," Ron said, heaving himself up out of bed, and putting his shoes back on. "Sleep," he jerked his head toward the spot he had just vacated. "I'll watch until morning."
I thought about protesting, but found myself nodding gratefully. The moon had gone behind the trees mostly, and the room was getting darker.
"Check the wards," I said shortly, the words coming out like more of an order than I meant them to.
Ron nodded, getting his wand out of his pocket. I saw him disable a ward, and lean out of the open window. Outside, something glowed a shimmery blue, as he checked the perimeter.
I was asleep almost before my head hit the ancient mattress.
TBC
I haven't gotten too many reviews on this one, but I hope everyone is liking it. It's just a little fic…mostly characterization, no plot to speak of. One of the reviewers called it "deep fluff", and I think that's an accurate description.
Enjoy. One more part to come, from Ron's POV.
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