Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 16
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Elspeth had managed to set up the arrangements to meet at Hogwarts within a matter of days; two, to be exact. Hermione knew Professor McGonagall had agreed immediately, because she got a rather cryptic message to acknowledge the fact.
A seemingly ordinary London sparrow thrust itself through the front door the next evening when it opened to admit Tonks, who'd come to check on them. Clearly it had been waiting for just such opportunity outside; once inside it busied itself dodging their flying stunning spells and transfiguring into a tawny owl clutching a… flower? A yellow rose. Tonks cautiously took it from him, although the owl didn't seem pleased with that and continued to swoop agitatedly around their heads. She tried several spells on it carefully, her expression troubled.
"It's definitely magical, but the spell doesn't seem threatening as far as I can tell. Not that that's any guarantee. Any idea who'd send you a spelled rose?"
"Maybe it's for Harry? Someone who's read the Quibbler and thinks he's getting a raw deal?" suggested Ron.
"Who knew how to find us in an unplottable house and how to transfigure an owl into a sparrow that would somehow magically transfigure back at this address, which doesn't even exist?" Hermione pointed out impatiently. "I think it's got to be either Elspeth or Professor McGonagall. May I see it?"
Tonks gave it to her like handing off a bomb, slowly, and with a good deal of relief when it left her fingertips. The sudden idea of Tonks and anything explosive was so terrifying Hermione had a momentary feeling of light headedness. Once she'd regained her equilibrium she did a simple revealing charm and in her own hand it cooperated immediately, transfiguring itself back into a letter. The envelope did not bear Hogwarts crest but it might as well; Professor McGonagall's handwriting was distinctive enough to be recognized by anyone who'd taken Transfiguration there.
She heard herself let out a gusty sigh of relief. The owl was relieved also, and fluttered down to perch on the back of a chair with a noise remarkable similar to the one Hermione had made.
"McGonagall." Tonks stated, taking in the precise script. "Well that's a relief then. Still. I'm casting anti-bird and animal wards on the way out. Not just anyone could do that, but most who could aren't as friendly as the Professor. Where's the boy wonder?"
Ron grinned. "He's down in Moony's old room trying to control himself. It was getting a bit destructive up here."
Tonks smiled grimly back. "He's read the papers, then. Maybe I'll just go down and see if I can't help cheer him up."
"Whatever he says, don't "practice" anything with him. He was all sure he'd got himself under control yesterday, but I've got the bruises to prove otherwise," he told her feelingly. They wandered off in the direction of the dungeon-like space deep under the house behind the kitchen. Hermione moved from the hall into the front room and pulled the dustcover off an old wing chair to sit in the feeble light of a grimed window, extracting the missive from its envelope. They never used this room; it was too stiff and formal and too exposed somehow, being so close to the door.
Dearest Hermione,
If Elspeth has not been able to reach you yet, you should know that Professor Snape has agreed to meet with you and the boys here at Hogwarts 2 August.
As terrible as it was to read the Prophet this morning (both for the news of what has befallen Harry and their cavalier and biased reporting of it) I was still enormously proud and happy to make note of your continued friendship with both Ron and Harry. You three went through so much together that I was fairly certain the bonds would remain strong if all possible after Voldemort's demise, but they have obviously survived yet more difficult times for Harry as well. So often when students grow older and become romantically linked the quality if their other friendships naturally dwindle or change. I am glad that the three of you have weathered that step so admirably.
Hermione sighed tiredly. Yet more explaining herself lay ahead. She yearned for the day when that particular phase was over and everyone in her life knew and accepted that she and Harry were together.
I must make a confession. During your years here, as the three of you matured and advanced through your schooling, I felt almost certain at times it would be Harry you chose of the two. I know it seems silly now, but there it is. You two always appeared so connected in times of trouble, almost as if you each could sense what the other must be thinking. I thought that perhaps to be a heavier load at times for you than Harry; watching him do what he was meant to and knowing there was only so much any of us could really provide in the way of assistance was a very difficult thing. The earnest, bookish little witch I met the day you came to Hogwarts bore no resemblance to the brave and clever one who sacrificed her own best chances of advancement and academic glory and risked her very life to help save her friends'.
Harry's continued willingness to remain close to you both and act the fulcrum when you and Ron disagree suggests great affection and restraint on his part as well; qualities most people would not even distantly connect with Harry Potter but that both you and I know to be there in untapped loads. How like this life, though, that what seems outwardly to be the warfare of diametrically opposed minds can in fact be masking, or perhaps even paving the road to deeper feelings! I admit myself to have been both proud and thrilled when I learned that you and Ron were with Harry when he escaped.
I mention this, Hermione, only to remind you how truly blessed you are in both these boys, and to encourage you to keep a clear head in the days to come. I know you are only too aware the power the scrutiny of the press can bear to distort every facet of ones' life.
Hermione let out a single snort of laughter. Wasn't that the sorry truth. It had been a painful lesson for `it must be true! It's been printed!' Hermione Granger to learn Fourth year that books and newspapers could be not only fallible but in fact deliberately misleading.
I was relieved to see The Quibbler step in and take up Harry's side of things. Looked at simply, the very idea of the charges against Harry are ludicrous, and the solution of attempting to interfere with his magic both morally wrong and idealistically flawed. Examined through the skewed lens the Daily Prophet provides, however, it could take on a kind of warped sense to families that have not been able to recover from their losses to Voldemort, or even as far back as Grindelwald. I find myself growing more afraid of this Ministry than ever I was Voldemort himself; evil is far more subtle and difficult to detect when institutionalized.
Leave it to her favorite Professor to sum up her own fears so succinctly.
I know only too well how this would have enflamed Albus' temper and sensibilities, and I have been guilty of keeping most of what has been going on from his portrait. Portraits by their very nature know they can never truly affect the future again, and that their one strength lies in advising the living. Perhaps it might help them both if Harry and Albus were able to spend some time together while you were here. Dumbledore dealt again and again with some of the same issues Harry faces in terms of the fear, the jealousy and the need to be wary of manipulation that comes with possession of deeper magic.
I am looking very much forward to seeing you again so soon, Hermione. My only wish was that it could have been under far more pleasant circumstances.
Minerva McGonagall
That made two of them, then.
Hermione sighed and hoisted herself from her chair and went off in search of the others, her sense of foreboding heightened rather than abated as she'd hoped.
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Despite Ron's warning to Tonks, the three of them were -of course! - mock dueling, although the `mock' part was being stretched to the very limits of its true meaning. Ron and Tonks had teamed up, and if Hermione wasn't very much mistaken Tonks was not only thoroughly enjoying the proceedings, she was looking a more than a little intrigued with Harry's present form. Given her occupation, Hermione felt that wasn't really a good thing. Tonks' major strength as an Auror might be her metamorphmagus ability to adopt almost instant camouflage, and she might be more than just a little unlucky (or just plain clumsy) at times, but she was still a professional and no slouch when it came to wand play.
Harry really ought not to be able to manage what he was doing with her there. There was still a difference between an overload of raw magic and extensive training, something he'd never really had a chance at.
Hermione watched them from the relative safety of the short flight of steps that lead down from the kitchen, perched on the bottom and peering round the dividing wall. Ron kept a steady stream of constantly changing but relatively harmless jinxes and hexes flying Harry's way from as many directions as he could, while Tonks was timing her more serious ones, trying to slip one through his defenses while he was busy handling Ron's.
It wasn't working. Hermione could see that Harry was hyper-focused; he'd shifted from conscious thought into a mental zone of simple awareness and instant reaction to what was coming at him. She'd seen him like that before, his eyes empty but his body responding; it was his natural inclination to leap first and worry later taken past instinct on to a deliberate extreme. It had been that way with Voldemort that last time. As things had gone from bad to worse he'd retreated inside himself and managed just to endure it all, the repeated Crucios and Voldemort's other petty retributions, the wand combusting in his hands, the boggart dementor sucking the horcrux from his scar.
Yet when that final moment came and his single chance made its split-second opportunity known, he'd been able to grab hold and make use of it. She'd always been fairly sure the shield he had cast to deflect the spell meant to mark him as Voldemort's own had been an instinctive response If he had thought it through he might have hesitated, and any hesitation then would have meant his own end. It had been that close a thing.
When she'd asked him about it afterwards he'd known right away what she'd meant, but struggled in vain to find the words to describe what had happened. "I realized last year that there's just something there inside me, waiting all the time," he said finally. "I have to give in to it entirely for it to help, sort of get into this zone where it takes over and I just do stuff. Stuff I didn't think I knew how to do. I never wanted to at first, I thought it was the horcrux or something, but as it turned out it wasn't. I don't know what it is, really. It's me, but… not. I don't even know whether to hope it's gone now or not."
Clearly it wasn't gone. The question was why a simple mock duel with Ron and Tonks would bring it to the forefront now? Or was there more to it? She watched Tonks redouble her efforts and become sneaky with it, casting spells that rode right behind Ron's and forcing Harry to read and respond to both at once. He seemed to do so fairly easily; his body feinting and dodging and spinning away, his hands a confident blur of shields and spells. There was more clearly now then ever a faint foreshadowing of Dumbledore in Harry.
Ron's next jelly-legs arrived with a jelly-stinger behind it, a spell with the stinging effect of being hit with a flying jellyfish. It was a mild and relatively innocuous shocking spell in the hands of a Hogwarts First or Second year, but could be quite effectively painful when issued with deliberation by someone like Tonks.
Harry nimbly managed both spells, using a shield that deflected the jelly legs back toward Ron and a different one to harmlessly absorb the magic of Tonks'. Ron swore and wobbled toward the wall to prop himself up, but Harry let fly the counter curse before he ever reached it, restoring his opponent.
Hermione thought it was very much Harry to throw back a jelly legs and take out of play the more dangerous spell, and even more so to perform a counter curse for Ron, whom she truly believed him to be incapable of harming. Obviously he was not so far away within himself that he was not aware of his friends, though she noted that he moved with a disarming, sinuous grace that was not his own; predatory and controlled. The lightening quality of his defenses seemed at distinct odds with the overcharged but deliberately mild spells he himself was lobbing back at them, and she felt a little shiver run down her spine. A dichotomy like that could only ever last until…
Tonks got him with her fourth try, another jelly-stinger, succeeding at last by sneaking it even closer in sync behind Ron's deflected Petrificus. It barely struck him, but he wasn't expecting it and Hermione saw the shock run through him like an electric current. He was entirely without control for a moment, his whole body seemed to seize up as the spell jolted through his limbs.
It was only because her train of thought had been already headed in that direction that she could shout "Duck!" to Ron and Tonks and "Harry, no!"
Ron and Tonks did duck, but Harry probably couldn't have stopped what coursed through him if he tried; and given the sudden shock of the pain and the timing, Hermione wasn't altogether certain he did. The answering spell appeared ripped from his hands out of sheer reaction. Hermione felt her hair crackle with something akin to static electricity and there was a brief, implosive, whoosh; as if the energy of the spell simply displaced the air around it as it traveled. A flare of brilliant blue lit the very edge of it as it careened off the stone of the corner of the basement wall above Ron and Tonks. It generated a high whining sound like angry bees as it made for the wall directly across from Hermione and ricocheted off again, for all the world as if it were seeking something and grew more and more intense with frustration as it failed to find it.
And it was heading now for her. Harry swore in sudden recognition and heaved himself in front of it. Hermione watched him, her breath held, as the visible energy of the spell bent in its path to his command and swirled around him like planets to a dying sun, disappearing with a flare into his very skin. It broke his stride to absorb it all and he staggered, still moving toward her. It was only when his next step brought him to his knees she realized what the spell had been. Something crimson bloomed in a long, rapid stain up one arm and across his shoulder, following the path of the spell. She crossed the distance between them in what felt like a single bounding leap of her heart into her throat.
Ron began climbing back to his feet almost at once, helping Tonks to hers without taking his unblinking eyes from Harry.
"You weren't kidding," Hermione heard Tonks say, whistling between her teeth. "What was… oh. Oh, bugger."
Harry was staring at his own dripping arm with what seemed to be resignation and faint regret.
Hermione had only once before in her life seen so much blood, and then she'd been oddly satisfied. She hadn't been surprised Voldemort's blood was as red and staining as anyone else's - it had been formed from Harry's, after all - but she had been amazed how every fatal, spurting drop held felt thrillingly right and good as it relieved the knot of fear she'd lived with for so long. She hadn't thought she had it in her to be vindictive, to take such pleasure in the death of another, but after all he had done to Harry, after every vile, cruel thing he had gloried in himself that evening Hermione had found she could and did. It was only when they'd pulled Harry off him that she'd seen how much of it had in fact come from Harry; the first side of the `V' he'd been carving had bled copiously. She was struck cold by the thought now as she reached Harry and she looked desperately around the room for anything to staunch the flow.
`Not again,' she thought.
Ron caught her look and swiftly aimed his wand toward the stairs shouting "Accio towels. Accio sheets."
"You need to Accio Madam Pomfrey, is what you need to do," Tonks said, and Hermione heard the tremor in her voice. Ron nodded and ran without a word of argument up the stairs to the kitchen fire. "Either that or we'll bloody well have to take him in to St. Mungo's and turn him in," she continued to Hermione. "That's a right nasty piece of work. None of us is fit to heal something like that. What the hell was it?"
"Sectumsempra," Harry said dully. "It's Snape's own spell; he made it up at Hogwarts. It's what Voldemort used that night to try and make his mark on me. And look, he wins…"
Hermione felt her own blood run cold. The slash did run up across the opposite shoulder from the one that bore the scar Voldemort had given him, completing the "V" shape.
"Stop it," she heard herself say steadily; and if Harry had been in some sort of `zone' as he dueled before, Hermione had found one for herself now. She pushed aside everything in her mind but for three simple thoughts.
He would not die, he would not despair; he would not disappear. She would not allow any of it.
"You know it's nothing to do with him," she said, snatching one of the bath towels that had heeded the call of Ron's spell from the air and pressing it hard against his chest. He hissed between his teeth, or else he swore in parseltongue. Either way he wasn't happy. "Lie down," she ordered, as sheets and towels of every description began raining down on them from every corner of the house. Ron had been very thorough.
"Can't," he shot back, his jaw clenched tightly. She tipped up on her knees and peered over his shoulder. There was blood soaking his shirt and running down his back as well. She remembered him recalling the spell to himself as he'd stepped in front of it; how it had bent around him.
"Why didn't you just let it go!" she cried out in mix of fear and frustration, grabbing another threadbare bath towel with its embroidered "B". Somewhere Mrs. Black was having a gigantic hissy fit over the quality of the blood about to stain her family linens. She lay it over the wound and tried to wrap the two against him with a sheet around his chest. It was awkward and ineffective, and the front towel had almost bled through already.
His eyes opened then and found hers; much as she tried she could not look away.
"Right," he said woozily. "I forgot. It was your turn to get the scary wound, and my turn to panic about it. You were Fifth year, Ron was poisoned Sixth year and I was Voldemort's plaything Seventh. It's back to you, is it?"
"We ought to slow it down with a tourniquet around your neck, you bloody idiot," she said, and despite her resolutions she could hear the sob of fear playing around the edge of her anger.
Tonks turned out to be quite a help then, which was just as well, because Harry was beginning to drift. He slumped backwards against Tonks and they bunched fresh towels beneath him and let him go down. She taught Hermione a spell that tore sheets into strips and rolled them, making useful wrappings for keeping bandages on. She showed her two spells, one to help hold the edges of the towel together on his arm while they wound bandages tightly round it and another that acted as an extra finger to tie the knot at the ends.
She'd always known there had to be one of those.
"Love you," Harry said suddenly and dreamily, and she almost threw up. Not the response she wanted to remember to his final words at all.
"Shut up!" she said fiercely, and Tonks looked up at her, stunned.
"Don't you tell me you love me because you think you're dying, Harry Potter. Don't you bloody do it. This is not how someone who bloody defeats bloody Voldemort dies, not in a bloody little mock duel. What were you thinking using that spell ever again? You're going to live and I'm going to bloody Obliviate your bloody arse when it comes to that one for good." This swearing thing was most helpful, it was really making her feel better. Perhaps Ron was on to something.
"Didn't mean to," he murmured sleepily. She noticed he'd gone quite pale; his fringe appeared very black against the pallor of his forehead. "I wouldn't hurt them, you know I wouldn't. It… I think it's… afraid."
It's afraid? Tonks looked at her and raised one eyebrow questioningly.
"What's afraid, Harry," she asked, apprehension making her voice sharper even than she'd meant it to be.
"The magic," he said slowly, his eyes still closed, though he was beginning to sound almost drunk instead of tired. She got the sense he was drifting further.
"I'm going for blood replenishing potions," Tonks whispered suddenly in her ear, rising quickly to her feet. "Buy us some time just in case Ron can't find Madam Pomfrey. He's scaring me. Are you okay to watch him by yourself?"
Hermione nodded, because she knew Tonks would hear the truth in her voice if she spoke aloud. She was bloody terrified.
"I'll bring Lupin back with me," Tonks said soothingly. "He's good with healing charms. It's going to be alright."
She nodded again, and Tonks rose and ran up the stairs without stumbling once.
See? She told herself. A good sign. She took Harry's uninjured hand and held it in her own, stroking his wrist. It felt cold, but the throb of his pulse was familiar and comforting all the same. She'd almost started taking for granted somehow that no matter what unpleasantness he had to deal with in relation to the Ministry and his magic he would still be here, still be Harry. She didn't care if he had a lick of magic or not, although she'd fight the Ministry tooth and nail if they tried to touch him. It was just that once he'd lived through the worst that Voldemort could dish out she'd thought that was the end to her fear of losing him.
And she hadn't even had him then. Now the thought was… unbearable. Truly beyond bearing.
She thought of casting a warming charm over him, but realized the drop in body temperature was probably a natural response to cope with the bleeding. She was a witch, a supposedly brilliant one, and still she felt powerless in the face of what was happening to him. She couldn't save him; she hadn't been able to protect him after all. Grief welled in her like a sob aching to come out; she felt utterly useless and utterly alone. Merlin, tell her this was not what he felt when he began to disappear… It was wretched.
Wait a minute. She couldn't protect him? From what? Himself, the spell, the Ministry? What was she thinking?
Something in Hermione was stirring, something unfamiliar; recent and yet dormant.
`I found last year that there's just something there inside me… I have to give in to it for it to help…get into this zone where it takes over and I just do stuff. Stuff I didn't think I knew how to do.'
She thought back to the night he had let her see what his magic felt like, remembered how when he'd let it all flow back to him her own had felt small and helpless in the tide of it, but how later she'd managed her first bit of wandless magic ever. She'd felt he'd changed her then somehow, left something inside her, gifting her with magic not her own.
What if he really had? She tried for a moment to slow her thoughts and empty her mind.
I can't protect him any longer, I need to let go, made its way through her mind.
She didn't want to protect him; it was too late. She wanted to heal him. Why did she keep thinking of protecting him? Exhaustion filled her, a profound tiredness, unlike anything she had ever known. She had a distinct perception of him as vulnerable that was also at odds with her own thoughts; Hermione understood Harry to be too powerful for his own good, and `vulnerable' wasn't even close to what she'd been focusing on in him of late. Her own thoughts of him as desirable, the lovely way he moved and smiled and the look in those clear green eyes when he became aware she wanted him as well, all were met with a sudden confusion of conflicting ones; a very different sense of him as entirely innocent, of trusting and unquestioning reliance, and warm, heavy, unbearably sweet green eyes with feather dark lashes, heavy with sleep but struggling to hold on to hers anyway.
They were a child's eyes, but still somehow his; and Hermione had a sudden flash of insight.
`He's everything to me,' she thought desperately. She wasn't entirely certain she was right, but felt sure somehow that there was help to be had. `Please I only want to help him. Please. You'd know what to do.' She fought again to empty her mind, allowing herself only to keep the awareness of his shallow breathing through her hand on his chest.
Words began to chase through her awareness, over and over, building in their urgency.
Cesso, Eluo, Purgo, Renovo, Quiesco, Sano.
Her mind began puzzling them out; they were simple Latin for the most part. Her hands twitched restlessly against his chest as she got them one by one. Cease, wash away, cleanse, renew, ease, heal. They were all steps in healing… and she was suddenly certain the urge within her hands to move were wand movements she'd never once studied or been taught.
Hermione might until now have been a bit of a pessimist, insisted on the superiority of the written word to other forms of learning, scoffed at Loony Luna. Until now. Now she would throw her heart into anything if only it would help him.
She set down her wand and unwound the bandage, peeling back the blood soaked towel from his arm… and completely lost her nerve. It was too deep, there was too much blood; it swelled and filled with each beat of his heart.
Cesso, Eluo, Purgo, Renovo, Quiesco, Sano.
`I can't!'
Cesso, Eluo, Purgo, Renovo, Quiesco , Sano!
`What if I make it worse?'
Cesso, Eluo, Purgo, Renovo, Quiesco, Sano...
`Forgive me, Harry,' she thought, and took up her wand.
"Cesso" The long wand movement parallel to the wound, against the flow of the heart and then back. She visualized the bleeding slowing, the brutal cut drying up.
"Eluo, Purgo." On `Eluo' the wound seemed to resume bleeding and her confidence shook, but `Purgo' in this context, (the wand movement a series of flicks rather than the more usual wave she was used to performing) caused the excess bleeding to bubble and fizz and then disappear cleanly back into the wound.
"Renovo" seemed to cause the tissue deep within the cut to begin to knit together and grow anew; obviously a less than comfortable process, because his arm jerked in her hand and he let out a low groan of discomfort quite soon after she incanted the word, before her wand had even finished guiding the process.
She knew that `quiescent' meant quiet or at rest; she hoped `Quiesco' might involve easing the pain or resting after `Renovo'. But could she do it while the cut was healing, or did she need to wait until it had somehow closed? If she did it too soon would it stop the healing bit? Sectumsempra ripped into its victims more than cut them; there was a good way to go before the wound closed. She seemed to know the steps in order, but lacked the all important why of them. She was anxious to move on and stop the bleeding on his chest and back as well, but did she need to finish the entire series and before going on or could she sort of triage the whole of him and then complete the steps?
Lacking precise knowledge she was forced back again on her instincts. She cast the `Quiesco' portion of the spell on his arm and was enormous relieved when his unconscious agitation eased. It seemed to keep healing, if more slowly. She moved on and tore further open the rip in his shirt to remove the towels over the cut on his chest. She refused herself permission to dwell on the fact he had been right, the new injury did in fact intersect with the fading scar on his chest to form a V shape.
Cesso first. She rather liked that one, she felt enormously powerful to be able to stop the relentless bleeding. Eluo and Purgo; washing out and cleansing. Renovo once again brought out a strong reaction; the muscles surrounding the cut quivered beneath her hands and he cried out and fought it this time, the sound tearing at her heart. She flubbed the first `Quiesco' in her anxiousness to ease his pain and the second missed as he writhed desperately against the rapid working of his own body to close the cut. The third one seemed to take hold and she could actually see the healing tissue begin soften and come together more easily as it did. His resistance eased then as well; it was obviously an important step for both the patient and healing process. Not to mention the healer.
She eased him onto his side, shocked anew and frightened by his unresisting limpness. It took several of the `Cesso' spells to finish the bleeding in the slice that ran over his shoulder and down his shoulder blade. For the first time she saw things in the cut that looked suspiciously like tendons and the white of bone. She felt faint, and shook her head desperately.
"Eluo, Purgo," she mumbled, performing the rinsing and cleaning charms.
"Miss Granger!" came a voice from behind her, and Hermione let herself finally succumb to a shaky sob of relief.
"Madam Pomfrey! Oh, thank you. Thank you for coming; I couldn't have done that spell one more time, not again."
She saw that Poppy Pomfrey appeared both stricken by Harry's appearance and baffled by Hermione's own babbling. Having already seen Harry, Ron just seemed baffled. What was she talking about, anyway?
"Goodness," Madam Pomfrey said, taking in the wound and the warning flashings and flarings of her wand as she began to assess Harry's condition. "Whatever happened here?"
"They were practice dueling," Hermione explained. "Harry got hit with something that shocked him and fired off a really strong spell without thinking it through. Ron and Tonks ducked it, but it rebounded on him. Actually, he put himself in front of it and sort of called it back to him to protect me."
"And the spell?" Madam Pomfrey asked, tracing the cut over top of Harry's shoulder and looking with dawning recognition at the one that ran down his chest. "I recognize the look of it. It's what he used on the Malfoy boy just before Dumbledore was killed. He had it later as well, on the cheek I believe. From Professor Snape."
"Yes," Hermione admitted. "That's the one."
"Nasty, vicious spell. I never saw the like. It's like anger itself ruptures the skin. What was he thinking, playing with that," she fussed. She retrieved several potion bottles from her satchel and handed all but one of them to Hermione. "In exactly the order I ask for them, and quickly, if you please. He's just about drained himself, the silly boy."
One by one the potions were forced down Harry's throat, his head tipped back and neck stroked. By the forth Madam Pomfrey had to do a swallowing spell to force it down; his eyes were moving beneath his eyelids and he was starting, however unconsciously, to rebel.
"Down it goes," she said firmly with the fifth, though her eyes betrayed both her worry and her long fondness for the boy she'd spent so much time putting back together. He lay quite still after the last of them, but seemed to be breathing steadily and the wound Hermione had not finished on his back no longer bled at all.
"Tell me, Miss Granger, where did you learn the healing spells you used? Did you really remember all that from a book? I'd always hoped you might choose the healing arts, but you'd gone already by your Seventh year."
Hermione felt herself begin to sag with sheer exhaustion, as if Madam Pomfrey's reassuring presence made it alright to finally fall apart. "I honestly don't know. I don't think I ever read them, but they came back from somewhere. I was horribly afraid of not doing them right, but even more afraid to just wait while he was losing so much blood."
"You did well, my dear," Madam Pomfrey said more gently, as if suddenly realizing how frightened Hermione had truly been. "I asked because you chose exactly the right spells for the situation you were in. We tend to use potions wherever we can because they are commonly easier on the body, slower to act and more organic than forcing things with a spell. I know just what you mean about the Renovo, it's hard to cast it knowing the patient will find it painful, it's more commonly used in surgery, but you quite probably saved his life with it."
She turned to Ron. "Mr. Weasley, perhaps you would help me move him somewhere more comfortable. I always like to have two Mobil Corpus spells on a patient in this shape, better safe than sorry. Have you been staying here again? Is there a bedroom available to put him in?"
Hermione watched anxiously as they levitated him up the stairs, gathered up Madam Pomfrey's satchel and began to follow. Her eye caught the mess left behind on the floor and knew that she could never even dream of using one of those towels again, no matter how many scourgifying spells she did.
"Incendio," she incanted. She flicked her wand at each in turn until they were nothing but ashes drying in the congealing puddle of Harry's blood. Someone else was going to have to clean that up.
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She awoke sometime later stiff and sore and feeling very disorientated, though she recognized Harry's room at Grimmauld Place. The first person she saw was Harry, who, though sleeping soundly enough next to her, was oh-so-clearly going to be far stiffer and sorer than she when he finally awoke. Madam Pomfrey had finished coping with the damage the spell had wrought and secured the healing edges with the wizard version of butterfly bandages, making him appear to her bleary eyes like a worn and poorly stitched child's toy who been dragged once too often by the arm and almost lost it.
The second person was Elspeth, sitting over near the window. She smiled when she recognized Hermione was awake, and rose from the chair to cautiously approach the bed.
"Hello there. It was my turn to sit the two of you. It's been more than twelve hours now; I thought I might be the lucky one," she said softly, twisting her long hair up into it's clip. "How do you feel? Do you want me to call Madam Pomfrey?"
"I'm fine. I mean, nothing happened to me. I don't know why I slept like that," Hermione said slowly, peering more closely at Harry. He was still pale but not deathly so, and his breathing appeared deep and regular. She had a momentary flash of what might have been, waking up to the knowledge that he was forever gone, and couldn't help but reach out to touch him then. She let her fingers ruffle gently through his unruly hair and rest on the tender skin behind his ear, beyond caring if Elspeth were watching her or not.
"Don't sell yourself short, Hermione," Elspeth told her, her tone serious. "That was a terrifying thing to have to get through. It hurts just to look at now; I can only imagine the shock of watching it happen and then having to cope with it. The fear and stress and adrenalin just from taking care of someone with an injury like that are enough to take their toll on you, and you only feel it all when it's over. Trust me."
"I do," Hermione said, but tiredness and aftershock combined to make her bold. "But tell me why though. How do you know?"
Elspeth smiled in understanding, Hermione didn't get the feeling she was offended at all. "I could tell you it was the Healer training I had to do to get into spell damage reversal, but I don't think that's what you mean, is it?"
"No," Hermione said, "it's not."
"Tell me something first. I've been puzzling and puzzling; how did you know what spells to use? Madam Pomfrey said you never did the Healing course or anything at Hogwarts. Had you ever had to do it before?"
"No," she admitted. She let her eyes meet Elspeth's steady hazel gaze. "Do you want to know what I think happened?"
"Of course I do," Elspeth said. She came and sat on the edge of the bed at Harry's feet, and Hermione drew herself up to sit as well. Harry stirred with her movement and almost woke but didn't, evidently poised on the edge of a dream - or not quite ready to cope with what he had to wake to. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like `Merhione' and the two exchanged matching slow smiles.
"I think I might have figured something out," Hermione told her. "That; or I've gone entirely mad. Perhaps both."
"Go on," Elspeth told her, settling back against the footboard. "Fear not. I speak mad fluently."
Hermione reckoned she did, too. "You've heard about the spell he cast, then?"
Elspeth nodded her affirmation.
"Well, after he called it back and it hit him and he was bleeding everywhere, Ron went to get Madam Pomfrey and Tonks went for Lupin. I was all alone with him and he was pretty well out of it, and I was scared out of my wits that I was going to lose him after all. All of a sudden I started feeling very strange; there was this awful, swelling sort of regret like nothing I'd ever known in my life. It was like I was feeling someone else's memories or emotions, someone who'd known and done things I haven't yet. I kept feeling like I'd failed somehow to protect him… only I hadn't even been trying to protect him or anything, I'd just been watching, and what I really wanted to do was help him.
I think I realized it at that point. Harry had told me that sometimes he'd felt something in him that wasn't him, and he'd found if he gave in to it completely it helped him. He was afraid at first it was the horcrux, but over time he came to see it was something else, and it was still part of him after the horcruxes were destroyed and Voldemort was gone."
Elspeth nodded knowingly. "There is something. It's what I've felt on him as well, only I can't pin it down because I've never come across whatever it is before."
Hermione hesitated, then decided that if she honestly expected Elspeth to help her she needed to tell her everything as honestly as she could as well. "Well, erm, Harry and I were sort of fooling around one night just after we'd got together. I asked him to do something magically to, umm, speed things along, and when he did it sort of… well, you know. Harry's magic has that sort of undercurrent of power and you can really feel it. We sort of started playing around a bit and then he… well, he sort of… oh, damn, every way I try and say it just sounds wrong!"
Elspeth flashed a sympathetic smile. "Hermione, we're both big girls. I'm not your mum, I'm not going to judge you for anything you've done or are likely to do. And he's lovely, Harry, isn't he? I mean really, what's not to like; he's only too easy to look at, you could lose yourself in those eyes for days, and he's got a heart the size of a bloody lions'. It would have been a criminal waste not to have enjoyed all that. Life's too bloody short not to make the most of it while you can; you've just had a crash lesson in that and I know you've made him very, very happy. Given how long the world's been around with men and women in it, it's hardly likely the two of you came up with anything that's never been done before, if you don't mind me saying so. You've nothing to be ashamed of."
Put that way, it was a good bit easier. "He let me feel his magic," she said. "And trust me, that's not a euphemism. We were together and he just let it go so I would know what it was like. It felt…it was incredible, but it was too much for me. I don't know how he does it, how he manages it all, but I couldn't. It made my nerves feel raw. When he called it back it was so strong I felt like it was going to draw my own magic back with it and I sort of panicked. He could sense how I felt then and slowed it all down, but when it was done he'd left me with something. Erm, more than just the usual. I was stronger magically, not by much but I could feel it. I did my first bit of wandless magic that night, and while I can't do it like he does I've been practicing and I just know my magic is still different because of that one time."
"Wow," Elspeth said, and gave a low whistle, impressed. "How cool is that?"
Hermione felt herself break into a shy smile. "Very. But here's the thing. I think whatever happened on that night might have helped me out tonight. All of a sudden tonight I felt different. I wasn't seeing him the way I usually do, like… well like a friend, or a girlfriend, I suppose. If we'd played a word association game then I wouldn't have said desirable or snoggable or anything like that. I felt as if I would have come up with precious; or innocent or mine. In the sense of `mine to protect' rather than `mine to enjoy' or `mine not Ginny's.' I don't know what it feels like to have a child, but that's what it seemed like to me. I felt like his mum might have."
"Harry once told me that Dumbledore told him it was his mums' sacrifice that helped save him the night Voldemort first came for him," Elspeth said slowly. "That would be a clash of very old and very powerful magic, what Harry was in the midst of. A mother willing to give up her own life to protect her child, and an evil, twisted man willing to commit murder to shred his own soul. They weren't random participants, either; they were on opposite sides of what might as well have been a war of sorts even then. They knew what each other was about.
What if Harry's mum recognized in those last seconds that even her life might not be enough? What if she realized Voldemort's spell might go wrong and make a horcrux of Harry instead of out of his death? Could she have done something similar? Her actions turned a killing curse back on its caster, she'd made a deliberate choice with them to kill or risk killing. Could she have torn her own soul or essence somehow? Or done something like Harry did with you, and thrown off a bit of her own magic in him?"
"That's exactly what I was thinking!" Hermione told her excitedly. "I think she was trying to use her magic to protect him somehow, anyhow, until he could grow into his own. Maybe that's why Harry's magic has always sort of flared at times when he's been threatened or miserable. And I think it's still protecting him, it doesn't realize that Voldemort being gone should have marked the end of it."
They shared another glance, minds working feverishly.
Harry hadn't even known he was a wizard until he was eleven; he'd been catching up ever since. Lily couldn't have known for sure Dumbledore would give Harry to her sister; the protection she would have sought to instill in Harry would be as unconditional as love itself. It hadn't died with Voldemort; why should it? Harry was still Harry. The magic inside him that she'd given up was still growing with him; still protecting him, still trying to face this new threat. Only now it was the magic itself that was unknowingly driving his undoing.
Hermione knew that deeper inside than Harry would ever care to admit he was deeply hurt and frightened by his rejection now by what should have been his own kind, the very ones he'd risked his life to save. He'd spent a miserable childhood being reminded he was a freak by the Dursleys; now wizards and witches were starting to say the same things to him. What if the more they tried to control him and rein in his magic, the more whatever magic Lily had called on to protect her son would grow to protect him?
"Bloody hell!" they said in almost perfect unison, reaching the same destination together. Neither of them much cared for the view from their new precipice. No wonder Harry wanted to disappear sometimes.
"It's an immensely powerful thing, the love you have for your children," Elspeth told Hermione. "No matter what you think you'll feel, you stare into those eyes for the very first time and the magic is already there. Real magic, not just the sort witches and wizard sling around. No matter how powerful we are, the only way to create new life is the one that was given us. One man, one woman, one act that's meant to join us together by making us vulnerable and trusting of each other; binding us to each other and the child. Voldemort was too twisted to embrace that; he couldn't ever bring himself to need or love another human being, so he tried to shred himself instead. He and Lily were at exact opposite ends of the spectrum of life when they did what they did."
"What I felt, that sense I had… the words to the healing spells worked their way into my mind and wouldn't stop," Hermione remembered. "I unwrapped his arm to try them and it started bleeding again and I thought I couldn't do it. It was just like arguing with another person, someone insisting that I could if I only tried. If what I felt could respond like that, couldn't it still be convinced that Voldemort is dead and that Harry didn't need to be any more powerful?"
"Wait a minute. What were you just saying?" It was Harry's voice from between them, hoarse and cracked, his eyes still closed.
"That you're a magical idiot savant with all the survival instincts of a demented lemming," Elspeth told him smoothly. "How are you feeling?"
One eye opened then, glaring green. "Nice bedside manner, Hawktalon. Which leads me to wonder, what are you doing at my bedside, anyway?"
"You're having a very strange erotic dream?"
Harry's other eye opened and wheeled around rather desperately until it located Hermione. He let out a rather flattering sigh of relief and let his eyes fall closed again, shifting with a wince against the bed.
"Funny, that sort of dream never hurt quite like this before you appeared." The corners of his lips bent gently, and Hermione watched in pure pleasure as his hand shifted under the blanket in her direction. She slid her own into it, reveling in its returning warmth.
"I'd say you`ve got to stop fantasizing about Madam Pomfrey, then," Elspeth told him, "only that's taking the joke just that bit too far. You never answered, Harry. Are you going to live?"
"I think that all depends on whether or not I really understood what the two of you were on about during the last bit there while I was waking up. Because if my mum's magic kicking in every time it thinks I'm threatened really makes mine sort of take it up another notch, I'd say that under the present administration I've got the life expectancy of that demented lemming you mentioned earlier."
"I'll take that as a `yes, thanks, I'm fine,' for the purpose of Madam Pomfrey getting back to Hogwarts, and a `jury's still out' for the rest of us. Although you know she's going to have to have a good old fuss over you before she goes."
"Urgh. Those potions are particularly foul. I kept waking up and tasting them and then drifting back off in self defense," Harry told them. "I think my sense of taste may have been permanently damaged."
"Considering that might be the only sense you had before, tragedy has truly struck," Hermione informed him. It was bloody exhausting; being both thrilled someone was alive and furious with them at the same time.
"I'd say sorry a thousand times and it still wouldn't be enough Hermione, I know that." he said uncertainly, the joking tone noticeably absent from his voice now. "I don't know what else I could have done. I never meant to use that spell, it just flew out when the other one shocked me, and then I couldn't just let it go when it was heading right for you. I know I'm meant to think you're a clever independent witch who'd duck or counter it or throw up a shield, but I just see you and all I think is I can't bear to see you hurt again. You were amazing, you worked it all out and here I am. If anything had happened to you I'd be bloody useless, because I know I'd go over all despairing and disappear before I could do anything practical to help."
His fingers tightened around hers, his eyes held hers equally inescapably. "You were right when you said sooner or later I'd have to go just to find out where there is. I probably will. And I might just have to turn myself in to the Ministry sooner or later too, if we can't find a way of turning whatever this is off. How can I ask you guys to waste your lives in hiding with me when at any moment I could let loose on one of you like that?"
"Harry, do you remember when your friend Luna quoted Paracelsus the other day? About how anything, no matter how helpful, can be poison in the wrong dosage? Well she's right, and I'd missed that entirely," Elspeth interjected. Hermione watched his eyes shift to hers hopefully.
"When you're a bit stronger, I have two spells in particular I'd like to try on you. One of them isn't exactly legal, but it could answer the question about whether what's happening to your magic is related to what's called primal or fundamental magic, forces that human witches and wizards can't usually make use of. That could well be what your mum tapped into."
"Okay," Harry said, with what Hermione thought of as his typical jump-first-ask-after approach. Much as she liked and trusted Elspeth there was a lot more she wanted to know about that particular subject before she'd be comfortable playing around with it. Somehow the consequences sounded a bit worse than being, oh, expelled, for example.
"What's the other one for?" Harry asked curiously.
"It's a tracking spell. So we have a chance at finding you just in case you feel the need to give in to your disappearing act. Although I highly recommend you don't even considered it. Blah, blah, blah, lips moving, not hearing, I know. But I think you might be on to something; if the Ministry's actually found something that can null your magic, there's no real reason we can't figure out how to use it to just put a sort of safety brake on you until we sort it all out. So do me a favor, Potter, and stick around. I've grown rather fond of you. Both of you."
Elspeth rose from the bed and moved to the door, but turned as she made her way out.
"Oh and I heard about the roof, you two," she said with a grin. "Keep it under control. `MINISTRY CAPTURES RUNAWAY HARRY POTTER BY TRACING POST SHAG DEBRIS PATTERN' isn't a headline I want to read in the Daily Prophet any time soon. Ever actually, if you want to know the truth. So behave, and I'll tell Madam Pomfrey you're awake."
The door shut. Hermione allowed her anger to wrestle with her fear. While they were both otherwise occupied, lust won out and she kissed him. His answering kiss was all that she loved about him; responsive to the nuances of her touch but alive with his own fierce intensity and seeking need to be loved despite himself. It fanned the flames of her fear of losing him even as she lost herself to him, and she was more aware then ever of times' eternal progress.
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A/N: I got to write while my husband cooked and cleaned up tonight - so voila! Happy Mothers Day I could get very used to that… Sorry this one took so long - real life in all it's many permutations took hold. I have the next chapter almost finished though, and hope to get that up mid week. After that one, things begin to proceed quite quickly in this story.
I feel awful that I haven't gotten to answering reviews in a bit, but quite a few people asked about how I work on this. I am utterly ashamed to admit that I am one of those undisciplined people who just sit down and write away. I don't have notebooks full of notes or plot outlines; I just have a head full of ideas and characters making their opinions known about them. I have a general idea where the story is going when I first begin it and specific themes and destinations in mind, but the writing is a journey full of detours for me. For this specific story I know exactly what is going on and where it's going to end up, but details have ways of popping up or being explored according to their own logic along the way. For example, I have a whole six page scene between Draco Malfoy and Elspeth that was written and meant to be included earlier that now has to show up somewhere else…. And for all those who asked: yes, Emily Hawktalon will make a reappearance.
I know that's not how you're supposed to do it, and I hope someday I have time to do it right, but for now the answer is nope, no plot outline. I could guesstimate for you where events will flow and how many chapters remain (my prediction: 23 total) and I can tell you what the major action sequences are and how they will resolve, but that's about it. Hope that answers the question! *blushes*
I only work in the office two days a week in summer when my kids are out of school, so things will pick back up. Thanks for sticking with it.
~Lynney
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