Disclaimer: Not mine; more's the pity.
Shadow Walks
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
--Green Day, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
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Chapter Twenty:
I'm living for the only thing I know
--Lifehouse, "Hanging by a Moment"
Hermione Granger was drifting through the corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
In five years, she had perfected it, honed it, fashioned it into an art form, that of using her time as well as she could until another inevitable change occurred. She estimated that she had changed universes over one thousand times - uncharacteristically, she had lost count somewhere in the high eight-hundreds.
She had been terribly disoriented at first… Bellatrix's wand had been digging into her throat; there was a glint of gold and a flash of gemstone, a snarled spell…
And the world as she knew it had vanished from around her.
Remus had been dueling Macnair, and suddenly they were both gone. Lestrange was gone. She had lost track of Ron in the woods - and Harry? Had he succeeded? Was the war over?
Instead of answers to these questions, she found herself facing an inferno. Hogwarts was ablaze; Gryffindor Tower had fallen in on itself. There were bodies everywhere.
She couldn't understand it, mentally denying what her own sensory processing was trying to tell her. There had been no fire. She remembered screaming, her throat raw with emotion,
"This isn't what was happening!"
And then she found that no one could hear her, that she could touch nothing, be seen by no one. She had fingered her wand; it felt real beneath her skin, but was powerless. She could pass through walls, trees, other people, utterly invisible, insubstantial, unimportant.
Wherever she was, she was strictly an observer, unable to participate or interact in any way.
What had Bellatrix Lestrange done to her?
And then, when she had finally found Harry - her fingers skimmed lightly over the finely bound volumes shelved in the Ravenclaw common room, without actually touching them - she could still shudder with the soul-sucking horror that had suffused her when she saw him.
Harry. But not Harry. Cloaked in black, something hollow and cold curled in the depths of his eyes. She had witnessed, invisible, mute, as he ordered the death of Severus Snape, speaking in a low menacing hiss that might as well have been Parseltongue. The screams of the Potions professor echoed in her ears.
But it was the nothingness in his gaze that gave her nightmares…
However, she was not Hermione Granger, former Head Girl and top of her class at Hogwarts for nothing. As time melted and blurred past her - it was nearly impossible to keep track - she studied, took notes, watched for patterns. It took her only three changes to figure out that she phased out when there was a Hermione Granger alive and well in a particular universe. And after she lost all her meticulously kept notes when a change shifted her out rather abruptly, she learned to keep her research on her person at all times. She could manipulate things that had been with her, things that were in her phase, although she could not use them to act on any of her surroundings.
She studied, she waited, she skulked around the Department of Mysteries, postulating, theorizing, observing …
She remembered the day that she had realized she was waiting for Harry. Her lips had curled into a bitter, twisted rictus. How ridiculous! She didn't even know if he'd survived the Battle; she didn't know if they'd figured out what happened to her. Maybe everyone thought she was dead. Maybe everyone she knew was dead.
Yet still - the forlorn little hope, like a tiny, but resilient seedling, would not be quashed. With every change, she found herself looking for him, every time she saw a new version of him, she watched him with bated breath, waiting for the exclamation of recognition, for a realization that she was there, whether or not she could not be seen, for the knowing look in his eyes, for a low, throaty,
"I've come to take you home, Hermione."
She could remember the look in his eyes, the promise that had glinted there as they said their farewells in the Great Hall, the last time she'd ever seen him. She'd known what he had not said, what he had not needed to say, and she had contented herself with waiting only a little longer.
When this is all over, she'd thought… if only she'd known how it would all end.
Even when she was phased into a new universe, it was uncomfortable, even unpleasant, having to re-explain everything to family and friends who had thought her dead, to crush the light that suddenly sprang to life in their eyes. And there had been one universe where she had apparently never existed at all - it had been horrible, facing Harry and Ron while they glanced at her with the indifferent eyes of disinterested strangers. After a while, she'd tried to avoid deliberately seeking anyone out, but she could not abandon her quest for knowledge, for a solution to what had happened to her, for a way out, a way home.
She revisited the same places when she moved into a new reality, not knowing what the researchers of the day might have discovered or neglected. She browsed through the Ministry, the Hogwarts Library, and had recently discovered - with no small amount of jealousy - that the Ravenclaw common room was quite well-stocked with reading material on its own merits. She had taken to searching there as well, though it was considerably more difficult when one had to place one's head inside the book, unable to actually pick it up and open it. It always gave her a headache - or she felt like it did - trying to jot notes from a closed tome.
Now, she felt listless, ill at ease, vaguely depressed. It had been years - how many, she wasn't sure - but she wondered if she had been cursed to wander through the millions of alternate realities for the rest of her life. She had visited Godric's Hollow early that morning, seen with a kind of disbelieving amusement that she was actually married to Ron, and had left again quickly, with a clinging heaviness of heart.
There were crystals that one could use, but she had yet to discover a way to identify her own universe. The one promising time that she had been able to have an illuminating lunch with Luna in the Ministry cafeteria, she had `changed' right in the middle of their conversation.
She had been phased out for four changes now, and despaired of ever again being in control of her own fate.
She sat down on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. There was no fire in the hearth since the summer holidays meant that there were no students present to desire the warmth, but she wouldn't have been able to feel the heat anyway.
What's the point anymore? She wondered glumly. Whatever scheme Bellatrix Lestrange had been trying to perpetrate had obviously succeeded.
Nobody knows what happened to me.
There was a sudden noise from faraway, clamor and shouting in a distant corridor. Hermione listened without interest; none of this would affect her in the slightest. Nobody could see her; nobody could hear her.
A voice again, clearer now, hoarse and frantic. She sat up, every sense tingling with alertness.
The voice was calling her name.
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Harry stood at the top of the stairs, breathing heavily, Sir Nicholas wafting at his heels. He appeared at a loss, glancing first in one direction down the corridor, then the other. He didn't seem to know which way to proceed.
"You're sure you haven't seen her?" he questioned.
"I'm quite positive, Harry," Sir Nick replied. "I told you already that Mrs. Weasley had tea with Professor McGonagall last month, but there has been no Hermione Granger floating through walls here. I assure you the ghosts would have noticed something like…"
He stopped so abruptly that Harry, who had turned to gaze rather blankly back down the stairs, eyed him quizzically.
"Sir Nicholas? Are you all right?" The Gryffindor ghost was staring in bewilderment, his head cocked so far to one side that Harry could see the marks of his mortal wound. Harry followed his gaze down an empty corridor.
"She's - she's there. I see her. She just came through the Ravenclaw tapestry. Upon my word!"
Harry whipped his head back to spear Sir Nick with a glance that was both warning and beseeching.
"Hermione?" he asked. "Hermione's there?" His heart was hammering in his chest, and seemed to have swollen upward into his throat. He felt like he couldn't breathe, could barely speak, and yet, his legs seemed to propel him down the corridor in the direction Sir Nick had been staring.
"Hermione?" he said again, this time directing it to the emptiness. "Are you there?"
"She said, `I'm here'," Sir Nicholas translated. Harry licked his lips; his mouth seemed suddenly dry and sandy.
"Ask her - ask her what happened during the Final Battle." His hand groped inside his shirt collar, reaching for the two crystals twined there, more for something to do with his hands, than out of any actual purpose. Sir Nicholas was nodding, apparently listening intently.
"She - she says that she was accosted by one Bellatrix Lestrange and a band of Death Eaters in the Forbidden Forest, that Mrs. Lestrange put some kind of jewelry on her, and sent her out of her universe."
"Who was dueling Lupin?" Harry asked, feeling that his question was disjointed, as if someone else were directing the words from his mouth. Trust Hermione not to mention her last heated exchange of words with Ron. Another brief pause.
"Macnair," said Sir Nick. One of Harry's hands went shakily to the banister behind him, as he struggled to remain standing. It was happening, and he couldn't believe it.
"The first - the first universe you were sent to," he asked, plodding on, his fragile, tortured soul wanting to be absolutely sure. "Did you see me - my alternate self?"
Hermione must have nodded, for Sir Nick replied with an almost immediate affirmative.
"What was I doing?"
Sir Nicholas looked alarmed.
"She doesn't want to answer," he replied.
"You have to answer!" Harry said through clenched teeth, speaking to no one. "I know what happened. You're not shielding me from anything. You've got to tell me! I have to be sure."
Sir Nicholas' eyes might have bugged from his transparent skull. And Harry knew that Hermione had answered correctly, before the ghost said anything at all.
"She says that you were the Dark Lord." A small, satisfied smile tugged at the corners of Harry's mouth, belying the overwhelming surge of emotion that swept through him, and Sir Nicholas seemed more shocked that Harry hadn't been surprised than anything else.
Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall, who had been the recipients of a timely Floo call from Hermione Weasley, and had met Harry in the Front Hall, had now made it up the stairs, and were watching the scene avidly. Harry barely spared them a glance, everything in him beginning to focus on what he had to do next
He blinked toward the empty corridor, his eyes roving around helplessly, wishing desperately that he could see her. He twiddled with the chain inside his shirt.
"I've come to take you home, Hermione," he said.
"I've come to take you home, Hermione," he said. Hermione's breath caught in her throat; Harry knew she was there! It was everything she'd always dreamed of - and she could tell by looking at him that he seemed to be affected the same way. He looked pale, breathless, wild-eyed, fidgety.
She'd never seen anything more beautiful in her life.
"I'm ready to go home, Harry," she said, and waited for Sir Nicholas to relay her words to Harry, having only registered mild surprise when she realized the ghost could actually see and hear her. Even at such a crucial moment, she could not help but be annoyed that she had somehow not discovered this pivotal fact.
She saw his chest rise and fall, and a crooked, uncertain, self-conscious smile wreathed his face.
"I'm sorry," he said hesitantly. "I'm sorry it took me so long." She shook her head quickly, denying the need for an apology, even though he couldn't see her.
"You're here now. You came for me. Somehow, I - I knew you would."
At Sir Nicholas' interpretation of Hermione's words, Harry could feel the tears in his eyes, burning for release, but he blinked them back stubbornly. He pulled the first crystal - the one Luna had given him before he left - free from his shirt, and cast an Expanding charm on the chain. He glanced uncertainly at the empty corridor, and debated within himself whether or not to say anything, his eyes flickering back toward his audience of both the living and the dead.
"Hermione, I - I'm not sure what's going to happen next… I mean, I don't know if this will work - it should work, but - I mean, there's no reason why it wouldn't work, except that I don't think it's ever been done before, and - " He shook his head, annoyed with himself. There was no time for babbling.
He reached out one hand.
"She's there, Harry," Sir Nick said gently. Harry's fingers wiggled slightly in response, touching nothing but air.
Hermione moved closer, reaching for his hand, both of her hands melting through his skin. She could feel her own fingertips touching each other; she could see his hand, but could not feel it. Her fingers appeared to be on his, but there was no warmth of contact.
"I'm here, Harry," she whispered. "I'm here." Tears clogged her voice, made it difficult for her to force the words from her tight throat. She had never wanted to touch someone so badly in her life.
"I love you," he said, so quickly that she thought she must have misheard him, but there was no mistaking the fiery intent look in his blazing eyes. "I should have - I should have told you that day in the Great Hall, before we - before we all left. I knew, I knew then, and I should have told you, but I - I thought it was - it was a can of worms best not opened until we'd - until we'd dealt with everything else. I thought we had time...
"It was a mistake, and - and whatever happens next, I - I wanted you to know how much I loved you then, how much I still love you, will always love you, that a day hasn't gone by where I haven't - haven't… longed for you, wished you were with me, wondered what I should've done differently. I - I just wanted you to know."
Hermione couldn't speak. Tears were streaming down her face, and the ache in her throat and chest had become almost unbearable. She nodded frantically, struggling to swallow, hoping to get the words out.
"She's crying," she heard Sir Nicholas report.
"It'll be enough just having you back with us, I promise," Harry said. "I'm not asking that you love me in return."
"But - I - do," she croaked, finally getting the words out with supreme effort.
She watched his face transform, as the Gryffindor ghost told him what she'd said. And she was amazed. He had been pale, tired, weary with much heartache, and she hadn't even really consciously noticed any of these things until they were gone. In the space of a heartbeat, a breath, he looked younger, vibrant, more alive.
He smiled. Really smiled.
And Hermione saw a flash out of the corner of her eye. A portion of the corridor wavered, shimmered, and began to spin. There was a sound almost like rushing wind or water.
"No!" she said frantically. "Not now!" She looked wildly at Sir Nicholas.
"She said she's changing!" Sir Nicholas said suddenly, his worried expression sending a charge of alarm through Harry.
"Changing?" he asked, his eyes moving back and forth between the ghost and the empty corridor.
"Moving… to a new universe. She says she's leaving. You must hurry!"
Harry swore wrathfully under his breath, and pulled the elongated chain wide, holding it out at arm's length.
"I think you need to be within the circle," he said, speaking to the empty hallway. He saw no movement, but something sparked slightly down the length of the chain. "Is she inside the chain, Sir Nicholas."
"Ye-es," the ghost replied, making a wide pivot around Harry.
"Are you sure?" The words were desperate, urgent, almost feral. Sir Nicholas took another look, and nodded, this time with more certainty.
Harry glanced at the wide empty swath encompassed by the necklace, and wished that he didn't have to take so much on faith. Even as he thought it, there was the faintest of flickers, as if a vague image of Hermione had appeared and disappeared in the length of a lightning flash. He remembered that Luna had said the necklaces were not affected by phase.
"She's ready, Harry," Sir Nicholas spoke, prodding him into action. Harry closed his eyes.
Please let this work, please let this work, pleaseletthiswork.
He tapped the crystal with his wand, and spoke the incantation that would bring them home, that Luna had taught him, what seemed like ages ago - though it was likely mere days - on the Hogwarts green.
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Luna dropped her fork.
It bounced noisily on the tabletop and clattered to the floor. Ron looked over at her curiously when she did not immediately move to retrieve it. His own laden fork remained suspended in midair.
"Luna?" He asked. "Love? Is something wrong?"
For a long moment, she gave no response at all, and Ron had half-risen from his chair, brow furrowed in concern, when she suddenly sprang to her feet, knocking her chair over backwards, and letting out a screech that made Ron startle and say,
"Bloody hell!"
"Ronald, we need to go."
"In the middle of lunch? Where?" Ron asked, gesturing helplessly to the mostly uneaten meal.
But Luna's next words drove all thought of food from Ron Weasley's mind.
"Ronald, he's back."
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The first thing Harry was cognizant of was the feel of cool smooth stone beneath the skin of his palms and cheek. The second thing was the almost painful pressure of his glasses against the side of his nose. He blinked his eyes open, and saw a large crack bisecting his right lens.
Dammit, he thought, can't I fall on my back for once, instead of on my own ruddy face every time?
"Oculus reparo," came a voice, low and smooth and mellifluous, like a kind of soothing balm to his ears - and his soul - one he'd never thought to hear again.
And it all came flashing back to him suddenly… Hogwarts, Sir Nicholas, Hermione was changing universes again, he had to hurry!
The crack in the lens glowed brightly and vanished. He pressed his palms to the floor, and pushed himself upward. His gaze swung past the top of the stairway, where Dumbledore and McGonagall had been standing, and he allowed himself a momentary pang of regret that he had not had more than a few cursory words for his old Headmaster.
He swung his head heavily around, sweeping past the banisters, the corridor, the Ravenclaw tapestry, and then lighting on a girl - a woman - sitting cross-legged on the floor, regarding him with not a little disbelief. She was not in the same clothes in which he'd last seen her, and her hair was twisted into a haphazard knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were starry and wide, as if she could not comprehend that she was here, and he had never seen anything so breathtaking in all his days.
"Hermione," he said hoarsely, finally fully sitting up. She smiled at him then, though it wobbled and finally broke with the onset of tears.
"Yes," she replied in an affirmative, as if he'd asked a question. For a moment, it was like they were both afraid to speak, afraid to move, as if the moment they'd so yearned for would vanish into oblivion as instantly and irreversibly as the popping of a soap bubble.
Harry was drinking her in, his eyes roving possessively over every feature of her face. She was older than he remembered, and something indefinable had changed in her eyes. She was thin, but not gaunt; there was no sunny, privileged air about her. She looked like… she looked like Hermione, he realized suddenly, his Hermione, the one he'd missed like half his soul had been torn away. She was here.
He struggled with what to say next. Declaring his love for her had been easy, especially since he had not had to look into those melting chocolate eyes, since he had been spurred onward by the maybe my last chance desperation. Perhaps declarations or promises would be premature - she was going to have a lot to adjust to, after all… what if she wanted to be with her parents, or go to university, or what if she didn't like the flat? She had had life snatched away from her, suspended indefinitely out of her reach for five years, and now that she was back…now that she was back… His posture slumped slightly, and he ran a distracted hand back through his hair. He cast a quick glance at her, almost as if he didn't really want to, but couldn't help himself.
"You look like someone who has a lot on his mind," Hermione remarked softly, her words dropping into the silence of the corridor.
Harry jerked a glance upward in her direction, and looked momentarily horrified that he had been sitting on the floor in silence, staring at her, in her first few moments back. He scooted across the corridor toward her, until they were both sitting with their backs against a wall, the fringe of a tapestry barely brushing the crowns of their heads.
She leaned her head companionably on her shoulder, and for a heart-stopping instant, Harry forgot to breathe.
"I - I don't know - this is - " he stammered incoherently, and called himself six kinds of a fool.
"It's hard, isn't it?" She mused. "When you - when you work so long toward a - toward a goal, and when you finally achieve it, you don't really know what to do with it."
"I know what I'd like to do," Harry blurted honestly, and then felt heat creep upward and stain his face. "I mean, I mean…" He stopped and took a deep breath. This is Hermione, he chastised himself, not just some strange girl, someone you're trying desperately impress or something… it's just Hermione.
He could almost laugh at himself. She would never be "just" Hermione.
"I - I meant what I said to you earlier - meant every word of it. But I - I know you're going to have a lot - a lot to deal with… being back, I mean, and I don't - I don't want to make things more difficult for you. You've got five years of life to catch up on, and - and your parents - and the media's going to have a field day, and - and - " He swallowed and looked vaguely annoyed with himself. "There are going to be loads of decisions and -"
"Harry," was all she said, and it was enough to make him blunder to a stop. The tone was almost lovingly reproving, like a mother toward a child who has destroyed her kitchen in an effort to bring her breakfast in bed. "Didn't you realize - didn't you know that - that with you, there's no decision to be made? I - I made that decision a long, long time ago." She lifted one hand, and brushed it gently through his dark hair. He caught his breath at the contact.
"What decision?" he asked, almost afraid to hear her answer.
"The decision that I would love you forever."
The words shot through Harry, vibrant and stunning, and he raised unwilling eyes again to meet hers. Their gazes locked with enough force that Harry thought it was probably audible.
"Are - are you sure?" He whispered hoarsely, fighting the urge to clear his throat. Her eyes were searching his, her face impossibly close; her hands came up to bracket his face.
"If I - if I've really been waiting for you for five years, Harry, then I - I don't want to wait anymore."
It was as if her words had released the mechanism that was making all of his words and actions stilted and hesitant. He scooped her into his arms with enough force to elicit a squeak of surprise from her, and ran one hand gently over her face and hair, skimming reverently with his fingertips the smooth surface of her skin.
"I - I can't believe…" he said in a rapt voice, clogged with emotion.
"I know," she replied, even though he hadn't finished his sentence.
And then his lips were on hers, and hers were yearning toward him in response. There was a rush of sensation, as if all the universes they had traveled through were swirling around them again. Harry felt completion and peace seep into the cracks of his soul, even those present since a long ago Halloween night, and he knew that he held his world in his arms.
They broke the kiss, but remained close, each basking in the presence of the other, and Harry felt a smile begin to tilt the corners of his mouth upward. He smothered a laugh into Hermione's curly hair.
"What?" she asked, looking at him curiously.
"Just something Luna said," he replied. "About the universe being out of balance. I wonder if she's noticed that it's all come round right again."
"Did you really think she wouldn't?" came a voice that caused both of them to jump and move apart self-consciously. Ron was topping the stairs, gripping a carved finial for dear life, with Luna, serene as ever, just behind him. "We bloody well ran all the way from the gates."
Harry stood to his feet, and absent-mindedly offered Hermione a hand up as well.
"It's good to be back…" he began, but noticed that Ron wasn't looking at him, but over his shoulder, with ill-concealed emotion. Harry's eyes darted from Ron to Hermione, and he quickly stepped to the side, knowing that this moment had been a long time coming.
"Hermione…" Their other best friend began hoarsely. "It's - it's good to see you…" He looked as awkward as Harry had felt, and Harry had a sudden pang of pity in his chest.
"It's good to see you too, Ron," Hermione answered sincerely, the memory of their last exchange all but washed away under the force of everything she'd been through since that day.
"I'm so - Merlin, Hermione, I'm so sorry. If I - if I hadn't - " Ron's voice was choked, and he faltered, as Hermione quickly begin to shake her head, demurring his entire apology, her voice too low to be clearly heard.
Luna moved to Harry's side, her eyes discreetly watching their other friends, but sparkling with a new kind of life.
"You made it back," she said unnecessarily. Harry took her hand, and lifted it to his lips.
"If it hadn't been for you, what you did…" he began roughly, but was unable to finish. She searched his face thoughtfully, and her gaze drifted back over toward Ron and Hermione. An enigmatic smile ghosted her features.
"It was worth it," she remarked.
"So everything's all…aligned properly, is it?" he asked, a mirthful smile twisting the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were serious and filled with gratitude.
"Yes… it's as it was meant to be," Luna replied, sighing with contentment, as Harry dropped a light kiss on the top of her sunlit hair.
"And the best part about your being back is that maybe now Harry will keep his grubby hands off of my woman," Ron said overly loudly, obviously trying to dash away traces of tears from beneath his eyes. Hermione's eyes were glinting with a combination of emotion and amusement, even as she pursed her mouth in chagrin.
"'Your' woman? Honestly, Ron…"
Ron cut her off by impulsively picking her up and twirling her around.
"We've missed you, Hermione," he said. She walked to Harry's side, and he took a moment to revel in the way she felt at his side, as if she belonged there, as she could belong nowhere else. He slid one arm around her, his eyes clearly telling her what he could not find the composure to say.
More than you'll ever know.
The four of them walked down the main stairway at Hogwarts together.
-
AN: I still can't help thinking that this maybe won't live up to expectations. There is going to be another chapter…I still have a few loose ends to tie up… and possibly an epilogue as well.
Sorry this took awhile. Lately, all I want to do is sleep!
Hope everyone enjoyed it. You may leave a review on your way out if you like.
I don't know why it doesn't want to load. I had to hit `refresh' several times before I got it. I'm trying to reload it to see if that helps!
lorien
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