Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 7
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Harry was napping when she apparated into the flat later that afternoon, sprawled across the couch with a book tented across his chest. The setting sun was slowly filling the room through the two big windows across from him, but he was deeply asleep and unaware of its encroaching brightness. It was absolutely silent save for the ticking of the cast-off clock from Ron's Great Aunt Muriel on the mantle, and very warm. Their cooling charm against the July heat was clearly past due to be recast.
Hermione set her duffle bag down quietly, hoping not to disturb him, and released Crookshanks from his travel basket with a stern look. He immediately moved off on silent paws to prowl and secure the perimeter in the way of most cats. It was hard to imagine there'd be mice anywhere between Fred and George exploding things in the basement and Hedwig hunting in the evenings, but he'd still feel obligated to be report if things were otherwise.
As she stood up again, she saw her shadow cast its shade over Harry's sleeping form. Mesmerized, without thinking, she lifted her shadow hand until it touched his cheek, cool and insubstantial. She let her shadow finger run the length of his cheek bone and down toward his sleep-parted lips with a soft sigh. The sight both stirred and frustrated her; to see her desire come to life before her eyes yet feel the empty reality beneath her searching fingertips was almost more than she could stand. She fled, eyes stinging, for Ron's room.
It was a mistake staying here; as angry and shaken as she still was by Ron's admissions during the boys' conversation in the bathroom this morning no good could possibly come of it.
Being Hermione she decided to wrest back control of her emotions by making a list.
She set her bag down on the floor again and moved further into the midden that Ron called home. The bed was rumpled, pillow still hollowed from his head and blankets tossed back, half on the floor. The night table was cluttered with Quidditch magazines (she rather hoped they were all Quidditch, anyway) chocolate frog wrappers and a linty collection of knuts and butterbeer caps. A pile of dirty laundry grew fungus-like both up the wall and across the floor. The one clean corner was the spot where his Quidditch gear normally lived. It suddenly occurred to Hermione that Ron's room didn't contain a desk. Or an actual book, for that matter. Even his Quidditch reading was reduced to the depth of a magazine article.
She was dating a boy, seeing a man, walking out with a wizard who possessed neither books nor a desk. What had she been thinking? Where had her brain gone? Had she really just failed to notice it at Hogwarts, where learning hadn't been optional but a part of their very existence?
She whipped out her wand, determination growing within her. Several simple spells later the bed was made with fresh linens, the laundry relegated to hampers (it had taken three good sized ones, when was the last time he'd been back to the Burrow?) and the magazines piled neatly on the floor beside the bed, knuts in a orderly stack and butterbeer caps discarded. She'd thrown open the window, but the heat and humidity had defeated her; she shut it again and cast dust dispelling, air freshening and cooling charms instead.
She settled herself on the edge of the bed and pulled the cleared-off night table close. She had to lean at a slightly odd angle, but it was better than nothing. She took her journal and a self inking quill from her bag and opened to a fresh page.
She headed the page: Reasons to break up with Ron
1. Are we really even together?
2. His room doesn't contain a desk. Or books.
3. Book stores make him break out in a fit of allergic whinging.
4. Reading makes him fall asleep.
5. Discussing a book with him means explaining it to him first, since he fell asleep while reading it.
6. If he makes it on to a Professional Quidditch team, you will hear nothing but Quidditch plays and statistics until he is too old to sit a broom.
7. All we do well together is argue. We are really, really good at it. Too good at it.
8. He wants to shag. You don't feel the least bit like shagging when you're with him.
9. He wants to shag Megan Jones. She may as well be the anti-you.
10. This makes him an idiot.
11. You want to shag Harry.
12. So bad it hurts.
An even dozen seemed enough. On the facing page, she wrote: Reasons not to break up with Ron
1. He is a good-hearted person. Brave and true. He would defend you or Harry to the death if necessary.
2. He is light-hearted. When he doesn't make you so mad you could kill him, he does make you laugh. You don't do enough of that.
3. He is loyal, and a good brother. Family means a great deal to him. These are excellent qualities in a potential mate.
4. All of this would make him a wonderful dog replacement, although he is messier than most dogs and you are not, after all, a dog person. None of it makes your heart feel close to the way it does for Harry, who also shares most of the above traits. Except for the light hearted one. And of course the family thing. Although, statistically speaking he could have been an excellent family person if an evil wizard hadn't killed all of them first. In fact he WAS an excellent family person, considering he refrained from actually harming the Dursleys despite years of constant provocation. So he too would make a reasonable mate. And you actually feel like mating with him.
5. Ron is quite possibly too good for you, as you are technically sort of with him even now that you have realized that it is his best friend that makes you understand that love is more than like, more than just attraction, more than banter and playing hard to get and empty sexual tension.
6. Therefore he deserves better than you.
7. And you should tell him so when you break it off.
8. Then tell Harry how you feel.
9. So that Ron will not feel bad in any way when Harry gazes at you with those beautiful eyes and scratches at the back of his neck so that you can't stop looking at his shoulders and thinking how comfortable they'd be to just lay your head against when he says…
NO!…
It took her until the second cry to realize that it wasn't her subconscious she heard; Harry was actually crying out in his sleep in the other room. She threw down the journal and quill on the bed and ran, skidding around the corner from the hall just as either the dream itself or the sound of his own voice woke him.
He was in that state of anxious confusion nightmares often leave in their wake; heart pounding, chest heaving to catch his breath. He'd been alone in the flat when he'd drifted off, so the sound of galloping feet in the gathering shadows when he awoke from the private hell of his dreams was more than his post crucio-overloaded and still recovering nervous system could cope with.
The last thing she remembered was him launching himself off the sofa with a strangled scream of terror and landing atop her as both crashed to the floor. Being beneath him in the mutually wanton struggles of her dreams was way more pleasant than the results of his instinctual defensiveness and a hard wood floor. The guilt and horror that dawned in his eyes just as hers refused to stop seeing was almost worse than the pain that bloomed as her head connected solidly with said floor.
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"How long has she been out?" The voice asked.
It was a known one if not exactly familiar, she simply couldn't place it.
"I don't know exactly. Maybe twenty minutes now? I started to panic a bit as time went on and she didn't wake up but I'm not sure when it was I flooed you…"
Well, at least she knew that was Harry.
"I'm not a healer, Harry. Although I can tell you panicked more than just a bit. From the sound of you I thought you must have blown up half of Diagon Alley. Not to worry, and it's a good thing you called. I know a couple of healers who'd make a house call, we should…"
It was Elspeth. Harry's Spell Damage Reversal Specialist from the ministry. The one she'd met just this morning; no wonder the voice was both familiar and not well known.
"No," she managed thickly, blinking against her heavy eyelids. The last thing he needed was to have to explain injuring anyone else, no matter how innocently it had happened.
"Hermione?"
He was a bit hazy but growing sharper above her even as she blinked once more. She worked out that part of the strangeness was that he was upside down somehow; it took a while longer to fit together the various pieces of data from other body parts swimming upstream against the throbbing in her head. He was upside down because her head was pillowed between his knees, the aching lump on the back of her head in the hollow created by his crossed ankles supporting her neck. One of his hands seemed to be cradling her head, the other still trembling as it stroked back her hair. She could see at once she'd frightened him badly by failing to quickly regain consciousness.
"How do you feel, Hermione? Do you feel dizzy or nauseous? Seeing double or blurry? Do you remember what happened?"
"Harry's right, you do ask a lot of questions," Hermione heard herself respond, though somewhere part of her mind admonished her for being rude. She felt sort of sleepy actually, but suddenly realized she was nestling her cheek against Harry's inner thigh. The mere thought of a Ministry employee watching that had a smelling-salt like effect and she struggled to sit up. Both of them helped her but Harry's supporting hands kept her close and remained steady against her back.
"I'm okay," she said, and she did feel better, more awake and aware now that she was upright.
She felt his hand gingerly touch the back of her head and heard herself squeak.
Actually squeak. I squeaked! Get a grip, Hermione.
"You've got a lump the size of a Vipertooth egg," he told her. "Hermione, I'm so sorry. It never occurred to me you'd be here by now… and I think I'd been having a dream…"
"Lean forward a bit," Elspeth said, and Hermione felt a sudden pooling of coolness around the spot, lovely and numbing.
"Oh!" she heard herself say. "Thanks."
"I don't imagine you two boys keep much in the way of healing potions around the house?" Elspeth asked, and Harry looked stricken and shook his head. "Never mind."
Hermione watched as she rose and made her way across to the fireplace, taking a small handful of floo powder from the pot on the mantel. There was a purposefulness to her movements, a swift, no-nonsense sureness that reminded her of Madam Pomfrey in a way and made her feel safe and reassured. She sat up straighter and felt Harry's hand drop from her back, as if he'd realized she was recovering herself and didn't want to overstep his bounds.
And alas, pretending to faint again just to get back in his lap was totally beneath her.
She watched as Elspeth crouched before the hearth and a child's face appeared in the green floo flames.
"Em?" she said. "Love, run upstairs and bring me the blue box of potions from the airing cupboard, please? You can bring them through, just be sure and tell Gran you're coming, okay?"
The little girl nodded and disappeared abruptly.
"Your daughter?" Hermione asked curiously. "How old is she?"
Elspeth turned from the fire and sat down again on the floor beside them. "Eleven. She's just had her Hogwart's letter and she's over the moon about it."
Hermione liked that she was clearly assessing Harry just as closely as herself; even though he was the subject of a Ministry investigation it seemed to her Elspeth's concern was both real and well intentioned.
"How did you feel when you got your letter, Hermione?" she asked, and Hermione realized she actually wanted to know, she wasn't merely asking to keep her from falling unconscious or anything.
She cast her mind back to the days before Harry and Ron. Hard to do now, to peel back the layers of herself that felt the most real to the child she had been before.
"It was as if someone had suddenly handed me the key to myself," she said slowly. "I was muggle born, you see. No witches or wizards anywhere in the family, ever. It explained so much about me that had been inexplicable before. Connected me to something when I had always been different and apart. Professor McGonagall was better than Cinderella's Fairy Godmother to me. So over the moon would have fit me as well, I guess."
Elspeth smiled her understanding, and Hermione felt she really did. She also construed Harry's gratuitous removal of a tuft of Crookshank's hair from her shoulder for his best attempt to express the same.
"I'm half and half myself," Elspeth said. "My mother's a witch and my Dad a muggle. I grew up in mostly muggle house, but there was always magic around my mother no matter what she did and I spent enough time with her relatives to feel a part of both worlds. Very lucky, I guess, that's so often not the case when the two worlds collide."
Hermione nodded feelingly and felt a subtle but similar movement behind her.
The fireplace burst to life and a slender girl carrying a good sized box rather like a small suitcase with a handle came through the flames like a pro without the slightest stumble and approached them.
"That would have been me sprawled across the floor and half the bottles broken," Harry told her admiringly. "You're good."
The girl's face broke into a shy grin and a blaze of embarrassment that would have done Ginny proud at the same age. She was very fair, her long hair almost white blond and an even better foil for a blush than Ginny's ginger had been. She handed her mother the potions case.
"Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, meet Emily Hawktalon. She's wanted to meet you both ever since she heard I was meeting with you, Harry."
Hermione thought it was time to ease both the little girl's embarrassment and Harry's by taking him down a peg or two in the hero worship department.
"He's not kidding you, Emily. He's never been any good at the floo. The first time he used it he sneezed and ended up in Knockturn Alley and he's been staggering out of fireplaces ever since. He's just run into me and knocked me out cold, so thank you very much for bringing the potions."
The girl's blush eased back to the merely painful from the almost fatal. Hermione realized she looked almost familiar somehow, as if she was a smaller, altered version of someone she knew but couldn't place. She certainly didn't look anything like her mother; Elspeth had reddish hair, not fiery Weasley ginger but a more subdued chestnut, and hazel eyes.
It struck her then where she'd seen Emily before. She was like a young, female Draco Malfoy sans the annoying Malfoy sneer. Same sharp bones, same platinum coloring and silvery-blue eyes, but in an open, curiously alive and guileless face without the slightest sense of superiority. It made her wonder how handsome Draco might have been had he suffered Harry's fate and been wrenched from his parents and raised by others. She also wondered if they were related at all.
Elspeth finished sorting through the bottles and made her way into the kitchen, bringing back an assortment of glasses. She measured and poured three potions, handing them across to Hermione one by one. "Inflammation, pain, and a mild restorative. When was the last time you ate?"
She searched back through her memory and realized it had been the choked doughnut at breakfast; she hadn't stopped to eat anything when she'd picked her things up at her parent's house, she'd been too busy convincing them she'd be fine, she knew what she was doing, she was a big girl.
Ha.
"I though so," Elspeth said sagely without so much as a word from Hermione. "And I expect Harry could do with feeding as well. Do you two like muggle food or are you purists? I know a really good pizza place with a safe back alley a witch can apparate in and out of in a flash. Would you like a pizza?"
Hermione reckoned she could murder a pizza, and Emily bounced beside her mum hopefully. Despite being raised in a muggle household Harry might as well have been wizard in that respect; Petunia Dursley had done nothing so common as serve take away pizza and when they went out to eat they were hardly going to spoil their appetites or waste their money taking Harry. Even Ron had beat him to it, thanks to Bill. She still remembered his first pizza and his almost sensual delight in sitting on the floor with her and Ron at Grimmauld place and eating ravenously from the box. Horcrux hunting had on occasion been truly hungry work; he'd stopped for nothing and they hadn't liked to be the ones to remind him time was marching on by being hungry.
"That sounds really good," he admitted.
"Done," said Elspeth. "I'll be back in a flash. Em is an excellent table setter. Just point her to your silverware. Can I apparate from here, or do I need to hit the street? Did you guys do your own wards?"
"You can go from here. They're based on coming in, not going out. Maybe I'll even fix it so you can come back, if you're bringing pizza." Harry told her with a grin.
""You will if you want any," she said, and was gone.
Emily looked across the hall to where her mother had gone and reappeared with glasses. "Is that the kitchen? Will we eat in there? I can get things ready, really."
Harry looked at Hermione, green eyes still anxious. "Do you feel up to sitting at the table? We could bring it to you in here…"
"I'm fine, Harry, really. Better than fine now after the potions. Look, feel for yourself. The lump is gone."
His hand moved tentatively toward her but dropped well before it got there. "I'm so sorry…" he said again.
"I'm fine. And that is the kitchen, Emily. If you don't mind setting out the plates and things that would be great," Hermione told her.
Emily disappeared for the kitchen, her pale hair swishing silkily behind her.
"Who does she remind you of?" Hermione asked Harry softly.
He blinked; she got the feeling he hadn't really been thinking of anything but his guilt for knocking her out and he had to gather his impressions together. The light dawned before long though; Harry might not be the swiftest horse in the barn but when pointed in the right direction he seldom failed to find water.
"You almost don't see it because of not having the superiority complex, I suppose. Everything else is there, that's just what defines them as Malfoys. I wonder how close the connection is. Elspeth certainly doesn't look like one."
He lurched forward to his knees and offered her his hand to help her up. Hermione felt a fraud for taking it; she grasped it lightly as she could around the wrist, avoiding his bandages. It infuriated her that she could be all but cured of a probable concussion and a lump the size of a dragon's egg in moments but he'd had to cope with the wounds on his hands for weeks now without relief. She vowed to ask Elspeth outright what was being done about it.
She excused herself to use the loo and felt Harry's eyes follow her anxiously down the hall. She turned and made a shooing motion toward the kitchen, pantomiming helping Emily; and he padded obediently off.
When she returned from washing her hands and splashing cold water on her face, feeling at once both refreshed and repulsed by the state of their towels, she found Harry and Emily sitting companionably together at the table, their two heads bent over something. They were such a contrast of darkest black and palest blond it was striking. They both looked up at her arrival.
"She's the one you want to ask," Harry told her. "Smartest witch in forever, that one. Finished reading her textbooks over the summer and had them off by heart by Christmas. Tell us, Hermione, should Emily save her book money on a used copy of Bagshot's History of Magic or is the revised version really better for propping you up while Binns drones endlessly on?"
"Harry! Don't listen to him Emily; History of Magic is really an important class. It's not just dates and wars and things, it's the whole evolution of magical culture in a shared world. Just because he spent his time plotting out Quidditch plays and sleeping…"
"Hey look, there's a new text down for Defense. Disabling the Dark Arts by Angus McFangus. That can't possibly be his real name, can it? I wonder who's teaching this year." Harry cut her off with a sheepish grin. "And she's right, I was a rubbish student. You'll do far better following her lead," he confessed to Emily.
Elspeth appeared in the kitchen with not so much a crack but more the soft plop of a dripping faucet, bearing a flat fragrant box. She looked suspiciously at Harry and her daughter poring over the booklist as if she knew that little good could come of it. Hermione helped her pass round slices while Harry produced pumpkin juice for Hermione and Emily and butterbeer for Elspeth and himself.
It came to Hermione as they were eating that Elspeth and Emily Hawktalon appearing as they had was a blessing in disguise, and her now barely sore head was a small price to pay for the disarming effect they had on Harry. His guilt over hurting her would have been overwhelming had they been left to their own devices and she might very well have resorting to attempting to comfort or distract him in a most disastrous way.
It was remarkably normal and calming to be sitting together, hunger satiated, finishing their drinks and talking about the most wonderfully ordinary things; books, robes, cauldrons and familiars. Hedwig had been the instigator of that last, having arrived at the kitchen window with a package from Molly Weasley and what was evidently a note from Ginny. The box contained a diminutive apple pie; Harry set the note aside without reading it. He re-enlarged the pie and found clean plates and a knife and set them before Hermione to do the serving up; it was so peaceful and domestic she could almost push aside what Molly would think of her if she knew what Hermione was dreaming about while she sliced her luscious pie. Almost. And why was Ginny writing Harry?
Emily was entranced with Hedwig and the snowy owl, accustomed by now to being made much of by Harry's friends after her early experiences of being locked up and insulted at the Dursleys, had perched happily on the back of her chair and was preening shamelessly for pizza crusts.
"What familiar did you bring to Hogwarts?" Emily asked her curiously, and Hermione realized she hadn't seen Crookshanks since arriving. Decidedly strange, since he would have typically been twining around their feet under the table looking for a hand out. She made the little pss-pss-pss noise so irresistible to cats
"She's got a half kneazle named Crookshanks. The trick is to find the pet that's been unsold so long they practically give it away; it certainly worked for Hermione." Harry said with a grin. "Crookshanks is a faultless judge of character."
Crookshanks chose just that moment to appear carrying three struggling somethings proudly in his mouth.
Hermione was horrified and ordered him to drop them "this instant!"
Elspeth leaned round the edge of the table to get a closer look just as Hermione heard Harry say;
"Good boy Crookshanks, don't even think of dropping those here… oh shite."
Emily squealed, probably a combination of realizing Crookshanks had just dropped three very pissed off doxies onto the kitchen floor and hearing the Great Harry Potter swear.
The doxies began zipping around the kitchen like angry wasps as Elspeth, Harry and Hermione ducked and flailed spells at them.
"I don't suppose," Elspeth started, but Harry cut her off.
"No. No doxycide either."
It turned out he had better luck with his hands than they did with their wands, unsurprising under the circumstances since it gave him a broader focal point and he had been a seeker, after all. He managed to stun one, but it was when the second one dive bombed Hermione that the inevitable happened.
"Well, that one's done for," Elspeth said, looking at the still-smoking hole in the kitchen wall. And the hall wall. And the study wall beyond it to the gathering dusk outside. "Hedwig's got her own owl door now."
Hermione could smell the pungent scent of singed hair, and realized it was her own.
Harry sat down abruptly and buried his face in his trembling hands. And was promptly bitten by the third doxy, who was down to one wing and buzzing angrily under the table. Crookshanks recaptured that one with a tell tale crunch.
Hermione could see every bad word he'd ever learned swell and ebb in his eyes.
"And before anyone asks," he ground out between gritted teeth, "No doxy anti-venom either."
"If I'd have had my wand I'd have stunned it for you, I saw that one couldn't fly," Emily said sympathetically. "It's willow, eleven inches and thestral tail hair core. I'm really sorry, Harry. Don't be too upset about the holes. Mum can fix you, honestly. She'll find a way."
She patted his shoulder anxiously, and it struck Hermione that in that strange, despite-it-all way she knew so well, Harry had made another friend.
"S'alright ," Harry told her with a rather fixed smile. "It just… stings."
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Elspeth took Emily home to bed and retrieved some Doxy anti-venom. She insisted on coming back and administering it to Harry to make sure the dosage was correct.
"The bite will be quite sore for a couple of days," she told him, "Even after the anti-venom. You should definitely go and see your healer tomorrow and make sure it's not going to counter or conflict with anything they're giving you."
He grumbled something noncommittal, but Hermione met her gaze moments later and smiled; she would make sure he went if he knew what was good for him.
She followed Elspeth back into the other room; she'd returned by floo and meant to go home the same way and it gave Hermione a moment alone with her before she did.
"Thank you, for coming and looking after us both and for what you're doing for Harry. You do believe him, don't you, that there's nothing intentional about any of this?" she asked.
Elspeth's steady eyes met her own kindly. "I don't believe for a minute there's an ounce of evil in that boy," she said. "There's almost certainly something going on that involves him, but I really can't tell exactly what yet. Time will tell, we just have to be on the right side of it so that we can stop whatever it is before it gets out of hand."
"Speaking of hands," Hermione said. "Do you know what's being done with his? He won't talk to us about what the healers say, but they don't seem to have improved at all."
"I don't," Elspeth said, "but I should. I moved on rather quickly at first because I could tell they weren't the source of the problem I'm supposed to be solving, but there's no saying it isn't affecting it, really. I'll speak with his healer, I'm allowed to do that, and see what I can find out. Will you do something for me as well?"
"Of course," Hermione agreed. "What?"
"I need you to think back to the Order of Merlin ceremony and the funeral. You don't need to answer me right now, in fact I'd prefer if you didn't. Take your time and consider."
"Okay. I will." Hermione felt a flutter of trepidation, and wondered what Elspeth thought might be so important to what was wrong with Harry.
"When I spoke with you three this morning, two instances Harry spoke of stuck in my mind. The incineration of the portrait of Walburga Black, and the, as Ron so aptly termed it, 'one big angry-arse reducto' that killed Dolohov. Both of those had one thing in common."
"They were very powerful incidences of magic, perhaps outsized to their circumstances," Hermione offered, frowning.
"They were both defending you. Whatever the portrait said, it hurt your feeling or upset you, and clearly had a similar effect on Harry. Dolohov hurt you quite badly at the Department of Mysteries, and the moment Harry saw him again, his magic let fly. Tonight he was doing a perfectly fine job rounding up those doxies until one got too close to you. You've been friends for a long time, and his nervous system just went through a rather forced realignment. I'm just wondering if there isn't a pattern somewhere."
Elspeth smiled kindly, and Hermione wondered if she looked as spell-shocked and disbelieving as she felt. She watched the older woman grab a handful of floo powder and toss it into the empty fireplace, launching a burst of green flame. She turned back just before entering.
"I've really enjoyed meeting you today, and I want you to know I feel much better about Harry now that I have. One of the greatest powers a wizard can ever learn is true friendship. Despite all it seems he's been through, he's been very lucky in that with you and Ron. Don't ever take it for granted. It's a gift."
She disappeared in a swirl of green flame, and Hermione wondered once again how she could ever untangle the knotted skeins of her life without severing one or the other.
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