Shadow Walks
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
--Green Day, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
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Chapter Fourteen:
Without you, I just can't find my way
--Simple Plan, "Perfect World"
By unspoken and yet shared consent, neither Luna nor Ron uttered a word to each other, as she somewhat dazedly answered the questions fired at her by the Auror on duty. She dimly noticed the quill frantically jotting down her disjointed responses verbatim. Kingsley Shacklebolt stood in the corner, observing, a silent and brooding dark shadow. Ron was a comforting presence near her… not warmth exactly, as he wasn't touching her, but the promise of warmth.
Later, she would realize that she couldn't really remember what she'd said to the investigator. She would recall the vague distant sound of her voice in her ears, no more distinct really, than water trickling over stones. She could remember the faint whispery scratch of the quill, and the cool feel of the lacquer on the table, and Ron - a blur of color behind her, wordlessly offering support by mere proximity.
Harry… she thought almost dully. Harry's gone, and I sent him there. The atmosphere around her - the very universe - had seemed to throb slightly, as if something important had been removed from it, when Harry had disappeared from sight. Luna had felt it, felt the very center of her soul convulse with the loss, and she had collapsed against Ron, as her bones refused to help her stand any longer.
Ron's hands had closed around her upper arms, just below her shoulders. He had squeezed once. I know. I understand. All he said was,
"He'll come back."
After the interview was complete, they made their way home, Apparating to the predetermined point outside their flat, and strolling toward it with their fingers loosely interlocked. With the click of the door latch behind them, Luna suddenly felt trapped, imprisoned, as if by closing that door, they had inadvertently sealed themselves in irrevocably. Silence seemed to swell and grow inside the dim set of rooms, until it was like a living thing, an uninvited guest that was unwelcome and determined to stay.
Luna's eyes darted everywhere, and she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, her small hands twisting round each other tightly. Ron watched her with curiosity and not a little concern. One thing Luna had been for them over the last five torturous years was a rock. She would occasionally say or do completely barmy things, but she rarely lost her equanimity, the vague placidity that seemed to carry her through life, with no more urgency and frantic grasping at control than a fallen leaf caught in a slowly swirling current. He had never seen her this way.
"What if he doesn't - ?"
"He will," Ron interrupted her.
Luna gazed at him, with a mournful look that was almost beseeching, like a small child pleading with an adult to tell her everything was all right, even if that meant lying. She resumed her uneven and erratic pacing around the room. Ron watched her, opened his mouth, closed it again, started for his room, stopped, turned back to her, and finally swore under his breath, and strode from the living room.
Luna held her breath when she heard the clinking of glass, and clenched her hands into small fists. She knew that Ron felt left out, that he didn't understand why she was upset, that he might even be jealous of her bond with Harry, and she didn't know how she could explain it to him.
"Ronald?" she called out uncertainly, wincing when her voice cracked on the last syllable. There was a beat of absolute silence; Luna could sense it lurking in the corners. Then she heard his heavy tread in the corridor, and he appeared before her again, his eyebrows raised in query.
His hands were empty. Without her really meaning them to, Luna's eyes flickered from those hands to his face, questioningly.
"You're not drinking," she said mildly, as if observing the weather. It belied the anxiety evidenced by her stance and movements. Ron flushed a little, and shoved his hands into his pockets, shuffling his trainers back and forth on the rug.
"It's not that I don't want to," he began honestly. "Believe me, there's nothing I'd like more right this moment than a glass of old Ogden's. I even poured it."
"But - ?" she prodded gently. Her shoulders had relaxed slightly. He took her hands in his, and led her to the sofa, where they both perched, knees toward each other, nearly touching.
"You need me." The simple words dropped into the room and hung suspended there. Luna said nothing for a moment, and Ron began to fear that he'd offended her somehow. "You - for five years, you've been there for me and - and Harry. Without questions, without judging… I don't know how you've stood either of us - especially me - this long. How can I abandon the one I love - you - when I have a chance to return the favor?" He laid one hand alongside her jaw, so that his fingertips trailed into her hair. "And if that weren't enough, I - I promised Harry… and I owe him this."
"Ron…" The last syllable of his name blurred into a sigh. He tilted her chin up, and laid a light kiss on her lips. It was apology; it was hope; a chaste rebirth and a promise of a future all commingled with the tears that he could taste on her mouth.
"Now," he said presently, leaning back into the sofa, with Luna tucked into the crook of his shoulder. "What's wrong? Is it just Harry's being gone, or - ?"
"It feels different," she blurted nonsensically.
"You're just worried," he said. "It's probably better to keep ourselves busy, focused on something else so - so we don't - " think about what might happen.
"You don't understand! I felt - I felt him leave. He's - he's really gone, and - and it - it doesn't feel like it did before." She appeared irritated by the inadequacy of her words. "What if I've made a mistake?" Ron was shaking his head, his eyes narrowed as he tried to glean the gist of what she'd said from its inarticulate expression. "It feels like - like the rest of the world is out of focus, or - or too sharply focused, so that it gives you a headache… like wearing glasses not meant for you."
Ron wondered absently how often Luna wore other people's spectacles.
"Or like a picture frame that seems to be hung crookedly, but really it's the ceiling that slants…" She trailed off, and put her head in her hands, in an uncharacteristic gesture of despair. Her dirty blond hair hung like a curtain, spilling over her arms and knees.
"The universe was out of balance," Ron said slowly, staring into middle distance, as if outside forces were impelling him to speak.
"I told Harry that," Luna said suddenly, looking up at him, brushing tears away from her sticky face.
"On more than one occasion, if I recall correctly."
"He needed a lot of reminding."
"As, apparently, do you," Ron smiled fondly at her, and kissed her softly again. "What if the feeling you have of something being different isn't really wrong. Maybe - maybe it's the universe starting to - to realign itself correctly, and it feels a bit off because you're so used to it being out of balance?"
Luna grew very still, as if she'd been Petrified. Her eyes were wide and staring.
"Equilibrium…" she whispered, almost to herself.
When she turned to Ron, there was ethereal and rapturous smile on her face.
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Harry wasn't sure how long he would be waiting, after the crystal holding him to this particular universe was deactivated. He hoped it wouldn't be long, and he tried to shake off the long, chill fingers of dread that tickled at him, as he thought of himself as a murderer, as a hater of the Muggle-born, as a violent despot, as Dark Lord.
His eyes went pleadingly to the ruined stones of Hogwarts. Please, get me out of here, please. If only he'd been able to do magic while out of phase, was the longing thought that skittered across his mind. If he - invincible, untouchable, invisible - were to face this universe's version of him, how many lives would he be able to change for the better?
Every instinct he had allied itself with those unfortunate enough to live under his alternate's rule. It seemed untenable that he would have to leave this universe as it was, leave this evil unchecked, unthwarted. His righteous indignation had reared its head, and he wanted to fight, to set right, to vanquish, to restore, to - to …
Don't you think you've got a bit of a saving-people-thing?
He sighed, as his thoughts returned slowly, pulled as if with an unseen, implacable force, to the reason he'd come here in the first place. All that matters, he thought ferociously, is that my Hermione was out of phase when she was here. When she left that universe, she was alive, and that meant that his journey wouldn't end here.
Try as he might, he could not erase the coarsely spoken comments from the Death Eaters in the Hog's Head.
You dare speak his name? His own name, which had once been an object of praise, thankfulness, and starstruck awe - was now the focus of elitism, terror, torture, and death…
The hostile murmurs of the crowd surrounding the fallen servant girl, as she spit out her own blood, were still ringing in his ears as the world melted away around him once again.
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He passed through several universes in a blur - apparently so incompatible with his own that he could not remain there for any truly measurable length of time. As he was flung mercilessly from one whirlwind to another, he could only hope that Hermione had passed through as well - surely she had. There was simply no opportunity to search for her.
He found himself on a green similar that of Hogwarts, though the stone building standing in its place resembled more of a heavily fortified military stronghold than a castle or a school. There was a battle going on somewhere in the distance; he could taste the acrid tang in the air and hear the cries and clangs of the clash. Dragons soared in the sky, arcing and whirling, spurting fire from their nostrils and leaving smoky contrails in their wakes. There were so many of them….
Unearthly silence surrounding him, and the ground beneath his feet was gone. He panicked, flailing his arms desperately, and would have sucked in a couple of lungfuls of water, if he'd been in phase. There was nothing as far as the eye could see but the churning, wrinkled, fathomless surface of an ocean. As he let himself sink - not that he could stop it anyway - he wasn't sure what was more disconcerting, the fact that there was a large body of water where Scotland should have been, or that - apparently and thankfully - he did exist somewhere in this universe…
And in the space of a heartbeat, he'd gone from wet to dry in the most extreme of juxtapositions. Still standing in the same spot, geographically speaking, he was now in an arid wasteland, devoid of anything, but featureless, rolling, desolate hills, and the occasional desert scrub. He appeared to be in phase now, and the heat assailed him like a physically dominating foe. When he inhaled, he felt as if every molecule of moisture had been sucked from his mouth, his lungs, the lining of his throat. The sky was such a bright, pale blue as to be almost white, and twin suns hung in the sky…
He stood on cool, smooth stone, a crisp and uniform grayness that extended outward in all directions. Where he had once seen the lofty turrets of a castle, there was now a building of a sort he'd never seen before, a domed structure, metallic and abstract and low to the ground. He saw no windows. As he turned on his heel, he could see other similar structures, some taller than others. People were everywhere, though no one seemed to notice him. It was as if he'd been planted in the center of some large, futuristic metropolis. A pretty girl in her early twenties brushed by, and passed partially through his left arm…
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Then he was on the green again, much as he remembered it, and felt a rush of emotion at the sight of Hogwarts intact, familiar, beloved. He reached for the tree, and his hand passed harmlessly through the rough edges of the bark once again.
Damn, he thought, imagining another fruitless search, unable to touch any object, ask any questions. He supposed that, with the bizarre possibilities he'd seen so far, Hermione could be anywhere on the planet, or nowhere at all… and the task seemed to loom up before him, large, imposing, and utterly insurmountable.
He heaved an enormous sigh, that did nothing to stir the air currents around him, and - reluctant to venture to Hogsmeade again at the thought of his last experience there - he began to head toward the castle itself.
Even as he mounted the central staircase, he realized that, without having any clear plan in mind, he was headed for the Headmistress's Office. He was hoping that, like so many times before, the person in that office - whoever it happened to be - would be able to extend to him the answers for which he so desperately searched. The journey was not long; he was able to move swiftly, there being no student traffic due to the summer break, and he could also cut through classrooms and walls to take the most direct route.
He had just seen the burnished edges of the gargoyle that marked his destination, when he spotted Nearly Headless Nick wafting at the far end of the corridor, apparently floating in a beam of sunlight from one of the leaded windows. And then…
Sir Nicholas apparently saw him.
The ghost streamed quickly in his direction.
"Bless my soul, Harry Potter, what are you doing here?" Harry actually found himself checking over his shoulder if someone else was there.
"You - you can see me?" Nick cocked his head at him - at more of an angle than most could - and eyed him with a look that said, Of course, I can see you; have you already been nipping at the firewhiskey today?
Harry paused to reflect for a moment. He supposed that ghosts didn't occupy the same dimension as humans, strictly speaking - but he'd never thought that they could actually see travelers from other universes. He wondered if Luna had forgotten to mention it, or if this was something that the Unspeakables had not yet discovered, just because nobody had happened upon a ghost they knew, while out of phase.
It was all beginning to make his head ache.
"Now that you mention it," Sir Nicholas said, squinting closely at Harry and floating all the way around him to get a full view. "You do look rather more translucent than normal." Harry jerked his chin down toward his chest in shock, but found himself looking - to his eyes anyway - as solid as he ever had, his ability to pass through solid objects notwithstanding.
The ghost leaned toward him, and laid a see-through hand on/into his arm, which Harry could not feel.
"So what happened to you?" He added a conspiratorial wink. "Annoy the missus already?"
"The missus?" Harry echoed stupidly.
"Have you hit your head?" The spirit drew closer to him still, appearing intent on checking his pupils for proper dilation.
Harry was irritated. His head was still swimming with images of Dark Marks branded with lightning bolts, of countless dragons swooping malevolently across the sky, of implacable and featureless water, extending everywhere he looked. He was beginning to think that he had indeed bitten off more than he could chew this time, and despaired of floundering in this wilderness of possibilities forever, having either already missed Hermione without realizing it, or having failed to reach the universe where she was.
He flung up his left hand, and glowered at Sir Nick.
"Does it look like I'm married?"
"Don't tell me you've lost your - " The ghost began in a tone of dismay, but Harry didn't let him finish.
"I don't have time for this. Sir Nicholas, I'm sorry, but I really must find Hermione Granger. Do you happen to know where she lives?"
Sir Nicholas drew back regally, and looked at him with a guarded and somber expression. It was as if he'd concluded that somehow Harry was quite mad, and began speaking very formally.
"She lives in Godric's Hollow, sir. With … you." Nicholas looked forebodingly down into Harry's uncomprehending face. "I don't claim to know who or what you really are, and I am certainly in no position to stop you, but know this - you won't get within a hundred meters of that house if - "
He stopped abruptly, and whirled in a misty circuit in the center of the empty corridor.
Harry was gone.
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Upon fully processing Nearly Headless Nick's information, Harry had Disapparated - or done his best approximation thereof - immediately, while the Gryffindor ghost was in mid-sentence. Godric's Hollow…Godric's Hollow… the name throbbed in his brain with a goodly amount of angst and disbelief. He'd been there… once … as he, Ron, and Hermione had begun the search for the horcruxes.
Why in Merlin's name would I want anyone I cared about to live there?
But the answer was before his eyes, as he saw one of the most picturesque little cottages he could have ever imagined, set back from the paved, but narrow lane by a low stone wall, artfully overhung with some kind of low-growing purple flower. Twilight was beginning to set in, and light was spilling from the windows like welcoming yellow arms. He thought he could see laundry - laundry! - fluttering in the slight breeze, nearly out of sight behind the house.
It looked nothing like the ramshackle wreck that had met his eyes, upon their arrival to the Hollow six years ago. The property had been decrepit, overgrown, forgotten; wand blasts were still blackened against the porch railings and front door, which hung on one hinge. To Harry, the sight had made him feel as if the tragedy that had skewed his life irreversibly in this direction was not as far removed from him as he liked to think.
He had hated it on sight. Hated the house that had provided no shelter or safety for him or his family, hated the fact that it still stood here when his parents were long-buried, hated that it seemed to symbolize all the ways in which his life had gone wrong. He had picked up a fist-sized rock from the crumbly stone wall bordering the house, and flung it through an unbroken window with an incoherent cry of rage and anguish. Ron had started visibly as the sound of shattering glass pierced the still night. Somewhere down the winding little lane, a light had come on.
Then he had felt the warmth of hands on his shoulders, which trembled convulsively beneath their light touch. Abashed, he had dragged his world-weary, despairing eyes to the compassionate ones of Hermione. He had almost not wanted to look at her at all.
"Sorry," he had mumbled, lowering his gaze to the scuffed toes of his trainers.
"It's okay to be angry, Harry," she said. Her voice had sounded warm and low and knowledgeable, like one could recline back in the comfort of that voice, knowing that whatever it said was good and true and right.
They had made a hasty visit to the small cemetery where his parents were buried, and then left. Harry hadn't cared if he ever saw the place again.
He never imagined that he would ever look upon the house as it had been, as it was meant to be, when love and light and laughter had filled it, even through dangerous times. He drank in every detail, the fringe of the eyelet curtains that he could just see around the edge of the window, the cobblestoned walkway up to the front stoop, which was topped by a rather jaunty looking Lincoln-green front door. A brass weathervane perched on the roof, and Harry was amused to note that it was in the form of a polished owl. It was like every cottage he'd ever imagined in storybooks, what precious few he'd managed to scrounge from the Dursleys, and he could not take in the fact that he lived here, with Hermione.
Just as he'd finally decided to venture into the house itself, and look around - hoping to have enough time to ascertain that this Hermione was not his Hermione, not knowing when he would be pulled out of this universe - he heard voices coming down the lane, headed in his direction.
"Great Merlin's Ghost, Harry is paranoid!" came a male exclamation, punctuated by laughter. "The range of his anti-Apparation ward is ridiculous."
"Now that they're back and settling in, I'm sure he'll key us in to the wards. He just hasn't had time yet. Besides, you can't really blame him, can you? After what happened with that young witch that disregarded her restraining order!" A female voice answered, and the tone was one of chagrin, though there was amusement beneath it. More laughter, and the sound of a swat. "Why are you laughing? It's your fault that he's rich - and handsome…"
"Are you hoping to distract me from my previous point that Harry is going to end up like Alastor Moody?"
"Alastor is not that bad. He's the Head Auror; it's his job to be secretive and see conspiracies under every toadstool." The pair was coming closer; Harry could hear their footfalls on the lane.
"I work with him, remember? There is no need to remind me of Alastor's… unconventional approaches to security. The last time he put in a new ward without telling anybody - just last week, might I add - I ended up nearly naked in the front office of the MLE." The woman guffawed.
"You didn't tell me that! That explains why Narcissa Black was looking at me so oddly at Madame Malkin's on Tuesday. She must have been green out of sheer envy." The man must have looked inordinately pleased with himself, because the woman tutted. "Now, about Harry - James, you really shouldn't tease him so. Between you, Sirius, and Remus, and those Weasley boys, Harry doesn't get a moment's peace when everyone's together."
"Come on, Lily! He's almost twenty-three years old! In case you haven't noticed, he gives as good as he gets!" James sounded proud, and on that statement, they both rounded the final corner of hedgerow that had blocked them from sight.
Harry had been frozen on the spot, first at the sight of the house, and then at what the voices were saying. At what point he'd realized who they were, he wasn't even sure, but he was still unprepared for the sight of the middle-aged couple that greeted him. The man was trim, in black wizarding robes, rimless spectacles set upon his nose. His hair was as dark as Harry's, but with the addition of graying streaks beginning at his temples. The woman had her arm laced loosely through his, and her vivid red hair swung attractively around her chin and jawline. She was admonishing her husband.
"Well, you shouldn't tease him tonight. They're only just back."
Harry felt his heart stop, and then surge back to slow life, thumping painfully in his chest.
"Mum? Dad?" he barely managed in a throaty, hoarse whisper that nobody heard.
James gallantly held the gate open for Lily, and they both strolled up the path. Before they could even reach the door, it swung open, and light from the house tumbled onto the lawn.
"Mum! Dad! Come on in… ill waiting on Ron… was work?" His own voice drifted out to him. There was laughter and muffled exclamations, drowning out some of what was said next.
"Yes, we had a lovely time. But we're so glad to be home!" The new voice was exuberant, musical, filled a-brimful with joy and laughter. He recognized it instantly, even though there had not been much opportunity for joy or laughter in those days leading up to the Final Battle.
He found himself walking through the stone wall and over the smooth grass to where the party was clustered at the front door. Slowly, his heart still beating deliberately and agonizingly, and his mouth as dry as desert sand, he dragged his gaze upward to the beautiful house wreathed in light.
And there she was.
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AN: Sorry for the delay, but I was trying to get out an update of the sorely neglected "Resistance". I'm also all caught up to where I'd written ahead, so there probably won't be any 2-day updates!
So, next chapter, we'll finally get to see Hermione - even though it isn't our Harry's Hermione. This part was pretty fun to write too - loved writing James and Lily - and I hope everyone enjoyed it.
You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.
lorien
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