Disclaimer: Harry Potter and company are the property and creation of J.K. Rowling. The only things that're mine are the purely non-profit story below and a couple of plot-necessary magical items. Reviews are always appreciated. :)
CHAPTER SEVEN:
"I thought I'd find you here. Would you mind?" Lupin indicated one of the chairs across from Hermione, who nodded.
A couple of seats away, Ron shut the book he'd been pretending to read. Since his arrival two days ago, he was always at Hermione's side. At the same time he sensed how uncomfortable she was in any male presence, and kept some distance.
The former professor fiddled uncomfortably with an open Hogwarts: A History book. "We've found out some things," he began hesitantly, "but I understand if you don't want to hear about it."
Hermione leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her. "Ron, can you excuse us?"
The boy clearly didn't like being left out. "What? But why? Hermione -"
"Please."
"Fine!" he snapped and stomped off.
Hermione sighed. She sensed how badly Ron wanted to know what was going on, but she wasn't ready to talk about what had happened yet. Besides, she had an idea where this discussion was headed. She turned her attention back to her old Defense Against Dark Arts teacher. "It's an augmenter, isn't it?"
Lupin was stunned. So that's why she's been in the library all this time. "You really are the brightest witch of your age."
The girl's lips actually twitched at that. "At first I thought it was some kind of love charm, but it didn't fit the facts," she confessed.
"What have you found so far?"
"An augmenter can be in any shape or form, although it's normally a small item. Pieces of jewelry are favored because of their size and romantic association, but basically it's anything that's charmed to magnify what a person feels. The augmenter usually targets feelings of love or lust." The way she recited it reminded Lupin starkly of the precocious thirteen year old he'd first met on the train to Hogwarts.
Poor girl. He nodded and said softly, "Then you know that it acts only on what's there."
Hermione looked down. The books had led her to almost the same conclusion. An augmenter was not like the love potion Ron had accidentally ingested last term. It didn't manufacture feelings that didn't exist. But she still wasn't ready to believe it. "There was never anything like that between Harry and me."
Lupin said very gently, "When I first met you, I was glad to see the bond between the three of you. But I always got the feeling that you and Harry got along better. As friends, I mean," he clarified as the girl shifted to protest. "Maybe it's because, unlike many of the students at Hogwarts, you and Harry come from strongly muggle backgrounds. You don't have to explain to him, do you, what a telly is?" he tried to joke.
More seriously, he continued, "Hermione, the bond between you and Harry has always been strong. Maybe you've always cared for each other deeply as friends, but emotions, especially powerful ones, are not easily compartmentalized. Sometimes you care for a person on many levels. Eventually, some of those feelings you act on and some you don't. There's no shame in it." He paused. "You touched the augmenter, didn't you?"
The girl flushed. Of course Lupin would remember how Tonks and he had found them. "Yes. It let me understand a little of what Harry felt. It's very strong," she said in an objective tone, "but ..."
It doesn't explain what he did. When she had held it, she had felt desire, yes, and she had kissed Harry. But nowhere in that had been the urge to hurt or to force. Unless ... "There's something else, isn't there? The attack." Because of everything that had happened Hermione had nearly forgotten about it. "Professor, what's going on?"
"This isn't going to be easy for you to hear," he warned. "We've received information from a highly unlikely, but so far reliable, source." He didn't think he needed to mention young Malfoy at this time. "The attack on Harry was meant to do two things: let a Death Eater plant the augmenter, and get a highly specialized potion into his bloodstream.
"The substance on the icepick."
Lupin nodded. "The clever thing is that the augmenter and the potion boost each other's effects, but they do work separately as well."
"What is it?" the young witch asked, curious despite herself.
The older man looked positively grim. "The potion is called the Coerceo Solvamus, usually referred to simply as the Solvamus. It was outlawed a hundred years ago. Almost no one remembers how to make it anymore."
"Except maybe former Hogwarts potions professors," his companion guessed caustically. "What does it do?"
"In a word? It drives you mad." The lycanthrope tried to rein in his disgust. The Coerceo Solvamus was a new low even for Snape, but to use it on a mere boy and a former student was practically unthinkable! "Sorry. The potion breaks down a person's inhibitions."
The girl looked puzzled. "That doesn't sound too bad."
Lupin's eyebrows rose. "You think so? Hermione, you must realize that most of our lives are spent learning to control what we feel, do and say." He straightened in his chair and suddenly it was as if he was her Hogwarts professor again.
"Our inhibitions to a certain point define who we are, because it involves a constant choice of what we will and won't do. It takes years of everyday living to build restraint. The Solvamus strips you of that in days," he revealed darkly. "How many people do you think can survive that sort of mental strain? Wizards and muggles alike have gone mad from the Solvamus."
"The worst thing about it," he continued, "is that it targets exactly those passions and feelings over which the victim has been exercising the greatest control. In short, what that person considers to be a moral restraint, some impulse or emotion that he absolutely must rein in. Add to that the fact that the augmenter magnified Harry's feelings a hundredfold ..."
He did not notice, until it was too late, that the color had drained from Hermione's face. When she finally spoke, her voice was trembling with suppressed horror. "Are you ... are you telling me that ... Harry has always wanted to do those things to me?" She sounded horrified.
Oh Merlin forgive me. In his indignation, he had forgotten to whom he was talking to. "No," he replied quietly. "I'm saying that Harry must have had feelings for you for a long time, and that he made a firm decision somewhere along the way to bury them as deep as he could. There's a dam bursting inside him now, and considering what he was up against, Tonks and I are actually surprised he was able to fight it for so long."
He took a deep breath, reluctant to continue. "I'm sorry, but there's more. Again, I'd understand if you'd rather not ..."
To his surprise, the young witch actually muttered several expletives under her breath. Then she nodded.
"It was all part of a plan. It's heartless, but Tonks and I agree that you must know."
The girl was visibly bracing herself. "Go on," she said in a near whisper.
"Another cruelty of the Solvamus is that it wears off exactly at the moment its victim completely breaks free of his restraint. The Death Eaters thought that Harry wouldn't be able to resist, that, with the augmenter, he would break within hours, not days."
Lupin forced himself to meet the young witch's eyes. "If Harry had succeeded in his ... plans that night, if at the moment of the act, he returned to his true self, what would he have done?" What would Harry or Ron do to anybody who truly hurt Hermione? He could guess. The Marauders would have torn anyone apart who would've dared to attack Lily that way. Not that he and Sirius had even been half as close to Lily as Harry and Ron were to Hermione. "I think we already know what Ron would do."
Hermione looked ill. "That's what this is? Another attempt on Harry's life? Only this time Harry was supposed to kill himself, or Ron would've...?"
"Or you, if you were defending yourself."
He could give her no more than a moment to absorb it. "There's one last thing." Suddenly the thin man looked old and tired. "I'm sorry to say you were right the first time. The Solvamus isn't classified as a poison, because, as I just told you, that's not it's real purpose. But eventually the struggle between the person and the potion takes a toll on the body, specially the heart and the brain. We went to Snape's old potions professor with a sample of the Solvamus. He estimates that we have seven more days to find an antidote. If we don't ..."
He could see that Hermione already knew what he was going to say, but he had to anyway. "Harry will go mad, or die."
================
Would you like to see him? It's perfectly safe. Harry's unconscious while we're treating him, and Tonks and I will be with you the whole time.
Lupin departed soon after his unexpected offer. He left an extremely conflicted girl behind.
Do I want to see him? Hermione bit her lip. The mere thought made her heart drum nervously. She hadn't told anyone, but when she closed her eyes at night she was still haunted by images of Harry looming over her, of his wild feral gaze as he unbuttoned her blouse and palmed her breasts with rough hands.
It had been the face of a stranger. More, it had been the face of a man she could fear ... and hate.
She was afraid he would always look that way to her now.
Hermione had never hated Voldemort and his Death Eaters more than right at this moment. How DARE they? How dare they mess with us this way?!
The truth was her friendship with Harry and Ron had become one of the anchors of her life. It was something she felt would be there no matter how much time passed, or how they changed or what else happened. The boys knew her as few people ever would. All the bits - from her at-times irritating bossiness to the idealistic but misguided heart that founded S.P.E.W., to the compassion and the protectiveness, the determination, and yes, the cleverness that applied equally to school and, surprisingly, to breaking the rules, too - and they accepted her, no, actually liked her for all of that.
Hermione had learned from them, had become the person she was now in part because of the boys and what the three of them had been through. A better person, she felt, who knew how to risk everything when it was important enough. For all her love of books, she felt that some of the most valuable lessons she had learned over the past years had come from being with Harry and Ron.
Like learning how to tell when something was important enough to risk everything for.
"Books! And cleverness! There are more important things - friendship and bravery and -"
How to be brave.
Standing between her friend and a convicted murderer. "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!"
How to love. How to be steadfast.
"You said to us once before that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"
Hermione covered her face with her hands. She felt like weeping. Should I turn back now? She could, and she knew that no one would blame her for it, Harry least of all.
"Are you alright?"
She dropped her hands, and found Ron standing in front of her. He looked worried, and she could see that he badly wanted to comfort her but didn't know how.
She reached out to him, and his large hands gladly enveloped hers. He sat down in the chair next to her, facing her. They sat that way for awhile, not saying anything, just holding hands.
"I'm glad you're here," she said, meaning it.
He grimaced. "I should've been here sooner. If I had -"
"No, don't even think it!" she interrupted fiercely. "I just, I can't bear `if's' right now."
For a second he seemed like he might argue the point. Then he relaxed, and asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"
She was hesitant. "Some. How did you find out?"
"Lupin came to the house to see my parents. I eavesdropped. I came here straightaway and ... well, you saw the rest." He didn't think Hermione needed to know how murderous he'd felt. If they hadn't interrupted him, he might very well have beaten Harry almost to death.
But she was looking at him curiously. "Ron, when we came in, what was that bit about you and Harry promising not to let anything happen to me?"
"Oh." He felt the color rise in his cheeks. "It was years ago. We never told you, but we were really shaken up when the basilisk petrified you. It was just wrong, seeing you like that. One day we got to talking and we sort of agreed that, since we were the blokes in this gang and all, that we should be the ones taking the risks. So we made a pact, you know, the way kids do." He cleared his throat. "Not to let anything happen to you if we could help it."
Now it was Hermione's turn to look like she was about to argue. Instead she let out a deep breath. "That was very sweet. Thank you." But her eyes flashed as she said it, and Ron knew what that meant. She wasn't about to stop taking risks and doing what she thought was right.
In a way, it made him glad. For the past few days the young witch had been pale and quiet, not saying much and burying herself in books. So unlike the girl Ron had grown up knowing. Well, except for the books part. "What did Lupin want?"
"They found out what's wrong with Harry."
Ron frowned. "That's it? I can tell them what's bloody well wrong with that -"
"We were supposed to kill him," she interrupted his rant. "Or let Harry kill himself."
"WHAT?!"
Hermione quickly told him about the augmenter and the Solvamus. Although she left a lot of details out - particularly the part about Harry's long-buried feelings - there was enough to make Ron grasp what the Death Eaters had planned.
When she finished, Ron's eyes were wide. He'd known all this time that the Voldemort and his Death Eaters were evil personified, but this! Was there nothing these people wouldn't stoop to? "You mean to tell me Harry's going to die if ..."
"Hermione! Ron!" Tonks ran breathlessly into the library. "Come with me right now!"
The pair shot to their feet. "What is it?" Hermione asked as they sped after the Auror.
"Harry did it again. I saw it with my own eyes this time. One second he was lying on the bed completely immobilized, and the next he was running past me."
"Where did he go?"
Tonks looked uncharacteristically grim. "The roof."
===================
It's a long way down. Harry adjusted his glasses as he gazed dispassionately at the street below. He had never realized before how tall and narrow Grimmauld was. He wondered what would happen to the charm that kept the house invisible from the muggles below once he jumped. Would the magic keep him hidden even after he fell, or would his body suddenly appear on the pavement out of nowhere? Probably the latter, Harry thought.
From behind, he heard the crunch of slate as someone else climbed out the attic window onto the roof, like he had. "Remus," he said, using Lupin's given name for the first time. "Tell Hermione and Ron I'm sorry."
"Tell me yourself."
He whirled around so fast that he nearly stumbled.
"Careful!" Hermione gasped as a small piece of tile broke away under the sudden movement and plunged to the pavement below.
Harry actually closed his eyes for a second. The sight of the brown-haired witch instantly set his heart pounding. "You shouldn't be here. You're not safe around me," he said bleakly.
"Did you really expect us to just stand by and let you do this? Shouldn't you know us better by now, Harry? Don't you know me?"
"Don't try to save me this time, Hermione. I'm not worth it." He said it with absolute conviction. "What I did to you ... what I still want to do," he swallowed. "Do you remember how mad I was when I thought Sirius betrayed my parents? To me, turning on your friends is one of the worst things in the world. But it's exactly what I've done."
Hermione found herself in the strange situation of trying to save her attacker from harm. No, not her attacker, she told herself. Harry. "It wasn't you," she tried to reason. "It was the pin and the drug in your system. Ask Lupin if you don't believe me."
The dark-haired wizard seemed to hesitate. "What drug?"
"Come inside and we'll tell you." Hermione held out her hand.
"Better do what she says, mate." The slate crunched under Ron's feet as he stood next to the girl. "You know how she is when she doesn't get her way."
Harry looked at the pair of them in disbelief. "There's no way you can forgive me for this. Things between the three of us will never be the same."
Ron and Hermione exchanged a look. Then Ron held out his hand, too. Ironically, it was the same hand he had used to pummel Harry a few days ago. "You'll never know, will you, if you stay out here? Let Lupin tell his story. I want to hear it myself."
Harry stared at their proffered hands and suddenly he was filled with a deep thankfulness for his friends. Even if I do every single thing that's expected of me, nothing I do will ever mean I deserve this. He nodded shakily. Then he let them guide him in.