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 Twenty-Five: Consequences
There was a cacophony of noise surrounding Hermione Granger Potter. Voices seemed to be coming from all directions at once, but they were unfathomable, distorted, almost inhuman. She wanted them to stop; nausea assailed her as she struggled to make herself speak, but her mouth felt dry and filled with cotton. Her eyelashes fluttered in an effort to open, but the heavy fingers of too-bright light pressed mercilessly on her eyelids.
She's waking up.
Thank Merlin.
She felt her arms lurch out from her sides, blindly feeling for purchase and finding none. Fingers struck something soft and smooth. She was lying in a bed… in the infirmary? The voices swirled around her again; it was all so noisy.
"Har - ry?" she managed to squeak. Her throat burned; she wondered what potion they'd force-fed her while she was unconscious. What had happened to her? She felt panic well up within her like a storm slowly beginning to rotate and strengthen. A warm hand grasped hers carefully.
I'm here.
She wanted to sob with relief. It was Harry's comforting touch, Harry's familiar hand, Harry's reassuring voice, and for the briefest of moments, those things were all that mattered.
Then her memory came back to her with a forceful tidal wave of terror.
Lucius Malfoy.
The prophecy shattered on the floor. Harry had destroyed other spheres to mask Luna's voice.
Ron had shouted somewhere. Where was he? There was noise, glass breaking, spellfire.
Harry wasn't going to leave without Ron.
She'd never be able to cast a curse in time.
"For the love of God, Hermione, please!"
She had to think of Laurel; she couldn't let herself think of Laurel. Harry was too important - too valuable.
Her mind felt frozen in icy sludge.
Something had fallen on her. There was a loud crash. A shelf?
She had hit her head.
She sucked in a frantic breath, filling her lungs with a noisy gasp, and her eyes flew open, almost of their own accord. Disheveled raven hair framed Harry's out of focus face, as he hovered anxiously over her. Blood from a laceration had dripped from his temple, drying into rivulets near the corner of his eyes, smeared where he had brushed at it in annoyance. He had obviously refused to let them see to it, in his concern over her.
"Laurel!" She wheezed in alarm on the exhalation, her free hand flying to her abdomen to feel the reassuring swell there. "I - I - something fell on me. What happened?"
"Laurel's fine," Harry whispered, brushing some of her tangled and sweat-dampened hair away from her face. She looked at him without comprehension for a moment, trying to understand the graveness in his brilliant eyes. "You've broken a couple of ribs and both collarbones. Ron - Ron came over the top of the shelves, bloody well landed on you, but he managed to get in between you and Lucius Malfoy…just in time. He was - he was cursed twice for his efforts, once by the Death Eater trying to stop him, and once by Malfoy. It was - it - " He trailed off, sounding dazed, as if he were speaking without really thinking about the words.
Hermione felt as if a giant, pitiless hand had just reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart painfully. Her lungs constricted; it hurt to breathe.
"Is he - is he - ?" She couldn't even make her lips form around the word.
Something sticky had been oozing damply through her robes. Ron's blood?
"No, but he's - he's badly hurt. He lost a lot of blood and - and they don't know…" Harry answered, his voice once again dwindling into nothingness, as he still seemed to be millions of kilometers away. A hiccupping kind of sob burbled out of Hermione's mouth, unbidden, at the uncertainty of the end of Harry's sentence.
"I want to see him…" she blurted suddenly, forcing the words through a rapidly closing throat. She pushed at the mattress, her hands sliding ineffectually on the sheets, as she tried to sit up, to swing her legs over the side.
"You aren't getting up, Hermione," Harry said, gently, but in a tone that brooked no argument. "Penelope's only just healed you up. You also took a pretty good crack on the head." He looked over his shoulder, and a sort of tremor passed over his face. "Besides, Madam Pomfrey's - they're still working…trying to stabilize him."
It was more the lost quality of Harry's expression than his warning about her health that caused Hermione to refrain from further attempts to get up. And then she thought of Ron, climbing the shelves in the Hall of Prophecies, and leaping to the floor in the effort to block her from certain injury or death.
I'll look after her with my life, Harry, you know that. Ron's sincere words swam back through her memory. He had risked his life - risked everything - to keep her safe. A persistent dull ache had begun to throb through her side when she'd moved, and she pressed one hand over the area. She'd not belittle his heroic action, by undoing what he'd tried to accomplish.
Harry must have seen the fight go out of her eyes, for he relaxed as well, still resting one hand lightly over hers. He was watching over his shoulder again, something that was out of her line of sight. She presumed that it was the mediwitches working on Ron. There was something bleak and almost fatigued, like anger or grief that was banked, but not extinguished, flickering in the depths of his eyes. She squinted up at him, trying to read his mood, and determine if all this emotion had been brought about by Ron.
He glanced down at her briefly, and obviously recognized her analytical face. He almost smiled.
"I reckon Daphne Greengrass blew the whistle on us," he said, in a voice so devoid of emotion that he may well have been remarking on the weather. "I'm not sure how she figured out who we were, but it must have been too enticing not to turn us in."
She always was a sharp one, Hermione remembered Blaise saying. She wondered now if there was more to Daphne's not-quite-convincing nonchalance punctuated by flustered nervousness, as well as her remarks about not being in Gryffindor, than there initially seemed. She remembered the shuffling step as Daphne rounded the corner, almost as if she'd stumbled - it was when Harry was talking about the Hall of Prophecies. No wonder they'd known exactly where to come.
"I thought - " Her voice gave out on her, and she had to clear her throat to resume speaking. "I thought Malfoy was just guarding the prophecy."
"I would have thought so too," Harry said slowly, "but that comment Malfoy made? He knew exactly who we were. And the Death Eaters showed up at the Registry as well."
Hermione's hand flew from her side to her mouth, in a gesture that did nothing to mask her gasp of horror and remembrance.
"Blaise - and Tonks! I - I completely forgot about them. Are they okay? Did they get the Registry?"
"Blaise got the Registry," Harry spoke in that dead, detached sort of voice again, but his teeth actually clicked together audibly, as the muscles in his jaw trembled. "He was wounded, but he's going to be all right."
Hermione noticed his exclusion immediately.
"Harry, no…" she said, so brokenly that it was almost inaudible. She watched the muscles in Harry's neck convulse, as he swallowed, struggling visibly for composure.
"Malfoy thought he'd hit you both - he started laughing like he'd bloody well gone mad. I could have - " he paused, and amended his statement. "Perhaps I could have done something - taken him out then - and gone to help them… but I - I just fell on top of you and Ron, and used my medallion to get us the hell out of there."
Hermione could see emotions warring in his face, guilt and self-disgust among them. He was wondering if he'd made a mistake, if the attempt on Lucius Malfoy's life was an opportunity that should not have been passed up, if only because of what Harry's aid might have prevented from happening later.
"Blaise returned here with the Registry - and - and Tonks - barely a moment later. He was bleeding and his arm was broken, but he was holding onto them with everything he had. She'd been hit with Avada Kedavra. And - and the look -- oh, God, Hermione - the look on Remus' face…" Hermione was no longer sure that Harry was even aware she was there.
Michael Corner's face flashed before her eyes, with its dull, staring-yet-unseeing slackness, the nothingness that meant the soul had flown. It had all happened so fast that she'd hardly had time to register anything. She tried to imagine the same look on Tonks - on that pert, malleable, sparkling-eyed face that seemed predisposed to impudence and irreverence - and found that she couldn't.
"I - I can't believe it - I - " she tried to say.
"We shouldn't have gone," Harry spoke over her, as if he had not heard her at all. "We - it was self-serving, only for us - it - it - and now - now Tonks is …"
"She wouldn't have thought so," came a rusty voice from behind Harry, and they both looked to see Remus at the foot of the bed, swaying as if a stiff breeze might topple him completely. He had entered the infirmary with the silence of a wraith, and the comparison was more than apt. His face was white to the lips, his eyes remote and glazed, and he seemed to have aged a decade in mere hours.
Harry dropped his eyes to the mattress, and pursed his lips together tightly. Hermione felt tears bubbling up behind her eyelids, stinging like acid.
"Remus, we're so sorry," she managed to whisper, with choked hoarseness. A spasm passed over the werewolf's face, as he strove for composure.
"She - she d-died fighting… so that your little one, so - so countless other little ones would have a chance without - out from under Voldemort's thumb, so they wouldn't be sacrificed to his - his tyranny. She would have considered death well w - worth it…" His voice vibrated under the last part of what he said, and he lowered his gaze to where his fingers were clenched around the bedrail to keep from trembling.
"She was a hero, Remus," Hermione said, feeling his given name slip rather awkwardly from her lips. "But I - I know that doesn't make it any easier to bear."
Lupin looked somewhere beyond her, and shook his head with a wry and bitter half-smile.
"No," he said, almost to himself. "No, it doesn't." He turned from them, as if to leave, but didn't appear to know what he should do next, as he gazed emptily around the infirmary. Harry had shifted so that his back was to Hermione, and he cocked his head, appearing to be signaling someone from across the room.
A moment later, Luna had floated into view at Lupin's elbow, carrying a flagon of something that steamed slightly. Her large blue eyes were as solemn and compassionate as Hermione had ever seen them.
"Here, Professor," she said serenely. "You ought to take this, and maybe rest for awhile." She gave him the container, and he did not turn it down, as she put one hand at his elbow and guided him from the infirmary.
Hermione felt inexorable fatigue, initiated by her injuries, and fueled by the grief that seemed to be methodically shredding her insides with vicious claws. Harry was sitting on the edge of her bed, elbows on knees, and posture looking even more defeated than before. She wanted to reach out to him, but he seemed somehow distant from her, locked away in pain and worry and despair of his own that she could not access.
Tonks is dead… and Ron is - is - it was unfathomable, not to be believed, not to be borne. When will this all be over? She wondered, as she began to sink back into oblivion, even as she fought against it.
She felt Harry's hand on hers again, lightly, and knew that whatever happened, she could handle, as long as he stayed with her, as long as he loved her.
As from a great distance, she heard his voice saying, "Go to sleep, Hermione. I'll wake you if there's news of Ron."
~*~*~*~*~
She woke as she had that first morning after the Battle at Hogwarts, when Harry was gone and everything was wrong. She blinked, sandy-eyed, and wondered why she was sad and why there was an aching, empty feeling somewhere in the region of her chest.
Tonks is dead, she remembered suddenly, and the grief and regret flashed white-hot within her.
The infirmary was only dimly lit, and Hermione was vaguely aware of subtle movement in the shadows. She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep this time, but it appeared to be what passed for nighttime in the cavern. Over to her left, she heard soft conversation. Without raising her head from the pillow, she turned it to the side.
In the low light, she saw Harry, ensconced in a chair, with his feet propped up in a second, looking rumpled enough to disclose that he had evidently been sleeping in that chair for some time. Across from him, straddling a chair the wrong way and leaning with earnestly folded arms onto its back was Blaise Zabini.
"… you've got to believe me, Harry," Blaise was saying quietly, and there was a note of pleading in his voice that Hermione would not have believed possible of the Slytherin. "Daphne - she - I really thought she could be trusted, and - " He clawed his fingers backward through his hair, and looked absolutely distraught. "It's all my fault. All of it. I thought - I thought I knew her, and - and - " His voice gave out under a wave of emotion, and when he got in under control and spoke again, it was more casual, the deliberately conversational air that seemed more endemic to him. "Fred would like to kill me," he added, with forced nonchalance. "And Professor Lupin couldn't even bring himself to look at me." He sank into a mutter, but raised his voice once again, as he lifted his eyes to Harry's. "You don't know how glad I am that nothing happened to you or Hermione - or the baby."
Harry sat in momentary silence, the shadows making his face look as grimly brooding as one who sits in judgment. After only a brief period, he shifted and sighed, destroying that illusion, and said,
"I believe you."
Blaise's eyebrows shot upward, his eyes clearly conveying, Really? Out loud, he merely said,
"Thank you."
"If you had sold us out - or if Daphne's original intention had been to turn us in from the start, it would have been much easier just to have a team of Death Eaters waiting on us down in those tunnels beneath the Ministry," Harry added, by way of explanation, even though Blaise had not asked for one. "Why risk letting us into the Ministry at all? Why bring us fake identification and recalibrators for our wands? Why let us get so close to our goal?" These were all really very good questions, Hermione thought, but she already knew the answer; indeed, Harry had told her as much, during their earlier conversation. "Somehow, Daphne figured out who we were - Harry Potter himself, and his illustrious companions," he finally said, his voice ringing faintly with sarcasm. "And it was too good for her to pass up - even for you."
Something rather curious throbbed in the undertone beneath Harry's voice on those last three words. Zabini looked up in faint surprise, met Harry's eyes, and then swore in admission, lowering his forehead into a cupped palm.
"I always had this kind of half-arsed crush on her," Blaise finally said, with a bitter laugh rippling under his words. "I think I felt sorry for her a little - she always seemed to be on the fringe of things in school, always seemed a little half-hearted joining in the pure-blooded rhetoric and bullshit. Parkinson and Bulstrode ran her roughshod, and I - I think I just wanted to protect her." He seemed to be scrubbing at his face with his hands, as if he could somehow wipe away everything that had happened that day. "Maybe she - maybe she was always as - as devoted as everyone else in Slytherin. Maybe I just saw what I wanted to see."
"You've been seeing things in black and white since you've been with us," Harry remarked, in a somewhat philosophical tone. "For Voldemort or against Voldemort. Not very Slytherin of you at all. Daphne Greengrass was looking out for Daphne Greengrass."
"I reckon she's made her choice then," Blaise said, with an acrid bite to his tone. His face seemed to almost pinch in on itself with guilt and bitter recrimination.
Harry's mouth crimped a little in sympathy.
"I reckon she has."
"The Records Room was empty," Blaise began, in what sounded like a non sequitur. Hermione had trouble following him at first, but realized that he was going to tell Harry what had happened while they had been trying to extricate themselves from the Hall of Prophecies. He was speaking in the rote, mechanical way of one who must relate what happened, before the words tear one apart from the inside. "It was like nobody had been down there in years - and especially not for the purpose of casting any Dust Repelling charms. There must be hundreds of battered, old, leather-bound ledgers in there. We thought the Registry might be sitting out somewhere - and Tonks was concerned about possible wards - so we did a circuit of the room first." His face contained profound regret, as he was obviously thinking that if they'd just Summoned the book and gotten out of there, that Tonks might still be alive.
"Finally, Tonks Accioed the Registry, and it just sailed right out of a shelf into our arms. No wards on it or anything. We - we couldn't believe it could be so easy." He shook his head with the terrible knowledge of hindsight. "Then, the door blew open. The pane of glass in the door was smashed, and we could barely see through all the smoke. Tonks started throwing curses faster than I could see - and I could tell she was trying to advance toward the door, cut her way through the attack, even though we couldn't even tell who was attacking us yet."
Hermione felt the familiar stinging sensation in her eyes and nose again, as she realized what Tonks had been intending. She was coming for us. Somehow she knew we'd all been betrayed. There probably wasn't a thought in her mind about using her medallion to return, not without ascertaining our safety.
"I was hit first," Zabini was still speaking in that detached tone of voice. "When the - when the bone in my arm snapped, my fingers went completely numb. I - I dropped the Registry, and when I went to pick it up, I was hit with some kind of Cutting curse or something. I was trying to reach the book with my good hand - and keep hold of my wand at the same time. I - I think I screamed." He sounded almost disgusted with himself, dismissive of the amount of pain he must have been enduring at the time. "Tonks turned to help me. She ducked under my shoulder to help me stand, had the Registry trapped between our bodies. And then - s - somebody - a Death Eater stepped out of the confusion by the door, and - and - " He didn't finish, but he didn't have to.
Hit her with the Avada Kedavra, Hermione supplied for him.
"Who was it?" Harry asked suddenly, his abrupt question surprising both Blaise and Hermione.
"What?" Zabini replied.
"Who cursed her? You must have seen them. You even started to say so."
Blaise looked like a strange combination of sullen and compassionate, as he looked directly into Harry's face and replied,
"Bellatrix Lestrange."
Harry moved so suddenly that the chair made a scraping noise against the floor, and he swore under his breath. Hermione could not fathom the untenable cruelty and malice of it all. The Death Eaters had been firing non-lethal curses, curses meant to incapacitate and capture, not to kill. Every member of the Order had knowledge that would be invaluable to the Death Eaters - knowledge that, when ripped forcibly from their minds, could put a decisive end to the war. And Lestrange had not been able to see past her hatred and resentment of her baby sister, who had disdained pureblood politics, to follow orders. She had murdered her own niece.
It wasn't war; it was personal, Hermione realized with horror, unaware that she had gasped aloud at Blaise's disclosure, until she felt two pairs of eyes turn toward her. Her eavesdropping so blatantly discovered, she could not help but flush uncomfortably.
Something lit up in the depths of Harry's eyes.
"You're awake," he commented somewhat unnecessarily. Hermione forced the corners of her mouth upward in a slight smile, though she was still thinking about a woman so consumed by evil that she could commit murder for a murderer, that she would cut down family with cold-blooded and decisive deliberation. Harry seemed to read some of what she was thinking in her eyes, because he turned back toward Blaise, and said, "I'm not sure I'd mention that to Remus - unless he asks directly."
Blaise's eyes were twin pools of desolation.
"What good would it do now?" he asked bleakly. He stood slowly and carefully, as if his bones were made of glass, or as if he carried a weighty burden already over-encumbered shoulders.
"About the other…" Harry called quietly after him. "You've already proven yourself more than once - nobody … nobody is going to blame you, not really. They - they'll just need time."
"Time?" Blaise's smile was at once wistful and sardonic. "The one thing we really don't have in overabundance, isn't it, Potter?"
He turned and left the infirmary without another word, as Harry and Hermione watched him go silently, the weight of his guilt and loss and shame and his outsider-ness hanging in the room like a pall of smoke. They sighed in tandem, and looked at each other helplessly, each unable to come up with any words of wisdom for the other.
In the ensuing quiet, Hermione pushed herself upright in the bed. The pain in her side had receded to a tense, stretchy soreness; the bone-knitting elixir had clearly done its job.
"I want to see Ron," she said, before Harry could give voice to the obvious Hermione, what are you doing? that seemed to be hovering on his lips and in his eyes. Rather than arguing, he acquiesced with a nod, and stood, extending an arm to help her slide off of the bed.
"He woke for just a little while earlier, but - but he was unconscious again almost immediately," he supplied informatively.
"How is he?" she asked, in a quick, clipped way, obviously as worried as he was. Harry lifted his shoulders, as he delved his free hand into his pocket, his other hand still supporting her.
"His stomach was slashed open," Harry said, the words coming out slowly, as if against his will. "Penelope - Penelope said that Madam Pomfrey was working as fast as she could for awhile, repairing his organs, trying to stay ahead of the next failure. They - they're waiting now to see if the damage was too great or if - if the repairs will hold."
They were nearing his bedside now, and Hermione felt her lips tremble at how gray and pale Ron looked, his shock of ginger hair the only vivid thing about him. Her legs felt loose and wobbly, and she slid her hand out of Harry's to prop herself against the edge of Ron's mattress. She lay the back of her other hand against his forehead, dismayed at how papery warm his skin felt. His breathing was rapid and shallow through slightly parted lips. She barely registered Mr. Weasley, propped awkwardly in another chair nearby, sleeping fitfully.
"Ron…" she started, and the syllable was barely intelligible through her hot, clogged throat. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, and yet none, because to say those things would be to admit that she presumed his death to be inevitable, and she wasn't ready to admit that either. There were things, also, that she wasn't comfortable saying with her husband hovering behind her - and really, what good were the words anyway? I'm sorry I didn't love you like you wanted me to?
Ron's eyes moved suddenly beneath his lids, and he struggled to force them open, the pale lashes fluttering in agitation. He turned his head toward them, toward her voice, very slowly, as if it were the rotation of some monstrously heavy cog, and not the simple act of a group of muscles.
"H…mione," he rasped in recognition. His eyes flickered briefly over her shoulder, and he acknowledged Harry with a ghost of a smile. "Mate."
"How are you feeling?" Harry asked solicitously, his tone completely missing casual and sounding somber and worried.
"Mus' be pretty bad," Ron slurred. "Or - or y'wouldn't be looking at me like that."
"Don't be ridiculous, Ron," Hermione said, and nearly winced with how high and shrill and nearly hysterical her voice sounded, warbling unnaturally from her shaky mouth. She glanced quickly at him, mortified, and noticed that his eyes were almost glinting with suppressed laughter.
"Always figured `swhy you… didn't like t'lie," he said. "'Coz you're not very good… at it."
She swallowed hard, and dropped the pretense, taking his limp fingers in hers.
"Don't say things like that," she whispered. "You - you gave us all quite a fright there for awhile, but - but things are looking up."
She felt Harry move behind her, felt the warm comfort of the touch of his hand on her hip.
"But you - you're all right?" Ron asked. "He - he di'n't hit you? Baby's all right?"
"They're fine - both fine," Harry said, his voice vibrating the air behind her. "I - I don't know what we would've done if you hadn't gotten there when you did, Ron."
Ron's eyes slid shut in a blend of fatigue and pain, but his mouth smiled.
"Good," he said, and there was unmitigated satisfaction in that word.
Hermione and Harry watched him for a long moment, Hermione's gaze fixed on the slight movement of Ron's chest, willing it to continue to rhythmically rise and fall. When she tried to extricate her hand from his, his fingers tightened feebly around hers.
"Don' go…" he said, in a barely audible plea. She shook her head in response, even though his eyes were still closed, and gently pulled her hand free.
"You need to rest, Ron," she said, brushing his hair away from his forehead with the faintest of caresses. "You need to rest, and get better. Soon. We can't do this without you, you know." She cast a stricken look at Harry, who looked just as torn up as she, and he dropped a comforting kiss in her hair.
"Okay, H'mione…" he said in an acquiescent voice, though the words were still barely intelligible. "Always did… better when I le' you boss me `round."
She clamped tightly onto Harry's arm, as he walked her back to her bed on the other side of the infirmary, her fingers like talons clutching his sleeve. Only when they had both taken a seat on the edge of her bed, did she let herself quietly collapse, crying as she had not let herself cry in quite some time. The hiccupping sobs rattled down her chest into her side, awakening a nagging pain there, but she didn't care.
"He's going to die, isn't he, Harry? Oh God, isn't he?"
"I - I don't know, Hermione," Harry said in a strained voice, holding her tightly against him, as if in doing so, he could absorb her pain and grief into himself somehow. "I don't know."
~*~*~*~*~
But Ron didn't die. He remained gaunt and pale, eating little and sleeping most of the time. The cruel slashes left by the Death Eater's wand were clearly no ordinary wounds, and, while they had closed relatively neatly, remained thick, ropy welts of lurid purple. His breathing was still raspy and labored, and sustaining conversation clearly took much effort on his part.
Nevertheless, he began to improve slowly, a little at a time, insisting on being present at Tonks' memorial service two days later, over the half-hearted protests over Penelope and Madam Pomfrey. He was not yet able to sit up, but had pleaded with such unusual eloquence to attend that the mediwitches had given in, adding wheels to his bed, and trundling him out into the main body of the cavern.
Hermione and Harry, standing close to a barely functional Remus Lupin, had exchanged satisfied glances and intertwined their hands, feeling mutual satisfaction that Hermione's hysterical prediction was proving to be untrue. Hermione saw Harry's chin lift in acknowledgment of Ron's presence, and, as Fred moved with Ginny to stand beside him, Ron nodded in response to the salute.
All eyes turned instinctively toward Minerva McGonagall, who seemed to be the one they looked to as a symbolic leader, when they needed some kind of ceremonial undertaking performed, whether it was wedding or funeral. Her eyes were somber and moist, and Hermione knew that she was remembering Nymphadora Tonks as a student of her still-beloved school.
With a flick of her wand, the Headmistress gracefully transported the sheet-enshrouded body, already placed under stasis charms from its spot of repose behind a divider in an unused room. As if under its own power, the drape wafted back, exposing the unmarred body of Tonks, who looked as if she might have only been asleep.
"Let us look one last time upon one whom we considered the dearest of friends," McGonagall intoned. There was a flicker of movement at the periphery of Hermione's vision, and she looked to see Harry physically holding Remus upright; the werewolf's knees had buckled beneath him at McGonagall's words.
Hermione tried to force herself to look dispassionately at Tonks, noting with amazement that her true form, the one to which she had reverted upon death, had hair that was raven-dark, with mahogany glints. She looks like Sirius, she thought in awe, wondering how she'd never noted the family resemblance before. Tonks' hands were folded across her chest, clasping her wand, and her lashes were fanned like inky smudges across porcelain cheeks.
The clatter of stone against stone jolted Hermione from her thoughts, and she saw that Mr. Weasley had begun to remove the barrier from the carved niche tucked into one corner of the cave. It was their morgue, where, until this moment, only Michael's body had lain. There was a hushed sob from Padma, as the small chamber was exposed, and Cho cupped one hand around her shoulder comfortingly. The silence seemed to thread around them, grief too deep for words, loss piled on top of already intolerable loss, until Hermione thought she would choke on it. She squeezed Harry's hand tighter.
Blaise stepped up from his place next to Seamus, and cleared his throat awkwardly, drawing the somewhat surprised glances of the other Order members.
"I - I didn't know Tonks as well as most of you," he began hesitantly, but his voice grew more confident as he spoke, "but I know she was an Auror - a damn good one, from what I heard - and that she used her skills on the side of Light to the best of her ability. She - she saved my life, and without her… this mission would not have succeeded as it did. Because of her… sacrifice, the identities of wizarding babies will be kept safe. I won't forget it, and - and if we make it through this war, I'll see that others don't forget it either."
"Hear, hear," came an affirmation from a surprising quarter - Ron.
Mr. Weasley spoke a few words, as did Fleur, Fred, and Ginny. Professor McGonagall related some of her anecdotal knowledge of Tonks from her schoolroom days. Just when silence had reasserted itself among the gathering, Hermione felt Harry's hand twitch slightly in hers, and she knew that he was going to speak.
"Tonks never faltered when it was time to carry out a mission," he began, and his wife could hear the tightness of the control over his voice; he was speaking as if the words were brittle, fragile things that might break between his teeth. "Even as far back as our fifth year, she was openly defying those who would follow Voldemort, risking her life to keep people safe, even at the cost of opposing family." Hermione's eyes flickered involuntarily across to Blaise, remembering what he had disclosed to them. "She didn't not hesitate to act on this mission either, and because of her - because of her, there are babies out there - and here now - with a hope for the future." His voice wobbled slightly. Hermione looked over at Fleur, who was standing rigidly, beautiful features almost frozen, her hands locked across her swollen belly. "Hermione and I will certainly not forget what she gave up and for whom - and we don't intend that Laurel shall forget either." He looked earnestly up at Remus then, and added, "She'll know what a lion of Gryffindor her Auntie Tonks was."
Hermione clamped her lips together so that she wouldn't make any noise, even as the tears rushed unbidden to her eyes and began to stream down her cheeks.
Remus made an involuntarily move toward Tonks, one hand upraising slightly, as though he might reach for her, but he arrested the motion awkwardly.
"Tonks…" he sighed. "Nymph, love…" He faltered over the pet name that she would have never let him use in public, and he hung his head, shaking it in helplessness and despair, one lock of brown hair tumbling across his forehead.
When it became clear that Remus wasn't able to say anything more, Harry nodded subtly to McGonagall, who closed the ceremony, and began to move Tonks' body toward the small chamber, where it would rest in the company of Michael Corner, until such time as they could properly inter them.
Hermione couldn't help but flinch as the recently removed stone was returned into place - it sounded so bleakly final, as bad as the clods of dirt spilling onto the Evans' and Percy's coffins. She had followed the path of Tonks' body, as it arced through the air toward the darkened entry, but she turned her head decisively away, her eyes again landing on Fleur.
The half-Veela, as beautiful as she had always been - perhaps more so now, even in the late stages of pregnancy - was still standing stiffly, as if she were holding herself in absolute check. Hermione regarded her more closely, now out of concerned curiosity, and noted that she was clasping her hands together so tightly that her knuckles were bone-white. And then, even as she watched, Fleur let herself relax, ever so slightly, letting out an inaudible sigh, discernible only by the slight parting of her lips.
She's having contractions, Hermione noted astutely, and she didn't want to disrupt the memorial service.
As the burial chamber was sealed once again, the Order began to move and mingle, most stopping to offer a comforting word or gesture to Remus. After checking to make sure that Harry remained with him, Hermione moved quickly and quietly to Fleur's side.
"You should be headed in that direction as well, shouldn't you?" she asked, nodding her head after Penelope and Madam Pomfrey, who were transporting Ron back to the infirmary. Fleur looked at her in mild surprise, and let out a short exhalation of air through her nostrils.
"How did you know?"
"I was watching you," she replied. "When did they start?"
"This morning," Fleur answered. "Penelope told me it could take hours. The contractions have not been bad until the hour or so. But I think - I think it will be soon now." She hissed in air through her teeth, and stood very still again, until the vise-grip of pain eased, and she said, very softly, "Oh, Bill…"
Hermione could not help but toss a grateful glance back in Harry's direction, as she took Fleur's elbow and walked with her in the same direction that Ron and the mediwitches had gone.
When they arrived through the dividers that delineated the infirmary, Penelope and Madam Pomfrey were moving anxiously over Ron's bedside. The Hogwarts' mediwitch had lifted Ron's gown away from his side, and she was examining his still livid-looking wounds with mild concern.
"Is Ron all right?" Hermione asked worriedly. Ron appeared to be hovering on the edges of consciousness, and Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips in his direction.
"He appears to be doing as well as can be expected," she said, in a tone that implied that that was not actually very well at all. "I'm afraid that even that slight exertion was too much for him, too soon."
"Couldn' not go," Ron drawled, barely moving his mouth enough to let the syllables escape. He slipped into slumber then, and Penelope scanned him briefly with her wand, before checking his pulse and temperature, then reattaching him to the various potions he had been absorbing.
Madam Pomfrey turned more fully toward them, and seemed to realize who exactly was standing there for the first time.
"What can I do for you, Mrs. Potter, Mrs. Weasley?" she said, in the formal tone she sometimes still adopted when addressing potential patients.
At that moment, Fleur grabbed Hermione's hand, clamping it between her own arm and her body, as she bent slightly, closing her eyes, and visibly riding out the pain. Hermione flung a knowing glance at the mediwitch, as her question had indeed been duly answered, but responded to the query anyway.
"I reckon you can deliver a baby."
~*~*~*~*~
Fleur groaned loudly, a growly, throaty sound that seemed to dredge up from the depths of her abdomen and force its way through her teeth. Her face was red with the effort, the cords stood out in her slender neck, and her golden hair stuck damply to her cheeks and the back of her neck. Hermione felt like she must be at least as sweaty as Fleur, and was nearly certain that she still didn't look as good.
"You're nearly there, Mrs. Weasley," Madam Pomfrey said, in what seemed to be almost a croon. "One or two more pushes should do it. Wait for the next contraction."
Fleur flopped backwards onto the inclined mattress, breathing heavily from fatigue rather than pain - the potion having done its work well - and Hermione used the opportunity to dab her clammy skin with a washcloth that had been charmed to stay refreshingly cool.
"How are you doing?" she asked in a low voice, trying to mimic the soothing tone of the mediwitch. Fleur looked at her, her startlingly vivid eyes more shadowed than normal.
"I miss Bill," she said simply. Hermione brushed some of her damp hair back from her forehead.
"I know."
A small, colored emblem hovering in mid-air near Fleur's abdomen began to chime, and Madam Pomfrey crouched at the end of the bed again.
"Here comes another one. Are you ready to push?"
"I… suppose…" Fleur ground out, as Hermione pushed her back into an upright position, bracing her with a mild Repelling charm. She lifted the weight of her own hair away from her prickly neck, and wondered how long they'd been back here, behind the drawn curtains, Silencioed so as to not disturb Ron. It had probably only been several hours, though it felt like at least a day. She had only left Fleur's side twice, to make reports to the anxious row of Weasleys - and Harry - lined up in the infirmary waiting for word.
"Here he comes," was the triumphant declaration from Fleur's feet, and Hermione noticed that Madam Pomfrey had taken it for granted, as had Fleur, that it would be a boy.
"Red hair?" Fleur managed to croak.
"Not much of any hair at all. Keep pushing," the mediwitch instructed. Hermione noticed Penelope standing by with a warmed blanket, ready to take the baby as soon as the cord had been cut.
Fleur's final push ended in a helplessly worn out squeak that merged into the lusty wail of a newborn baby.
"It's a boy!" Madam Pomfrey exclaimed, and Hermione felt tears standing in her eyes, as Fleur's face crumpled in equal parts joy and sadness.
"Can I have him? Can I see him please?" she asked, already trying to sit up again, and look at the tiny person making so much noise.
The mediwitches cut the cord, and used a gentle obstetrical charm to clean him off, before Penelope wound him in the blanket, and brought him to Fleur. He was a big baby, red and wrinkled, and had ceased squalling, but was looking around him with a disgruntled air, as if he didn't think much of the world into which he'd been flung.
Hermione reached out with two fingers to touch the downy softness on his head, and felt Laurel kick vigorously inside her. Soon, she thought - soon that'll be me…and our baby - mine and Harry's.
Out loud she said,
"He's beautiful."
"He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Look at his hair!" Fleur's French accent seemed to grow even thicker in a voice already clogged with tears. Madam Pomfrey had been right; he didn't have much hair to speak of, but what was there was a fiery gold, not flaxen like Fleur's, but neither the vivid red that was the Weasleys' trademark. It was as if his delicate head had been gilded ever so slightly.
"Shall I get the family?" Hermione asked, as Madam Pomfrey began efficiently casting charms to clean Fleur and the immediate vicinity. Penelope came and took the baby, over Fleur's slight bleat of protest, but she was assured,
"Only for a moment - to weigh and measure him. I'll bring him right back."
Fleur nodded at Hermione.
"They can come in." Hermione slipped out between the curtains, expelling a breath upward to push her hair away from her sticky face, and laughed as Fred, Mr. Weasley, and Harry all stood expectantly.
"It's a boy," she announced, and watched in satisfaction, as a musical laugh trilled from Ginny's throat and the Weasley men and Harry shook hands and clapped each other on the back, as if it were their son entering the world. And, in a way, it might as well be, Hermione mused.
"How's Fleur?" Fred asked, after a moment of celebration.
"She's fine - it - she was really incredible in there," Hermione said sincerely, wondering if she could have been so stoic, delivering a child without his father. "She'd like you to come in now," she remembered to say, just as Madam Pomfrey drew the curtains aside to reveal Fleur reclined almost regally in the bed, a blanket-swathed bundle tucked securely in her arms.
Mr. Weasley was the first one to her side, gently pushing aside the edge of the blanket to get a good look. Shining wetness swam in his eyes.
"My grandson…" he murmured. "What are you going to call him?"
Fleur smiled mistily, as she used one hand to dash away the tears that couldn't help but escape anyway.
"William," she said, her voice almost cracking in the middle of the word.
"Junior?" Ginny wondered aloud, waiting quietly for her turn to hold the baby.
"No," Fleur corrected gently. "William Percival Weasley."
"Oh…" Mr. Weasley breathed reverently, almost as if he didn't dare believe it. "Oh, that is nice, Fleur. They would like that…so much."
Blinking back the persistent tears, Hermione noticed Penelope smile a wobbly smile at the announcement of the baby's name and glide softly to a divider, leaning through it to speak, her voice soft and indistinct. For the first time, she noticed the low murmur of voices beyond, and realized that the birth of this baby, this new Weasley, was as much an event for the others as it was for those closest to that family. A symbol, she recalled Ginny's words, like her and Harry's wedding, like the Christmas feast, a sign - a hope - that the world really wanted to go about its normal business of living, and that someday they would achieve that goal. At the same time, that hope caused an edge of tension - she knew what would have to happen before everything could come to fruition and restoration - if indeed it happened at all.
She sighed tremulously, as she watched the tableau at Fleur's bedside, the only thing marring it the absence of Ron in the circle of shining ginger heads. She felt the solid warmth of Harry's presence behind her, and she leaned back against his chest without even looking.
"Soon we'll see our baby," he murmured, his breath warm and tantalizing against her ear. She arched her neck away from the shudder it sent through her, and her mouth twisted upward in a wistful smile.
"I can't wait to meet her," she admitted ruefully, as she caressed the sides of her abdomen with open palms. "But I'm so worried… about - about what kind of - what will - everything seems to be spinning faster…" She had trouble articulating the tension that snaked through her, and she lifted her chin to look at him, her eyes limpid and troubled.
His gaze was an emerald mirror of hers.
"You feel it too, don't you?" he said, his tone too certain to really be an interrogative.
"Feel what?" she asked, her words sounding almost like a feeble denial.
"The sand slipping through the hourglass. The clock chiming the hour. It's almost time." His words were unusually and almost poetically cryptic, and his gaze had shuttered. Hermione was uncomfortably reminded of the period during which he'd been under the influence of the vial. He seemed to be seeing beyond her somehow, gazing at some bleak vista that was out of her sight.
She turned more fully toward him, placing one hand flat on his chest.
"Harry?" She kept her voice low, so as to not alarm the others thronging about the baby, but a definite hum of concern threaded through her voice. The random comparison to the Circle's influence jolted suddenly through her mind again, and she was afraid. But it was gone… we - we eradicated it - it has to be gone.
He must have seen some of the utter alarm dilate her eyes, turning them into ebony pools, because he looked suddenly and sharply down into her face.
"What's wrong?"
"You - you sounded odd," she replied, keeping her voice barely audible. "It reminded me of the Circle." She half-expected him to laugh off the notion, but he did not. Instead, his hand floated absent-mindedly up to rub the scar on his forehead.
"Funny you should say that," he quipped, wincing a little. "Ever since you and Ron broke the hold it had on me, it's like there's been a - an echo maybe, or an imprint left."
"Of Voldemort?" She queried, her voice abrupt and worried. At his nod, she added, "Worse than your scar?"
"Not - not worse exactly… just different. It's been faint - and I don't think it is going to control me or anything, but - but I can just feel that time is running out. The feeling's gotten even stronger - worse - since - since Ron…and Tonks. It's going to be soon."
"Harry!" The word was a fiercely beseeching plea. The hand she had laid on his chest curled into a fist, clenching the material of his shirt in its grasp. "Harry, what's going to be soon?"
He shook his head helplessly, his eyebrows flattening into a low and brooding line that hooded his brilliant eyes.
"I…don't…know." His gaze had gone dark and distant again. "But I think… it's about time we told Neville to make his move on the Primes."
~*~*~*~*~
Hermione tossed and turned for over an hour later that night, before finally giving up and clambering out of the bed. The cavern was dim and silent for the night, as she exited the divider to the sound of Harry's soft snores. She felt a momentary flash of irritation at him for filling her head with worries and then "leaving" her to fret over them while he slept. Almost instantly, she was mildly ashamed, knowing how few nights of truly refreshing sleep he was given.
There was low light from the infirmary, and a shadow flitted across the divider. Hermione assumed that someone was up, assisting Fleur or tending to Ron. She decided against poking her head inside, not wanting to invite a lecture on proper rest for expectant mothers from Madam Pomfrey.
As she turned toward the small section of cave that served as her and Fred's laboratory of sorts, however, she was surprised to see that selfsame Weasley there, bathed in the low light of a lamp, hunched over their workstation so intently that he did not hear her approach.
"Keeping awfully late hours, aren't we?" she asked casually, a slight smile evident in her voice.
"It's this slavedriver of a boss, you see," Fred responded in kind. "She's this really swotty know-it-all…" He finally turned around so that she could see the twinkle lurking in his eyes, but the pleasant, if subdued, expression vanished from his face when he saw hers. "What's going on?" Wariness flashed back into his eyes.
"I can't sleep," she sighed, flinging her hands upward as if to say, the very idea! "Harry is - he said some things earlier that - it reminded me of the vial. He said that it had left an imprint behind."
Fred instantly became very concerned.
"It's not still in his mind? I thought we'd gotten it."
"No, no," Hermione hastened to correct him. "He said it wasn't controlling him or anything, but it was like … like there was an afterimage left or something. Similar to his scar - just another way for him and Voldemort to be on the same wavelength, I guess, and he - Harry thinks it's going to be soon."
Fred did not have to ask what "it" signified.
"I just keep thinking that there has got to be some way we can use the contents of that vial to our advantage…" she finished helplessly. Fred was shaking his head.
"It's resisted all our attempts to break it down, to alter it, to immerse it in a potion…" he made a swirling gesture with his hand, clearly saying, I could go on, but you know all this already.
There was silence as both of them mused separately, each lost in their own troubles, when Hermione suddenly straightened.
"Wait a minute," she said, knowing that her eyes were beginning to flash with excitement. She had actually said it herself, actually voiced the clue, and hadn't even realized it. One corner of Fred's mouth had tilted upward in a slight smirk.
"What have you thought of?" he asked admiringly.
"Wavelengths - they're on - they're on the same wavelength!" She could tell Fred wasn't really following her, but her brain was spinning off in this exhilarating new direction, moving faster than her mouth could compensate. She stopped and took several breaths in succession, hoping for a way to explain this adequately, so that Fred could join in her brainstorming session.
"Do you remember how I told you that I extracted Harry's magical signature from the repository stone?"
"Because you didn't want to risk extracting some of what little magic he had from him directly - yes, I remember. You used it to customize that Masking charm for him."
"And why do you think that Circle seemed to pinpoint Harry specifically?"
"Because Voldemort created it," Fred replied easily and without hesitation.
"But why? Why does that automatically mean Harry will be affected?"
"Because they're linked through Harry's scar." Again, Fred's answer was prompt and confident. Hermione couldn't help but smile, as if Fred was playing right into her line of theorizing.
"But why?" she asked again.
Fred opened his mouth to speak, but did not, clearly unable to continue down Hermione's path.
"It all makes sense!" She exulted, her voice a hiss of excitement. "It explains why Harry's wand is a brother to Voldemort's. It might even explain why Voldemort felt somehow drawn to mark Harry as his equal that Halloween. Or why some of Voldemort's powers transferred so easily to Harry…"
"That's fascinating, Hermione," Fred said, in a long-suffering voice, teasing underlying his tone. "But would you mind explaining it to me?"
"Their magical signatures! I'm not sure what exactly determines the look of someone's magical signature, but they're supposed to be as individual as fingerprints. But what if - what if - Harry and Voldemort have magical signatures that are nearly identical to each other's?"
"And those similar signatures selected nearly identical wands?" Fred said slowly, as he cottoned on to what Hermione was trying to say.
"And might have a tendency to easily link or interact with each other…" Hermione finished.
"So if the Circle's essence `attached' itself to Harry," Fred postulated, turning toward the magical field housing the vial within it, and poking at it with his wand. The viscous fell smoke roiled inside, as if in protest. "And now we've got this…"
"I'd be willing to wager that we've got a copy of Voldemort's magical signature right there," she finished.
"Brilliant!" Fred exclaimed in understated praise. "And how do we use that to our advantage?"
Hermione's eyes were contemplative, almost turned inward, as she spoke slowly, clearly formulating her plan even as the words left her lips.
"I've got the empty repository stone," she said. "The one that was keyed to Harry's magical signature until I removed it. If we can key that to Voldemort's signature - then we may be able to…"
"Do unto Voldemort as he did unto Harry?" Fred questioned, in a lightly-spoken, apt Muggle reference that made Hermione blink at him in slight surprise.
"If we could get to him somehow, and drain his magic - but I don't know that one stone would be enough. There were dozens in that cell with Harry - and even then, it took time to remove. He - he said it was quite painful…" She tried to continue speaking with clinical detachment, but didn't really succeed.
"But - but you said Voldemort was afraid to face Harry himself. He had those repository stones doing all the work for him."
"What do you mean?"
"If there was a way that we could - could embed that repository stone with Voldemort's magical signature in Harry's wand. And there was a spell that could - could call to that signature in Voldemort… with Harry's being so similar…if it is that similar…"
"Priori Incantatem," Hermione breathed in a barely audible voice. "Harry could call the magic out himself. It would probably go much faster that way."
"We'd need to be sure that the two signatures really were almost exactly alike," Fred pointed out.
"I'll not extract any of Harry's magic now," Hermione refused staunchly. "He's only now returning to normal levels. We don't even know how any removal would affect him, or how fast he could regenerate it."
"So we go back to the Riddle house and get another stone," Fred suggested casually. His eyes sparked suddenly, and he stood up from where he'd been lackadaisically leaned back against the worktable. "Better yet, we go back and get all of them - by their very nature, aren't they storage devices? If you can extract Harry's magical signature from them, why couldn't you extract the magic contained there? It would take a more specialized spell, but…"
Hermione felt her heart begin to slam into the wall of her chest, as she thought about what Fred was saying, calling herself six kinds of an idiot for not having seen it before.
"Are you - do you mean - ?"
"If they took it out of Harry, it had to go somewhere, didn't it?"
"It never even - I never dreamed - they'd just leave it - right where - " Hermione couldn't finish, and she almost wanted to laugh as she thought of Harry's bitter, yet unknowingly appropriate, words to her that day long ago in the safehouse.
Magic would be a lot harder to come by, wouldn't it?
And her reply, there's not exactly a surplus of spare magic lying about, is there?
"Could we - " she stammered, almost hoarsely, then cleared her throat and began again. "Would we be able to … to put it back?"
"I don't know that it's ever been done before. But - but you and Ron seem to be able to link up to his mind fairly easily. If you were … facilitating the exchange, then I reckon anything's possible."
Hermione stood very still, fist pressed against her mouth, eyes moving rapidly, as she thought intensely about what Fred was saying. As she came to decision, she dropped her hand, and looked over at the remaining Weasley twin with brisk and businesslike intent.
"Well, then, let's go."
"Go?" Fred looked taken aback. "Go where?"
"To the Riddle house," she explained in an overly patient voice, as if to a very slow child. "To get the other repository stones. We'll check the Map, but Voldemort seems to be staying close to Hogwarts these days."
"You - you're not going," Fred nearly spluttered, as if unable to believe that she had even suggested it.
"Don't be ridiculous, Fred," Hermione said, keeping her voice cool and level. "Ron and I are the only ones who've been through the wards. And Ron's not exactly in a state to go, is he? It's probably as empty now as it was when we were last there. And if we go now, we'll probably be back before anyone even knows we're gone."
Fred's dubious expression spoke volumes, but he felt compelled to voice a prediction anyway.
"When Harry find out, he's going to hex me within an inch of my life."
TBC
Well, how is that for more prompt updating? (pats self on back) We are really getting down to the final chapters here, and the writing seems to be coming a little faster. I would say maybe just two or three more chapters before we're all done.
Hope you are continuing to enjoy. You may leave a review on the way out, if you like.
lorien
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