A/N: So…the chapters are becoming increasingly harder to write as the story moves along. In this chapter I begin the resolution (I think there are something like 3 or 4 more chapters left) but I have to be really careful not to give too much away. As some of you know, this is my first time writing a mystery fic, and it's only now that I fully appreciate how difficult it is to pull off. As a result, this chapter seems very angsty and features what I've developed as a really cynical and downtrodden Hermione. I don't really like it, but I'd love to know what you think about everything. Also in here is a previously posted one-shot called "Just Thinking" that I originally planned as a flashback for this fic. Sorry about the long AN. Without further ado, here's chapter 7!
Chapter 7-Dangerously Powerful
Perhaps it was the shock of Harry's news the night before that had rendered Hermione defenseless against the engulfing black cloud of unconsciousness, or perhaps she had been so far along in the natural progression of drunkenness-tipsy, buzzed, unconscious, hungover-that she was simply adhering to the rules as she was wont to do. In any case, her sleep was not what one would call restful, for she began the process of awakening more exhausted than when she had gone to sleep.
In the dim morning light that stealthily eased its way in through the blinds, Hermione stared around her bedroom. The wardrobe doors were closed to hide the few tasteful and practical articles of clothing that hung there. Her gaze slid to where a neatly folded knitted blanket-the first she had ever finished and kept for herself, a relic from her Hogwarts days long ago-rested as it should on the red armchair in the tight corner behind where the door would swing open. The dawn light made the chair look pale and insubstantial, its usually crisp, sharp outline indistinct from the designs of its wallpaper background. Sometimes she would sit there and read over notes on clients after a day with a puzzling session, her mind trying to put all the facts seamlessly together to form both the underlying cause of someone's heartache and the means of alleviating it.
Hermione smiled wryly to herself; her mind was always trying to piece things together, whether it was a riddle to uncover a Stone or a basilisk, or just helping someone, even if that someone was herself. But there would be no more of that, for certainly her boss would see to it that she was sacked-how many other psychotherapists had two patients not only die, but commit suicide right after seeing them?
She heard Harry's worried tone from the night before. Another suicide…It was Adam. Her lips formed the words and she felt a bitter taste fill her mouth. How could such words bring so much pain when they had come from the man she loved?
The clock on her bedside table said that it was still early. She considered skiving off from work; her department was probably doing damage control if the news of Adam's suicide had been leaked to the press. Hermione felt a great surge of pity for Isabelle, who Hermione imagined was probably fielding off dozens of owls from Hermione's other clients. No one would want to be treated by someone who had driven two of her patients to suicide. In fact, she half expected an owl message calling for her immediate resignation any minute. She doubted she had the fight left to protest, whatever her client's "best interests." Perhaps she wasn't cut out for the work after all; she had her own demons to exorcise.
Feeling a quietly accepted sense of defeat, she threw the covers off her and inferred from the pervading stench of smoke that neither of her best friends had thought to-or felt comfortable enough to-remove her clothes from night before at the pub. As she stood up, the blood left her already throbbing and stuffy head and left her dizzily stumbling to the window.
The unusually fine weather from the previous evening had not held; gray and bleak clouds blocked every potential patch of blue sky. She glanced back at the furniture in her bedroom, made brighter by this weak morning light, and put a hand to her eyes. Maybe opening the window was not such a good idea in her condition.
A door down the hall shut softly and footsteps padded lightly toward her room. Hermione considered returning to bed and hiding there for the rest of the day. Today was going to be a day of vulnerable moments and she doubted Harry would enjoy being privy to that-perhaps temporary hibernation was the answer.
She wished she could be angry. Anger was a simpler emotion than grief. She wished she could find a way through the past that seemed to all of a sudden be consuming her very existence. She wished she knew why she couldn't think of anyone or anything besides those who had died and what hand she had played in their death. Why was she tormenting herself?
The footsteps paused just outside her door and Hermione could almost see Harry pressing his ear up against it, trying to surmise her state from what sounds permeated through the wood. What would he conclude by the silence of her gazing out the window? It would say nothing about how she was feeling. It would not tell him how slept or that her dreams had been filled with Adam.
"Do you know how it feels, Hermione, to lose a sibling?" Adam had asked her this on their very first session nearly three years before. She had shaken her head in reply, that void within her where the love for a brother or sister would go pulsating with purpose. No, she knew nothing of siblings. It was difficult for one to lose something one never had in the first place. In her whole life, Hermione had only come across one other person who had understood that pain-without-loss.
Harry.
She remembered when she discovered this fact about her best friend that she had thought she knew everything about.
They had stayed up one night in some old inn outside of Dover. It was late and though the three of them-Hermione, Harry and Ron-were exhausted from Apparating all over the countryside searching for a manor the hoped housed their targeted horcrux, only Ron had drifted off to one of the bedrooms for sleep. Hermione and Harry sat side by side on the hearthrug in silence, leaning their backs and shoulders against the lower part of the couch behind them.
The crackling fire and the trio's constant lack of success was making Hermione lethargic and dull-witted. A sudden snap as the fire devoured a packet of air on the log didn't even make her jump; she doubted she could even raise her wand to defend herself if Voldemort's entire army barged into the inn's little three room cabin.
"We'll try in Sussex again tomorrow," said Harry in the authoritative tone he had adopted since their quest began. She was glad for the injected optimism even if it was forced, for after months with little to guide them but Dumbledore's hunches, Hermione's mood had grown steadily gloomier.
But for Harry, she turned her head toward him and replied with a hearty confidence she did not feel, "All right, can't hurt to be thorough, as Ron would say." Ron had been making up for her noticeable pessimism by putting a positive spin on everything, something none of the trio had anticipated.
Harry returned her smile, but Hermione detected the pain behind it. It brought back the images of the eleven-year-old boy, just discovering himself as a wizard and feeling lost along the way. She marveled at how the years had fallen away with just that one tragic look. She watched his profile as he stared into the flames, his arms crossed tightly over his chest protectively, though his right hand was ever flexed for quick retrieval of his wand should he need it. It was in moments like this when she saw his grief, not during the shouting matches that frequented her fifth year. He was still mourning Dumbledore, Sirius, Cedric, countless others that had yet to fall by Voldemort's hand, those that would surely fall if they failed to defeat him. The two people he so closely resembled but couldn't remember. The words were out of her mouth before she'd even had a chance to think.
"They would be proud of you, you know."
He turned his emerald gaze to her and the confusion that expected to see, once she had gotten over her own shock at her bold words, wasn't there. He knew exactly who she meant.
She was braced to apologize, unsure if she had overstepped even their wide bound of friendship, but Harry waved her off. They settled into a tense silence.
"Do you really think so?" he asked, once more facing her. She felt the cold, hard weight of his doubt pressing into her. This was not the time for light teasing or jokes; Harry did not often invite discussion about his parents and a simple "Of course, don't be silly, Harry," might close him off to her forever.
She placed a hand on his arm, absently adding the feel of the toned muscles under her slender fingers as further evidence of his emergence into manhood, and tried to find the words. Somehow she found herself echoing words she had once said to him long ago. "You're a great wizard, Harry." He smiled, presumably remembering the first time she had said that to him just before he'd gone to face Quirrel. She smiled back, lost for a second in the way that just his grin brightened his entire face, then grew serious. "I never knew your parents, so I could not truthfully say how they would feel. But I do know that they gave me my best friend and that I, at least, am proud of him."
They stared at one another for what felt like an eternity and Hermione thought to herself for the first time that if she had only one view to gaze at for the rest of her life, Harry's green eyes, sparkling with emotion that he did not often share with the world, would be it. Then another log popped, causing the pair to jump slightly apart. Had they been leaning toward each other? Her face blushed at the idea. The moment was gone.
They retreated into themselves once more, and Hermione wondered what her raised heartbeat and flushed cheeks meant for her friendship with Harry.
"Tell me about your parents." Harry's words were spoken as more of a request than a demand, but Hermione suspected that she would have acquiesced either way, to keep the conversation flowing.
So she talked about her family-their jobs, their quirks, their bafflement of her magical abilities though they loved her just the same, family trips to Brighton when she was younger, sitting on her dad's shoulders when they would visit street fairs or watch parades when she was little. She summarized her simple Muggle life for him, bringing as much vigor to her words as she was able, though she doubted he could ever take them for himself as the substitute of the real thing. She glanced at him and knew from his expression that despite the added vitality to her words, he had sensed the emptiness in them.
"Only child?" he asked simply, an understanding half-smile on his face.
She swallowed her reflexive defense of "I had them all to myself," and nodded truthfully to both what he said and what it implied. "I should have liked to be a big sister," she said, sharing one of her dearest secrets for the first time.
"You would have been a great big sister," Harry replied at once, seeming to know that she had never spoken of her wish before.
She was taken aback by the promptness of his answer. "How do you know?" she asked.
He struggled and looked down at his hands clasped in his lap. "Because you're pretty good at bossing me and Ron around," he joked and she cracked a smile at her own expense.
"Well, I think you'd make an excellent big brother," she asserted, nudging him playfully with her shoulder. They lapsed into quiet again, but only briefly. Hermione felt herself inexplicably in the mood for sharing. "When I had first read about twins, I used to look for mine everywhere. I never told anyone, but I always felt like maybe she was near, just out of sight. Darting around the corner just as I'd entered the hallway, a reflection in a windowpane….Why else was I so lonely, if not because my twin couldn't find me? Ordinary people, untwins, seek their soul mate, take lovers, marry. Tormented by their incompleteness, they strive to be part of a pair. Maybe that's just what I was feeling.
"It's hard to be an only child, not just because there's no one to play with. There's no united sibling front when parents are strict, no one to share secrets with, no one to teach things to," she said, her words coming out in quick bursts only to trail off in the end.
"It's not even loss is it?" said Harry when Hermione was finished. She shifted her gaze to regard him quizzically. "You can't lose something you never had," he elaborated.
She frowned, having never considered this. "I wonder if that's better or worse. It's like the pang of loss but without the justification."
Harry nodded. "Exactly," he agreed.
"And it doesn't matter how much you want it, how many nights you spend wishing for it," she said quietly.
"Some things are just out of your control," Harry added cryptically. His brow furrowed and she got the feeling that he was talking about more than just family. She watched as a weight seemed to resettle on his shoulders and she supposed that he was thinking again of the prophecy that had so cruelly directed his life. Oh, that Snape had never heard it! her mind cried, wanting to reach out to her friend and knowing that her desire to comfort him concealed some ulterior motives that she wasn't sure she was ready to think about quite yet.
"We should have talked like this a long time ago," he said, bringing Hermione out of her musings.
She heaved an exaggerated sigh and replied in a blasé manner, "Oh, I think we've been quite occupied with our quest for bits of Dark Lord soul, wouldn't you agree?"
Harry laughed, the sound unfitting to the seriousness behind her words. "But even before then, we've had about six whole years now," he insisted.
"There's always been something, Harry," she pointed out with a hollow laugh. "Basilisks and imposter professors, werewolves and nosy reporters."
"But there are more important things," he said finally, after a lengthy silence punctuated by crackling flame. He didn't seem to realize that he had just quoted her twelve-year-old words once more.
She gave an involuntary yawn and leaned her head back against the seat of the couch. The conversation had buoyed her somehow, despite the heavy subject matter. She had spoken words aloud to Harry that she was sometimes afraid to even voice in her own head, but she knew that Harry wouldn't betray her confidence-even to Ron. And more importantly he understood what she felt and was able to put words to the feeling.
Hermione's thoughts returned to her body's reaction to his close proximity, to her instinctive will to protect him from all hurt, to her want of him to look at her again with that sparking understanding gaze. She set these aside in a safe little corner of her mind, advising herself "For now, keep them here." She could bring them back out and admire them later-when Voldemort was gone and Harry was free of his burden.
"There's always something," she repeated through a yawn, almost to herself. She didn't see Harry looking over at her in puzzlement as she peered through heavily lidded eyes at the dying fire. She was content to do so for now, just to sit and think about everything and nothing with the presence of her best friend at her shoulder. Just thinking.
A small crash followed by a muffled curse from the kitchen startled Hermione from her reminiscences. Hermione supposed that Harry was unsuccessfully preparing breakfast as quietly as he could.
Ignoring the dull persistent throb at her temples which, coupled with slight churning in her stomach, served as a reminder of her night out-as well as the news that sobered her up-Hermione sighed as her thoughts came full circle.
Adam had lost his sister. Charlotte had lost her husband. These were things Hermione didn't understand-who was she fooling? She ran her hands over her face, the movement drawing her gaze to where her reflection in the mirror at her vanity copied her. "I didn't think I can take much more of this," she said to image-Hermione, who nodded back in agreement. She sighed heavily. "Well, time to face the day," she announced, grabbing her robe from her it was slung on the back of the chair at her vanity. The bottom of the robe was pinned beneath a chair leg, so Hermione tugged to free it, accidentally knocking over the chair and her briefcase that had been sitting on it.
Hermione suppressed a huff as parchment went skidding across the carpet. She tossed the robe onto her bed and stooped down to pick up the sheets. It was while she was shuffling them into a neat stack that she noticed something odd about the sheet on top.
The heading of the page indicated that it was a continuation from her notes that she had made weeks before following Charlotte's session. Hermione supposed they must have become separated from the rest of the case file when she had handed it over to her boss. Her writing was neat and without flourish or flowery prose, but every now and then a personal thought was interjected. It conveyed in straightforward English the observations and interpretations of Charlotte's behavior and speech that Hermione committed to parchment the afternoon after meeting Charlotte for the first and last time.
Hermione felt a dull pain in her forehead as she struggled to remember writing the words that she was seeing on the page. Not only could she not remember how her hand had guided the quill but she couldn't remember the very events that it was recounting.
~*~
Mrs. Fairclough-Charlotte-- stopped me just before leaving and inquired whether she could ask me a question. I found the dread that had subsequently percolated up was unfounded when all she asked was whether I've ever been in love. I sensed that she had placed a lot of significance in my answer to this question. No one foreign to the pain of love and loss could ever hope to help another overcome their grief; I think she and I both understand this.
She seems to have loved Mr. Fairclough dearly, but I hope I'm not too hasty to presume that she has already initiated the healing process herself. She seems intent just remembering him; I believe it will be beneficial for her to discuss her husband in greater detail in a setting outside of the war…
~*~
Hermione felt a surge of pain in her forehead and found herself pressing her fingers against it as though that would alleviate the tension building there. She blinked as she read the words in her own hand that directly contradicted what she knew in her mind to be true. At least, what she thought was true.
It was possible that someone else had written it and planted the parchment as some malicious practical joke-anyone could have broken in to her office, and wasn't her enchanted quill just sitting there in her desk drawer? Anyone could have mimicked her writing…
But Hermione somehow doubted that this was the case. An idea was sharpening in her mind, less a conscious thought than a feeling, something completely unconnected to memory: she did write this. Charlotte was intending on returning for another session.
Witnesses changing their testimony, the sudden deaths of Charlotte and Adam, the queer looks from Harry, Mark, and Isabelle when Hermione mentioned a weepy Charlotte, her sudden change of mind where Charlotte was concerned-were they all related? Was she, Hermione, becoming another victim of memory alteration?
Suddenly, the pain in her head escalated to the point where Hermione began to see dark spots at the edges of her vision. This blackness marched resolutely across her field of sight and the sound of her blood rushing through her veins pounded noisily in her ears. She mustered up her remaining cognitive strength and staggered to grab the quill she had seen earlier on her vanity. She could feel darkness beginning to engulf her as she wrote one word-MEMORY-in spiky capitals on the parchment detailing Charlotte's case. The pain increased. She collapsed just as a pair of arms reached out to steady her and the last thing she saw before blacking out were the concerned green eyes of Harry.
~*~
In her sleep Hermione was surprised to find a calming numbness overtaking her. Her head no longer throbbed but instead she felt a blissful relaxation.
"Everything is going to be all right, Hermione," said a familiar disembodied voice. Hermione closed her eyes and smiled, not knowing who was speaking and not caring, but agreeing with them all the same. It was going to be all right.
"Just stop fighting it," the voice told her, lulled her. "It hurts when you fight it."
Hermione nodded. The voice spoke the truth. It did hurt to resist. She should just let whatever it was run its course. Wouldn't it be much easier to obey?
Another, weaker voice: "That's stupid, Hermione. Since when did you forget to question authority?" The question ended in the tell-tale huff that Hermione had come to associate with her own conscience.
Hermione's dream self frowned at this dissention. Come to think, this feeling of sweet powerlessness was familiar-
"No!" came the first voice, its once soothing tone now insistent and commanding. "Listen now: Charlotte Fairclough was unhappy. You couldn't save her-- just like you couldn't save Robert Henderson!"
She gasped, horrified by this brave pronouncement. She shouldn't accept this as truth, should she? The other voice that Hermione recognized as her own, having gained strength, matched the tone of the first. "Don't believe it! Someone is tampering with your mind!"
The vague sense of bliss lifted and Hermione realized why that feeling seemed so familiar-it was the same as when the Imperious curse was removed. She had not long to ponder this revelation when she felt her dream self rising higher and higher as her mind returned to consciousness.
~*~
She came to by degrees. First she noticed the scent of Harry filled her nostrils as she turned to her side and inhaled deeply into an upholstered cushion. Then she heard how the constant pattering of footsteps back and forth behind her stilled. Finally she heard her name being spoken in an anxious question.
"Harry," she replied groggily, her brown eyes snapping open. There was a sense of urgency, something important that she needed to tell him straightaway before it slipped from her memory. But what? The two voices from her dream had waged a war over her recollection of past events-how did it really happen? Which voice should she believe? She thought she knew…
Harry grasped her hand firmly in his. "I'm here, Hermione. What happened?" he asked as his concerned face swam into view. Behind him, Hermione could make out the fiery red hair of Ron.
She squeezed his hand as if to delay his questions for the time. "Harry, listen to me for a second because this is very important. You were right before to notice how odd it was that I changed my mind so extremely about Charlotte. Harry, I think someone is messing with my head, to get me to forget her or to confuse me or something-" Harry sent a panicked glance back toward Ron and opened his mouth to speak. "I'm not crazy, just trust me, okay?"
Harry stared at her for a long moment and then nodded resolutely. "All right, so, someone is messing with your…memory?" he asked uncertainly.
Hermione sighed in relief that he seemed to be following her. "Yes, that's why the way that I remembered Charlotte and our session together kept changing….like your witness' testimonies!" she exclaimed as everything seemed to piece together.
There was a pause as her thoughts settled around in her head to make a clear, logical picture of everything. Ron cleared his throat and hesitantly asked, "What made you figure that out now-that your memory was changed?"
She stopped to consider her answer, though she was unsure how to put it into words. "It was…it felt-just now-like the Imperius curse cast on my mind instead of on my body…This voice kept telling me just give in and believe that Charlotte had poisoned herself because of me. Because I couldn't save her. It wanted me to believe that."
"Oh, Hermione," said Harry, his face filled with pity. He thought that she was reacting to what she had overheard him tell Ron about Adam the night before.
She huffed and pulled her hand from his, using it to push herself up and ignoring the light-headedness that made her head swim. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, forcing herself to calm down and speak rationally to them. She turned slowly to face them and looked them both fully in the face. "This isn't about Adam. At least not fully. Someone out there-" she threw her arm in the direction of the window as though to highlight her point, "is trying to convince me that my clients are killing themselves because of me. They're manipulating not only me and my memory but others' as well. Why else would the testimonies keep changing? Without their evidence and my confirmation that Charlotte was unhappy, there would be no real reason to suspect that she would take her own life. And now I think this someone is trying to do the same thing with Adam."
Her best friends stared at her in silence. Ron glanced repeatedly at the back of Harry's head as though trying to divine his thoughts, but Harry never took his eyes off her. A few seconds later he stood up and walked to where she had stood during her tirade. He placed both hands on her upper arms just below her shoulders and said, "I believe you."
She relaxed against him and looked past him to Ron, who seemed a little shaken. "I was worried for a second that I would have been right all those years in calling you mental," he said finally and the uneasiness dissolved.
After the brief bout of laughter, Hermione once again turned to Harry. "So I suspect that you'll be interviewing witnesses today regarding Adam's case?"
Harry's smile faded and he looked slightly uncomfortable. He reached up to rub the back of his neck and cleared his throat nervously. "Yeah, but it won't be the Aurors, it'll be the MLE. No matter what you say, as far as the Ministry's concerned, Adam Finnin died by poisoning at his own hand. I'm not sure there's any contrary evidence at this point."
Hermione frowned to herself; Harry was right. "But what about Persephone and the other Auror, Doyle? They would certainly think it odd that their witness' stories were changing?"
"Maybe," conceded Harry. He paused to consider her line of questioning and, turning to face her once more, offered, "Okay, I'll take you in with me today and I'll find some way to sneak you into the interrogation room."
Hermione's face broke out into a grin and she suppressed the urge to wrap her arms around him in thanks. His vote of confidence meant more to her than she could say. She understood the risk he was taking involving her in matters that not only were outside of his department but most likely classified as well. And she also knew that he was putting a lot of trust in her after she had been flip-flopping back and forth on her own story. "Thank you, Harry," she said sincerely. "I'm sorry if I frightened you both before, I think my mind was just trying to sort itself out."
Her best friends nodded to pledge their support, although Hermione noticed that Harry had begun thinking ahead to the implications of someone performing memory alteration to cover up deaths. If he accepted what Hermione was saying as the truth, then there was someone dangerously powerful out there running free.
~*~
"Agent Potter, are you cleared for entry on this level?" asked a young, greasy-haired Magical Law Enforcement officer in a quavering voice. Hermione, hidden behind Harry under his invisibility cloak, supposed that the young man had never come across The Harry Potter in his entire life.
Harry, probably anxious to distract the officer from the fact that he was sneaking someone into an interrogation room in which he had no jurisdiction, leveled the man with a steely gaze and answered with an affronted air, "Would I be trying to enter if I wasn't?" Only Hermione could discern from the tenseness of his shoulders that he was nervous about being found out. She felt a rush of affection for him, for believing in her and helping her get to the bottom of whatever was happening.
The MLE officer waved them through, confused at Harry's answering of his question with another question, which in fact wasn't an answer at all. The hallway was wide enough for Hermione and Harry to walk side by side but even for all of his status as a top Auror, Hermione did not dare remove the cloak just yet. She took great care not to swing her briefcase too much lest she reveal her shoes unintentionally. She had brought it along in case she needed to take notes on the proceedings of the interview.
Harry had talked to Persephone before the pair arrived at the Ministry and she found out the location of the interrogation for the witnesses pertaining to the 'Finin case,' as she had called it. They walked mostly in silence broken only when Harry whispered last minute instructions to her out of the corner of his mouth. They had agreed that he would let her into the little anteroom where MLE officers and sometimes Aurors observed the interrogation proceedings from behind the mirror while he went to apprise Persephone of the situation. Hermione was a little uncomfortable with the idea of being left alone, but she comforted herself with the fact that she was invisible-the worst she could do was accidentally step on someone's toes.
"Everything will be all right, Hermione," said Harry reassuringly. She stiffened at his word use, for he had unconsciously echoed the words of the voice in her head. Its owner was responsible for the possible wild goose chase that she was on now. She frowned in puzzlement-who did the voice belong to?
"Okay, through this door," Harry said, magically unlocking the door to the anteroom. One look inside said that it was empty save the enchanted quill and parchment taking down the goings on within the interrogation room. "Brilliant. Okay, you hang tight here and I'll just run and find Persephone. All right?" he said, his eyes trained a little to her left.
She reached out and touched his arm. "Thank you, Harry," she said, gratefully, slipping past him to hide inside the room.
Harry glanced in all directions before shutting the door and jogging the way he had come.
Inside the room, Hermione settled near the opaque end of the mirror to listen in on the interview taking place in the room in front of her. The dialogue of the MLE officer and the witness was magically projected into the anteroom and Hermione inferred by the length of writing on the parchment that the interview had been in progress for some time before her arrival.
The man being interviewed was old and balding, his white hair growing in sparse tufts atop his head. He seemed to be weary of the onslaught of questions. Hermione read over the first part of the parchment and found out that he was a resident of Hogsmeade and, judging by his address, a close neighbor to both Adam and Charlotte.
The Ministry officer paced back and forth across the far side of the white room, stopping once in a while to fire a question. He had the unmistakable behavior of someone new to the job and trying to prove himself. "Mr. O'Connor, you testified last night that Adam Finnin was content in his line of work and appeared to have no grievances which might have led him to take his own life. And just now you say that he never got over the death of his late sister and that he had been experiencing some work-related setbacks.
"Now, it is clear to me that these conditions are mutually exclusive. So, which is in fact, the truth?" the officer demanded.
The old man was not impressed with his questioner's rough tone. "He was still grieving his sister, young man, and I'll thank you to not put words in my mouth. Of course Adam was miserable with his life, I even remember him saying that his therapy at St. Mungo's was a waste of money. And as for that nonsense about contentment and whatnot, it's just that-nonsense. I never would have said it," he replied gruffly, settling back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest.
The Auror looked flabbergasted at him. "Would you like for me to read out your testimony for you, sir? I can assure that you did indeed claim that our classification of this case as a suicide is unfounded." He took a few steps toward the door and Hermione speedily read over the first paragraphs of that parchment before the officer could remove it. She skimmed through the young man's questions, reading the given answers in depth. Slowly she began to see where the testimony began to deviate. It was true; in the beginning of the interview, the old man expressed his surprise in hearing about the death of his good friend. It then continued to suggest that Adam had been unhappy and unstable for years, especially after he lost the full use of his leg and his business began to decline. The picture became bleaker and bleaker with every new piece of evidence, each answer altering it more and more.
So that confirmed it, little by little, the testimony was changing. Each new moment yielded some new, just-remembered evidence that would sway the case. No one just meeting the witness would doubt the veracity of their statements. It was only seeing it as a whole that Hermione was able to picture the evolution of their story. And now she knew that she was not the only one with a modified memory.
Just then the door from the hallway blasted open. Hermione had just enough time to step back and remove her wand her robes before she heard two voices shouting spells in quick succession. "Accio invisibility cloak! Expelliarmus!"
She watched horror as the cloak and her wand flew away from her into the outstretched arms of a bulky man with a low dark brow and a pretty, petite brunette.
"Persephone!" gasped Hermione in relief. "Did Harry find you? You scared me to-"
"Hermione Granger, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice. Doyle, bind her," said Persephone in a rough voice that was barely recognizable from the soft lilting tone Hermione was used to.
Hermione stood there motionlessly as the man she now knew to be Doyle moved toward her to put her hands behind her back. When he seized her briefcase and passed it back to Persephone, she was pulled out of her stupor. "Wait a second! Persephone, what the bloody hell is going on?"
A soft look graced the other woman's face and she looked truly apologetic. "I'm sorry Hermione, but we had a tip. You're really not supposed to be in here anyway."
Doyle cast the spell to bind her wrists together and Hermione got a good look at his stern appearance. Words weren't needed for him to intimidate her. He began to lead her out of the room and the other way from which she had come while Persephone neatly folded and tucked away Hermione's wand and Harry's invisibility cloak. Harry.
"Wait! Does Harry know what's going on? Will he be able to find me?" Hermione asked, digging in her heels to keep from being dragged away.
Doyle gave an extra hard tug and Hermione stumbled after the pair of Aurors. "Oh he'll know soon enough, I expect," he replied with a smirk that Persephone did not return.
Hermione felt the cold fingers of dread creeping up her back. If she had had any doubt that there was something deeper going on beneath all of this, it was thoroughly squashed by now. She only hoped that if she focused on what she had learned in the past few hours, her memory wouldn't be edited further. It was exactly how she knew that it would be.
A/N: So whatcha think?