A Fine Duet
Summary:
When a plan goes amazingly well, but hopelessly wrong at the same time, two people have to learn to cope with each other; in the same body.
Disclaimer:
No one belongs to me…. Just playing with the creations of the great J.K Rowling!
Rating:
Pg 13 - for mildly offending language
Genre:
Romance/Humour with a touch of seriousness (only for the first chapter ;))
Author's Note:
Random fic, the idea just sprung out of nowhere! Really!!
Part 1:
"This is it damn it!" To get his point across, Harry slammed his right fist on the table, causing the crudely built wooden table to tremble. While Ron was looking quite indifferent to it, Hermione was looking quite uneasy at the plan Harry had set before them and Harry was having quite a hard time convincing her it was the only way. "I know it's reckless, but do you see any other way?!"
Hermione's uneasiness seemed to raise, much to her displeasure. "Well, as … as you said. It is a bit reckless, but Harry!" She added at the sight of the fury rising on the boy's expression. "It's a really good spot to start! You must have gone to great lengths to find all this information!"
Sitting back down on his seat with a sigh, Harry's tone softened. "We all did." He shut his shimmering emerald eyes. "We all did…."
For the past year, the three of them had relentlessly sought out the remaining Horcruxes and, with the help of Dumbledore emerging in the form of a portrait and a miniature library stowed away in the basement of Grimmauld Place, they were able to find them all.
Well, all but one essentially.
To the dismay of everyone present, Harry himself concluded, after three months of futile searching, that he was the last Horcrux. After hours of tears mixed with rage and fear, Harry planned his course of action. In doing so, he sealed himself from his two friends for a length of around three days (he lost track of time a long time ago, especially when they had set up camp in - what seemed to be - the middle of nowhere) he presented them with this.
"You call this a plan?!" That was Hermione's immediate reaction. "You … you just rush in blindly and … and…." She fell onto a couch and placed her face in her palms, the tears pouring from her eyes once more.
Ron was a little better.
"Well, mate," he said sadly, his usually optimistic tone dismissed entirely. "I really see no other way…. I'm … I'm sorry you have to … to, you know…." He couldn't bring himself to say it. But Harry knew all too well what he was talking about.
Harry wasn't going to make it through the battle.
"We just … just need more time, Harry!" Hermione screamed out from the nearby couch, rising and stepping toward him slightly.
Wheeling about on her, Harry frowned. "Time is what we don't have, Hermione." He said coolly, thinking he had had enough of yelling for one week.
"But, Harry! This is … it's …. Totally outrageous! Just totally outrag-"
"We get the point, Hermione." Ron said setting himself on the couch while beginning to rub his eyes from sleep.
Looks like I'm not the only one who's skipping sleep. Harry thought wryly to himself.
"Wait, Harry…." Harry's head snapped up, he found himself sitting once more at the table. It seemed Hermione had brought him out of his reverie. "I know V-Voldemort's already taken away…."
"McGonagall," Ron said, causing Harry to remember one of their last failed raids that ended up with McGonagall's disappearance. "And Filtch…."
"Y-yes, Ron … we kno-" it was clear that Hermione didn't want to hear the list of disappearances anymore than she needed to. Waking up every morning to read an article about the latest one was bad enough.
But Ron, as Harry knew all too well, just quite stubborn. "I read yesterday that Fudge was killed, eh? He wasn't that great a Minister…. But he didn't really deserve…. You know…. Death." With a sigh, Ron continued to name people Harry had encountered all through his life. "I also heard of Seamus' family, apparently they weren't killed by the … the normal Death Eater ways…. It was gruesome…. That's all I heard…."
Harry guessed that the "normal Death Eater ways" were just going in and casting the quick Avada Kedavra at every direction on the compass face.
"R-Ron … stop it!"
"Then there was that raid on Diagon Alley just last Sunday…. Destroyed Ollivander's shop totally I heard! And … F-Fred and…." His stubbornness had finally ended with the disappearances of the Weasley twins. Harry suspected that the Death Eaters saw their talent and made note of the market they had started with the Ministry's many departments and decided to keep them, despite the fact that they were Weasleys.
"Then there's Ginny…." Harry found himself mumbling. Apparently Malfoy had caught wind of the relationship Harry and Ginny possessed…. It seemed as though breaking up with her wasn't one of Harry's brightest ideas, while she was wandering around alone at Platform 9¾, Malfoy had snatched her.
If I hadn't broken up with her, she would have been with me! Those guilty thoughts had been nagging at Harry for months and months. Dreams of Malfoy rapping her then performing a multitude of curses on her without actually killing her plagued his mind during night and day.
He couldn't stand it, he really couldn't. So he did something he thought was quite ingenious. When September 19th rolled around, Harry presented his - now eighteen year old - best friend with a book on Occlumency.
"Ohhh … thank you, Harry!" She had said after tossing - it must have seemed like it to him - Ron's present (Beauty and Beastie Hair: Restorative spells on your hair!) elsewhere. "I've been looking for something like this for ages! I thought maybe Grimmauld Place might have it, but I didn't find anything there…. Then I looked at Knocktur-"
"Hermione," Harry had no time for her stories. His serious tone made her look up at him in surprise. "I want you to learn everything in that book, and then teach it all to me."
And so she had. Through many sleepless nights full of research and rigorous training, Hermione was able to teach him to shut his mind to the nightmares centred on Ginny. And now the two of them were, at least they thought they were experts at the practice.
"Oh, Harry…." Yet again, Hermione brought him out of his reverie. "We'll get her back. I promise."
And somehow, just looking at the shinning pools of chocolate in her eyes, Harry knew she was going to keep that promise.
~*~
Everything was set; Voldemort was even kind enough to have sent a letter to him to confirm his suspicions.
Harry James Potter,
I assure you that this will be first and last time you will ever receive a letter from me, Harry. I actually suspect that this will be the last letter you ever receive as well! Imagine that… it's as if you're reading a will right now, eh boy? My hand finds that it cannot grip a quill as well as it could back in my youth, so I am having Wormtail write this letter for me. So, essentially, the man - even though he barely ressss…. eMb…LeS oNE (it seemed as though Peter Pettigrew did not like writing an insult directed at him) - who has taken away your second father will now write your death on paper. Interesting, isn't it Harry?
But I really do digress, and I've got a small army to command. If you really must know, we are heading right for Hogwarts, I'm currently in the midst of the final preparations which consist of assembling those forsaken Mermaids at the bottom of your pathetic lake and annihilating the centaurs who continue to dwell in your equally, if not more, pathetic forest teeming with the odours of all those Mudbloods….
I suppose I have angered you, Harry. I do not doubt it; after all, I know one of your best friends is a Mudblood too…. Better take better care of her than … oh, what was her name?
Ginny? Ah yes, that was her name. Oh YES, she told me to send her regards, she asked if she could write something, but then the realization of having no hands to write with dawned upon her….
So yes, I do plan to destroy the only place that we both considered homely to us. It and all its occupants really do stand in my way and because of that, I get rid of it, much like you swat at an annoying insect right? So you see, while you believe that we are different.
We are actually quite alike.
- Lord Voldemort
Wordlessly, he had passed the letter to Hermione and Ron who had speedily read it.
"Don't listen to him, Harry!" Hermione had shot out of her seat, startling Ron, who was still reading. "It's just like Sirius! He's just realized that you've mastered Occulmency and he's trying to take advantage of yo-"
"I'm going, Hermione." Harry said coolly as he walked purposefully upstairs, whilst Hermione continued to protest.
"Didn't you hear me, Harry?!" She was now blocked the way to Harry's room and his needed supplies for the battle ahead. "There's no one at Hogwarts! It's closed! You don't have people to save, Harry! You don't have to be no-"
"Move, Hermione." His tone was stern enough to make even the stubborn Hermione move out of his way. He quickly gathered his most needed things; his broom and his wand. He didn't really need anything else…. How much would an invisibility cloak help in a battle? He would be too concerned about keeping it on him. He needed to stay focused on the battle with him.
"Harry!" It seemed Hermione's stubbornness could take her far, very far indeed. "Are you even listening to me?!"
With a deep sigh, the Boy-who-lived turned to one of his two best friends and nodded. "Of course I have, Hermione. That doesn't mean that I totally agree with i-"
"Harry James Potter! You will get yourself killed!"
The irony, it seemed, was lost to Hermione. "That's the whole point, isn't it?" With one last sad smile to Hermione, he disappeared.
~*~
"It seems, Harry." Voldemort said triumphantly as he held both their wands in each of his hands. "That I am the victor." Harry picked himself up from the forest floor while the observing centaurs around him growled in protest. "You cannot do anything!" It seemed as though Voldemort were talking to every being in the world, not just Harry himself, at least … the dynamics of his voice seemed to hint at that. "After your death Harry, no one can do anything. Remaining anonymous wasn't exactly the smartest thing you could have done eh, Harry?"
Battered, but still breathing, Harry rose to the ground, pushing himself up using a nearby tree root.
"So this will be your final stand, Harry? I'm sure Dumbledore is shaking his head right now. Crucio!" Falling to the ground once more in a heap of screams and pain, the centaurs growled.
One of them even stepped forward, but a larger one blocked his path with a firm arm. "This is not our fight, Firenze." Bane said sadly as he continued to watch, along with all the other centaurs, the destruction of their last hope against the growing darkness. "The planets have told us not to interfere, Firenze, this is not our fight."
Remaining mute, Firenze's eyes grew darker and narrower.
"Take heed, Harry!" Voldemort cried out in seemingly ecstasy. "You will see your family momentarily and, I daresay, your friends as well!"
So…. Harry thought to himself. This is Voldemort's form of an orgasm…. Looking at him right now through his blurry vision, Harry saw a face concerted with eagerness and pure elation one that frightened Harry quite thoroughly.
"W - wait…." Harry wheezed as the pain continued to stab at every bone and every tendon within him.
"What did you say, Harry?" Voldemort said venomously as his smirk grew even more.
"WAIT DAMNIT!" Harry fixed his icy glare on Voldemort, shaking off the pain of the Cruciatus curse. Voldemort released the spell and watched the, quite prominent, smoke billow eerily around Harry.
"You have a final say on my magnificent art of pain?" Voldemort chuckled at his boastfulness.
Harry pointedly ignored it. "Wh - when I was born…." Coughing up today's lunch, Harry's mind was spinning out of control while his throat was more parched than a life-time desert inhabitant.
"The day that I suffered far more pain than you are feeling right now, than, as a matter of fact, anyone has ever felt before. What of that day?" He continued to watch unmoving as Harry vomited seemingly non-stop. "WHAT OF THAT DAY?!" Jabbing his wand toward Harry once more, Harry floated into the air, some of the lingering vomit sliding disgustingly from his mouth and onto his chin.
"Yo ... you … created a Hocrux that day…." While Harry believed Voldemort would be shocked at that fact, he, instead, laughed.
"Dumbledore probably told that bullshit about seven being a magical number, correct?" Voldemort said shaking his head. "It seems as though will abandoned that man in his late years…. I was originally planning on seven, but then other circumstances came up that blocked me from making a seventh. The day of your birth and almost my death did not create a Horcrux, Harry."
"Are you quite sure, though?" Harry was now standing on both feet, but he still had to use a nearby tree for support. It seemed as though his legs were not content on supporting his full body weight. "I mean, logically, what else could this scar represent?"
Voldemort shrugged as Harry pointed at the lightning bolt on his forehead. "A mere memento of that horrendous day, and a forged connection between you and me, though it seems as though you have learnt to break that connection quite well, Harry." Voldemort bowed. "I hold some, while being rather small, respect for you now. Will that be all then, Harry? Can I finish this?"
"NO!" Though it was not Harry who said it. Speeding across the forest floor was none other than…
"HERMIONE!" Harry screamed out in warning, he attempted to rush to her but fell to the ground, seeing as his legs had finally given up on him.
Voldemort seemed to hardly care about Hermione's sudden entrance as he raised the wand on his left hand and pointed it at Harry's body lying with his back facing Voldemort. "It seems as though I will not have the pleasure of seeing the fear in your eyes, Harry, as you die. Avada Kedavra!"
Harry could feel the eerie spell making his way toward him, the air around him seemed to vanish soundlessly. With a look of fear at Hermione who had tears streaming down her cheeks, he felt the curse hit him. And as the life inside of him drained away every so slowly, he thought about only one thing:
Hermione he thought, I … I must get to Hermione….
And with a sharp crack, Harry Potter, the Boy-who-lived disappeared from the world.
"What is this?!" Voldemort screamed out immediately, not noticing the trembling in Hermione Granger. "Wh - where did he go? I hit him with the bloody curse!"
Hermione tentatively raised her wand, still unnoticed by Voldemort who was shouting at the centaurs, the still air and the equally, if not more, still trees around him. "Avada … kedavra." Hermione said, in a voice whose treble didn't belong to her.
She watched as Voldemort's face turned toward the ghostly green ball of magic floated towards him, at first he looked cocky, but then when it made contact with his flesh his eyes seemed to lighten slightly and his pale skin disappeared, to be replaced by a normal, seemingly healthy peach colour. He fell back on the soft grass, visibly lifeless.
Hermione sank to her knees, tearing at the strands of hair in her scalp. Not in all of her reading or her actual, practical, experiences had she ever thought this was possible.
She assessed the situation as concisely as she could to the Minister when he approached her after she had released the news that Voldemort was dead and that Harry Potter, the true saviour, had disappeared.
Hermione was now standing in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, but she had never stepped on this part of the large hall before. She was standing where Dumbledore would normally stand whenever he made a speech to the entire school at the beginning of the year. Speaking publicly was never one of Hermione's strong suits, even when she knew what she was talking about totally. Hermione Granger found that she was not the most social of characters; she was content on living in silence, with a book in her small hands. Though here she was, in front of multiple reporters of newspapers Hermione had never even heard of. The African Telepath and Magik Biography only being two of the ones she sighted.
She noticed with embarrassment rushing through her, that her hands were trembling quite profoundly and, even though Voldemort had been vanquished once and for all, her heart still hammered within her chest, still unable to grasp at the truth of the situation.
"I ran in just when Voldemort was about to finish him." She said into the floating microphone in front of her, noting that it resembled the still-Muggle type that she had seen quite often throughout her seventeen years. "Harry was …. Visibly weakened, it was quite obvious to me who was on the winning side. Voldemort -" Hermione pointedly ignored the cringes and shivers evident around the hall "- had somehow obtained Harry's wand and was using both of them to perform a multitude of Cruciatus curses on him. I'm actually quite surprised Harry was able to survive up till then without turning insane." Hermione took a moment to breathe, for, as usual, the nervousness inside her made her anxious and speak quite fast.
"As you all now know, Lord Voldemort produced seven Horcruxes in order to make him invulnerable to anything, absolutely, anything we sent at him. Over the past year, while Hogwarts remained closed to all students, Harry, our best friend Ronald Weasley and I searched for the Horcruxes, finding six of them.
"Harry insisted on remaining as anonymous as possible throughout the search, and Ron and I abided by that, finding no reason to counter it. We eventually found, as I said earlier, six of them, but for the last few months we were turning up futile leads as to the location of the last one, until, that is, Harry made the final conclusion.
"He believed that he was the last Horcrux, and that Voldemort accidentally created a Horcrux on the night of his birth when he meant to kill Harry. Much to my … a - and Ron's dismay, I could find nothing to disprove this hypothesis. One of the Horcruxes we destroyed was Voldemort's pet snake, Nagini, which proved that Horcruxes can house themselves in living, breathing, beings.
"As we continued to disprove other leads, the list of possible Horcruxes grew thinner … and thinner, to the point that I truly believed Harry's theory. Of course, I didn't want to believe it at all. You see, to eliminate the creator of the Horcrux, you must, essentially, destroy the Horcrux before combating the creator. Destroying the Horcrux means … killing it, really.
"For Voldemort to die, Harry needed to die as well."
This statement tore the silence around the hall immediately; uproars of complaints from every living person, newscasters were crossing out their scratched notes of ink on their loose parchment, shaking their heads in disappointment.
A seemingly living howler screamed out from the crowd. "You-know-who's dead! You said it yourself! That's why we're all here isn't it lads!" Raising his beefy arms and looking at his supporters around him they all nodded their heads firmly.
Hermione was getting uneasy, as if the nervousness inside of her didn't make her feel bottled enough. "P - please, allow me to explain!" They don't even know half of the truth! "Please, calm down!"
Hermione's uneasiness remained even after the crowd's noises died down. "Thank you, I know I'm sounding a bit like a hypocrite right now, but I do have a theory as to the explanation of this."
"Of course she does!" Oh no… The slime ball Draco Malfoy waltzed into the Great Hall, his father right behind him. "She just doesn't want you all to know the truth!"
What the devil is he talking about?! Hermione's head was spinning out of control. Oh no…. Oh no, no, no … this isn't right!
"She just wants to take the credit of it!" The crowd was now spinning even more than her head was. Cries of outrage and scandal screamed out at her as she tried to gain the attention of the crowd once more.
They need to know! She kept thinking to herself. They need to! Pulling out her wand, Hermione did something that even McGonagall would suspend her for. "Morsmordre!" The all too familiar symbol of Lord Voldemort floated eerily in the night sky that was the ceiling of the Great Hall. The silence that ensued felt more eerie than the aura of the Dark Mark could ever give off. Hermione quickly waved her wand to dispel the Dark Mark and, for a moment, relished the look of fear on both the Malfoy's stupid faces. "Thank you, now even if I were to claim credit for the killing of Lord Voldemort, in doing so, I would claim the credit of killing one of the best people I have ever had the fortune of knowing.
"You see," Hermione continued with, much to her pleasure, the throng's attention. "I saw the killing curse come from one of Voldemort's wands, his left one I noted, and I saw it contact with Harry's spine region.
"Now, I have read about the killing curse quite a lot in my life. The sentence it brings with the casting for outdoes any other sentence for any crime in this world, with the exceptions of the other two Unforgiveable curses. My peers and I actually witnessed the casting of it in our fourth year with the supposed Alastor Moody as our professor, though that is another story entirely." Hermione smiled in spite of the situation, she could see Malfoy jr. glaring up at her from the entrance of the Great Hall, venom leaking from his grey eyes. "I remember the professor told us its, essentially, an instant killer.
"However, I have actually met with a couple of experts on the killing curse. I do not have the fortune of having them here today, though I expect that they will be pleased their research will be released into the world. You see, they are Muggles." A collective awe of shock was apparent in the hall. But Hermione ploughed onward. "And while many wizards and witches leave Muggles to deal with their own affairs, Muggles are just as interested in magic as we are. These two experts that I met are Mr. and Mrs. Hover and are parents to a certain … Alice Hover I think, who happens to be a witch. I, like her, am born in a Muggle family with no known relative of magical relation.
"Anyway, the parents of Alice are quite interested in the mechanics of magic and especially the more dangerous kinds, the killing curse for example. The Hovers set up a lab in their basement and using their daughter, who is now of age and quite brilliant, have concocted a safe haven for their, potentially dangerous, experiments. Thanks to Alice's brilliance, they were able to keep themselves anonymous to the Ministry's spell detectors. For the Hovers were very interested in the killing curse, that, they say, is their main study focus.
"Using both magic and Muggle technology, they were able to see what exactly happened when a life form is touched by the killing curse. The curse, it seems, clogs the many arteries and vessels in your body, draining them of the oxygen and blood that they each need. That's why a victim of the curse seems so bloody pale, the blood wasn't able to get anywhere for the last few seconds of his/her life. The curse moves from the hit spot all around the body, halting the progression of blood until it reaches the heart. And that's when the victim dies.
"Now, when Harry Potter was hit by the curse, he lay perfectly still for about two seconds before disappearing with a sharp crack." Muttering begun to brew within the crowd, but Hermione continued to plough onward. "This is when it gets really weird; apparition is rather difficult when a strenuous situation is present, correct?" Nods of agreement were visible throughout the throng. "But I suppose Harry thought the threat of splinching is far more appealing than death. And he is too right for his own good." Smiling yet again in spite of herself she paused to breathe and take a drink from the table next to her. Feeling the cool liquid flow down her threat was overwhelming, to say the least.
After placing the empty goblet back on the table, she resumed her memorized speech. "When I performed the killing curse on Lord Voldemort and watched as the life drained from his body, I knew that Harry was dead. Though the knowledge of how the killing curse actually works is making me create a theory of my own.
"That Harry is only part dead in the place that he apparated to. I have already asked the Minster to search for any part that resembles Harry throughout Hogwarts, The Burrow and even Privet Drive. Places that Harry grew up and enjoyed being in, though I can hardly say that he enjoyed being at the Dursleys!
"Right now, Harry could be somewhere only dreams can take us, or he could be suffering without an arm and without any life support. I need you all to look out for him; I need you all to look for the true saviour of the entire world as we all know it." And with that said, Hermione marched down from the Headmaster's seat and, without saying a word to anyone else, she left the Great Hall and Hogwarts entirely.
Apparating back to their former hideout to find Ron pacing from wall to wall, he rushed up to her as soon as she entered, but she shook her head sadly and went to her room to sleep.
Though as she lay on the bed, a very familiar voice seemed to whisper right into her ears, even if it was only a whisper, it sounded like a horde of trumpets roaring in her ears.
"Uhh .. where am I?"