Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Here With Me
Chapter 6
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Given her options, Hermione wisely decided changing Harry's bandages would certainly wait another few minutes. After all, she'd read that a patient's sense of optimism was key to successful treatment. Patients that felt that life was worth living for tended to recover faster and with fewer complications regardless of the relative severity of injury. It was time to give Harry a little something to live for without Madam Pomfrey's prescription… or intervention
She dismounted and slipped beneath the covers beside him, feeling him reach for her and moving to make room she didn't need. She threaded her leg between his warm flannel clad ones and unzipped the enormous, well worn muggle sweat jacket of Dudley's she had chosen for him (to make replacing his bandages easier, she reflected with another grin.) She nestled against the heady warmth of his skin and laid one hand flat on his chest directly above his heart.
While his eyes appeared calm and watchful; the irregular thumping of the heart beneath her hand betrayed him.
"Hermione?" he whispered.
"What?" she whispered back.
"It's just that I… well, I've been dreading talking about the prophecy ever since Dumbledore told me. To you, most of all. I thought you'd be more upset, or I don't know, angry, even. Don't get me wrong," he added quickly, "it's fine that you're not, it's great, really. It's just that I don't understand why, and I really want to know what you're thinking."
The hand on his chest began making slow, mesmerizing journeys of exploration, fingertips covering previously uncharted territory without hurry and with obvious delight. Her touch was deft and light and curious, just as he would have imagined. If he'd ever let himself. Lord, what a lot of time he'd wasted.
"I might not have known what your prophecy said, Harry, but I gave prophecies in general quite a lot of thought while I was in the hospital ward after the Department of Mysteries and again this summer over break. I know Ron thinks that I left off divination class because Trelawney said I lacked the proper aura and I didn't want to be in any class I couldn't be best at. It did hurt a bit when she told me I had "very little receptivity to the resonances of the future." Hermione did an almost uncanny take on Professor Trelawney's ethereal quavering and Harry couldn't help but smile.
"The thing is," she continued, "that I found I just don't believe in it. Fundamentally, I mean. I believe that human beings have free will, the ability to make choices that affect our lives. You made a choice while we were standing outside the Great Hall before the sorting first year. You chose Ron over Malfoy. You asked the Hat for something else when it offered you Slytherin. Earlier today you talked about having some of Voldemort's powers in you because of the Avada Kedavra that backfired. But in all the years I've known you, I've never known you to be less than honorable, and you couldn't be a truer or more loyal friend. You've obviously chosen somehow not to let him overtake you. It's one of the things I love most about you, Harry. You've made the best out of a life that could have worn you down, not because you knew it was foretold that you'd have to fight Voldemort or die but just because of the person you are."
As much as he wanted to hear what she was saying, what she was she was saying was drawing him closer and closer to the point where wanting to kiss her turned into needing to kiss her. Badly.
"Prophecy or no prophecy, I think you'd have ended up fighting Voldemort," she told him. "You might yearn to turn away, but I don't believe for a moment you would. I chose to love you fully knowing that's what you'd probably do. Tom Riddle's made his own choices. I don't think the person who finally stops him is going to be a murderer. I think he's going to be an innately good person who just wants the evil to stop before it touches one more life. The very same kind of person who launches himself on an Ogre six times his size without thinking twice, even though he's only eleven years old."
She smiled at him then, and her hands moved from his chest to frame his face, as if understanding his brain's dilemma and focusing things for him.
"There's an enormous difference between prediction and prophecy, Harry. I think divination is really just a form of prediction, and prediction is trying to deduce what might be. Prophecy is trying to tell us what will be… And I believe with all my heart that what will be is ultimately up to you and me."
Harry felt somehow as if a staggering weight had just been lifted from his shoulders. Learn from this! he told himself fiercely, gathering her closer to him and burying his face in the warmth of her neck and the thick, silky fall of her hair. Tell her. Just tell her, no matter what it is. You know she can handle it, and she's more than earned it with that. Everywhere he touched felt impossibly soft and pliant beneath his fingers; how could she be so strong and so delicate all at once? All his instincts to handle things alone, to try not to involve his friends in the darkness of his life, to hide his fear and guilt and shame were all being swiftly usurped by a need so powerful it shook him in his skin. He bargained with himself as he kissed her, told himself that he could keep her safe, that he would never fail to keep her safe because without her he was nothing. If he had magic at all she was his focus, if there was love still buried within him from Lily's gift, she was the only one he could feel safe enough with to coax it out.
"Besides," Hermione said softly, her lips a promise against his ear. "Nothing says you have to do it alone. I'll be your power Voldemort knows not if I can. I will."
"The power I know not," honesty forced him to admit with some urgency in her ear, "is how to stop, if we don't. Right now actually. Hermione, I…"
She drew slowly back and he reluctantly eased his own hold.
"I know," she said, glancing over at the still snoring Hagrid and Ron. "I wish…"
She sat up, reaching again for the bandages and potion from Madam Pomfrey she'd set aside before.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Hermione opened one eye. Reluctantly. She felt lovely, warm and comfortable; sleeping beside Harry was a lot like having an electric blanket, another bit of Muggle comfort that Hogwarts could have benefited from. The question, then, was what had awoken her? She'd planned to wake early and slip down to her own sleeping bag, anxious to respect Hagrid's sense of responsibility for Harry's well being and uneager to gift Ron with further fodder for teasing. Hermione had an inner alarm clock. She'd always been able to will herself to wake early to get a head start on the day, or to pick up with an idea exactly where she'd left it the night before. It was still quite dark, though, and felt earlier than she had planned.
Something was amiss.
Her eyes roamed around the room. The door was closed and the bar still securely in the latch. The fire had died down to mostly embers and glowed. Hagrid was snoring away in his chair. Fang was drooling in his sleep and had rolled lovingly closer to Ron…
Hermione sat up quickly, throwing back the blankets and shaking at Harry behind her.
"Harry…" she hissed.
"Ouch… what?" Harry mumbled back.
Am I a really bad friend if I still notice how much I love the way his voice is all deep and sleepy while I tell him there's a giant snake crawling up Ron's sleeping bag?
"There's a snake on Ron's sleeping bag. A really big ugly snake."
"Friend of Hagrid's?" Harry suggested blearily, but she could hear him fumbling for his glasses.
"You're the parselmouth, Harry," she reminded him. "Ask it."
Harry struggled up to sit behind her, peering over her shoulder. She heard a shaky intake of breath, and then the sibilant, undulating hiss she had last heard issue from his mouth second year.
The snake stilled its progress, turned toward the bed and raised its head as if to get a better view of them. Black beady eyes fixed their gaze on Harry and Hermione felt what she could only describe as a wave of dislike, like a rush of cold in a stream of warm water.
Harry repeated the same string of softly slurring hisses. Hermione could feel that his body had tensed behind her. The snake flicked its forked tongue, rising up higher in the air, then appeared to answer Harry. Whatever it said, it ended the message with an open mouthed display of fangs that glistened in the low light of the fire.
"What… what did it say?" she asked softly.
"The Dark Lord, the rightful heir of Salazar Slytherin, is displeased with me. He can no longer allow my interference. The snake is here to claim an eye for an eye. The Dark Lord has lost something precious of Salazar's and he claims the red headed Gryffindor in its sake." Harry's eyes met Hermione's and he whispered "It's talking about Draco, I think. It thinks I somehow turned Malfoy to Dumbledore's side and it wants to kill Ron."
"Tell it something to make it stop! Quick!" Hermione whispered back, horrified.
Harry hissed urgently. Hermione watched in fascination as the snake appeared to listen to Harry's appeal. If it was possible for a snake to laugh, that was its response. It turned back to the still sleeping Ron and rose up further into striking position.
Hermione felt Harry launch himself from behind her back and literally fly from the edge of the bed to where his best friend lay on the floor, landing with full force on top of Ron as the snake struck. The fangs sunk into Hermione's enthusiastic re-bandaging of Harry's arm and he hissed something, grabbing at it. Ron sat up abruptly, screaming, dislodging both Harry and the snake on to Fang. Fang awoke with a startled yowl and leapt up onto Hagrid's lap, rolling the still wrestling pair back toward Ron. Hagrid came awake with a start but remained frozen, trying to take in the seemingly impossible scene before him. Ron appeared to suddenly realize the snake was trying to hurt Harry; he reached out and found the fireplace poker with one hand, grabbed the snake just behind its head with the other, yanked the fangs free from Harry's bandages and with one smooth continuous motion batted the snake towards the hearth. There was a hideous, slithery whump as it hit stone and fell to the floor, stunned.
A moment of silence followed in which all that could be heard was heavy breathing as three wizards, one witch and one enormous boarhound tried to persuade calm to swim upstream against the adrenalin rush.
"Nice one, Ron," Harry managed first. "Thanks."
"No problem," Ron gasped. "Think nothing of it. I did think snakes were partial to you, though. What's the story with that one?"
"Friend of Voldemorts'."
"No!" Hagrid was horrified.
"He told Harry the Dark Lord sent him," Hermione said. "He said…" she broke off, a look of dawning comprehension on her face. She hopped down from the edge of the bed and grabbed her wand from the floor beside her sleeping bag.
"Erm, Hermione, don't get too close, I think it's only stunned, that thing…" Ron started as he saw her head toward the prone form of the snake. She ignored him and crouched down quite close, softly said an incantation and waved her wand. There was a blinding flash of light and then a speeded-up-film effect they had each seen before. Hermione took several steps backward and to the boys' undisguised amazement the enormous pale snake grew and took shape as Lucius Malfoy's unconscious body.
"Eeewww." said Ron, succinctly.
Harry couldn't have agreed more.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>