AN: Realized I'd forgotten a disclaimer. The characters in this and the previous chapters are not mine. Neither infringement nor profit is among my objectives.
Resistance
Chapter Fifteen: Exile
They arrived in Godric's Hollow with hardly a sound. Hermione and Ron, having jointly Side-Alonged Harry, now stood flanking him closely, wands drawn. Harry's wand was in Hermione's pocket, as further removal from temptation, while the owner of said wand looked decidedly disgruntled. Hermione knew that he was irritated that he needed protection, that he couldn't contribute to their defense, and that they were putting their lives at risk for him.
Like you wouldn't do the same - and more - for us, Hermione thought fondly, glancing at Harry for a moment before turning her attentions to the town.
Nothing stirred. It seemed that nothing even drew breath, and Hermione knew that she was surely holding hers. Godric's Hollow was almost unrecognizable as having ever been any sort of recent civilization at all. The splintered wood of support beams pointed at the darkening sky like accusing fingers. Glassless windows gaped like eye sockets in half-toppled walls. Debris littered the streets, every day objects lying where they had been discarded in haste, or dropped upon their carrier's demise. Papers and trash fluttered in light breeze. Tendrils of mist swirled around the knees of the Trio, adding an otherworldly aura to an already eerie scene. A faint scene wafted on the air - an unpleasant odor reminiscent of gunpowder and sulfur…and something else that Hermione couldn't quite put her finger on.
"Bloody hell," she heard Ron whisper, barely even moving his lips. She held up a cautionary finger in front of her mouth for silence, listening intently. There was nothing. Tonks' hasty monitoring charm had revealed no recent magical activity in the town, though the residue lingering from the village's destruction made the charm's results dodgy at best. Either the Death Eaters were no longer watching the Hollow, or the Trio's presence was so far undetected.
Hermione jerked her head in the direction of the house - Harry's house, she supplied mentally, though she had always had difficulty labeling it as such. They began walking, keeping to the shadows, choosing their steps carefully, unwilling to even light their wand-tips to more securely traverse the uncertain ground. Harry was in the middle, and Ron brought up rear guard, ever so often pivoting watchfully in a complete circle.
On one such circuit, something crunched noisily under his feet, startling all three of them. Upon jumping rather violently, Hermione felt the toe of her shoe connect with something soft, but solid. There was a soft cry, heard clearly in the unnatural silence, and a treble voice called out plaintively,
"Mama…." They all froze, and the frantic glance Hermione hurled over her shoulder ascertained that Harry's face was ashen in the descending darkness. Her eyes roved wildly, searching for this child that had somehow survived the massacre. She risked lighting her wand.
The low light danced off the shattered lenses of the glasses that Ron had stepped on. Then she saw it, and didn't know whether to be relieved or dejected. Her foot had hit a Muggle doll, kicking it a short distance, and causing it to subsequently protest in its one word vocabulary.
"It's a doll - just - just a doll," she gasped, almost breathlessly, without turning back to her best friends. A semi-hysterical laugh trembled on her lips. She edged forward to retrieve it, and when she bent down and picked up the crumpled object, the blue glow of her wand glinted off of something pale, nearly concealed beneath a dense combination of debris and shrubbery, further hidden by the shadows of the stone remnants of a chimney.
There was a tiny, outstretched hand, arm outflung from its hiding place, fingers bloated and slightly flexed. Someone was moaning slightly, almost in protest, and Hermione realized with some surprise that it was she. The doll fell from her lifeless fingers, and wailed again when it hit the ground.
"Hermione?" Harry questioned, reaching her side just in time to support her as she doubled over, retching helplessly. When she straightened up again, one hand pressed to her mouth, he was standing closely by her, one hand at her elbow, and then other brushing her hair back from her clammy face. She suddenly realized the other odor she had smelled…death.
"I'm - I'm sorry, I don't know why I - I mean, I know what he's - what they're capable of…I just - " she stammered, feeling foolish, and watched Harry's eyes drift to the little hand and darken, but he said only,
"I wonder how the Muggle authorities missed that?" and winced over the impersonal last word. His eyes flickered gently up to Hermione's. "You okay?" She nodded again, shakily, and he proceeded over to the place where the hand reached out in death. He lifted some of the wreckage out of the way, and called, "Oy, Ron!" in a low voice.
They conferred together in low mumbles, effectively blocking their view from the little corpse, and Hermione was content, for the moment, to let them do so. She heard Ron clearly at one point.
"Not a mark on her. Had to be Avada Kedavra." She saw Harry's shoulders heave in a deep sigh, as he pushed up off of his haunches and stood.
"Can you levitate her, Ron?" His voice was low and tired. "I know where we can put her." He seemed subdued somehow, as if his earlier triumph with his magic and his shining confidence in her abilities to overcome their problems had faded in the shadow of the stark reality of Godric's Hollow. The little girl's forgotten body seemed to cement that for him.
She didn't really realize what he was talking about until they topped the slight rise, and saw what had once been the home of his babyhood, hidden by a copse of trees on the fringes of town. The small cemetery was within view, separated from the ruins by its white fencing…and by its unmarred appearance, except for two toppled tombstones, shining in the weak moonlight. Hermione thought that one looked as if it had cracked in two where it had fallen. Voldemort must have conjured the ones at the rally, she mused. As they drew nearer, she could see the gashes in the ground, the thrown earth, the two dark holes that they knew were empty. She glanced at Ron, and saw his return look of comprehension. Of course, two ready-made graves, bodies conveniently removed…
They made their way through the cemetery gate, no longer thinking about watchful eyes, feeling somehow safe in assuming that there weren't any. The little girl's blond hair shone in the dimness, and Hermione winced when Ron, trying to steer her through the narrow gate, cracked her head on the post. She felt her gorge rise again, and fought for control, not understanding why she was suddenly going to pieces.
She rubbed clammy palms against her jeans, and felt her rapid breathing slow slightly, once the body had disappeared into the grave that had once housed Lily Potter. Ron almost perfunctorily began to replace the dirt into the hole from whence it had come, gesturing his wand with lazy flicks, his eyes distant. Harry stood next to him, hands bracketed behind him, looking as remote as Ron. Hermione supposed she could understand why. What words were there to say? They didn't know this little girl, her name, how old she was, who her parents were - other than the fact that they were probably dead too. Voldemort - or those following his orders - had killed her, but he had killed many, and would undoubtedly kill others. Hermione's stomach roiled uncomfortably.
She turned her back on the graveyard, and moved down to the far corner, where two segments of white fence met in a pretty column. She wondered at the cemetery being untouched, but figured that Voldemort had no agenda with the dead - save for the two bodies he had disturbed. She leaned over the fence, clutching the railing tightly beneath her hands, striving for a breath of clean air, but there was none to be had. The stench of decay and abandonment was strong. Hermione didn't realize that she was crying until she felt moisture drip on her hands.
"You shouldn't go anywhere alone," came a voice from behind her, almost stammering with uncertainty. Ron. She turned, dashing at the tears with the backs of her hands, her mouth twisting self-consciously, as she peered at her shoes, which were nearly lost in the grass that was starting to look ill-kempt.
"I - I - " she started to defend her actions, but bit off her response, and replied simply, "I know." Ron looked mildly surprised. She raised her eyes to his, and then looked past him to Harry, still standing by his parents' former graves, looking tense and preoccupied. She felt awkward; she and Ron had not had a serious conversation in quite some time, both of them feeling grateful that the war took up so much of their lives that this fact could be overlooked. Are you sleeping with her? Yes. Her face burned, and she was thankful for the darkness.
"We shouldn't stay here in the open. The Death Eaters could have patrols," Ron said, after a constrained silence. Hermione nodded, glad that once again they could allow real life to intercede.
"We should go on to the house," she added inanely, and Ron turned, saying,
"I'll go get Harry."
"No!" she burst out suddenly, over the end of Ron's sentence, startling them both. "I'll - I'll go get him." A flash of hurt glimmered suddenly over Ron's face, vanishing so quickly that she thought she might have imagined it. She could feel his eyes on her back, as she proceeded up the slight rise to where Harry stood.
"Harry?" she ventured in a small voice. When he did not answer, she moved to his side, and threaded her arm through the crook of his. "Harry, come on, love. We should get indoors." Clouds had begun to scud across the sky, obscuring the stars. "It looks like it could rain."
"I wish we knew her name," was all he said. She noticed that he had raised the bottom half of the cracked tombstone, blank white marble, to mark the spot where the girl had been interred.
"So do I," she replied sincerely, her throat hoarse with tears. She tugged on his arm again. "Ron's waiting."
"If I had - " he started, but floundered to a stop. She leaned her head on his shoulder, knowing what he had wanted to say.
"You can't save everybody, Harry."
"It seems I can't save anybody, Hermione," he responded in frustration.
"You saved me," she answered.
"That remains to be seen," he answered, sounding cryptic and downcast.
"You love me," Hermione continued, not to be thusly put off. "Whatever happens next…it's worth it."
"I guess I'm lucky that you're content with so little," he sniped, but sounded a little less dejected. Her eyes went to the half-tombstone positioned crookedly above the repositioned soil, and his gaze followed. "Are you okay? You - I mean - you were - " he gestured back toward the main part of town with one hand, apparently indicating her discovery of the body.
"Oh - yeah, I'm okay," she said in a flustered voice. "A lot - a lot has happened today," she finished lamely. Perhaps it was the knowledge, made visible by the little girl, that no one was safe. She was used to being at risk - but to see the truth so baldly, crumpled and abandoned in a ruined town, that nobody was safe, unless somehow Harry - the man she loved - could rid the world of this evil once and for all … it was unsettling at best, and terrifying in a soul-crippling way at worst.
She looked up at him then, and kissed him, lightly at first, lingering momentarily, and then her cheek slid along his, until her head was cradled on his shoulder. She felt the strength and warmth of his arms around her, and reveled in it.
"I do love you," he said oddly, seeming to realize that he had not agreed, when Hermione had declared that he did. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, as she smiled at him ever so slightly.
"I know." They turned to proceed back to the main gate of the cemetery, and Hermione noticed, with a pang, Ron standing there, with his back studiously turned toward them. He was apparently carefully surveying their surroundings, but was in fact ignoring them so emphatically, that he might as well have been staring at them.
"Ready?" Ron asked a little stiffly, without turning around. Harry delved his hands in his pockets, and looked, without any desire whatsoever, at what was left of the building that had once been his home.
"I guess…" Harry drew out, shuffling his feet in the dirt a little. Hermione eyed him sympathetically, and linked her arm through his, as they exited the cemetery and made their way to the Potter house in silence.
~~**~~
The house was much as they remembered it from the previous summer. More than half wrecked in the battle that claimed James and Lily Potter's lives, the remainder was dangerously unstable and mostly gone over to ivy and weeds. It had been an eyesore to the pretty little village for nearly two decades, but Hermione could understand the reluctance of the villagers to do anything about it. They would have probably been hesitant to go anywhere near it, seeing as how a lovely young couple had been mysteriously murdered there - and their baby vanished into thin air. Plus, she supposed, Harry did actually own it, however ignorant the townspeople might have been of his whereabouts. Now, the point was moot, seeing as how the house looked better than most of what was left of the town.
They had stayed in the cellar last time, and it had made a passable headquarters. The floor of the house had shielded them from most of the elements, and a few well-placed charms did the rest. It also had two exits, one into the house, and one out into the back garden. They had decided against anti-Apparation wards during the horcrux hunt, simply because it blocked them from Apparating in and out as well, and they couldn't very well be seen slinking in and out of the old Potter house. This one lapse in security had been covered by numerous concealing, silencing, and detection charms and wards, both around the house and the village proper, and their stay had passed without incident.
Hermione looked dubiously down into the dark maw of the cellar, after Harry lifted the ramshackle door back from its rusty hinges, which groaned loudly. The overgrown garden, all rustling noises and huge nebulous shapes of darkness, seemed foreboding somehow. Of course, she thought, last time we snuck in to scout out the situation, there were lights in the village and music - someone was having a party - and … and now… Now it was completely different, silent and dark and destroyed and … dangerous, a poised and waiting kind of danger, like an undetected predator content to bide its time before taking down its prey.
Or maybe I've just gone round the twist, she thought derisively, feeling the expectant eyes of her two best friends on her with concern. She shook off the dread, and shot a detection spell into the cavernous blackness. A moment later, a white spark flew back up the shallow stairs and flashed back into the tip of her wand.
"It's clear," she said, and began to trot down the stairs with a determinedly casual air. She knew that Ron and Harry had exchanged glances before following her down the stairs, and she called back softly, without turning around,
"I can feel the worry oozing out of your pores, both of you. I assure you I - " Whatever she might have finished the sentence with was cut off by a crack of breaking wood and a shriek, as she fell.
"Hermione!" She heard Ron and Harry in stereo just above and behind where she lay, cheek against the cool concrete of the cellar, spitting blood out of her mouth.
"Damn, I've split my lip," she said, touching the tender place tentatively with her tongue. She felt Harry's hands on either side of her face, though she could not see him in the inky blackness of the cellar.
"Are you alright? Ron, light your wand," Harry ordered, and Ron did so, it probably not even occurring to him to take exception to Harry's tone.
"That's not all you've split," Ron said, as their eyes recovered from the sudden spray of light. "Stairs are rotted through." She had stepped through - rather than on - the second step from the bottom, and it was only once Ron had said something that the pain began to radiate up her leg and make itself known. She bit back a gasp, and tried to turn over, pushing herself off of her stomach with abraded palms, and trying to extricate her leg from the splintered stair. The pain made her see stars.
"Wait, wait, Hermione. Don't move," Harry said, helping her twist around, as Ron gingerly freed her leg. As careful as the attempt was, Hermione felt the bones grinding against each other, and she felt herself growing dizzy and nauseated.
"Harry, I'm going to - " was all she managed before she threw up again, barely able to lean to one side in time. She felt Harry's cool hands on her temples, as he held her hair back, and she slumped against the comforting wall of his chest. "I hope you're up on your healing spells," she said to Ron, her voice slurring as she struggled to maintain cognizance of anything besides the throbbing pain in her ankle.
"Stun her," she heard Harry say, as if from a great distance. It sounded like Ron was arguing, but the words ran together, soupy and indistinguishable. Harry said something more emphatically, and she felt his hands again, fluttering around her forehead, stroking her hair. Harry knows it hurts. He wants to spare me the pain, while Ron heals my leg. Ron said something else; it sounded like a phonograph playing too slow; then a spell hit her, and everything went black.
~~**~~
When she awakened, her head was pounding, her leg felt stiff and unwieldy, and her mouth tasted like it had been filled with metallic shavings while she slept. She groaned and shifted, but promptly decided that that was a bad idea, as the nausea threatened to well up in her again.
She opened her eyes to see Harry's concerned face hovering above her, and realized that the surface she had her head pillowed against was his lap.
"Hello, you," he said, as if trying to sound flippant, but Hermione could see the concern lurking in his brilliant eyes.
"Which one of you knocked me down the stairs?" she croaked.
"Ron, of course," he answered quickly, and they shared a smile. "Are you really okay?"
"I guess. Feel sort of sick still. Ron fix my leg?" she asked, keeping her questions of few words on purpose.
"Yeah," Harry said. His hands were in her hair again. She felt a fluttery stirring in the pit of her stomach. She craned her neck, attempting to extend her limited view of the cellar, and he gently pushed her back down.
"Where's Ron?"
"Went to do a perimeter," Harry said laconically. Now that they had completed their survey of Godric's Hollow, the next step was to establish subtle detection wards around the town, so that they could be notified the instant anyone approached.
"He shouldn't have gone alone!" Hermione blurted in alarm. Harry cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Who was going to go with him?" he asked, some of the bitterness back in his voice, though it was mostly lost underneath sarcasm. "The Boy Who Just Got Proficient at Wingardium Leviosa, or the girl who just fell down the stairs, broke her leg, and got sick all over the secret hideout?" Hermione raised her eyes to his with a look of chagrin. Of course, he was right. He gave her a smile, albeit a somewhat twisted and wry one, and ran his fingers lightly along her jawline, leaving tingles in their wake. She tilted her head back to regard him more closely, and he leaned down to kiss her.
"Harry, my mouth tastes terrible," she protested weakly. He almost grinned and his eyes twinkled, as he handed her her wand. She flung a coy look up at him, and cast a breath freshening charm on herself, feeling light-headed for an entirely different reason as she saw his eyes darken with longing. When his lips touched hers, she felt her heart skip a beat, and she remembered the elated look on his face from earlier that morning. Hermione, look! It was as if a vista opened up in front of her, and she could see the future that they could have had… dates in London, sharing a banana split at Florean Fortescue's, perhaps a holiday on the continent, or a proposal somewhere terribly romantic.
Someday, Harry! Someday, we'll get that future, she thought fiercely, winding her arms around his neck, and opening her mouth to deepen the kiss. She felt his fingers skim the hem of her shirt, and began to slip upwards; his skin felt blazingly hot against hers. She arched her back a little, allowing him further access, tacitly granting permission.
Just when she thought she would melt into a lovely, warm puddle of Hermione-goo, there was an uncomfortable harrumphing sound from the stairs. She disengaged her mouth from Harry's, and would have propelled herself away from him, but still felt slightly swimmy-headed.
Ron was standing at the bottom of the stairs, having evidently trodden down them carefully, so as not to meet the same fate she had.
"You forgot to put your tie round the door handle, Harry," Ron said, his voice light and casual, but his eyes betraying the truth about how he felt about what he'd seen. Harry sighed, and ran one frustrated hand through his hair, while he helped Hermione into a sitting position with the other. Hermione let out a strangled kind of groan.
"Ron - "
"Perimeter's secure. There's not a soul within at least a half-kilometer of here," he continued in a
business-like way, dropping his knapsack onto the dusty cellar floor with a scuffing noise. He wasn't looking at
them, but there was pain evident in the lines of his spine and shoulders. There was a strained silence. "We should
fix those stairs."
"Ron," Hermione tried again. "If - if it's just going to be us for - for awhile, shouldn't - shouldn't we discuss this?" Ron looked up and met her gaze squarely, his face bland, but his ears red.
"What is there to discuss?" he asked airily. "I love you. So does he." He shrugged. "Only difference is you love him back." He spread his hands in a voila gesture, as if to say, See? Easily summed up.
"I know you think you - " she struggled, but the sudden look of anger on his face made her stop.
"You once said that I had the emotional range of a teaspoon, Hermione. It's one of the only times I've known you to be wrong. I'll be damned if I'll sit here and let you say that I really don't know my own mind - my - my own heart." He cleared his throat abruptly. "I do love you. I've loved you for years, but I was too thick to realize it." He jabbed a sharp glance at Harry. "Reckon I wasn't the only one." Hermione watched Harry meet Ron's eyes for a moment, then lower his gaze to his hands, folded in his lap, white knuckles betraying the unspoken tension he felt. "I know you don't love me, and I'll deal with that. But don't insult me by saying that I don't really love you."
Hermione felt as if she'd been stabbed in the chest by a cruelly honed blade. How could she explain to Ron that she couldn't help how she felt about Harry? Or him? How could she communicate the perplexity of a feeling that seemed to have chosen her, rather than the other way round?
"It's not anything we planned, Ron," she mustered, feeling the excuse to be woefully inadequate. She was still reeling from his declaration of love, never having suspected his feelings to be that strong. The silence was thick and nearly palpable. She dragged her eyes - as slowly as if they were encumbered with heavy weights - up to meet his. "I'm sorry." Her voice was a barely audible whisper, and the gasp of shock and surprise and hurt from Harry was easily heard in the sound-swallowing silence of the cellar.
She turned toward Harry so quickly that she thought she might have wrenched her neck out of place.
"Harry, that's not what I - " But her entreaty was halted mid-word, as Harry stood in one swift, fluid motion, and strode up the stairs, the wood creaking ominously beneath his feet. A rickety, hollow-sounding slam indicated that he had exited the subterranean room, closing the door behind him.
Ron and Hermione sat in further silence. Hermione thought that the tendrils of tension would strangle her.
"What was that all about?" Ron finally asked, somewhat sullenly.
"He - he thought that I was sorry - that I was - that I regretted the fact that I love him. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just - I'm sorry anyone has got to be hurt because of me." She looked at him with wide, pleading eyes, and held her hand out. He hesitated for a moment, but then came across to sit just opposite her, his back to the cellar stairs, and enfolded her small hand in his larger one. "I do love him, Ron."
"I know you do." This was said without inflection, negative or otherwise.
"I - it scares me sometimes, how much I love him. It's - it can't be quantified or analyzed or neatly sorted and put into a pigeonhole. It's all-encompassing, overwhelming. Sometimes I think that I'll be consumed by it, and I'll - I'll just cease to be who I thought I was."
"You won't ever," Ron said, with a mirthless chuckle. "Harry wouldn't let you."
"I had no idea - I thought you just … a schoolboy crush, you know. I didn't know your feelings were …" She floundered idiotically, and settled for repeating what she had said earlier. "I am sorry, Ron."
"You didn't ask for this," he replied.
"Neither did you," she interjected.
"Neither did he," he parried back, and they both fell silent again. He let go of her hand, and she folded it with its companion in her lap. "The war made it easier," he said presently.
"Made what easier?" She said automatically, even though she knew the answer, had thought the same thing herself.
"Pretending it didn't hurt. Telling myself that being angry over something so - so small, when people were dying - had already died - was selfish and arrogant and - telling myself that we were likely going to die anyway, so how I felt or you felt or Harry felt didn't really matter at all." He cast a fleeting glance at her, and then fixed his gaze on the opposite wall, seemingly a million kilometers away. "It was Mum's dream, you know. You and me, Harry and Ginny, all of us together at Christmas and birthdays, filling her walls with magical portraits of dozens of babies." Remarkably, he said this without blushing, and then sighed. "… Now she's dead, Ginny's blind, and you - you - and everything's changed forever."
"But life doesn't stop just because the world falls apart," Hermione finished for him softly.
"Yeah," he agreed. "You and Harry are proof of that. Of all the times to fall in love…" He tried to speak the sentence lightly, but his mouth twisted bitterly with the word `love', and Hermione felt her heart throb painfully. She opened her mouth to speak, but he headed her off. "Don't apologize again, Hermione. Please." Her shoulders slumped, as her mouth snapped shut. "I s'pose this conversation was bound to happen… with this separation from the Order - nothing to think about but this."
Hermione sighed. She'd wanted so badly for Ron to waltz up to them one day, smiling, giving them his blessing, and proclaiming that he'd been mistaken all along, announcing some girl or other as the true love of his life. It could still happen, she thought. Ron's eighteen years old. And he's always been the least mature of the three of us. She watched him tenderly for a moment, as every emotion he was feeling paraded in succession across his face. If I'm the mind of this Trio, and Harry's the soul, then Ron is the heart. And when has the heart ever acted rationally where love is involved?
"You should go talk to Harry," he told her, after another anxious silence. "He shouldn't be out there alone anyway, much less in his current temper." She stood with alacrity, favoring her recently healed leg, but turned at the bottom of the stairs.
"Are you okay?" He hesitated a moment, as if debating how honest to be with her.
"No," he finally said. "But he needs you."
She tried not to notice, out of the periphery of her vision, Ron's lanky form slump over his knees, and his face go down into the crooks of his elbows, as she walked gingerly up the rotting stairs. As she clambered over the doorsill into the cool night air of the rambling garden, she tried to close her ears to the strangled sounds of his repressed sobs.
~~**~~
She saw him almost immediately, even in the unnatural darkness of the Hollow. The clouds were patchier, allowing stars to peer through at intervals, but the night was still nearly absolute. He was sitting at the base of a low stone wall that had been covered over in ivy and moss, his knees spread wide, and his head cradled in his hands. She knew he'd heard her when the creaky door protested, but he did not look up.
"Harry…" she began, her voice all but swallowed in the continuous rustling of the breeze-strewn garden.
"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Hermione," he answered before she could say anything else, his voice sounding dull and tired.
"I do when you have so obviously misunderstood," Hermione corrected him, with some asperity to her tone.
"Have I?" He looked up at her then, one eyebrow arched inquisitively. She regarded him for a long moment, his face all valleys and shadows in the darkness.
"Harry, don't expect me for one minute to - you can't honestly believe that there is any sort of doubt in my mind at all about you - about us? It's preposterous."
"There's no doubt in my mind about the way you feel," Harry said, choosing his words carefully, picking his way along the sentence with the same care that one would use to walk a tightrope. Hermione mulled over his selected words for a moment.
"Then there's doubt about the way you feel?" she finally said, her words sounding ponderous and weighty in the whispering garden. He sat up straight then, and she heard him take a deep breath, as if girding himself up for something. She felt dread grip her insides, as he lifted his face toward her, and opened his mouth to speak the words that - she knew - would sound the death knell of their relationship.
And then he faltered. His gaze dropped again, and she watched the black outline of his form crumple down and in on itself.
"There's no doubt," he said, as if that were something to be dreaded rather than celebrated. She sensed her advantage, and moved to his side, seating herself against the rock wall next to him. The stones retained the warmth of the sun, even though daylight had been a memory for a while. He turned to her, his face only inches from hers, his teeth bared in a panicked pant, almost like a cornered animal. They were practically breathing each other's air.
"Why is that a bad thing, Harry?" she asked gently.
"Because I'm so damn weak," he burst out in a voice of self-recrimination. "And selfish. If I had any kind of nobility at all, I'd send you and Ron away - somewhere where they've never heard of Voldemort or Harry Potter. You could learn to be happy with him; I know you could. And he loves you. " He ran both hands rather jaggedly through his hair, and swore. "But all I want is you." The sentiment fell out into the silence abruptly.
She understood what he had not said. All I want is you. I almost don't care about anything else, and I feel guilty.
"Good," she spoke lightly. "Because all I want is you. More than you know. I could never be happy - with Ron or anyone else - knowing that you were alone and in danger." More silence.
"Ron said - "
"Ron's going to have to work out his feelings on his own." She slanted a sharp look at him through her eyelashes. "Are you jealous of him?"
"Jealous?" Harry let out a short bark of laughter, but then became suddenly serious. "No, honestly, I'm not. I trust you. I know you love me. I trust him. If anything, he's the one with the right to a grudge. Technically, I'm the one who moved in on you, after you and he… I can't even imagine how I'd feel if the situation were reversed. But I - I can't say that I'm thrilled to know that he's going to be looking at you the way I look at you, and thinking about you the same way I do, and - " He broke off with a frustrated sigh. "If he felt this way, why'd he have to come here with us at all?"
"Because I'm not the only one he loves, Harry," she said in a low, intense way. "You're still his best friend, and I think he wants to help as much as he can… regardless of how painful it might be."
"For him, or for me?" Harry snorted. Hermione nudged him in the ribs in reprimand, but her lips curved in a smile.
"So what are you really afraid of? You didn't really think you were in danger of losing me to Ron?" She asked him, after a reflective moment.
"I'm afraid of losing you at all," he replied, impassioned.
"We've talked about this, Harry. Would your grief be lessened if I died, and we had never gotten together at all?"
"Of course not," he answered roughly, as if the hypothetical were still something he'd rather not contemplate.
"Then staying emotionally distant from me won't help anything, will it? And like Ron said before, pretending that we don't feel anything won't change the fact that we do. He knows it, and we know it. Why pretend?" She bracketed his face with her hands, and spoke to him with clear enunciation, emphasizing her words. "I love you, Harry. And I'll love you until the day I cease to draw breath. There is no power on earth that can change that or take it away." His body remained tense for a moment, until he finally let himself relax, leaning his forehead against hers. He laughed shakily.
"Maybe after you've told me that a few hundred more times, I'll finally start to believe it."
"Believe it, Harry," she said throatily. Without breaking eye contact with him, she waved her wand in an arc around them, muttering a silencing charm, as well as the one that she'd performed the day they first kissed…Caecusco, that made Remus see the empty patio.
He turned quizzically toward her, lips parted to speak, but whatever question he'd nearly uttered died unasked, as she pressed against his shoulders, bearing him down to the cushiony bracken, in the shadow of the mossy rock wall.
~~**~~
The days slid monotonously into weeks. Hermione and Ron had a fairly substantial potions lab arrayed in one half of the cellar, and they puttered around in it for hours at a time, concocting potions and testing spells and spell/potion combinations. Truthfully, some of that time did devolve into shouting matches, generally about what Hermione was taking too seriously, or Ron wasn't taking seriously enough. Harry would usually ask them to stop in a tired voice, the way an exhausted mother might berate two of her squabbling children. He was unable to practice his magic, while Hermione worked on perfecting some kind of masking charm - or potion, though she thought a spell would be preferable - so he spent his time poring over Hogwarts: A History. Hermione was secretly quite proud of him for doing so; it seemed inevitable that they would have to make an attempt to infiltrate or take Hogwarts, and detailed knowledge of the school could only be an asset to their cause.
They had had scant communication with the Order. They had been able to scavenge supplies from undisturbed Muggle cellars, the Pureblood snobbery endemic to Death Eaters having forestalled any looting, and setting up a covert supply line through the Order was unnecessary. The Trio did know that the Order was safe, that they had found a new haven somewhere or other, and that Ginny had had some bad days, but was overall adjusting well to her handicap.
August had shambled along into September, with no sign of a breakthrough with regard to a charm or potion that would successfully mask Harry's magic from Voldemort's detection. Hermione and Harry had continued to steal away to the garden every so often, and make special use of the Caecus and Silencio charms. She was sure that Ron couldn't help but be aware of what was going on, but the subject had once again morphed into the Hungarian Horntail in the corner that everybody studiously ignored.
Today was another such occasion. The sun was setting on the horizon, and Hermione lay sated in Harry's arms, magically concealed in what she now considered to be "their spot" by the garden wall. She sighed in utter contentment, nearly purring, and she felt the rumble of a chuckle low in Harry's chest.
"What are you laughing at?" she asked languidly.
"You," he answered, and she could feel him smiling into her hair. His voice sounded nearly slurred with peace, and it did her heart good to hear it. She was glad beyond words when she could be the instrument of his contentment, however temporary it was for both of them. "Like a cat curled up in a pool of sunshine."
She laughed, and her fingers played across the muscles of his chest under his unbuttoned shirt. Wind danced through the already mussed strands of their hair, and she shivered a little, shrugging her blouse back on over her shoulders.
"It's already getting cooler at night. What are we going to do when it's too cold to come out here?" she asked, fumbling with the buttons. He straightened his shirt, and she smoothed down her disheveled skirt.
"The charms work indoors too, don't they?" he teased, and she grimaced at the thought of doing anything - charms or no charms - with Ron in the same room. "We could send Ron out on longer sweeps. It's not like he doesn't know what we're doing."
"I know, but we're all three of us pretending he doesn't know, and right now, that suits me just fine," she responded archly. "Besides, once we've properly masked your magic, he can stop doing those sweeps alone. I really hate that." Harry and Ron had been adamantly opposed to her patrolling Godric's Hollow alone, while Ron stayed with Harry, and since Harry couldn't yet do magic, that left Ron with the job. She had been prepared to argue herself hoarse about how unnecessary their predictable macho protectiveness was, but the naked fear glinting in Harry's eyes changed her mind. He did not protest because he thought her incapable, but because he did not want to see her hurt. She could live with that.
They both reached for their shoes, and Hermione sighed as Harry picked a leaf from her tangled hair. He bent down and picked up the blanket that they had taken to bringing along with them, and when he straightened, their eyes met. They regarded each other for a long, solemn moment, in what was becoming a tradition for them. Back to the real world, she thought somberly. Back to potions and calculations and spell design. Her lack of success was beginning to do more than frustrate her, and Harry must have read the desperation in her eyes, for he reached out and clasped her hand.
"I think we should - " he said, when she went suddenly rigid, her head swiveling from right to left alertly. "What is it?" She squeezed his hand and shook her head.
Voices, she mouthed, not wanting her voice to keep her from hearing something important, and watched his eyes grow wary. They both crouched down again, careful not to dislodge any of the loose undergrowth that was now fading and drying with the approach of autumn. Hermione caught Harry's gaze, and made a quick gesture with her wand. She saw him relax slightly with remembrance. They were still concealed under the Caecus and Silencio charms, as long as they stayed within their radius.
"Perhaps it's Ron," Harry managed to say, unable to entirely abandon the urge to whisper.
"It's two people. They're close. I think - " Hermione stumbled to a stop, as two hooded figures entered the Potter garden through the small gate that opened out into the little wooded area shielding the house from the remainder of the town. Hermione felt Harry's fingers clench convulsively around her own.
"Could you at least stand downwind if you refuse to bathe?" came a cultured voice with a tone of disdain. Hermione and Harry, concealed beneath their umbrella of charms, exchanged wide-eyed looks of horrified recognition.
The other cloaked figure made some kind of obscene gesture, which was obscured from the two watchers by the heavy drape of his sleeve, but which his companion saw clearly. The first speaker gave the gesturer a clout across the back of the head, and when the violence of the contact caused his head to snap forward, Hermione thought she saw the end of a rather beaky looking nose.
"Please don't tell me that's Malfoy!" Harry hissed in her ear, still whispering.
"It sounds like Malfoy. And I think the other one is the same one that scanned our Marks at the rally. Or his clone."
"Watch yourself, young master," Beaky Nose hissed, sarcasm fairly dripping from the last two words. "You've gotten your comeuppance, you have. Ain't nobody better than anybody else down `ere."
"I still have my father's ear," Malfoy replied, for it was he. He had snapped his wand up toward his companion, and the sudden movement knocked his cowl back, revealing his unmistakable white-blond hair. For all his brave talk, Beaky Nose appeared to harbor some fear of possible reprisal from Lucius Malfoy. "It's bad enough that I've been forced to go on needless patrols to dead Muggle villages, but to be forced to interact with Replicants!" He made a moue of disgust, as his eyes tripped over the clone and continued around the overgrown garden. Hermione felt her heart stop in her chest, when Malfoy's gaze appeared to cross her own, even though she knew he could see nothing through the Caecus spell.
"Ain't so bad being a Replicant. Reckon the real Hoofshorn owes us though, seeing as how we're all workin' for the Dark Lord while he sits up at Hogwarts in the lap o' luxury." He gave a wheezy, braying laugh.
"Be quiet, you fool!" Draco said, as Harry nudged Hermione excitedly in the ribs. Hogwarts. It was something concrete, at least. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you don't mind being the copy of someone who was utterly worthless in the first place."
"How do you know you ain't one?" Hoofshorn said suddenly, grinning unpleasantly. Draco stared at him, incensed, but clearly unsure how to respond. "I'll tell you how… the Dark Lord don't want any other o' you, seeing as how you couldn't even perform your firs' assignment correctly." Hermione assumed they were talking about Dumbledore's death, and from Harry's sudden, uncomfortable shifting, she guessed he'd assumed likewise. Draco's eyes darkened. Rather than answering Hoofshorn, he flicked a casual glance over the ruined homestead.
"This house gives me the creeps," he said, flicking a contemptuous glance over it. "It isn't any wonder Potter was born here."
"It wasn't like this when I lived here, you idiot," Harry muttered darkly. Hermione threw him a sympathetic smile and squeezed his hand again.
"If it hadn't been for him and his potty wee friends, I would have succeeded that night," he told Hoofshorn darkly. "It was his fault I - " The rest of Malfoy's absurd story was obscured, as Harry, incensed, said,
"I was Petrified under an invisibility cloak. How could I possibly have stopped him?" Hermione impatiently told him to hush.
"That's not what I heard," Hoofshorn wrinkled his protuberant nose, and the end result was truly alarming, Hermione thought. "I heard you just didn't have the stones to do it, that ol' Albus woulda talked you out of it, if the Potions Master hadn't happened along to save the day." Harry shifted uneasily again, looking agonized and ill. Malfoy turned threateningly to Hoofshorn, brandishing his wand again. Hermione wondered how often Malfoy endured this kind of taunt over the last year.
"Who had the stones to curse Ginny Weasley in Hogwarts that night?" he asked quietly. "Who worked with Severus for a year improving upon the entire concept?" He flicked his wand lazily, and Hoofshorn very nearly cringed. "I could do it, you know." There was a moment of heavy silence in the garden, unmistakably threatening. Hermione looked over to see Harry's head in his hands, fingers threaded through the messy blackness. He seemed to be keeping himself beneath the charms by sheer will alone, knowing that he would be no match for two Death Eaters.
It was nearly night. Hoofshorn bowed his head uncertainly, appearing absorbed in the hem of his cloak, and Malfoy seemed to take that as evidence of submission. "I trust that I'll hear no more on this subject," he said as loftily as his father before him. He smiled, a tight-lipped affair without pleasance or mirth. "Now, let's finish our circuit and get out of this forsaken place."
He had no more than moved forward, when he stumbled, stepping into a small dip in the ground and losing his footing. He flailed a bit, but failed to find purchase. To Hermione's horror, his trajectory took him straight toward the edge of the area she had charmed.
"Arresto -" she began, but she did not have enough time. Draco Malfoy plunged into their hiding place. She imagined that the way he completely vanished from the waist up would be quite alarming to his patrol partner.
The three of them stared at each other for a long, frozen moment. Hermione's wand was trained on him, and Malfoy was decidedly at a disadvantage, lying full-length on the ground, picking bits of dead leaves out of his mouth, wand wherever it had flown as he'd fallen.
"Bloody hell," the Slytherin said softly, as his gaze intersected with Harry's. "Trysting with the Mudblood? Really?" His eyes roamed over their decidedly disheveled apparel, and he made a tsk-ing noise, as if Harry were a dear friend who had disappointed him. Hermione's face burned.
"Do it, Hermione," Harry hissed. Draco put his palms flush on the ground, on the verge of pushing himself back into a more upright position. "Do it. He can't be allowed to let anyone know where we are."
Hoofshorn was moving. They both saw it at the same time, as he surged forward suddenly, reaching out, evidently intending to grab Malfoy around the waist, and haul him out of whatever magical field he'd fallen into.
"Reducto!" came Ron's voice, sounding frantic and nearly hysterical, though neither of the others could pinpoint his location.
Hoofshorn aborted his attempt to help Malfoy as the spell rushed by him with the hot hiss of singed air molecules. The reductor hit their Slytherin nemesis with all the force of a projectile, and all the air rushed from Malfoy's lungs with an audible `oof'.
Hermione and Harry were propelled backwards by the force of Malfoy's dead weight, and Hermione felt her head crack rather loudly against the crumbling stone wall. Something warm and wet was seeping into her clothing, her lap, her legs, and she looked at Harry with alarm. He was trying to push Malfoy's body off of their lower limbs. He gave one final shove to Malfoy's shoulder, rolling him off of them rather unceremoniously. Malfoy landed on his back, just to the side, and their clothing was revealed to be stained black with his blood.
Hermione tried to stifle an automatic gag reflex. There was a gaping hole where Malfoy's chest had once been, but gurgling blood still bubbled forth. His eyes were glassy and unseeing, and even as they watched, frozen in shock and horror, his heart ceased to pump. There was a rattling sound, and then nothing. Draco Malfoy was dead.
"Stupefy!" Ron's trembling voice reached their ears again, and Hermione saw Hoofshorn drop, near the garden gate, through which he had evidently been intending to flee.
"Finite Incantatem," she managed shakily, and the concealment vanished, revealing Harry and herself, along with Draco Malfoy's bloody corpse. "Ron?" she called out. There was a moment of silence, and an area of the hedge that bordered one side of the garden began to twitch and swirl, then wrinkled and collapsed to reveal Ron Weasley standing there, looking dazed, wand arm limp at his side, the other hand clutching the invisibility cloak.
"Merlin's beard," he said dully. "What the hell…? Are you two all right? What did he do?"
"It's his blood," Harry replied. "We're okay." He looked down and seemed to suddenly realize that his shirt was still partially unbuttoned, and moved his hands almost mechanically to fix it, even though said article of clothing was liberally coated with blood.
"I didn't mean - the other bloke was running, and I didn't know. I thought you were there, but I wasn't sure. I was trying to hit him," Ron stammered, gesturing toward the back gate, where Hoofshorn's prone form lay, nearly concealed in the flora. He had moved toward them while talking, and so came to Malfoy's ravaged body. Hermione saw his neck and jaw muscles work convulsively. "I've killed him, haven't I?" he asked, in the tone of one unable to believe that such a thing has actually happened. He looked at Harry and Hermione, almost wildly, as if he believed that a judge and jury were going to emerge from the woods and sentence him immediately. "I didn't mean to - I was - " Hermione pressed her lips together, and moved to his side. She would've patted his arm in sympathy, but arrested the motion, when she saw that her hands were still sticky with blood.
"Don't be sorry, Ron. He deserved to die," Harry said in a calm and level voice, and Hermione wondered at the coldness with which he said it. If she'd had any doubts as to whether or not Ron or Harry had killed anyone in the battle at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, they had now been put to rest. It seemed obvious that Ron hadn't, and Harry had. With the return of his magic, he seemed to be turning back into the battle-hardened, world-weary soul that had landed on the rocks beside her that day near Hagrid's hut, the one who focused on a goal and plodded tirelessly toward it, regardless of the risk to himself. "He let Death Eaters into Hogwarts. He facilitated the situation where Dumbledore was killed. He helped Snape fine-tune the Nightmare curse, and he used it on Ginny. We heard him say so."
It was almost scary, Hermione thought, how Ron's face suddenly changed, became more icy, and less fretful. He looked down at Malfoy's corpse with contempt.
"How did he know? About her worst nightmare?" Harry shook his head.
"I don't know. I guess that's something we're going to have to ask Ginny."
"He's going to be coming around soon," Hermione offered, gesturing toward Malfoy's companion, trying to get her best friends' minds back on the immediate peril in which they found themselves.
"What are we going to do with him?" Ron asked.
"We can't kill him," Harry said matter-of-factly. "Then others will come looking for them, and they might start watching these villages more closely. Obliviate him. Hermione, if you can push me into his mind - I don't think I'm strong enough yet to do it on my own - I'll plant new memories. He'll think he killed Draco."
"Won't he run away to avoid punishment?" Hermione pointed out. "Then they'll still be missing two Death Eaters. They'll still come looking."
"Not if I give him so much guilt and fear that he feels compelled to return to headquarters and confess," Harry answered her.
"Can you do that?" Hermione winced, as her voice came out sounding very small. Harry flicked his eyes toward her, Ron, and then the ground, carefully avoiding including Malfoy in his field of vision.
"I think so," he said slowly. He was clearly uncomfortable with his ability to do Mind Control of any variety. Hermione wondered if this was some more of the "extra-curricular" training he'd taken up, once he'd mastered Legilimency.
"But your magic. We aren't able to mask it yet," was Hermione's last protest. She wanted to wipe away the distant, tired look in his eyes. Had it only been moments ago that he had been caressing her with gentle fingers, worshiping her with his mouth and his eyes, smiling into her hair? She plucked uncomfortably at her skirt; the blood was causing it to cling clammily to her legs. She felt filthy, defiled, like she'd never be clean again.
"We'll have to leave here," Harry said perfunctorily. "Ron can pack everything up, while we're Obliviating him," he jerked his head in the direction of the back gate."
"What are we - " Ron cleared his throat, and tried again. "What are we going to do with - with Mal - with Malfoy?"
Harry was already moving toward the rickety door, to retrieve his wand from the cellar. He replied to Ron, without even pausing or looking over his shoulder.
"Dump him on the other side of the wall. Leave him to rot."
~~**~~
The cadence of her two best friends' breathing did not change as Hermione quickly slipped out through the door into the garden. She was careful to open it only as wide as necessary for her to slide through, and lowered it back into place as if it were made of spun glass. The wards were tuned to recognize her wand, and shimmered only slightly as she passed through.
She trod silently over to the wall, placing her hands on top of the rocks smoothed by age and moss cover. It took her a moment to be able to look over the wall to the knee-deep shrubbery, where Ron had dumped Malfoy's body, all the while exchanging concerned looks with Hermione.
"He can't be serious. He's just going to leave him there," she said in a heated whisper. "It's - it's barbaric."
"It's Malfoy, Hermione," Ron replied, seeming to take the whole thing more in stride than she was. "When has he ever acted like a human?"
But he was human. He was a boy - just their age - and who knew but that his family situation and the bigotry under which he'd been raised had never given him a chance. Obviously, he didn't have that deep-sown seed of nobility and character that had caused Harry to grow up such a beautiful soul despite the hardships he'd faced early in life.
This sudden implacability was unlike Harry, and it frightened Hermione more than she wanted to admit, even to herself. Even if we survive, who's to say that he'll ever be able to recover from what he's gone through? An unwelcome image of a powerful, malevolent Harry flashed through her mind, and she shook her head convulsively. No, she would not even entertain such a notion. Harry did not have it in him to go the way Tom Riddle had.
Staving off such unprofitable thoughts, she clambered over the wall, taking care not to step on Malfoy, wincing at even the slight noise that her trainers made when they contacted the ground.
Choosing a place, she made an arc with her wand, slicing a gash in the green undergrowth and revealing the earth beneath. With small scooping motions, and a muttered spell, she began to dig.
She and Harry had successfully Obliviated Hoofshorn earlier, and Ron had all of their equipment ready to go. They had determined to spend one last night in the Hollow, and to take their leave bright and early the next morning. Harry had not talked about what he'd seen in Hoofshorn's mind, but when he came out, he was grim and drawn, taut lines of fatigue mixing with righteous anger and resignation. He and Ron had Stunned the Death Eater, and dragged him some distance away from Godric's Hollow. Theoretically, Harry had explained, he should awaken with the memory of provoking and then dueling Draco Malfoy, getting off a lucky shot, and being unable to remember exactly what had happened next or how he got where he was. He would suppose that he had panicked. They had even smeared his cloak with Draco's blood before "escorting" him from the garden.
Hermione's eyes were burning with exhaustion and worried tears, as she continued to magically remove the soil from what would become Malfoy's final resting place.
"What are you doing?" A sudden voice in the stillness made her jump, and she nearly dropped her wand.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked, sounding defiant, even though she really didn't mean to.
"It looks like you're out here wearing yourself out when you should be resting. He's past caring what happens to him, Hermione." Harry's voice sounded as weary as she felt.
"How'd you know I was gone?" she asked to deflect the subject.
"You think I can't tell when you're not near me?" he said. "Leave it, Hermione. We've got to get started early tomorrow. He's not worth it. After what he did - "
"I'm not doing it for him!" Hermione shouted suddenly, startling them both. "I'm doing it for me." The tears had finally spilled over her cheeks, and she brushed at them, irritated. She looked up at him, struggling to make out his features in the darkness, and implored him wordlessly to understand. Sentiment is what keeps us from being Death Eaters. "I told you once that you give me hope - even now - even after all that's happened, after everything we've lost. It - it scares me a little when you act like this whole thing might beat you after all." He stood very still, regarding her.
"I'm not going to end up like him, Hermione, no matter what happens," he said quietly, and they both knew to which him Harry was referring. "He didn't have anyone like you, now did he?" There was a moment of silence, and she found herself smiling gratefully, foolishly, even though he couldn't really see her. "All this because I didn't want to waste time burying Malfoy?" He asked after a beat.
Without waiting for an answer, he hopped lightly over the wall, using one hand, and reached for something propped nearby. Hermione didn't realize what it was until she heard a soft scuffling sound in the dirt. He had brought out a shovel before their conversation. The conclusions made her sniffle loudly, and Harry stopped digging to ask her what was wrong.
"Nothing," she said, in a watery way. "I love you."
TBC
I sort of liked some of the introspection in this chapter. Hope you did too. There should be a little more transition before we move into the last act of the story - with the reunion with the Order, and the move to take Hogwarts.
You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.
lorien
-->