A/N: Wow, usually I space these things out more but since the end is near, sadly, I find that I can barely control the pace with which I write this. Should be good for you, considering my love of cliff-hangers, (I looked it up, sadly there seems to be no cure… other than speedier updates *sigh*) and the fact that I keep creating questions. Hopefully this chapter clears a few more of them up, though by now some of you may have guessed what's up with certain things.
Anyhoo, do read and review. I always smile when I see them. Just ask the many kind people who have already.
Disclaimer: Noticed that I didn't have one in the last chapter, knew I was missing something… oh well, all the characters and other stuff except Emmeline (huggles Emmeline) are JK Rowling's.
*****
The Secrets That We Keep
In the moments that passed like hours after Bellatrix Lestrange breathed her last earthly breath, all in the small room on the Fourth Floor ward stood stunned silent. The Unbreakable Vow, whatever she was supposed to do, she had failed and now she was dead. And not only that, all she had so far managed to tell them, was that, and this was rather confusing, that they had been "barking up the wrong tree" so to speak. After two weeks, after all they had gone through, they had nothing.
But Lupin, was still speaking.
"Harry… the Unbreakable Vow Harry… Draco Harry…" he said, somehow incapable of proper speech.
Harry just stared at him though. They had seen so much in the war already, so very much, but this… this was… Harry could barely think.
And then Tonks decided to help Lupin out, "Harry, Draco's at Headquarters… Harry, Percy's at Headquarters!"
Immediately Harry snapped back to reality, tore his eyes away from the figure on the bed and said, "Oh gods… Emmeline…!"
Violently, pushing and shoving, he forced his way out of the room and took to the stairs. Cantering wildly, he nearly tripped, heart racing, glasses struggling to maintain its grip on his face, trainers sliding on the squeaky clean floor, as he tried to get down to the floor on which Hermione and the others were.
It was only when he got there though that he realised that he could not let Hermione know he was here, that he could not let her know that Emmeline was at home, defenceless with Draco, that she was probably dead too…
Not caring who saw him, he tore into an office, snatched up a handful of Floo Powder, threw some into the fire and went in after. He practically bellowed, "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place!" and waited for the Floo Network to take him home.
Emmeline, he had to get back to Emmeline, he couldn't face Hermione if he didn't get to Emmeline…
He practically fell out of the fireplace unto the cold, stone floor of the kitchen when he got there. It must have felt a personal insult to whatever managed the Floo Network that Harry had had the audacity to shout at them when a simple command would have done. There was no time to mull over this silliness though, as he was up and unto his feet again as quickly as he could, and then racing up out of the basement calling, "Dobby! Emmeline! Dobby, where are you? Emmeline! EMMELINE!"
There was no answer. To his absolute horror, there was no answer…
He was hypersensitive to every movement around him and yet could not detect the slightest trace of Emmeline. Every creak, every groan, every moan of the old house, the muffled, dust raising thuds of feet on the carpet, the sound of his own, anxious breathing, the very pounding of his heart in his chest. He could smell the dust covered cobwebs, he could taste the decay in the air, and he could almost feel the darkness as he finally made it up to the first floor bedrooms and wrenched the door open.
His heart leaped into his throat.
She was not there…
He didn't have to step further into the room an inch to know that Emmeline was not lying in that bed. In the still revolving shadows of the lamp he could see her quilt thrown aside as she had risen from it. Searching for the source of some noise in the night…
He at once turned around and started running through the rooms again, in each one calling, "Emmeline! It's me! Harry! I'm home Emmeline! You can come out now! Emmeline! EMMELINE! COME OUT EMMELINE!"
She was not in the kitchen, the living room, the study, the bathrooms, the library, or the other bedrooms. She was not on the First or Second Floors and Harry hoped he hoped that she was not higher, but no one had answered his calls…
He pelted up the flights to the Third Floor, nothing, Fourth Floor, the same, and on the landing between the Fourth and Fifth Floors he stopped cold.
There was Draco Malfoy, sleek, white blonde hair wildly lying about his head, body fallen sideways with arms outstretched as if they had been grasping something before, and eyes wide open though there was a look of peace on his face. And he was dead.
There was no mistaking this sight; he had seen it before, on Ron…
He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. He just stood there, staring at him, watching as the image of Ron lying that way in the graveyard on a clear morning was superimposed over Draco on the landing of the dimly lit house. Watching as he tried to wake Ron before, and then numbly heading over to Draco and shaking him, "Wake up! Wake up Malfoy! Where's Emmeline! Come on… Draco… you have to wake up… please! You have to tell me where's Emmeline, wake up!"
He grasped the boy's shoulders and pulled him up as best as he could but he was a dead weight and he could barely move him. He remembered attempting the same thing on Ron, it hadn't worked then either. There was no response; there was no movement, nothing…
He released him as soon as this hit him and then backed away slowly, and then raced up the remaining flight to the top floor, hoping, searching for Emmeline. When he met Dobby in the hallway he gave up the search.
He was too late, she was gone, and Percy had her…
Defeated, once again, he sank to his knees and let the tears run slowly down his face.
He could not tell for how long he remained kneeling in that hallway staring at nothing or the house elf. He could not tell when he finally decided to try to wake Dobby, "Ennervate!" and failing that, conjured a blanket over the still form. He could not remember rising, conjuring a stretcher and casting, "Mobilicorpus!" to carry him down and then doing the same to Draco on the landing. He was not even sure when he finally got to the parlour and placed the two bodies on the floor in the middle of the room. It was as if the world had shut him out of it and he was just moving mindlessly along. A zombie, to Emmeline, an Inferi, to him, but both of them did the same thing.
What he would remember, after sitting on a chair in the study like a naughty schoolboy awaiting the headmaster, was the first sound of Hermione's scream.
He was up again and out of the door and down to the kitchen where she had just come through the fireplace with Lupin, Charlie, Mrs Weasley and Tonks. She was fighting with Lupin, hitting him with all the violence she could muster, cursing in language under normal circumstances he knew she would not use, crying, begging, pleading with them to tell her that Emmeline was alright…
When they noticed Harry standing in the doorway, the look of clearest defeat on his face, they couldn't do it. Mrs Weasley actually began to utter softly, "Oh no… oh no… not the child… oh no…"
The others seemed to give up attempting to restrain Hermione and she rushed away from them to Harry to go up to find her sister herself.
Harry stopped her as she got to him, opened his arms and let her run into them and still she tried to get away from him. She struggled against him, her arms swung, slapping him, repeatedly as she cursed, "Let me go! You son of a bitch! You bastard! You bloody bastard! You bloody, son of a bitch! Let me go! You fu…"
She slumped against him and he let her, hoping she would forgive him later for non-verbally stunning her, then he reached down and gathered her up in his arms before finally daring a glance at the others. They were all looking at their feet, though Tonks asked, "Is it true?"
Harry only nodded.
Mrs Weasley, strangely found the need to explain.
"She was going up to tell you… I had seen you go by and told her you were there… so she wanted to… Fleur… it's a boy… another boy…. But when she saw them… she… she wanted… oh no…"
Harry said nothing more to them then. He turned silently around, and shrugging a little to settle her in his arms, carried her up the stairs.
*****
Delirium had set in. Her skin was on fire, her throat parched and her limbs useless, but before her eyes she saw the strangest things.
And she knew what this was, she was delirious.
First there was that light. That brilliant flash of green, brighter than a traffic light, than the grass in the sunlight of summer, than Harry's eyes when he smiled, which came at her before the darkness took over.
Then there was that strange man with the red hair that wildly went round his head, curling, tangling, knotting and swinging or flying, as he moved. He wore the strangest clothes too, robes of black that billowed, swayed or swished in the wind. After the light and a first bit of darkness, he was the first thing she saw, smiling down at her before he lifted her into his arms.
And then there was that feeling of being squeezed, confined within the tiniest of spaces, before everything came out again with a "pop" and they were no longer in that smelly, old, morose house. Well, at least she thought it had been a house, a dark, safe little house.
In this new place though, it was different, so much different. But she didn't have a long enough time to know it completely, she just felt it. She just felt the coolness of night air on her skin, icy hands gripping her small frame, a floating, and then she fell into the darkness again. Maybe when she woke up she would know it better, she would explore like she had done in that house.
In the darkness she knew nothing; there was nothing to see. No sneering, pointy faced boys with grey eyes and white blonde hair who hated when she talked to him and dropped her on her bum at the top of the stairs. No red-haired men with dull brown eyes and icy skin that burned against hers and from which she could almost detect no breath. There were not even the sounds of shouted spells and flashes of light.
She liked the darkness, it was better than her delirium.
But it was not static, it could fall, and it did, once or twice.
There was that first time when the creaking of a rusted old gate pierced it and forced open her eyes. At once she was assaulted by the scent of its metal, the night air and creeping vines on mossy stone. There was the touch of the rich earth when the floating gently ended and the tiny chirrup of a cricket that had landed near her ear. Somewhere in the distance she could hear water serenely lapping at a bank. But the darkness was powerful and it was safe and just as the floating began again, she willingly fell into it.
And then there was that second time.
The floating had ended and was done so long that the darkness noticed and parted. Now though, she was someplace warm.
The walls were rough; she could barely define them, but unto them orange and yellow lights flickered. Beneath her, there was no longer just air, or icy hands or warm earth, but something soft, much softer, blankets. And somewhere out there, if there was an out there, there was the pungent scent of bark, earth and fire. She was not safe, she was sure of it, but the darkness was coming and she effortlessly slipped back in.
*****
In a semi-circle before the blanket-covered bodies they sat in the parlour. There was Mrs Weasley in an arm chair, with Ginny on the arm rest beside her. Tonks and Lupin on the sofa, Moody pacing the floor space behind them and Charlie on a nearby Ottoman. And finally, Harry with Hermione on the loveseat, her head at comfortable rest in his lap while he gently stroked her arm.
There was so much to do, and yet they didn't know where to start. There was no message, no warning, not even a sign that Emmeline would survive the night. There was nothing to tell them whether any attempt at a search would be a wild goose chase or not. And still there was no answer to the main question of all, why, through all this, did he want Hermione.
They had come here to discuss it at first, but since they saw the room's centrepiece words died in their throats. Each ached to move, to do something, anything, and yet couldn't bring themselves to rise from their seats. So then this is how they all had remained, silently hoping, and praying that some part of Percy was still human. That some part of him still would not kill a child.
Moody broke the silence first.
"That woman, she knew something, she knew a lot more than she told us!"
No one offered a comment; they all knew that, it was most obvious now.
"Kept insisting that he was dead, well he clearly isn't, and he's a lot more powerful, how is it that he got into Headquarters? How did he find this place?"
Hermione began to stir in Harry's lap. Mrs Weasley and Ginny flashed quick looks in her direction and Lupin straightened in his seat. Moody kept on speaking.
"He must have given up on the sister so he took the child… he's probably going to use her as bait."
"Alastor…" began Mrs Weasley.
"This may have all been a trap arranged by the both of them… he double-crossed her and now…"
"Alastor…" she pleaded, her voice coming stronger.
"After all of that, after all of that time wasted, she tells us that we've been looking at the wrong person, who else are we supposed to look for, Voldemort?" he continued as if he hadn't heard her.
"Alastor!" she cried at him and he stopped and turned looking at her.
Hermione had come fully awake in Harry's lap and was staring up at him. Her face held an unreadable expression; she reached a hand to Harry's face and gently traced the finger tips down his jaw line. He closed his eyes and bowed his head so that his cheek came into her palm. She drew her hand back then, and slapped him.
No one said a word.
Harry had not flinched when she slapped him. It was as if he had been expecting it. But when she began to sit up, he held her down and said, "Don't."
"Don't look at them," Mrs Weasley echoed, assuming he had been talking of the bodies on the floor.
Hermione protested, "I have to, she's my sister Harry… if I don't find her… she's my sister!"
She gripped his arms and tried to force him off of her but he wouldn't.
"Harry…" she said in a whisper, a plea.
"Hermione, I will find her, I should have been watching her, or I should have taken her with me. This is my fault and I'll bring her back," he said.
To everyone's surprise then, she suddenly applied her teeth to where her hands were and he yanked his arm away so that she was up and off of him in a hurry. She stood up awkwardly then, in her haste to escape and tumbled to the floor, dragging off the blanket on Draco.
"Oh gods…" she managed, when she registered what she had done, and then quickly forced her knuckles into her mouth to suppress the scream that followed immediately after.
"Oh my… oh gods… oh no…!" she screamed and scrambled across the floor away from the bodies and everyone else until she was backed up against the door looking on in wide-eyed horror.
Mrs Weasley stared at the body an instant and then looked away, while Ginny just stared at Draco transfixed. Charlie did not look at all, and all the others turned to the crying girl at the door.
Long glistening tracks of tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto her clothes. Her eyes were reddened and squinting as she began to cry but she wildly looked about her terrified, horrified at what the bodies in the centre of the floor could mean. Her chest heaved as she sobbed into her hands and the groans, the heart-wrenching groans she made sounded through the silent room. She knew well what the bodies implied, and yet she did not, she could not, should not believe it. For Emmeline's sake, she should not believe it…
Harry then, made a move to get to her and suddenly she backed into the door harder and put her hands behind her to brace herself. He paused, for only an instant, before continuing again and then walked over to her, all the while saying, "Hermione… Hermione please… don't Hermione, this is my fault, let me find her… please Hermione, don't…."
He was almost upon her, inches away and then he said the words that he shouldn't, "You know you can't help her… your magic Hermione… let me help her… don't even try it please… Hermione…"
She stopped trying to get away, stood up quickly and lunged at him, causing the others to rise as if to help him, while screaming, "And why is that? This is your fault! This is all your bloody fault! I shouldn't have… I know I shouldn't have… but no, I did, I did, I tried to hide it… this is your fault!"
Because he already blamed himself Harry never questioned this, and only accepted her violent thrashing in his arms as she screamed and hit him and repeating softly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry; I'm so sorry Hermione… I shouldn't have left her behind… I know that… Hermione… please understand… I'm very sorry…"
But then she wrenched herself away and said, "Don't apologise. Oh no, don't apologise for this… this is as much my fault… I shouldn't have…"
Confused, he tried to reason, though with irritation, "Hermione, I'm not that irresponsible, it was… I can't even say it but Hermione I know this is my fault, I will get Emmeline back! I swear it on my life, I will get Emmeline back!"
This though, seemed to add to her ire and Hermione suddenly let out a scream of frustration and pushed him away from her.
"You don't understand!" she cried and then walked past him to look at Draco's body in the centre of the floor.
He did not attempt to follow her this time, but remained as the others staring on. She said nothing though, just stood there looking at Draco, and then finally Harry realised what she was attempting to do.
The edge of the blanket that had fallen free of the body trembled slightly, moved half an inch and then stopped. Hermione closed her eyes and released a sob before kneeling down beside the body and draping the blanket securely over the face. It was a gesture of pity for a former enemy, one who had no doubt begrudgingly saved her life and possibly now her sister's, in the end, but still too, there was another emotion. Sadness at a life abruptly ended, and the pain that it was a reminder of Ron.
"Hermione…" Harry started again.
She stood once more and looked around the room, her eyes falling, and lingering a moment on the blanket that covered Dobby, before returning to Harry.
"You're not sworn on a prophecy to end this. You have no obligation to this. She is my sister Harry, I want to be the one to get her back," she told him.
"You're my family," he said calmly, "and I promised her that she is mine too, I will not argue semantics with you, and I know that there is no prophecy over me this time, but Hermione… you have to let me… I promised."
"No… he won't… not as long as Harry Potter is here to save the day…"
She scoffed and looked away. That simple act infuriated him.
"Okay Hermione, you say I don't understand right, what don't I understand Hermione, what? And don't give me that look, I promised Emmeline that we won't fight again in that house, this is a NEW HOUSE AND SHE ISN'T HERE, WHAT DON'T I UNDERSTAND?" he bellowed.
She shouted back, "I'M BEING PUNISHED HARRY!" and then calming, "Just let me do this, get my sister back myself. It's the price I have to pay for what I've done, just let me be punished."
The steam he had built up to roar at her immediately evaporated. He stared at her in shock, "What? Hermione, what are you talking about? What have you done?"
She continued as before, "We're wasting time Harry! I've done something very bad, something very, very bad, so now I'm paying for it. Now please, let me go find Emmeline!"
Annoyed, Harry said, "Hermione, you haven't done anything wrong, I know you, I've been with you for a long time now, you haven't done anything wrong. If this is about Ron you know full well you didn't do that, you didn't kill him! That man did!"
"YOU DON'T KNOW ME!" she practically screamed. "YOU DON'T KNOW ME AT ALL; YOU DON'T KNOW THE THINGS I'VE DONE!"
"THEN TELL ME DAMN IT! TELL ME WHAT THE HELL HERMIONE GRANGER'S DONE THAT SHE'S BEING PUNISHED FOR IT! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE!" he shouted.
"Remember that secret that I couldn't tell you? Remember that thing that I couldn't say that morning in the kitchen? Well here it is." She stopped a moment and closed her eyes as if to summon her strength, and then said, "You want to know why I ended things with Ron. Why I didn't slap you silly in the shed? Why I'm still talking to you even when my sister is gods know where when you should have been watching her? It's because I love you."
The silence that followed this declaration was loud. It was as if they had been sucked into a vacuum and frozen in place. It filled the room so fast that it threatened to wholly consume them if it went on too long. But Harry had to break it, he didn't understand.
"Hermione… I… I love you too; you're my best friend, my family… I don't understand… what are you trying to say…?"
She gave a mirthless laugh, and with tears flowing freely said, "I'm trying to tell you… that I'm a fool- don't… let me speak- I've been a stupid fool to think that it wasn't true… that I could escape this if I turned to someone else. Harry James Potter, I'm in love with you."
She scoffed at that a little, as if she couldn't believe it herself. Ginny, Mrs Weasley and Tonks were staring at her with wide eyes, Moody looked distinctly uncomfortable and Charlie and Lupin looked down at their hands. Harry though, wasn't sure that he had heard correctly.
Did Hermione just say… did she just say… and now… like this…?
"I've been in love with you since Third Year, do you know that? No, of course you didn't know that, because a girl like me knows how to hide things, not very well, but I know how to hide things from you. And besides, in Third Year it was just a stupid crush anyway. I was fourteen; my last crush had been on Lockhart, so of course my attentions would turn to someone closer to my age next. Oh was I ever wrong."
She moved across the room and sat down on the loveseat and continued. Harry was frozen on the spot.
Now… she was telling him something like this now… after all they had been through… Emmeline… and she were telling him this now…?
"In Fourth Year, that was all it was too and it went away in fact, though not completely, when I was with Viktor. Clearly it had been the stress in Third Year and in Fourth that made me think the way I did about you. That was all it was. Stopping Sirius from killing you and then stopping you from getting yourself killed in the Tri-Wizard Tournament simply awakened some maternal instinct in me. But as I said before, I was wrong, and it all went to hell in Fifth Year when you were with Cho."
Since when… after all this time… now… now she was telling him this…?
"But at the end of Fifth Year, after the Department of Mysteries, I realised something. You are scary. You are a scary human being. If I, at sixteen, let myself feel for you the way I did… I was in for trouble. You could die and leave me behind, all alone with a broken heart. I was too logical for that, I could not let that happen. Girls like me don't get broken hearts because we think before we act, always."
"So, in the summer before we met up again at the Weasleys, I made a decision, I was going to love someone else. Someone who would make me happy, someone who had already showed interest in me once before, someone who would live, it had to be Ron."
"I would, I could love Ron just as easily as I loved you. And I did. But oh what a wonderful fiasco that was from Sixth Year to that time I told him that I couldn't do it anymore just before you went after Voldemort. We were clearly meant to be friends, no matter how necessary it was to stop you from breaking my heart."
"But you know something Harry, you were still breaking my heart, you were still going to break my heart no matter what I did. And there were times, when Ron and I were really happy together, that we really worked. He could make me laugh and forget the world, or make me so exasperated that I wished I could kill him, or make me so… but through all of that, he wasn't you. And we began to drift apart so that by the time we officially broke up we had stopped being together for months. And he was so understanding, that instead of getting mad at me like he should have, he said that for someone constantly lauded as intelligent I could be really thick. He patted me on the head and sent me on my way… gods, I loved Ron… he could be so much smarter than me sometimes…"
Why did she have to tell him this now… why now… why… why had she kept it to herself in the first place… he wouldn't have hurt her… he was her friend… they could have given it a try…
"Things were fine for a while after that. Nothing was wrong between us, we had Horcruxes to find, Voldemort to stop and futures we were too afraid to dream about to get to. But you see I didn't do something, I didn't tell you how I felt. And by that logic, the Fates decided to punish me for keeping it a secret."
"I knew that I really should not tell you, and I was not doing that. I was not going to do that to you when you were clearly going back to Ginny after this. I wasn't going to do that to you when you didn't feel the same. But then it started to affect my magic."
He snapped to attention at that. Hadn't that started after she went to France? Why couldn't she have given him the straight story? Why was she telling him this now?
"I'd seen it, heard of it happening before, so I knew what it was, but I couldn't believe it was happening to me… and I still didn't say a word. And then Ron was killed, another punishment, and we were left with each other; I still didn't say a word then either. But I had an excuse this time, it was inappropriate, and I kept telling myself that. Before the attack at the Burrow, even when there was the English Channel between us, after my parents were killed, and then when Percy came to the house, I still didn't tell you. It was inappropriate, you were friend. The fact that he's hunting me now and took Emmeline goes hand in hand with that… if I had said something before, no matter how you reacted, all of this probably wouldn't have happened. That's what I thought my imagination, that's what I hoped to forget, that's what I knew. I love you, I am in love with you and because I kept it to myself, possibly wasted Ron's, and my, time, I'm being punished. So please Harry… and it doesn't matter if you don't feel the same or not… just let me find my sister. This is my punishment, I want to bear it."
She had not raised her head the entire speech. She just sat there staring at her feet and waiting for them to react. Harry didn't know what to say.
She was telling him this now… only now… after all this time… they could've given it a go… seen what would have happened… and she only told him this now… because she couldn't keep it a secret longer… what the hell was she waiting for…?
Ginny did though.
"What about me? All this time… you knew… you know how I feel… and you… you helped me… but you… you…." She began, "But of course, you weren't really helping me, you were helping yourself… all this time…"
"Oh shut up Ginny!" Hermione snapped, looking up at her, "You got what you wanted didn't you, he was your boyfriend and you had fun! Weren't you listening? I just want to find my sister now, I'll go somewhere, I'll look… I don't even know where to start… but if I'm being punished I might as well get to it right!"
She rose from the loveseat and began to head out of the room but Harry took her hand and drew her back. Clearly the plan at the moment, if she had one, was to run away, and he was not going to let her. When she turned to him perplexed, while trying to stop the flow of tears from her eyes he asked, "Where are you going?"
"To find Emmeline, take her place maybe, if he wants me, he can have me, but not Emmeline," she replied.
Why now… Emmeline… only told me because of Emmeline… we could've given it a go… seen where it would have gone… Ron knew… and didn't care… why…?
Harry shook his head, "If he wants you, he'll have to get in line like everybody else. Emmeline needs you here, and alive and looking for her. Her being taken is not your punishment."
"Harry…" she said, trying to twist free of his grasp, but he held her fast.
"And we have a lot to talk about; you can't possibly tell me something like this and run away. You shouldn't have kept it a secret in the first place." He told her this seriously, but there was no anger.
She tried to twist again, he glared and she gave up. She took a moment to compose herself, finally remembering that they really weren't alone in the room, and said, "Yes, we'll talk. But we have to find Emmeline, I won't… I don't think I'll be alright if we don't find Emmeline…. Tell me everything Bellatrix told you, word for word."
A/N: How was that bit of pumpkin pie? Out of place like a certain hospital scene (though I didn't mind it too much) or needed some snogging?
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