A/N: All Aboard! Attention all passengers of Aftermath Transit. During this chapter there will be frequent trips to the Department of Mysteries Back-story. As such, all passengers are reminded to keep all appendages, children, hand-held luggage and/or pets within the compartments at all times. Aftermath Transit will not be held responsible for any injuries or losses sustained otherwise. Now sit back, strap in and enjoy the ride. Thank you.
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine, but I am eternally jealous.
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The Strange Tale of Ms Granger and Mr Hyde
Someone was talking. Emerging from that dark, chilly place of her dreams where the only other sign of existence was the throbbing pain in her side, that was the first thing she knew. Someone was talking… speaking in low, but angry tones, raging at some unseen someone else.
Hermione tried to adjust her position on her cold stone bed and failed miserably. She was still too weak.
It was uncomfortable and uncompromising, as stone usually is, forcing her upright so that spasmodic pains reverberated through her chest and waist. A night wind cut sharply at her warmed flesh and brought to her nostrils the smell of blood, burnt flesh and death. It was the smell of the battlefield and she was in the middle of one, and even worse, it was in the midst of a graveyard.
She didn't want to think of how she had ended up unconscious here. It was not that she was afraid of the graveyard, though any reasonable person who knew the workings of the Wizarding world should have been; it was just that she hated to know that she had been unconscious through the battle. She could have helped, it was just her and Ron here and she had left him alone.
But then, it was a tad difficult to escape the full blow of the "Impedimenta!" that had hit her in the back and sent her flying back amongst the tombstones. The coward who had hit her must have been overjoyed when his spell connected. He'd better pray to whatever deities he knew that she never met up with him again. She knew some spells now that they definitely didn't teach at Hogwarts.
That brought out a conscious thought, Ron.
She hoped that he was alright. Last she had seen of him, he had been fighting with the Inferi, holding them off with flames from his wand. She had to tell him sometime that the flames and his hair almost matched colour for colour.
Pondering this though, was not answering the all important main questions. Where was Ron, who was talking, and for that matter, why were they angry?
Opening her eyes now, as she so wanted to do, proved more difficult than she imagined. Her lids felt heavy, there was a strange weight on her chest and the rest of her body refused to cooperate. If she wanted to get up she just might have to cast a spell on herself and with her flaccid limbs at the moment, she doubted she could manage it. But there were the voices…
Their owners were so close by that in the chill she could feel their body heat, and yet still they were angrily talking.
And then she heard the name that forced into consciousness her absent mind.
Harry.
One of the voices had mentioned Harry.
Almost at once her eyes fluttered open and she struggled, and failed, to suppress the moan that came with it. But none of the speakers took heed. Too engrossed with their verbal sparring were they.
They had mentioned Harry though, and because of it she needed to know more.
Was he alright?
Had he won?
Had they won?
Oh no, he lost didn't he?
He killed Voldemort but he died didn't he?
Oh no, she couldn't… she couldn't bear to think it… While he needed them she had been lying here useless. His noble nature meant that he probably had left her be and now… and now…
If he was dead… then she was too…
And then finally her vision cleared from the hazy world it was before. At once her breath caught in her throat.
This was not possible.
There was no way…
Harry was never more torn than in the seconds after Charlie said those three little words and he was holding the crying and apparently more cooperative Hermione in his arms.
On both sides were moments he had just been waiting for. The capture of Bellatrix Lestrange, that woman he hated with a passion so intense he had been planning her murder, along with that of her nephew, since the night she killed Sirius.
He could almost see her interrogation, but this time not at Grimmauld Place, where they tortured the answers they wanted out of her. She would scream in agony, beg in that annoying babying voice, and bitterly curse them like Mrs Black's painting.
And it would all be to no avail.
He would be right there with them, just waiting for his chance, the chance where he would take it too far and end up happy in Azkaban.
Well, at least that was how his imagination had held it.
And then there was Hermione.
She had been his best friend for a long time now, and all the while had had the guise of sanity. She had always been a sweet-tempered girl, to quote his other best friend, and rarely had she ever acted as anything but a model human being. And now in the past few weeks she had been acting most errant.
She had gone from this headstrong young woman to the weepy girl he couldn't handle. The one, who cried in bathrooms, performed badly and had the audacity to be snappish about it after. She was an emotional wreck, made rash, disastrous decisions to the detriment of others and went from rendering him speechless to grating on his nerves.
She was Cho.
Oh how she would have hated that comparison but that was the price she would pay. She wasn't Hermione anymore, she was someone else.
Here at last was the opportunity to get the answers he had been hoping for from the two sides for what felt like forever. There would be crying, angry shouting and apologies all round, jail terms for Bellatrix, but in the end they would have the truth. He could almost taste it now.
He had just never imagined it happening at the same time.
Charlie's head in the flames was speaking again, apparently impatient at being ignored, "Didn't you lot hear me, they've caught Bellatrix Lestrange with Death Eaters in Knockturn Alley. Someone left her in a flat there…"
At this, Lupin, who was apparently the only one capable of forming a coherent sentence asked, "What… what do you mean "left"?"
"That's the best description you could come up with without getting sick… she's a right mess you see. Someone probably lured her into it and… well…" Charlie explained.
"It was a trap?" asked Moody.
"More or less… she's on her way to St Mungo's under heavy guard now… the Healers there might be able to keep her alive for as long as it takes, but they don't think it will be for long," he replied.
At once Moody turned to the fire, "I'm coming there, she's a dangerous woman, and you're going to need all the help you can get."
Tonks turned to Moody, her mouth twitching slightly as she bit back her amusement, "But didn't you hear she's not going anywhere?"
"That's a trick, never trust a Death Eater, and especially her… are the rest of you coming too?" he asked, looking back at her and Lupin and… Harry's heart fell… him too.
Lupin and Tonks turned to him and he looked at Hermione, who had now stopped crying and was sitting on her haunches staring at a spot on the floor. Her body heaved feebly as she stifled her tears, her brow furrowed slightly as she fell into her thoughts and he knew that she was ready to talk. If he left her now there was no telling whether she would be ready ever again. Whether or not she would even speak at all when left to the mercies of Mrs Weasley, who had taken a seat nearby, and Ginny, who was staring at her with a look he particularly didn't like. He knew at once the decision he had to make.
As Lupin rose from the floor near them, and Tonks made to go into the flames where Moody had just stepped, he replied, "No, I'll stay here."
"Are you sure?" asked Lupin though the look in his eyes showed that he knew and understood.
"Yeah… it's not like Bellatrix would even talk to me, if she could, it'd probably be a waste of time," he told him, hoping that he could believe it himself.
Lupin accepted his answer with a nod. He had not forgotten the intensity of before; Hermione was speaking some nonsense about seeing Percy. Her sister's confirmation of seeing the aforementioned earlier that day did nothing to help the situation any. And then too, what was she talking about him doing something else?
As the flames in the fireplace roared to life once more and Tonks and then Lupin vanished from the Weasley living room, Harry suddenly felt rather alone. He wished Lupin had stayed; he needed him to hear this too.
Emmeline took a seat on an Ottoman near Mrs Weasley and so now he and Hermione, or rather just Hermione, had an audience.
She had a lot of explaining to do, beginning with what Emmeline had meant when she said she had seen Percy earlier. What did she herself mean when she said that something was not true and that Percy was dead, which they all already knew? And most important of all, though probably to Harry most, why was she acting so strangely.
Suddenly, Hermione stood up and walked to the fireplace where the pictures stood on the mantle. Harry made to go after her, fearing that she would try to Floo out, but paused when she stopped and took down a picture.
She stood looking at it for some time, just staring at the moving figures in them, and then finally, as on that morning in the graveyard, said, "It's true… after all this time, thinking… knowing that I… not wanting to believe… it's true…"
Ron was trying to sit up from the ground where he must have fallen or had been sleeping. There was slight dark red stain on his shirt, though she doubted he had been badly hurt, and his angry voice was hoarse. He was weak and yet he was forcing himself to be angry. Almost as if trying to distract his adversary from her limp form behind him…
Why had she not been paying attention to her surroundings?
But the person he was talking to…
She, Harry and Ron had not been there when it happened. In fact, they only heard about it nearly a week after the incident and then rushed to the Burrow immediately.
Arthur and Percy Weasley had been killed in a late night attack on the Ministry of Magic led by Bellatrix Lestrange. All reports coming from a junior photographer, the sole survivor, claimed that Arthur had actually let in the Death Eaters who would kill them and two others in the room at the time. No one believed him, no one wanted to believe him, and yet the fact that two of the bodies were missing lingered…
And here was Percy, minus his glasses and his usually groomed appearance, though with oddly blank eyes, engaged in a heated argument with Ron.
His face was contorted slightly with his rage, his wand trained directly at his brother, and still, neither of them noticed that she was awake.
And where was Harry?
She could hear snippets of the conversation coming through.
"You could help me…"
"You're not my brother anymore…"
"… or would you rather that she helps me… you never listened before… good advice…"
"You can't… I won't let you… Harry's coming back soon… he'll kill you too…"
"… don't understand… you, she can help… stop this…"
"… you're not Percy anymore…"
And then suddenly, he raised his wand and a brilliant flash of green light went at Ron's head before he had a chance to react. He promptly fell over with his eyes open, dead.
She could contain it no more.
She screamed.
Hermione was speaking again.
"When Harry was fighting Voldemort, Ron and I were in the graveyard nearby… we had let him run on ahead, he had to do it…. There were Death Eaters, but just a few, and… and creatures of… and we had to stop them. But the fight didn't last long you see, someone hit me and Ron was left alone."
She stopped and gave Harry a direct, apologetic look. He wondered if she could see the guilty one on his face then. If she did though she did not acknowledge it and continued.
"When I woke up, the first thing I heard was an argument. Ron was arguing with someone about something, I'm not really sure what, but it sounded intense. And when I looked to find out with whom, it was… it was Percy…"
Mrs Weasley looked up at her, mouth opened slightly, head shaking weakly, and then over to Harry. Ginny was still just staring at Hermione, the look on her face was somewhere between shock and anger.
Emmeline alone looked lost, which was to be expected, but there was no time to explain anything now as Hermione began again.
"They didn't notice me though; even when I made my presence known… they were too busy arguing. The bits of it I heard, probably the end of what had to be a long argument, made no sense to me at all. But I didn't even have the time to try to figure it out before Percy… Percy raised his wand and… killed Ron…. I didn't see anything else after that… I think I must have started screaming, but then everything went black…. When next I opened my eyes Harry was back and trying to get me to wake… to… Ron…"
The declaration that one of her sons had committed fratricide, and unbelievably, one who was supposed to be dead, was too much for Mrs Weasley. She sank her head into her hands and began to cry.
In body rattling sobs she cried while Ginny came over to rub her back. She would not look at him or Hermione as she went either; she just took a seat on the arm of the chair near her mother and tried to comfort her. And nearby, still Emmeline sat confused.
Personally, it surprised Harry that no one, and by that he meant Mrs Weasley, had yet begun to shout that Hermione was a liar. Save for the one moment with Ginny and Emmeline, everyone had been rather accepting of it all.
Maybe they were just too… well, stunned.
Hermione though, was not finished.
"I didn't want to believe it. It was impossible, Percy was dead, we all knew that…. And the dead don't come back, not unless they're ghosts or vampires or… or something else. I thought I had made him up, that my mind wouldn't let me accept that Ron had been killed while I was sleeping… I left the graveyard that morning believing that…."
Harry felt an unnatural constriction in his throat.
"We'll be right here waiting for you when you get back!"
"What took you so long mate?"
What was that old myth? Something about Nero fiddling while Rome burned?
"That lasted a long time that belief, right through all that time in St Mungo's and the funeral too. But it wasn't going to forever. Three days after the funeral, I saw him for the first time since the graveyard… he was standing in the orchard just looking at me while I was writing… he had been there for who knows how long and just waiting for me to look up and see him…. I nearly went mad."
"Hermione… Hermione are you going to come down for dinner tonight?" asked Dr Granger.
No answer.
"Hermione, you have to eat something… you haven't eaten since breakfast…" she tried again.
No answer.
"Hermione Jane, open the door… please…" Dr Granger insisted.
Hermione, seated at the small desk at the window of her room finally raised her head and replied, "Please leave me alone."
Immediately she crumpled the letter on the desk before her, the fiftieth one she had attempted so far today, and threw it in the waste paper basket. Her excuse this time was that she had drooled on it, Harry wouldn't want to read through her drool.
There was a pause, her mother was standing there seemingly contemplating something a moment before she finally said, "Hermione… your friend won't be any more forgiving if you die of starvation."
Hermione didn't answer.
She had long regretted confessing her "sins" to her mother their second night in France, and her mother was making a point of not letting it go. She insisted on trying to help her when Hermione was sure that it was nothing. She was just having a hard time dealing with losing Ron that was all.
The red-haired man, her nightmares, the guilt, the fact that she was slowly losing the ability to perform the simplest of spells, all of that came from losing Ron, her boyfriend. It had happened to Tonks when she couldn't get Lupin to admit to his feelings, and that was all this was too. After all, hadn't she felt claustrophobic in his house with his family and without him? Hadn't Harry felt that way too?
He would not show it but she knew him better than that.
So there was no other explanation save one…
And she wouldn't, she couldn't follow that other option. It was the one that went along the road of teenage, hormone-driven, Third Year delusions….
"Hermione, you need to come down for something to eat. It's not healthy; you know that, we have always taught you to face your problems…" Dr Granger began again through the door but was cut off.
Hermione had taken the time to look out the window as she was thinking before and now screamed, "Mum! He's back! He's outside!"
"He was gone almost immediately after that though. One minute there and the next minute he wasn't. It happened so fast that I guessed I must have dreamed it up and I tried to forget about it. I mean, I was going through a lot, we all were, so my mind was playing tricks… and by the next morning he was forgotten anyway. But he didn't forget me… the next night… he was back again…"
"I tried to pretend that he wasn't real, that he wasn't there and this was just my imagination… like with…. My way of dealing with Ron being gone… but it didn't work. He began to appear in the daylight too… in the shadows of the orchard, in the window of a room, in the backyard under the moonlight… by the end of the week I couldn't take it anymore… I had to leave. I told Ginny, she agreed to help me and then I began to make the arrangements. As much as I wanted to, as much as I knew what I promised, I couldn't do it…"
"I think we're together forever Harry… no, I know it."
Harry made a point of looking away from her. He barely acknowledged the heavy breath she took as her head dropped.
"The day I was going to leave though, as I tried to write a letter to explain why I was going away like a coward, he was there again. He kept staring at me… watching me… probably knowing what I was going to do and all the while I kept telling myself that he wasn't there. Then to further complicate the situation, as if there weren't a few already…. There was that argument downstairs and I knew…. When Harry came back I went out to argue with him and then Draco came and then…. Harry took us away from here, surprisingly back to the very place Ron died and would you believe it… he was there too…. And then I knew I had to go."
Harry still wouldn't look at her. He tried to think of what Lupin and the others were doing now, probably trying to withhold Bellatrix's treatment until she told them everything. He could almost see her terrified face, her baby voice and insanity long gone as the realisation dawned on her that she was going no where.
He could feel Hermione's eyes on him, burning into him, and he still would not look up.
It was the sound of the first "pop" that had alerted Hermione's attention.
Her mother had finally gotten her down to dinner tonight and she sat with them at the table as they sampled this latest discovery of French cuisine her mother had made that day. For a dentist who was mostly concerned with the health of her daughters' teeth she had an eye for food. Their father was by no means better either.
Emmeline was sneaking the gummy bears she had bought out in the town earlier that day under the table.
Just before Hermione put the first spoonful to her mouth she heard it. With the warm, moonlit night and cool night air, her mother had left the windows open to the countryside and nocturnal sounds. They had proven soothing on mostly every night until this one. That "pop" did not belong there.
Before she actually had the time to register it though, she heard more of them and knew at once that they had company.
At once she looked up to her parents, the look on their faces told that they knew it too. She stammered, "I… I can't do anything; I-I-I I'm useless… I…"
Her father rescued her, "Don't worry… we'll think of something, take Emmy and find someplace safe to hide…"
"No! I'm the one they're looking for…" she began to protest, though her voice barely left a whisper.
Her mother shook her head, "And they're not going to find you."
Before she could form another response though, there was a loud crash from below that made Emmeline scream and Hermione had to muffle it by covering her mouth with her hand.
The packet of gummy bears tumbled unto the floor.
And then she was being roughly drawn out of her seat by her father and sent on her way to a hiding place. Her mother was already heading out into the living room to meet their "guests" as Hermione thought, and with certain irony, that her wand was sticking out of her pocket, and she hadn't the power in her to use it.
Harshly, her father suddenly drew her back and shoved both her and Emmeline into the linen closet.
"Daddy, what's going on?" Emmeline demanded, she was shaking in Hermione's arms, her face under her sister's hand wet with tears that had begun the moment she was forced out of the kitchen with her.
"Dad, what are you doing?" Hermione asked, still in that whisper.
"You're not moving fast enough, what do you expect me to tell that friend of yours if they catch you and I just stood there?" he said with a smile she could hear.
Her response was not amused though, "Dad…"
"But in France it was no better you see. He had followed me there too. It took him a while though. Long enough for me to begin to hope that I was free, that I was safe, that I could forget about my failure, forget…. That was foolish though. I had been around Harry long enough to know that once something starts stalking you; it's not likely to stop…."
"But this was Percy you see, Percy! He was the overly ambitious Head Boy with the designs on becoming Minister of Magic! He could be a bit of a snob, he could be annoying, arrogant and obstinate, but he was no murderer. No one, not even myself would ever let me believe that he would… that he could…"
There was a pause, Hermione had fallen into it so abruptly that Harry looked up this time and immediately regretted it. Her eyes were wide as she seemed to realise something, her whole body had begun to shake even before she said aloud, "Oh gods… Harry… Harry… I… I… I led him to them… I made him come after my family…"
"The Nightmare Continues: Attack in France Claims Parents of Friend of Harry Potter!"
Harry didn't want to get up and go to her. He didn't, he honestly didn't.
Mrs Weasley was crying even more now. Silent tears had begun to stream down Ginny's face and she had stopped trying to comfort her mother altogether. She was just looking at Hermione now and on her face there was only pity. She had given up on being angry with her, she now clearly thought her mad.
It was entirely different from the one on Emmeline's.
The small girl looked thoroughly repulsed. If she understood anything at all of what had transpired during the two years her sister had been away to school, suspiciously longer than was necessary by a year, it had to have been that part at the end. This was Hermione's fault.
That was the clearest thing in that furious look in her face, the hating one in her eyes, this was Hermione's fault. Their parents were dead because Hermione had brought the bad man when she came home.
This was all her fault.
Harry really didn't want to go to her, but his traitorous legs took him.
He went right up to her and took her into his arms as she began to cry again. He didn't know what to tell her, what could he say? More than that, he didn't know if he could believe what she was saying. How could he, how could she expect him to understand… save for the nagging voice in his head that reminded him of Emmeline's identification, he couldn't believe this.
But then this was also an explanation.
After weeks of not knowing, wasn't this the answer he wanted? Wasn't this why Hermione had changed altogether? She had seen Ron's murder, was undoubtedly being stalked by the murderer he himself had seen, though not his face, and the trauma had changed her. Wasn't this adequate?
"Who is the "red-haired" man? Why is he haunting my daughter?"
No. It wasn't.
"What happened last year?"
Because something told him that she wasn't telling the exact truth. Something, and he knew it was not Legilimency, knew that she had left gaps in that story somewhere, save for the one he understood as their drinking expedition.
"Harry, Harry I want to leave here… let's get out of here now… please, I want to get out of here now!"
Choosing to ignore this for the time being, he asked, "H-Hermione, why… why, in the midst of this didn't you tell someone? You know I would believe you, you always believed me, why wouldn't I believe you?"
"Why is he haunting my daughter?"
She turned to stare him straight in his eyes, "Because Harry, no one else but I saw him at first… I thought I had made him up… and I didn't want you to believe for some favour, I wanted, if it was true, I wanted… I don't know… I wanted to…"
And suddenly, they were all floored by a soft declaration, "I… I saw him too."
Both he and Hermione turned to the speaker; Ginny was standing with Emmeline and looking too.
It was Mrs Weasley.
"I saw Percy… I… he was outside yesterday… and before that… at Ron's funeral… his face… the look on his face…" she cried.
Her bosom heaved as if under a great strain. Her hands trembled slightly as she put one to her forehead and nervously gripped at her skirt. If ever he had seen her look like this, afraid, upset and guilty, it had to be the night that boggart cornered her at Grimmauld Place. But she hadn't done anything wrong then, he was sure of it, all she had been then was afraid.
She looked at all of them now, her eyes pleading for forgiveness.
And Harry found that he had none.
Irrationally, the anger he had been feeling for Hermione before took control and he nearly shouted at her, "Y-you knew… you knew about Percy and you… you didn't TELL ANYONE?"
Feebly, Ginny called his name, "Harry…" and Emmeline turned to him with her mouth open.
Normally, he would not have dreamed of such a thing, but this was beyond normal. First Percy's dead and then he's alive and then he killed Ron, stalked Hermione and now his mother confesses that she knew about it too. At the time when he learned of this though, Bellatrix Lestrange was lying in a bed at St Mungo's kept alive and he wasn't there to see it.
The world had gone mad.
"HE FOLLOWED HER TO FRANCE! HE KILLED HER FAMILY! HE WAS SPEAKING TO EMMELINE TODAY! WHAT IF HE…? WHAT IF…? WHY…?" he stopped and dropped his voice, remembering at last to whom he was speaking, "Why… why didn't you tell anyone?"
This was insane. That was the only excuse. This entire thing was completely insane.
And then he didn't wait for an answer either. He reached forward and snatched Emmeline's hand, took hold of Hermione with the other and Disapparated.
A/N: Thank you for travelling with Aftermath Transit. Please remember to collect all personal items on the way out. Until next chapter, have a nice day!
If nothing in this is new to you, and especially to izzieq, who scares me into thinking that my mind has been read, (though not on everything, ha!), I'm sorry. Thank you all for reviewing and I hope you liked or at least understood what was going on in this chapter. I'm not sure that I do.
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