After the "Sectumsempra" fight in HBP, Hermione realises that she can no longer put off a decision. First person angst.
From the Unofficial Portkey Archive: https://portkey-archive.org/story/6924/
Hi all. Yes, I know, it’s been ages since I’ve done anything on “Storm”. I haven’t left it (am working on the latest chapter now), but this story has been bumping around my head for months. It’s sort of a one-shot, though I might continue it if anyone is interested, as I have some very vague ideas as to where it might go (although I don’t know if any continuation would be suitable for Portkey).
You should know two things before you start. The first is that this story is utterly, hopelessly, depressing. If you’re in a good mood now, please click the back button, as I don’t want to be responsible for ruining it!
The second is that this continues directly from the HBP common room argument where Ginny slaps down Hermione for being angry at Harry’s use of the “Sectumsempra” Curse. Hermione’s POV, and alternate universe.
“Leaving Home”.
“Oh, don’t start acting as though you understand Quidditch,” snapped Ginny, “you’ll only embarrass yourself.”
The Common Room is silent.
He looks guilty, a bit ashamed (as well he should!), but I can’t help but notice that he looks grateful as well. He’s glad she’s sticking up for him. And that wouldn’t bother me – at least, not much – if I wasn’t suddenly, completely aware that he was going to let her do it.
And in that moment, I realise two things. That I love him, and that it’s not enough.
It strikes me as the funniest thing in the world, and although I should be crying, I hear these breathy, high pitched noises coming from a long way away, and I understand that it’s me. Laughing. And I can’t seem to stop.
The Common Room is quiet – it’s deadly, really. Everyone is looking at me as if I’ve suddenly lost my mind, and on Harry’s face I can see the shame, the guilty gratitude, turning to something like worry. I’d like to stop laughing for a moment, to tell him he doesn’t need to worry, but that’s a lie I can no longer force myself to tell. He makes an awkward movement towards me, a sort of reaching out with one hand, but stops himself. He’s clearly confused, poor boy. I wish that I were so. But I’m not confused, and I’m not weak enough to stop myself from doing what I know has to be done.
It’s another difference between us.
I turn and go up to my dormitory, and no-one tries to stop me. I think they’re all a bit scared, really. It’s funny. Everything’s funny. Honestly, it’s even a bit tragic. Even in the quiet, sitting neatly on my bed, alone, it takes me a while to stop laughing. And then I find I’m not quite as strong as I’d like to think. It’s so easy to keep sitting; staring at nothing, avoiding what I know must be done. There’s even something calming about it, and my life outside this room suddenly seems so far away.
There’s a picture of my parents on the stand beside my bed. It’s nearly hidden by books, and I take it gently in my hands and trace the frame with my fingers. It’s a Muggle picture. It used to be a wizarding one – they were so interested at first, to see how they moved – but as things began to get more difficult, the movements they showed were that of worry. They tried to hide it, of course, but it showed in the tightness of their smiles, and the way that they held their shoulders. After a while, I changed to a photograph that didn’t move, one that had caught them off-guard in one of their last happy moments. When they weren’t worrying about me, or about this world that they’re not a part of.
There’s a knock on the door, and Lavender and Parvati silently enter. I know they’re worried – they’re never silent, and they never knock. It’s their room too, of course. Why would they? But they shuffle over in front of me, these girls that I have shared a room with for five years but have never really becomes friends with, and I can see the worry in their faces. Even in Lavender’s, and it’s not as if we’ve been getting on well lately. I wish I could find the strength to tell her that it didn’t matter, none of it did, but it’s taking all my energy not to hide under the bed, to sit upright, to breathe. And even if there were something to say that she could understand I have no idea how to say it.
They’re nice, really. Clueless, but nice, and they want to know if there’s something they can do for me. The question makes me light-headed, because I know with certainty that there is no longer anything that I can do for them. But in trying to avoid their eyes – Harry isn’t the only one feeling shame today – I notice a small wickerwork basket tucked neatly beside the bedside table, and know that I have to find my cat. Lavender and Parvati look relieved, and offer to find him for me. They think I want to cuddle him, to make myself feel better, just as Parvati does with that ragged old elephant that she thinks I don’t know she has hidden in her trunk.
We’re all so young, and it’s so unfair.
After they’ve checked under the beds, they leave me alone again, but not before promising to tear up the Tower if they have to, to find him. I just hope the lazy little beast isn’t sleeping in the greenhouses again. I don’t want to drag this out longer than I have to. It’s warmer inside, and I take off my jumper, and wrap the picture of my parents carefully in it. I don’t want it to break, and even though I am now of age and could repair the glass easily enough, the thought of everything else that I am about to break today makes me want to keep as much as I can intact, no matter how small it is. The wool catches on my Prefect’s badge, and I trace it with my fingers just as I traced the photo of my parents. The world that each belongs to is so different, yet they’re colliding and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. The most I can hope for is to avoid that collision for as long as possible.
I was so proud of that badge.
Now I just feel old, and heavy. And every movement, as I collect up my books, fold clothes, and pack my trunk feels as though it’s being done in a higher gravity. I roll most of my notes together, and leave the spare parchment and quills on the table for the other girls. Someone may as well use them. I stack my library books by the parchment – someone else will have to return them. And I hide under my pillow the bobble-hat that I hadn’t finished knitting. I leave all my Hogwart’s robes in a neat pile on the bed. I won’t be using them again. When my trunk is packed, and I’ve charmed it to be feather-light, I sit on the bed, as neatly as before, and wait. Things don’t seem so funny anymore, and not nearly so distant.
I’d write letters, but I don’t know what to say.
Night is falling and the others have yet to come back with my cat. In a way, I am almost glad. This will be easier to do in the dark. When another knock comes, I’m almost surprised to find that it’s Ginny. Another one who has never knocked before. She has Crookshanks in her arms, and he has such a vile expression on his flat face that I just know he has sunk every claw he has into her. I’m not sure which of them looks grumpier, and in the fog around me it’s almost funny. Almost. What is funny is the way that both of their expressions change at once when they see me. I take Crookshanks in my arms, and despite myself hug his fat furry body to me. He doesn’t purr, but rubs his head against my face, and even goes quietly into his wicker basket. He’s never done that before.
Ginny is eyeing my trunk, and her face is a mixture of resentment and regret. Although she doesn’t say so, she wants to know if apologising will make me stay. It won’t. I should be angry, but it’s hard to feel anything but pity. None of it is her fault, really. We don’t speak, as there is nothing to say to each other, but I give her an awkward hug, and after a moment she hugs me back. Poor girl. I hope she doesn’t blame herself for this. I’m fairly certain that she won’t, however.
It’s awkward carrying my trunk and Crookshanks down the spiral staircase. I’ve never had to do that before. Taking the luggage to and from the rooms is always something the house elves have done. I do hope one of them takes that hat.
There are a few people in the Common Room, and Ron is one of them. He takes one look at my trunk and knows what is happening, but I can see him jumping to all the wrong conclusions. For once, he doesn’t explode but has the sense to bite his tongue and follow me out through the portrait hole. He doesn’t slam it shut, but it closes much harder than necessary, and I flinch. At least we are doing this in the corridor, out of the sight of the rest of the House. The last few glimpses I got were of a small group of junior students, looking after me as if their world had suddenly become a bit less stable, and a lot more frightening. I’m grateful for the door that Ron has closed on them.
He’s angry and confused, but the first drowns out the second. I think that there’s even a hint of jealousy in there. He believes that I’m leaving in some sort of juvenile huff because Harry hasn’t taken my advice. I can see that he thinks I’m being pathetic for resenting the closeness between his little sister and his best mate. Well, he is her brother, after all. And what makes him even angrier is the knowledge, unspoken between us, that I wouldn’t get this jealous for him; I wouldn’t leave for him.
It’s painful, and I don’t express myself well. Ron’s half right, really, but that is all. For someone as bright as he is when it comes to chess, the future is a blank slate – or at least one that he is unwilling to look into.
For today I realised that Harry was going to lose. It’s so unfair, and I’m not sure that it’s anything he can help. No-one should be expected to perform as Dumbledore expects him to, with his only weapon the comforting platitudes that are all the Headmaster sees fit to give. I wonder whether to be angry at him that he finally saw fit to reveal the truth at last. What good will it do now, this revelation that should have come years ago? Now, when Harry has come to expect that the good guys win at the end, simply because they are good and he’s gotten lucky before? It’s not his fault, really, even though he refuses to help with Slughorn. Almost no-one has thought to teach him otherwise. Luck isn’t going to be enough to beat Voldemort, and neither is love, no matter what Dumbledore says. Love didn’t save Harry’s parents, or Neville’s. I won’t rely on its saving mine. It certainly didn’t save Harry. It just gave him an extra space of time to get used to the idea of not dying.
I know that he worries. Ron has told me before how he shifts in his bed at night. Deep down, I feel he expects to win, however. His belief in Dumbledore has become so deep-rooted that he can no longer even be motivated enough to obey him. Today he behaved just like Malfoy, and no-one even seemed to care. It’s just not good enough. I love Harry, but he’s lazy and sloppy when it comes to homework, and I’m sure he just nods his head to shut me up when I try to tell him about SPEW. And I’m positive that after all this time he’s never even read Hogwarts: A History.
I don’t know what he’s relying on to help him beat Voldemort, but I can no longer rely upon him. Ron cannot understand this.
Or am I being ungenerous? Perhaps he sees it as well as I do, but refuses to leave regardless. He’s always been loyal. I used to like to think that I was loyal – more loyal than Ron anyway (who was it who ran off in a snit after the Goblet of Fire episode?) – but when push comes to shove it seems that I am more intelligent than faithful. I cannot follow blindly, and Ron will never forgive me for it. I see it in his face when I turn away, the utter contempt for me, and I now that I have just shattered our friendship beyond repair. It’s heartbreaking. I’ve come to look upon the Weasleys (and Harry of course) as family, but I have another family, and it’s time to put them first. I try to hold on to him for one more second, to kiss him on the cheek, but he turns away, doesn’t let me touch him.
Of all the people to come after me, I don’t expect one of them to be Snape. He doesn’t try to dissuade me, however, and I get the sense that he actually approves of what I’m doing. That has to be a first, my potion making aside.
He shoves a small bag at me. I put down my trunk for a moment to peek inside, and find it stuffed with more books, charmed small, and from the titles I see that none of them can be found outside of the restricted section of the Library.
“Why?” I ask him, genuinely curious.
“They might be useful to you,” he says, and for the first time in years I hear no sneer in his voice. “After all, it’s not like any other student here will bother to appreciate them.” Ah, there it is. Some things just can’t be changed.
“You’re not even going to try and stop me, are you,” I say, and he shakes his head. He doesn’t need to explain. There’s no more that I can do here, but I feel that his work, whatever it is, is not yet done.
And yet he seems to want to be comforting. “There’s nothing you could have done, Miss Granger. Indulgence has ruined the boy.”
And I bite my response back, knowing it to be untrue. And in the silence, we both hear the truth. It’s not indulgence that has ruined Harry, it’s Dumbledore.
Dumbledore, who knew the prophecy all along and said nothing. Dumbledore who, when realising in first year that Voldemort was back, did nothing. Dumbledore who waited until a student was dead before reforming the Order of the Phoenix, and sending Hagrid as embassy to the giants. It’s not surprising, really, that Voldemort got to them first. Of course, if Dumbledore had taken up the Minister of Magic position that had been urged upon him at the end of the First War, he might have actually been able to prevent some of what’s happened, to build some bridges. It’s not as though he would have left Hogwarts in bad hands; he had McGonagall, after all.
But nothing. The so-called hero of the First War, the only one Voldemort was ever afraid of, seems to have lost the plot, and no-one appears to notice.
But I notice, and Snape notices. We can see it in each other’s eyes, the regret and the resignation. And the anger. Still, it’s easier for him. It’s not as if he’s on Voldemort’s hit list. The bond between us remains, however, and there is part of me that faintly marvels at how a Slytherin is apparently braver than a Gryffindor. I cannot bear to stay, but I am grateful that Snape can. Perhaps he will make the end easier for Harry, if he can. Gratitude makes me stumble forward and kiss his cheek. He doesn’t turn away, but I can see the surprise in his face – although only for a moment, and then the usual cool sneer returns. He bows slightly, silently, and I turn away.
I leave Snape behind and make my way mechanically over the lawn. I can’t apparate from school grounds: it’s in Hogwarts, A History. But once I have reached the boundary I can be home in moments, and plans have been made now for over a year. My parents aren’t stupid, and I never insulted them by thinking I could hide my life from them. They’d been informed when I was petrified. They’d seen the medicines I had to take at the end of last summer. They get the Daily Prophet. They could have pulled me out of school – certainly wanted to, but I persuaded them that it was still safe. They believed me, on the promise that I would tell them when things changed.
They changed today, or perhaps today I only realised it.
My parents have their own trunks packed; waiting in the spare wardrobe in case we ever needed to run. I don’t look forward to the next few weeks, but the arrangements have long been in place for if we need to run. McGonagall helped. She said that it was only in case of emergency, but she didn’t meet my eyes when she said it. I wonder now if she knew this day was coming. With their money and my – talents – our route and fake identification should be doable.
It won’t last for ever, of course. There’s nowhere you can hide from Voldemort, and if – or when, for I now believe it to be when – he comes to power, there will be, eventually, no escape. But it might just be long enough…
He comes to me before I cross over, and grief almost makes me buckle. Beside me, Crookshanks hisses at him, and it gives me strength to stand for a short while longer.
There’s nothing to be said. Perhaps it is easier to let him believe that I leave out of jealousy, that I cannot bear the influence that Ginny has on him. That underneath my brainy exterior, I’m nothing more than a stupid, jealous little girl. Surely that is easier than telling him that I cannot bear to stay, to watch him fail and die. That I love him, but not enough to abandon my parents to try to keep him alive when I think that keeping him alive is a futile endeavour. That I think that he is good, and brave, and talented, but that despite all that he’s not going to win and that is partly because he and Dumbledore deserve not to.
But when I look into his eyes I see that I am wrong. I see that he does know, and that although it is hurting him, he will not ask me to stay. He doesn’t have the strength to tell us all to leave, and face Voldemort alone, because he too believes that he will fail, and that all this year has been about him believing he will fail, so why not live while he can?
We both refuse to speak, because it is the last thing that we can do for each other. He’s not going to ask me to stay, because he too thinks that I should go, that I should save myself for as long as I can. I know now that he will speak to Dumbledore and McGonagall, that he will prevent them from coming after me. I do my best to smile for him, to show that I understand and do not blame him. It’s unfair to expect so much of him – he’s just a kid. No kid should have to be a hero for the entire world, it can’t be done.
I lean forward and kiss him, not like I kissed Snape, or how I tried to kiss Ron, but on the mouth, fully, where I can taste both our tears. Turning away from him is the hardest thing I have ever done, because I fully believe that if I ever see him again, it will be from a distance, to weep over his body.
I step across the boundary of Hogwarts, and refuse to look back. It seems that even the mountains are weeping, as my sobs echo amongst them, and I can feel Harry at my back, willing me to go on. I close my eyes, and there is a tug, and I am gone.
I open my eyes in my parents’ study, and see my mother, frozen over a journal. She’s having an article published soon, and I can see the knowledge dawn in her eyes that she will not around to see it when they deliver it to our door.
“We have to go,” I said. There is no blame in her eyes, and I am no longer laughing.
Leaving Home (2/6)
Author's note: First of all: not mine (whether Rowling or Shakespeare), so please don't sue! I don't own anything anyway. Secondly, thanks to all for the reviews. Some of you loved it, some of you hated it. Yes, it is going to be H/Hr, and suitable for Portkey. I did have a request, though: Tank03 asked if I would warn people how upsetting things would be - for example, with the tag “character death” if a character actually, you know, died. Just so you could all psych yourselves up for more misery, or press the back button before I go depressing you again. Tank also asked that I give some indication that this wouldn't want to make people cut their wrists at the end of it. Hopefully not. This is a sad and angst-ridden story, but I want it to end with hope - a bittersweet ending, but one that is ultimately positive. I might fail utterly. Just warning you.
So (and you have Tank to thank for this), character death ahead in this chapter. Don't say you haven't been warned! But before you stop reading: it isn't who you think. To be honest, I'm not sure this chapter even rates as needing a character death tag, as it happens off-screen and is only there to keep as much canon as possible for an AU. Basically, if you've read HBP, the death won't be a surprise. Yes, now it's who you think. So…
Part Two.
A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.
My mother's voice measures out the words, refuses to falter over them. She is strong, stronger than I. I remember when she used to read these words to me when I was a little girl - a strange little girl that preferred Shakespeare to Peter Rabbit. Despite the fact that I was named after a woman in The Winter's Tale, I preferred A Midsummer Night's Dream. I loved hearing stories about the fairies in the woods. I knew that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in our philosophy. I knew that there were goblins.
My parents still stuck with the old standby, though. They had met at a performance of A Winter's Tale, and in this dark car, near the end of our flight from Britain, the sundering of our lives from friends and school and career and home, it is a comfort to them as much as to me to hear it aloud once more.
We've been travelling for close to two months now. Under normal circumstances, we could have gotten to the safe house McGonagall arranged for us in under 24 hours, but the circumstances are far from normal. If anyone was trying to follow us (and really, would Voldemort waste effort on a family of fleeing Muggles? It would be beneath him, surely) we would have lost them long ago, in endless misdirections involving all kinds of transport. I've tried to avoid using magic when at all possible, as we don't want to draw attention to ourselves. Apparition doesn't help much - I can't Apparate to somewhere I don't know, and going back and forth to side-along my parents and our luggage is exhausting. The one time I tried it, on a short stretch along the French coast, I nearly splinched myself, and Crookshanks was sick.
Despite the constant dirt and noise, I've been almost grateful for the movement. There is always something to do and to watch for. It keeps me from remembering, although the long stretches waiting for buses and trains and hired cars - not to mention all the time spent actually in them - are becoming harder and harder to fill.
It will end very soon - we're on the last stretch now - and I almost don't want to stop. I'm so tired, and I wonder if I will ever sleep again without awakening, whimpering, with guilt. I dream about Harry every night - about him dying, him being tortured. It's not true of course; it's only my guilty conscience, but one day it will be real. I wonder if I will wake up knowing the difference, or if the day it finally happens will see me dream it, not knowing that my dreams have at last come true. Despite the weariness, I dread the end of our travels, because then I will have time to think again, while building for myself the new life that Harry will never have - the papered over version of my old self, for as long as it holds.
When the memories get too bad, I bury myself in books. I know that my parents worry when they see me reading one of Snape's gifts (I've wrapped it in the cover of some piece of inoffensive traveller's rubbish, the kind that they always sell in bargain bins outside the bus stations). I worry myself. These are not nice books, and there is a kind of laceration in reading them - the life that I have given up, the spells I could have used, the protection I could have helped to give.
Inconsistently, part of me wishes that I could burn them, but even if my parents would countenance me burning a book (even these books), I cannot help but think that Snape gave them to me for a reason. Perhaps there is something in here that I will be able to use, something to buy me redemption. Something that will allow us to live for a little longer, when the end comes. Perhaps it is something that will help the end come quicker, at the last - perhaps that is the only redemption that I will be allowed.
I will not let my parents suffer for teaching me about goblins and winter, for the sadness of their tale.
What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.
It should be, but it isn't. And even my mother cannot hold her voice steady over these words, although the catch in her throat is nearly undetectable, and I feel it most in the constriction of her chest, the silent breath under my cheek. She tucks me closer, and continues, stable once more, but I see my father, in the front seat, gaze at her intently through the car mirror, his face tired, eyes bloodshot.
They know each other too well, as I once knew Harry, and they know that there's no going back.
There's nothing to go back to. Our house is gone. I don't know whether it was out of spite, or whether it was an attempt to twist the knife, or even an outbreak of black humour, but seven days after we left Britain, Death Eaters destroyed our house. It was completely unnecessary - it was no secret we had gone.
After we had been travelling for some weeks, and against the advice of my parents, I wrapped a cloak around myself and strode purposefully into the wizarding quarter of the big city we were travelling through at the time. It was a risk, and not one that I can justify taking often, if at all, but I couldn't stay away. Thankfully, the gloom of Britain has spread through the circles of the wizarding world, and cloaked and shielded witches and wizards were not unusual. It felt odd holding my wand again - I had taken to keeping it on me, but not using it - and my fingers felt clumsy around it. I was able to make a few small purchases, things that would be hard to get hold of where we were going, and liable to attract attention if I tried to get them there.
More importantly, I was able to get newspapers. It's no secret that I've left - Rita Skeeter has had a field day with that one. It's a good thing McGonagall taught me how to avoid the charm that addresses wizarding letters, or I would be getting Howlers by the bucketful.
I couldn't bring myself to care. There is nothing that woman can do to hurt me more than I have hurt myself. Everything pales in comparison to Harry's face, forcing himself to stay silent and let me go without a word of blame.
I would have cried at Dumbledore's death if I had any tears left to shed, but by this time they had dried up long ago. For all his shortcomings, he did what he thought was best, and I wish I had been able to let him know that before the end. It seems that being so guilty myself makes it easier for me to forgive guilt in others. I would have wept for him if I could, and for Snape - and for Harry, who is now more alone than ever.
I nearly went home then. I wanted to - perhaps I still could have made a difference? But the knowledge of my home's destruction left me in a cold chill. Voldemort had known that we had gone when our house had been destroyed, but he had also known where we lived. I can't go back there. I can't take my parents back there. They would never let me go alone.
The thought that Voldemort may have spared us, believing that I would run, weakening Harry further, keeps me awake at night.
What if saving my parents was his plan for me all along?
If so, it makes no difference. I cannot go back now. But Shakespeare was wrong: the past is not past grief. What is done can never be undone, and will be a grief forever.
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long.
My mother has taken over the driving, and it is my father's turn to come and sit with me in the back of the old car, to take me in his arms and comfort me as if I was a small child again, who had scraped her knee in an adventure of no importance. He has the play in his hand, open at the pages as he reads to me, but I know that he is not really looking.
They must have read this play to me a dozen times. I expect between them it is closer to a hundred. He no longer needs the volume, anyway, and it's not the dim light of dawn that makes his voice falter over the words.
I've cut my hair.
I borrowed my father's old razor one evening, early in our trip, over the cold, damp waters of the English Channel. It seemed more appropriate than scissors, or the kindness of a hairdresser, even though one was available on the ferry. I could sit in the handicapped toilets, on the seat in front of the mirror, and I held my wand in one hand, and the razor in the other. It would have been easier to magic my hair into something different. I knew that I should at least try to change my appearance, but the cold steel in my right hand seemed more appropriate than the warm wood in my left. There are times when magic is not the answer. It can suffice, but as I squeezed my hand around the razor, and watched it bite into my palm, watched the warm blood flow down onto my wrist and the slow, steady drip on the floor that was almost a comfort, I knew that for now, and perhaps forever, magic had lost the emotional resonance for me that once it had.
It's true. You can never go home again. It was that that finally decided me on the razor. I'd always been able to go home before - home to the warmth of my parents' house, or home to Hogwarts - but no longer. Without a home, I didn't know who I was anymore. I was not a Muggle, but I was no longer truly a witch.
It had felt like a little death.
It was strange to see myself in the mirror, putting aside my wand, and raising the steel, streaks of red running down my reflection. The sting was almost a consolation, and the sharp tug as I lifted a handful of curls and sawed through them with the old razor seemed suitable somehow, like a penance.
This handful of hair was the troll of first year, and the surprise I felt when I found I didn't have to deal with it alone. This was the Common Room, scolding as cards exploded onto my homework. This was checking their homework. These were the early morning breakfasts, the going to Quidditch games that I never really liked in the first place, the snow in Hogsmeade, the sunny days by the lake. This was Harry catching the snitch. This was Harry in the hospital wing.
This was Harry on the day that I left him.
I ran out of hair before I ran out of memories. It fell alongside my blood and my tears, and that was the last time I ever cried. There was no point in it anymore. It didn't seem to help.
My mother's face froze for a moment when she saw me, then determinedly forced itself into a smile, and a clucking concern over my hand. She dabbed at it with a wet handkerchief, wrapped it in plasters from her purse, and managed to compliment my new hairstyle without flinching.
My father just sobbed once, convulsively, and he wrapped me in his arms and kissed me. Before we left the boat, he bought me a soft woollen hat.
I let my hair drop over the side of the ferry, watched it as it disappeared into the dark.
My father misses it more than I do, I think, but reading to me soothes him, as if I were still a little girl that could be soothed with a story before bed. It doesn't hurt, so I let him do it. Our house was always filled with books. That's what I missed most about being at Hogwarts, about the wizarding world. About being away from our home. Shakespeare. Austen, Dickens, Spenser, Milton. The black prince and the fallen angel. Hogwarts library doesn't have them, and there are no wizarding equivalents. Literature seems to be a dead subject for them. The closest thing to fiction, heaven help me, was Gilderoy Lockhart and his adventures with the mysterious and the horrible.
In odd moments, I've wondered why that is. Perhaps the creative side, the consciousness of effort, is lacking. When one can magic something into place, or get a house elf to magic it into place for you, it seems wasteful and demeaning to do without. You can't magic creativity. It's something that has to be worked at, sweated over. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist in the magical world, but it's something that has transmuted into creativity of a different kind - the creativity of spell work, of the perfect potion, the perfect transformation. Not the creativity of literature, or art, or great music. There is no Beethoven in the wizarding world, no Mozart.
There's a reason why no wizarding school teaches the Arts. There aren't any. No Winter's Tale to savour throughout the darkness, to sweeten the long nights. I've never understood why before. Now I do. People don't want to forget, to be soothed. They know that darkness is around them, waiting for them to forget. The stories no longer comfort me, for I can no longer be comforted. I do not want to be soothed. I want to remember, to drown, to regret. I want my rosemary and rue, and to know them each time that I look into a mirror and see the ragged remains of my hair.
Damn it, I don't want Harry to be the only one who is marked. At least in this small thing, I know that I have not left him alone.
Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
With them forgive yourself.
I have my head in my father's lap as he finishes, and he is stroking what is left of my hair. His voice is so quiet, and I wonder if he is talking more to himself or to me. It must be me - my father has nothing to forgive himself for. He and my mother have told me how much they love me so often these last, horrible weeks, but it was never something that needed to be said. They gave up their only daughter to a life they could never be a part of, and now they've given up their whole lives to be able to shelter hers for a little while longer.
And they haven't complained. That's the worst part - not only knowing that haven't, but that they won't. They won't even consider it. For I know how long they tried to have me, and the winter's tale that was the lack of children in their marriage. I know that for them, I am their world, and there is nothing that they wouldn't do for me, nothing that they wouldn't be glad to do for me.
Perhaps that is what my father needs to forgive himself for - that no matter how glad he was for me when I finally made friends, that he would sacrifice those friends without a second thought for my sake. With no hesitation and no regret. Perhaps he feels the lack in himself, and wishes he could forget.
But perhaps this verse was really meant for me, and I cannot help but die a little at the thought. How can I forgive myself for this? How could anyone forgive me for it? Perhaps, in the end, betrayal is the true Unforgiveable. But as my father's fingers twine through the short strands of my hair, I know that for him, and for my mother, I am the only person who can never be betrayed. Anything else is preferable. Everything else is Forgiveable.
And on the strength of that love, as we pull into the quiet morning of an empty street that after two months is to be our final resting place, I realise that no matter what I feel, I have to find a way to make peace with myself. It's hard to know just how to do this, especially when I haven't felt anything but numb for a long time, for nearly the entire length of this journey that seems nothing but endless travelling in the cold dark bleakness of silence. I have to find a way to live again. I've betrayed Harry, and betrayed myself, but the covenant with my parents has been kept. They are alive, and for the moment, that is nearly everything.
That knowledge is a dry and dusty thing, even for the heavens. For when we finally arrive at what is to be, for the foreseeable future, our home, I still feel nothing, still feel numb. I feel nothing when I drop the cases in the small room that will be my own, feel nothing as I release Crookshanks from his cage, nothing when I look out of the window into the street below, nothing when I see the dark wallpaper and faded carpet.
But when I go into the kitchen, blindly walking throughout the house in an attempt to avoid crumpling into a corner and rocking myself back and forward like the child I no longer am, I see something that, at last, makes me feel again. It is a strange awakening. Through the kitchen window there is a small garden, and in the garden there is a lemon tree. Its fruit scrapes against the window, and the sun is shining on it. In this dark, chilly room the lemons glow, so brightly that they seem to swell even as I look at them. They fill the window with the warmth and brightness of the sun, and I suddenly feel as if, one day, life might be bearable again.
They're so bright and alive with colour that it almost hurts to look at them.
Perhaps there might be hope, after all. Perhaps the heavens will forget.
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Leaving Home (3 of 6).
Oddly enough, HP hasn't suddenly become mine overnight, so it all still belongs to JKR. Pity - my student loan could use the break. I'd like to say thanks to all the people who have taken time to review - I'm very grateful, even if you don't like the way the story is going. But to save me from keeping on telling people individually - no, Hermione is not going to be the great be all and end all saviour of the wizarding world. That's Harry's job, not hers.
As for this chapter, there are a couple of warnings that you should know about. First - there are character deaths in here (thank Tank for the warning!). Second, there's a small amount of Hr/Other in here. Don't worry, it's over quickly. This is an H/Hr fic after all. So…
Chapter Three.
It has been two years since I arrived in this country, and there begin to be times that I can forget, where the past seems all a dream and this is the only life I have ever had. A normal life, like other girls. Well, maybe they don't all spend quite as much time in the library as I do, but some things are past changing.
Still, there are times when I remember and cannot forget, even though I try. Little things remind me, and I know that I keep at least some of them around so that I cannot escape what I have done, where I have come from. I wonder sometimes if the litany of small hurts is a way to further punish myself, or if focusing on the small matters allows me to escape from the big ones. Another form of betrayal? I don't know - but I wonder just how much of a coward I have become.
There is something comforting about the small reminders, even so. My fellow students, in the laboratory and classrooms of the university I now get to work in, tease me for using chalk to explore my research, when they use whiteboard markers and computer programmes. I find that mathematics is more enjoyable with chalk, the faint, furry smell of it and the way it catches on my clothes, leaving ghostly fingerprints everywhere. It reminds me that I still exist, even outside of the Arithmancy classroom. That always was my favourite subject, and if I cannot have it back, I can have the closest substitute. I have stimulation when I want it, but most of it can be done alone. I am allowed lot of privacy, a lot of freedom to work. It's amazing what being really clever can get you.
I've even made friends, although they are pale imitations of what has been left behind. No matter how I try to sink myself in them, to concentrate on the new life I have built for myself, this is the one lie that I cannot force myself to tell. They are not the friends I had, and I am not the friend I was. I did not think that the loss would be this crucial, could not fathom what it would do or how far it would send me. I knew that it would be bad, but this…?
Unfathomable.
It's sunny outside, one of the last warm days of summer's ending. It is very bright here, different from the soft earthiness of Hogwarts, and I have to force myself not to think about the coolness of the lake and the dimness of the hills. Here I can let the colour carry me away like a leaf on the river, in ignorance of the current beneath. It may be a shell, but the colour is, I think, what has kept me sane, and it is too nice a day to continue with my derivations.
Dave smiles at me when I leave, teases me for being a layabout, and I can see by the tilt of his head that he wishes I would invite him along, but that part of my life is over. He's a good man, and the time I spent with him allowed me to forget, for a short while at least. But eventually I could hide it from myself no longer. Dave was funny, and charming, and maybe even slightly better than I was at maths, but despite the pleasure that he gave me in bed (the thought of Hermione Granger with a lover, even after the fact, still makes me shake my head and smile in disbelief) it didn't last, and the fault was mine. My first lover. At first I didn't see the similarity. He smiled too much. It was only when he moved to contact lenses - the chalk in the study room we shared always misted his glasses - that I was angry, unreasonably so… and that was when I really noticed the skinny build, the messy dark hair.
Again the loss, the laceration of realisation and abandonment. Sometimes the torture we inflict on ourselves is worse than anything others can come up with. Would Voldemort really have been worse than this?
Leaving the university is like stepping across into another world, where the shadows of my past become stronger. The house where we live has yet to feel like home, but it has become familiar. That is a small grace in itself. It has been divided into two sections, a larger one where a normal family lives, and the other hidden by the Fidelius charm. Professor McGonagall was very thorough, and we have a small space where we can hide, if necessary, and for me to do my study, my other research - and a bigger house that is open to anyone, although few are invited in. We are a private family, by inclination as well as necessity.
It grows harder to believe that anyone is looking for us. I don't want to be lulled into a false sense of security, but I simply cannot believe that finding one lost Muggle is of any great importance to Voldemort. Surely my leaving was an amusing irony, another thing for him to beat over their heads…
It grows harder to keep feeling guilty as well. There are times when I forget to, for as much as several hours together, but it never lasts. I should be ashamed to forget at all, but sitting in my bedroom, feeling the warm air waft through the window, I see the new man in my life stretched out on the bed, and realise that there are things about this new life that I would give up for no-one. Not even for Harry.
Ben is half-dressed, laughing, taking advantage of the breeze to escape the heat. It's close in here, and I want to touch him, feel his skin on mine, and his body under my fingers. He lifts easily, smelling of baby powder and just-washed hair. Fresh and clean. New. He gurgles in my ear, and I know again that I would never give him up. He is almost worth betrayal, if anything is.
I carry him downstairs, fat thirteen month old body cuddled against mine, fat hands reaching up to tangle in my still short curls. I open the patio doors, see my parents lying in the sun. It's a golden afternoon, and their faces light up when they see us. My mother reaches out her arms, and I swing Ben down to her. “Go to mummy, little one.” He smiles up at me, making nonsense noises that, with effort, we have all learned to decipher.
“Perdy, perdy!” he crows. For in this tale, I am Perdita. We all have new names here. It's a silly name, really, but my parents loved the idea of having their daughter called after a Shakespearian character, and it seemed to fit. Perdita, lost in her winter's tale. Unable to go home.
I managed to save Ben from that kind of fate. Over a year ago, watching my father flip through his well thumbed Collected Works, I had put my foot down before they lumped my little brother with something truly horrible. He'd be beaten up at school with a name like “Lysander”. As it is, the poor child is saddled with it for a middle name. At least I escaped with “Jane”.
I never thought I'd get this clucky over a baby, but Ben's not just any baby. A complete surprise to us all - my mother is nearly past the age of having children, and despite decades of trying has only managed to conceive once before. They had given up hope of another child, and focused all their love on their daughter. For years, I was the most precious thing in their life, but now I find I do not mind sharing. Ben is a happy baby, and I wonder if it was the move, the lack of stress in their lives, that finally allowed them to relax enough to have him. If we had stayed in Britain, they would be dead and Ben wouldn't exist.
I can't bring myself to feel sorry that he does.
There's no magic in him, however. No hint of it at least, and I should have seen something by now if there was. I've been watching for signs, and I know that they have as well, even if they don't say so. I can feel them watching, comparing, what it was like with me to what it is like with him. There is a difference - I can feel it in the relaxed set of their shoulders, the almost perfectly concealed relief in their foreheads. Ben is a perfectly lovely, perfectly normal Muggle baby - they will not lose him to boarding school and threats of death that are beyond their comprehension.
Five minutes later, I wish I had stayed in the sun. My research area at home is quite different from the one at university. There are ingredients and equipment and at least three cauldrons, one of which is a modified baby bath (it's impossible to buy cauldrons as a Muggle, I swear, and the house is full of baby things anyway). My coming up here, into the small secret upper floor, seems to be more habit than anything else. I hadn't lied to Dave - had actually planned to take time off - but I can't seem to stop myself from coming up here. It feels like my nearest connection to home.
But it's all so hopeless that I may as well not be here. I've read every book that Snape gave me, back to front, and for a long time didn't know what to do with them. Some spells seem completely irrelevant, and there's no good reason to do them. Others are so dark that I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole, no matter what. I expect Snape would sneer at me for it, but I don't think that I can be that brave, if it is bravery that excuses your throwing away all your morals for the greater good. I feel hypocritical saying that, though, considering...
But eventually I found something that I could do. The only one I wanted to do - but it's complicated. Naturally. I like to think of this potion - and Snape would no doubt be secretly pleased that it is a potion - as my redemption, but I know that this is ridiculous. As powerful as this potion is, it is not anything that can be used to stop Voldemort. There is no hope of it being used to save anyone. It's not a weapon, or even a defence against one. And suddenly the image in my mind of Snape returns to his trademark sneer - no doubt he would consider my choice as weak, given all the other options he had provided me with. Oddly, I feel slightly ashamed at the thought - but why should I feel shame at the opinion of a man who has probably betrayed us all, even if I do feel pity for him?
Perhaps I am weak, after all. Weaker than I thought, at least.
But I cannot help it. Those other spells… I have come to believe that betrayal is the one true Unforgivable, but the thing that really curls me up in shame is the knowledge that I will betray Harry but not myself. I can leave him to fail and die, but I cannot bring myself to try and master really dark magic in his defence. I'm prepared to leave him for a second time, it seems, for the price not of my life but of my soul. But if it were only myself I was betraying, then I would be the only one to pay the price. Strange. Perhaps, in time, I could forgive self-betrayal - but that is exactly what I can't bring myself to do. I can never forgive the betrayal of another - but that is exactly what I have done.
It leaves a bitter taste, and I don't believe that it will ever wash away.
So I fiddle with this potion instead, something useless and beautiful - and something that is utterly beyond me. I know that I am no fool, and perhaps it is true that I really was the brightest young witch in Hogwarts, but I am no Potions Master. I never even took my NEWTS. And this potion, that I focus on perhaps for redemption, or in order to fool myself that there can be redemption - I no longer know which - is, simply, too hard for me.
There are so many ingredients, and all have to be prepared in their own hideously complex ways, before a blending of a type that I have never seen before. After many months, I was able to complete the preliminary steps, but in the more complex final mixture, there has been nothing but months of failure. This redemption that I need so badly is impossible to reach. I cannot complete it alone - but neither is there anyone who I can ask for help, or who would come if I called. I need a Potions Master, and do not have one.
Really, I've stopped trying. I wonder if I sit up here not in order to try and make some great breakthrough, but to punish myself because I know that that same breakthrough is beyond me. At least if I succeeded, I would be able to say that I have done something. It wouldn't be a useful something, or a relevant something. It probably wouldn't even buy me redemption. But it could give me hope - not that Voldemort can be defeated, or that Harry could forgive me, or even that I would, at the end, be able to go home - but hope that perhaps there is something better in this world, something that I cannot betray. Perhaps success will take away my guilt, and assure me that there is something worth fighting for when even Harry is not.
Perhaps my failure is because Harry was worth fighting for, and I didn't. Unforgivable. It's a circle I can't get out of. For how can someone capable of Unforgivable produce something as peaceful as this? There is no peace left in me, and precious little left in the world.
The yearning to be able to finish, to be able to know, to be able, finally, to see a path through which I can forgive myself has become stronger over the years - painfully strong when I see Ben, and his little face smiling up at me. I can no longer bear this dislocation. I can bear the breach from Britain, and all that is in it, even when I see reports on the evening news of increasing mass violence and unexplained events. I can bear knowing that I betrayed Harry, painful though that admission is. I saved my parents. I saved Ben, or the Ben-that-would-be. I need to know if there is a way to save myself - not my physical body, but the beliefs that I once had, the yearning within me. There must be more to life than this - the emptiness of betrayal, the sterile beauty of mathematics, the power of the physical world and its machines that I am so good at building.
There must be more even than magic.
And so I contacted Professor McGonagall. I can't even say why, really - it's a foolish move. Stupid really - and a little risky too I suppose, although I honestly wouldn't have done it if I thought the risk was real. Stupid, and utterly selfish. It's not as if I can go back now. Mum would stay with Ben, but Dad would go with me if I chose to leave - and I can't do that to any of us. So, no going back, and no contacting where I would go with some sort of miracle cure from the bookworm, banished by her own hand to the back of beyond. But I just couldn't not know any longer. I must finish this potion, because although I was prepared for guilt, I don't think I ever realised how crushing it would be. It goes away sometimes, but it always comes back, and this…
I have no illusion that this potion will buy me redemption from those I have betrayed. That is past hope, and there the winter will always remain. But I must find a way to forgive myself - to know that there is still something in me that is worth preserving.
There was no-one else to ask, and I didn't expect an answer. I don't even know if Hogwarts is still standing, or if there is anyone left there who is knows enough about potions to answer. I'm not sure that I want to know the answer to either of these questions. They say that not knowing is harder than knowing, but I find that I can cope with not knowing well enough in this case, thank-you - although that is something I never would have expected to hear myself say, back when I still had hope. Hope for the world, and hope for myself.
So as I sit in my home laboratory on one of the last warm days of summer, staring at but not really seeing a page that I must have read one hundred times already with no result, I am surprised to see a Patronus pace through the door, and look at up me questioningly, with an intent expression on its whiskered face. For a moment I wonder if I have fallen asleep, for it is only in dreams that I see a Patronus lately - only in dreams that I remember home. But it is still there, and there is a faint grumble, a faint purr in its throat. Tears fill my eyes. I believe that it may even be happy to see me - but I have never seen this Patronus before. It must be from a Gryffindor, but who would come? Who would know? It must be McGonagall, and I drop my book, for once uncaring of the cracks left in the spine, and practically fall against the window looking out into the street.
Standing in the next door but one is someone I haven't seen for a very long time. My throat closes up, and I am wretchedly, stupidly glad. I had thought that I had plumbed the depths of how much I missed my life before this, but the joy that comes from seeing Neville Longbottom on my doorstep convinces me that I had yet to truly understand how lonely this life is.
Our reunion is awkward, made the more so by Neville's obvious injuries. He is limping badly, and the way that one arm is strapped to his side makes me suspect broken ribs. I usher him past my parents, and turn away from the shuttered look that has come over their faces; the way my mother clutches the baby closer to her for a moment, then forces herself to relax. Ben is sleeping, and they put him to bed on the sofa, and make a rather transparent excuse about needing some fresh fruit and vegetables for dinner. We're having curry. I know that they are going out to spare us all the awkwardness that attends this intersection of our past lives. I know that they hope that when they get back, Neville will be gone.
I fetch tea to fill the silence. It is still awkward between us, but Neville is not unfriendly. I am glad that it is him who came - I do not think I could bear to see Harry or Ron, and I do not believe that they could forgive me. Betrayal is Unforgivable, but Neville… I wonder what he would do to redeem his parents if only he could; what he would sacrifice within himself...
I want to believe that he does not judge me.
I wonder why McGonagall has sent him, for Neville has never been gifted at Potions. It seems he is only here as messenger, as he is too recently injured to be useful in the battles that now rage through Harry's world.
Harry. I can barely bring myself to ask, but Neville has always been kind, and he sees the question in my eyes.
“He's alive, Hermione. Ron too.”
I cannot help myself. I have to know. “Does he know that you came?” I ask, and my fingers tighten in my dress.
Neville nods, once.
“Did he…” my mouth is dry, and I can hardly form the words. “Did he… say… anything?”
And at this Neville has to look away. “No,” he says, and there is a finality in his tone. It is no more than I deserve, but I cannot stop the whimper that rises in my throat, the tears that suddenly fill my eyes. Neville glances at me again, and I can see the beginnings of pity in his eyes.
I do not want it, and turn to the window, facing away from him. I brought this on myself, after all. There should be no pity.
He has the decency not to apologise, and not to mention it any further. Staring at the empty street, I try to get my emotions under control as Neville fills me in on his errand. It appears that Snape is at Hogwarts, and that he killed Dumbledore on the old headmaster's orders. I cannot imagine how Harry must feel at that… or how Snape must have felt. Oddly, it strengthens the feeling of kinship with the Potions Master that has stayed with me since his gift of the books, his utter lack of condemnation when I left Hogwarts. It seems that he knows the price of betrayal as well as I do.
“He couldn't come himself,” Neville continued. “He's too important, and he can't leave Hogwarts now. Voldemort knows that he has betrayed him, you see…”
I understand. Snape cannot be risked. Yet McGonagall will risk this boy - this man, I amend to myself - to bring me his aid. He will take some of the potions I have back to Hogwarts, to be worked on by the Master. My one chance at redemption, in my own eyes if in no-one else's. It must gall Snape to do it. I believe that he would have helped me anyway, out of some grim sense of symmetry - it is only fitting that the ones who colluded in my running away would assist in its mitigation - but it must be hateful to him for that assistance to be so useless, for I know that is what this potion is. It is hopeless against Voldemort - and I should be ashamed to take his attention away from what must be more important work.
I should feel ashamed, but I have lost shame in desperation. There must be redemption, or suicide is the only alternative. I cannot live like this any longer. Perhaps McGonagall knows that, deep down. Perhaps even Snape does. Relief washes over me like a wave, and hope returns. My parents will be glad at the change, even if it came at the price of the temporary re-entry of the magical into our cloistered little world, far from the angry shores of Britain.
But when I see my parents return, walking down the street to our house, a large basket on my mother's arm, I see shadows move toward them and in a moment of exquisite clarity realise that redemption is gone, and will never come again.
There is no hope for me in the return of magic, and no hope for them in the crowd of dark robes, of green flashes sent at them by a man with dark hair and a cruel mouth. There is no hope for any of us in the bright fruit that rolls from the basket away from their bodies, and no hope in the shattering of my teacup as it slips through my fingers.
For two years, grace has slowly died within me, kept alive only by tortured rationalisations and fractured, painful dreams of the future. In the breaking of the cup, I know that that grace is gone. It is a quick death at least, after the fight I had to keep it alive within me, but I know that I will hear its death forever, in the tiny, echoing space between my parents' silent fall and the shattering of the cup. In this moment, I have truly become Perdita, the lost.
It is Neville that moves first. Neville, with the battle-hardened reflexes that I have never had to develop, and he scoops Ben up into one arm, and grabs me with the other. “Fidelius,” he snaps at me, shaking my arm. Numb, I can only point shakily at the door that enters into the magically protected part of the house, the part that McGonagall left for us all to hide in should something happen, and he drags us both across the floor, shoves me into the room, and places Ben on a nearby chair, groggy and sleeping. The door connecting the two parts of the house disappears, and we are safe.
I stumble to the window. Only a few meters away lie the bodies of my parents, my mother's arm out flung, tomatoes scattered around from the shopping basket that lies upturned on the pavement. I can hear great, wrenching gasps, and realise from a distance that they may - they - be mine. I can't seem to get enough air, and it is only that that saves me from screaming when the face of the dark-haired man suddenly appears at the window, his face only a few centimetres from mine.
Neville holds me tight from behind, one hand clamped over my mouth. Neither he nor I know how much protection Fidelius gives - the Death Eaters must be searching randomly… They cannot see us through the window, cannot even see the window itself, but I can see them. I can see him. He cannot see me, but could they hear me scream with only the window between us? The eyes of the man that murdered my parents stare into mine for a few seconds longer before moving on, searching elsewhere - and suddenly I am on the floor, with my legs at an awkward angle around me. They are no longer able to hold me up, and Neville's arms are still around me, his hand tight over my face. I can hear the noises begin next door, as the house that was our sanctuary is torn apart. No doubt they are looking for me, and I want to go to them, to allow them to find me…
It is Neville that holds me back. He jerks one arm at Ben, flushed and orphaned on the chair, just beginning to wake.
“There are too many of them,” he hisses in my ear, so softly I can barely hear him. “Don't let him grow up without you as well.”
Stung, stunned, I wrench free from him as quietly as I can, and make my way over to the baby, cradling him in my arms. I bury my face in his neck, and he starts to whimper.
I wonder if he knows something is wrong.
Distantly, I hear Neville apologise, dragging himself across the floor to us. “I'm sorry, Hermione,” he keeps saying. “I'm sorry. They must have been able to follow me here somehow… it's my fault. I'm so sorry…”
But I know that it is not his fault. He only came - McGonagall only sent him - because I asked for help. I could not bear my guilt alone.
Two years ago, I betrayed my dearest friends to save my parents. I thought I would be able to live with the guilt, but in the end it overwhelmed me. I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't strong enough to live with my own decisions… I wanted redemption, and by my own hand received damnation instead. This winter's tale will never end, and I can see no possibility of redemption for me ever again.
My parents are dead, and it's my fault. I betrayed them.
It's my fault.
Unforgivable.
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Leaving Home (4/6).
Hi everyone! Yes, this is your usual author's note disclaiming profit or responsibility, and warning you of a character death ahead. Yes, another one. Angst abounds, before happy(ish) ending - but not in this part. You have to wait until part 6 for that, sorry. And sorry about the trick with Ben, last chapter, heh. Well, not really, LOL. On the bright side, Harry's back! And no - he's not the one dying. You might wish he had, though… but as I've said to some of you in your reviews (which I'm really grateful for, by the way) I've been thinking of doing a sequel of the same time period but from Harry's point of view, because he's not just sitting on his arse all the time Hermione is away, of course. Given the ending of this chapter, you might be curious to know what he HAS been doing… and with that hopefully mysterious hint, on with the story!
No wait. There was something else before “on with the story” (I'm just editing this in now, as pity has over-taken me). You see, as dark as this story is, it gets darker. You might want to line up something fluffy if that isn't your cup of tea. The chapter after this, number 5, really is depressing, and although I've nearly finished it, I'm going to wait for a week or two until I've finished number 6 (and thus the whole story) so I can post them together. It seems kind of cruel, knowing the end to #5 as I do, to make you wait longer and frankly - some of you may read it and decide to cry off altogether. So please take this as an announcement in advance. Now, on with the story!
Chapter Four.
I never thought that I would return to this place.
Now that I have, part of me wishes that I hadn't. The castle defences are obviously failing, and there are great chunks of rubble where once there weren't. The wing that once held Madam Pomfrey's hospital and dispensary has been blasted into rubble, along with the healer herself. Seeing it now, I realise that I hadn't really noticed Neville's injuries before. I had seen them, of course, and seen the obvious pain on his face, even when he tried to hide it, but - it never occurred to me to wonder why it was so, and why he hadn't been really healed. There is nothing left to heal him with - and that includes the greenhouses, which are shattered beyond repair. I somehow think that Neville minds this more than his ribs, more than his leg.
I can see it in the way that he refuses to look at them, and so I refuse to do the same. Perhaps my not noticing will give him some comfort - the reassurance that he will not have to explain, to gloss over the loss.
Perhaps it was a mistake to come here, but I no longer have anywhere else to go. It is madness to bring a baby into what is clearly an active war zone, but I am too afraid to leave him with strangers. I don't know who would find him again, and cannot leave him without even the small protection that I can give him. It is hard to hold him now, or to look at him, for he reminds me of what I have done and lost, and what he has lost, unknowing. His little face is watchful, and I know that he is unhappy, but he still looks at me with trustfulness. That one thing hurts me more than anything has ever hurt, more than I thought anything ever could. It is so misplaced.
It amuses me that he seems to have latched on to Snape. If it was a surprise to find my former Potions Master hard at work in the failing wreckage of Hogwarts, the acknowledged headquarters of the resistance against Voldemort, it was an even bigger surprise to see Ben gurgle up at him, charmed. Snape was not charmed, not one bit. I don't think that he has any time for babies - especially a Muggle baby, who can never appreciate his ability and who spits up on his ingredients. Poor Ben seems to think that his disdain is a game, and I am too much of a coward to try and disillusion him. If I could disillusion a baby, that is. Crookshanks is a better nurse.
We have spent a lot of time together, Snape and I, in the few days since I have returned. He has drafted me into some of his simpler Potions work, as it is obvious to everyone here that I am unsuited for fighting. The faces are ghostly, and there seems to be an unspoken agreement to pretend that I don't exist. Space is made for me, food is set out for me, but it is plain that I am an outsider and only grudgingly welcome. Only Neville and Professor McGonagall make any effort to be friendly.
Harry is not here. Neither is Ron. Neville tells me that they had a lead on the last horcrux, and that they are expected back any day. I am afraid to see them, and feel myself jumping at every sound, every creak that might herald their arrival.
What is there for me to say to them? I'm sorry? But that is not enough, and only partly true regardless.
So I assist Snape, and do not ask what I am assisting with. It is better that way, I think, as then I do not have to face the fact that finally, I am ready to betray myself. It should be no surprise. I have proved so adept at betraying others that there is no reason for me to baulk at this final step - the final stage of Unforgivable. Witnessing the murder of my parents has blasted something from me that I had tried to hold onto - even after all else. I no longer believe that there is anything that can stand against betrayal, anything more important than the self. Nothing is sacred. There is no “thus far and no further”.
At last, I believe, I am capable of anything.
Is this what Voldemort feels, I wonder? That there is nothing sacred, nothing worth preserving? That he has the power, and the right, to be capable of anything. Have I gone that far?
I believe that I have. But the tiny part of me that remains the Hermione Granger that watches over Ben and hates herself for her capacity for betrayal is afraid to find out. For if it is so, then what is left? So I mix the potions, and do not ask. I do not ask, and I do not tell - not what I am doing here. Not what I have hidden in the bottom of my backpack when, in the few hours after our escape, I briefly left Ben and Crookshanks with Neville in order to retrieve something that signified my new life and the wasteland that has been made of it. And I do not tell Snape the purpose of my potion - not when he looks at it and rolls his eyes in clear disgust, not when he sets it aside to work on more important things - and not when he gravitates back to it in his few free moments, mixing and combining in a way that I have never been able to emulate.
I think he does it for pity of me, but that is not enough to make me speak.
It is only when Harry returns that I am able to find my tongue again. For when he returns, with a brief, distracted nod to McGonagall to show that the last horcrux is no more, he is supporting, half-carrying, the broken body of another.
Ron.
They pause briefly when they see me, both faces chalk-white - one with grief and the other with pain from a curse and loss of blood. For a moment I wonder why Harry does not levitate him, but then I realise that this contact is the last, and that the touch of a hand is important to them. Nevertheless, Harry cannot support him alone forever, and I find myself running forward to hold up Ron's other side, to direct him into a nearby chamber. Harry is rigid with tension. I can see the anger in his eyes, the refusal, and know that the only thing preventing him from throwing me off Ron is the fact that he would have to let go of him himself to do it.
The hatred in his face is blinding, but “Leave it,” I hear softly, and realise that Ron has spoken for me, leaning into Harry tiredly. Wordlessly, he accepts it, and we get Ron onto the pillows of a shattered couch, rip down curtain to make a pressure bandage for the largest wounds.
“Home sweet home, eh?” Ron says tiredly, and his voice is barely raised above a whisper but he is looking at me intently, and I can see the double meaning behind his words. He sighs deeply, and requests water.
I can see Harry glare at me, not trusting himself to speak, and the message is obvious. But when Ron summons the energy to speak again, it is clear that he expects Harry to leave, Harry to fetch the water, and not me. And he does leave, refusing to look at me, and I can see by the rigidity of his body that it's tearing him apart to do so - to have to leave his best friend to me, even for a moment, when their moments together are coming to an end.
I stumble to Ron, and the blood on my hands as I press down on the bandage to try and stop the bleeding is brighter than anything I've seen for the past two years, when I thought it was colour that would numb the pain. It's a useless thing to do, as it's not the bleeding alone that is killing him but the curse, but I don't know what else to do and I can't bring myself to look at his face, to see the pain and the fear that goes with the wrenching gasps, the shudders that wrack his body and bring bubbles of blood to his lips.
Then his hand grips mine on the bandage, and I realise that there is still some strength left in him, although I know that it cannot be for long.
“Look at me,” he says.
It takes me several moments. I want to keep looking away, to let my face screw up into this awful mess so that I truly can't see for tears and have a good excuse not to see the condemnation, the disgust, on his face, but… this is Ron. He deserves better - he stayed when I did not, and he deserves better. So I force my eyes open as far as they can go, and let the water spill out of them before it can obstruct my vision, and I force myself to look full into his face.
I can't see any condemnation there, but I can't see anything else either. I used to be able to read him so easily, but this war has changed him, as I suppose it has changed us all. I barely recognise the man in my arms, bleeding his life onto the floor around my knees. I don't know what to say, and I don't know if anything I can say will reach him. There's no excuse, and every excuse, and it is too much to hope that he will understand now what he would not before, when I left and he turned away from me.
“I don't forgive you,” he says, and there is no hate in his voice, but no warmth either. It has bled out of him, left him pale and cold. I can't help the sob that breaks through the calm I have so carefully tried to construct, but I don't say anything, don't try to excuse myself.
This is justice, I think to myself.
But because I keep looking into his eyes, because I don't allow myself to turn away from the judgement that he has the right to inflict upon me, I can see them soften slightly, and a cold finger comes up to caress my cheek, leaving a smear of blood across it.
He almost smiles. “I'm glad you're alright,” he says. “I've always been glad for that. But still…”
“You don't forgive me,” I confirm, and he nods, the movement painful. His eyes don't leave mine.
“We trusted you,” he says, and his body wracks with coughing. There's nothing I can do to stop it, or to ease the pain, and all I can do is hold him close to me, cradle his head against my chest, and let my tears rain down into his blood. His hand still holds mine, and I let him squeeze it - is it for comfort, I wonder?
Then - “That's enough,” says a voice roughly, and I realise that Harry has re-entered the room. He stands by the door, fists clenched, glaring at me as if he cannot stand the sight of me here, with his best friend dying in my arms. “That's enough. You need to leave.”
“Harry-” I plead, but he cuts me off.
“Get out.”
If I had stayed and fought with them, I would have argued now, because staying at this moment would have been my right. But I did not stay, and all of us know that I am an intruder on this moment, and the few moments allowed me to say goodbye were given by grace. They have not been earned.
Ron is shaking, from cold and loss of blood, and I press him close to me for a moment, let his face rest in my shoulder. “Goodbye, Ron,” I whisper, and the words suffocate me so that it barely comes out. His grip on my hands tightens even further, and I feel him choking against me. It's as if he is trying to speak.
For a moment I curse the loss of my hair, which would have fallen down around us like a shield, hiding what he has to say to me. For in that moment, with Ron using what remains of his strength to drag his lips a little closer to my ear, I know that it is something meant only for me.
“Stop him,” he breathes. “Help him…stop… Hermione…”
I don't understand. How can I stop Voldemort, or help Harry to do so? I couldn't even save my parents. Death is all around me, and shatters what is left of my heart. And then Harry's hand is on my shoulder, pulling me away, and he is taking Ron into his arms, and they are regarding each other with an expression that I will never be able to translate, because it speaks to shared experiences that I have not been here to share. And I know that neither of them will notice me again, and that I am no longer in the room for them, and so I leave, give them their privacy.
It is my judgement, and it is fair.
I wait outside the classroom, and although I know that it cannot be more than a few minutes, it seems like forever. There's nothing to be done. I retrieve Ben from Professor Snape, and I almost think he looks relieved, which isn't surprising as I don't think he's done anything but rather ostentatiously ignore the baby. Ben, on the other hand, seems slightly happier than he has been. I take his warm little body in my arms, and feel the weight of him sleeping on my shoulder - a soft body that is warm against mine, where Ron's was cold and heavy. Ben is quiet in my arms but he feels alive, and I am glad for the comfort of him, his confidence and trust. He does not yet know how to betray, and how easy it is for others to betray him.
The door, when it opens, is silent, and I know that it is over. There is barely a creak, and when Harry walks out I would think that he is calm if I couldn't see his eyes. They are blasted within him, and I wonder if he sees me at all. I take deep breaths, breathe in Ben's baby scent, and try not to sob, lest he wake. Harry begins to walk past me, and there is a slight check in his step that tells me that he has seen me after all - and the baby. He hadn't seen Ben before, and he must wonder whose he is. Or is the fact that he is mine enough?
He moves down the corridor, stiff, like a clockwork toy that is winding down. Slow, and in spurts, disappearing into another room. Out of our sights, and out of sight of Ron.
I wait again, but for a long time he doesn't come out. Neville comes to stand beside me, his face creased with grief, and wonders. He is not the only one who does. The few that remain in the shattered remains of this castle nearly all ignore me, but the movement of their eyes towards the place where Harry stays alone is unmistakeable, and the tension rises. We are all afraid, and no-one will go to him.
“He shouldn't be alone,” Neville states quietly, but he makes no move towards the door.
I wonder why he is telling me, as surely none of these people expect me to go to him, or think that I would be welcome if I did. Still, I am increasingly sure that someone needs to go, although I cannot tell how much my knowledge of Harry's needs has changed over the past two years. And no-one else seems prepared to do it… I give Ben to Neville, surprising him, and one of them whimpers pitifully, I'm not sure which. Neville is definitely not used to babies, and I am sure that Ben senses his nervousness, and it unsettles him.
“Hermione,” Neville starts, and there is a warning tone in his voice that I refuse to hear. “Are you sure that this is a good idea?”
I'm not sure, but no-one else is moving and it can't go on like this. Cautiously, I move out of the way of Ben's questing little hand, and make my way away from him, trying to look more confident than I feel. In truth, I am numb. I know that what is coming will most likely be extremely unpleasant, but I at this point I don't see how I could feel any worse. So much has happened that I think I am losing my ability to feel, at least for the moment. I think of what is hidden in my backpack and wonder if that is a blessing.
I hesitate outside the door, and wonder if I should feel afraid to go inside. I'm not sure whose reaction I am afraid of more - Harry's, or my own. When I left Hogwarts, I was so sure that I would never see him again, that he was lost to me. The last is still true, but to speak to him again, to be able to touch him… how can I react to that? And how will he react to me?
My betrayal hangs between us, and for Harry and myself it can never be undone. For Ben, I can be dimly glad that it cannot - but that gladness will wait until another day.
When I am inside, I shut the door behind me and lean against it, to prevent an easy escape. There is no escape for me here, and there should be none.
Harry is sitting on the floor, leaned against the far wall, feet flat and elbows resting on his knees. He looks calmer than I expected - too calm, and far older than I remember, like horror has touched him and left its mark. Has grief, self-loathing done the same for me? We regard each other flatly for several minutes, not speaking. He doesn't bother to evade my eyes any more; there is no pretending that I don't exist, or looking past me as if I was nothing. In a silent flash of understanding - that, at least, remains - I realise that Harry has come to the same conclusion I have, that we cannot run from this. We have been the great disappointment of the other's life, and there is no getting away from it.
When he speaks, it is not what I expect. His voice is rusty, made hoarse with grief.
“You're cut your hair,” he says. I blink, and give a belated nod. Harry assesses me silently, and the anger that is absent in his face finds expression in his voice. “I hate it.”
“So do I,” I say immediately, and am surprised by the vehemence in my own voice. I realise that it's true - while certainly easier to keep, the shortness of my hair has done its job. It has been a constant reminder of what I would rather forget, of the things that I am capable of which I would rather not admit.
I wait for him to ask about Ben, but he does not. I won't bring him up myself - I will answer, but not initiate. I will not begin to excuse what I have done, or trip over my tongue telling him how sorry I am. I will not reduce the target I make for him.
The silence stretches on, and he is again the one to break it. Again, it is not what I expect.
“Go home, Hermione,” he says tiredly.
A lump rises in my throat, and it's all I can do to shake my head mutely. He doesn't understand. There is no home to go to. This is it - the ruined remains of Hogwarts, the people who can no longer look me in the face. My parents used to tell me that home is where you go when there is no-one else to go, and they have to take you in.
But they don't have to, and what happens when they don't? I have missed having a home so badly, and I know that soon I will have to make one for Ben if not for myself, but I cannot face the thought of it. Always home has been somewhere that I came from, or went to. It existed outside of me, and was not something I ever had to make.
“Go home, Hermione,” he says again, and this time there is force behind it.
I shake my head again. I cannot seem to make myself speak, and I know that my muteness is chipping at his clam, and making him angrier. He tilts his head and glares at me, and for a moment I see something flash in his eyes - but I cannot make it out.
“I don't want you here,” he enunciates slowly, each word clear and well-aimed. There is no chance of my misinterpreting, but I find myself not only dumb but unable to move. I am not sure if it is merely seeing him again, or the death of Ron, or the anger he so clearly feels for me, but I am frozen in place, like a rabbit, my head shaking in place and I cannot stop it. Something curls in my stomach; it is cold and twisted.
Harry bounds to his feet, and the movement makes me flinch against the door. His eyes flash again, and my stomach coils.
It almost feels like fear.
“Don't you understand?” he cries, his voice rising, getting louder and stronger, face twisting with anger, and what I would like to believe isn't hate. “You don't belong here any more. I don't want you. I don't need you. You left, and you can't come back now, and think that looking all sad will make it go away! How could you? How could you?” He stops suddenly, panting with rage, and I can see him force himself to stillness. I almost preferred him angry, as the coldness that succeeds the rage is darker, and more disturbing.
“Leave,” he says. “Now. Or…”
I finally find my voice. “Or what?”
He glares at me. “Or I won't be responsible for my actions.” I can see his fists clenching and unclenching, and I know that he, like me, is on the verge of losing all self-control. So be it. I never did hesitate to argue with him if I thought it would help, and I know we're not going to get anywhere by pretending to hang on to the last remnants of our civility.
He hates. He has been left too many times, by death and betrayal, and I believe he knows that he cannot make it stop.
I hate. He is not the only one with losses, and if our hate is directed in different directions, it is as deep. I believe that he shares in my self-loathing; however I am not sure whether that loathing is directed at me, or at himself.
It's probably both.
I swallow, and raise my chin, ignoring my tears. This is no time for crying, and I've never been the type to use tears to get what I want. “I'm not going. I know that you must hate me right now, but I'm not going. Besides, Ron said-”
“DON'T YOU SAY HIS NAME!” Harry roars, and I flinch not only at the noise, but in the sure, pure knowledge that the wand he suddenly points at me is only a few last shreds of self-control away from being used. My throat dries horribly, and I know that I have left my wand back in the pack with Ben's baby things. It makes no difference. I wouldn't have used it anyway.
I believe that Harry won't use his either. I can see that he is afraid - not just of Voldemort, but of the pain inherent in the possibility of trusting me again. I have lost all claims to that trust, and we both know it, but with Ron gone… he will try to drive me away before letting anyone in again. He will threaten, and scream, and try to make me afraid, but he is still Harry.
He will not hurt me.
It takes me several moments to speak, and they hang between us like years. His hand is shaking, but he doesn't lower his wand.
“I'm not leaving,” I say. I leave out the fact that there is nowhere else for me to go, and that I am afraid to leave Ben anywhere that he could be found and used against me. “You can't make me go. And Ron…” I trail off, because I see that his wand has suddenly stopped shaking. I should have taken his advice, should not have mentioned Ron's name. Should have remembered his face against my neck, his silent plea. Harry is suddenly calmer than I have seen him since my return, and a coil of true fear begins to spin in my gut.
“I hate you,” he says, and I know that he means it. His voice is somehow both hard, and hurt beyond belief. “I hate you.”
And it is then that I realise how badly I have erred - not just in my betrayal and abandonment, but in my return. For his eyes flash again, and this time he is close enough for me to see that the flashes are not of anger, or grief, but are what these have become after being burned into despairing and loathing. They are red, and they spark in the green eyes as though belonging to somebody else.
I hear Ron's voice again in my mind, his last words to me as his blood streams over my hands and pools about me in a slow red death.
“Stop him… Help him…stop… Hermione…”
My breath dies in my throat.
I had thought that Ron had meant Voldemort - that Harry needed my help to stop him. What a laugh that is - my help, who has not seen Dark Magic for years. My help, that could not even save my own parents. The help of a traitor, and of a coward.
Then the wand raises, and I shrink against the door. In the next moment, I can hear only three things. The second is my own screaming, in a voice of empty agony that drowns almost everything but the memory of the first, of the memory when Harry looked at me through anguished, triumphant, horrified, vengeful eyes, and breathed a single word.
“Crucio.”
But the last thing I hear, the thing that overwhelms even this pain, is the memory of Ron's voice. Stop him. Help him.
He hadn't meant Voldemort.
-->
Argh! I know I said I'd post the last two parts together, but they've both been mostly done for months now and I can't seem to make myself finish them both at once. So have made myself finish part 5, and will post part 6 tomorrow - because if I don't post this now, I'll never get 6 done. So slow!
Rating is staying the same. I thought it would go up due to sex scene but that turned out to be much less graphic than I anticipated. But be warned, this is very, very dark H/Hr. Character-death dark. Epilogue to be posted tomorrow much more hopeful - remember the potion that Snape saves from the wreckage before slating me in advance for endless misery, LOL.
Leaving Home (5/6)
Which pain is worse, the physical or the emotional? Up until now, I would have said the latter, for that suffering I have come to know well over the past two years, and it is inescapable in its intensity. And yet, never before have I suffered a curse like this one, flung at me in grief and rage. Perhaps the physical can be as bad, because there seems to be no end of it.
When the end does come I am dazed, and the stone is cool beneath my cheek. I do not think I can rise and everything is dark around me. My throat is dry, and I can't seem to talk, although I would very much like to ask for water. Have I been screaming so much? Dimly, I recognise that Harry no longer has his wand, and I do not have the strength to wonder just who it is that took it off him, and who it is that crouches over me, their hand on my forehead. I try to move, and an echo of pain flashes through me. Someone is helping me to sit up, and I lean on them, almost falling. I can't hold myself up.
Voices flash and hover around me like birds, and I can't seem to make sense of them. I think I hear Harry, but what I hear of him shatters into fragments, cuts into the air like glass. I don't know whether the shattering comes from him or me. He sounds almost lost.
I know what it feels like to be lost.
“I didn't… I didn't mean to…deserved it. …she alright? I can't… happened? Deserved it.”
It swirls in my head like oil on water, and I don't know what has happened either, except that I know that I am not the only one to know pain so enormous it can't be borne without crippling the bearer.
The voices swim above me again. I hear “family” and “child” in a lower, whispered tone. There is a blur of movement, a small one, as a bowed shape before me lurches briefly towards the door, and in a rush of fear I know that Harry has been given back his wand.
Fear and pain overcome what scruples I have, what weakness. I can forgive the pain he has caused me because I know I have hurt him far more, but I cannot reconcile the child I knew with the man he has become, and I cannot risk the hurt of that man being taken out on a tangible reminder of my betrayal. Adrenalin forces me to my feet, fear making me move where agony does not and, reeling, I force him into focus and shove weakly at his chest. Anger, hurt flare briefly in his eyes but he steps back. It is not my strength that forces him to do so, but what I believe is an unwillingness to touch me. It doesn't matter. The brief pause allows me to get to the door before he does, to turn and bar the way against this person I used to trust more than any.
“You stay away from my baby!” I hurl at him, uselessly so, stupidly so. For I do not have the strength to fight him and he could easily shoulder me aside if he wanted to do so. But I do not trust this man, and his capacity for violence, and even if I fuelled him I do not trust him in his agony - and in my own - enough to risk my brother.
My head is spinning and I can barely stand but he'll have to kill me if he wants to get through this door.
And as my vision clears I can see his do the same, see the clear green of the child I knew emerge from the wreck of what he is becoming, the shadow of a monster. He is staring at me as if looking far into the past, and his wand clatters hard to the floor. He looks confused, and sick, and wounded.
“I wouldn't,” he said. “Not a baby, I… I couldn't.”
An in the roaring of my ears I can hear the horror in his voice, a bleak dismay that comes from the gap where he could have said “Not yet,” for we both know the gap is there. Had I not left him would he have avoided turning into this, into what he has to fight? Had I stayed, would I have become the same?
I am lead out of the room, and I realise it is Neville I am leaning on, Neville who takes me only a few paces from the door before my legs fail me, Neville whose robe I retch onto like I am vomiting up the horror of the world.
Scant feet away, I can hear Harry do the same, hear him weep; hear his sorrow, his regret. What have we come to, he and I?
Days later and I cannot leave. Most are still pretending that I'm not here. I don't know whether this is wishful thinking on their part, an attempt to give some privacy, or if they're simply so exhausted that they no longer care. Even Ben only gets a few token glances. Snape, of course, has no such compunction. He's at a large table set up in a dim corner, with the remnants of his potion-making equipment spread over it. His dungeon must have collapsed if he's up here, but I can't bring myself to be terribly sympathetic, even though the time I spent in said dungeon suddenly seems happier and more precious than it actually was. I don't have the energy to feel much sympathy for anyone but myself at the moment.
I'm completely unsurprised to see that he has rifled through my bag, and has apparently found the potion I've been trying to make for the past two years. Deft hands unscrew the vial, and he extracts a drop. The lid is replaced and the vial carefully stowed before he turns to the droplet, and it only takes a few small touches, as he holds it to the light of the nearest lamp, for him to understand what it is. He drops it immediately, and there is disgust in his eyes.
But Snape is not the only one who has grown inured over the years. I ignore his glare and drop down on a nearby chair. It's a relief to put Ben down - he is sleeping, and the strain of holding him for hours ebbs as I make a nest for him on the table, folding the blankets about him. It's not ideal, but I'm here and he won't fall off. If anything, Snape looks more affronted than ever.
“Yes,” I say tartly. “It's a baby. Get used to it.”
“I don't know where you picked up that thing, Miss Granger,” he says, under his breath, and I can hear the disdain in his voice. “But perhaps if you'd spent your time studying instead of-”
Instead of fucking, I can almost hear him finish, and of all the liberties I will allow Snape to take today, that is not one of them. “He's not mine,” I say, a little defensively - but only a little, for now he is more mine than anyone's, and no-one else has any claim on him. I wouldn't give him to them if they did.
“I'm not blind,” Snape says. “Obviously he is not your get, Miss Granger. There's not a spark of magic in him. Anyone with half a brain could see that.”
I don't know whether to be offended or relieved on Ben's behalf. “There's more to life than magic, Severus,” I say, and note with a twinge of evil pleasure the spark of anger in his eyes that I would dare to use his first name, as if we were equals. And yet it is almost justified - I am no longer a child or a student, but equals we certainly are not. I nod towards the discarded drop. “I can't get it to work.”
“I am not in the least surprised,” said Snape. “I am, however, astounded that someone with your gifts would waste them on frivolities. Fiddling while Hogwarts burned, were you, Miss Granger?”
That goes home, as he knew it would. “I need you to help me fix it,” I say, and try to keep the desperation form my voice. My desperation, my salvation.
He leans back in his chair, fingers steepled, and his face in the shadows. “Why?”
“I need it,” and, despite myself, my voice wavers. It is bad enough to come back here, my past and future destroyed, to ask favours from a man I should detest. He shouldn't get to hear why, especially as we both know “why” in the first place.
“For what?” he says, merciless. “Of all the spells in all the books I wasted upon you, you had to go and pick the most inappropriate of the lot. A complete waste of your not inconsiderable talents, I might add.” I look up in surprise, not expecting even that small kindness. Has Snape actually learnt mercy in the last two years? “I expect you've laboured the entire time away on this, with nothing else to show for it,” he says.
No. There is no mercy within him. It is almost comforting that there is no change in him, that his logic is as cutting as it ever was. As much as he detests me, it must have been difficult when I left. I have grown past false modesty, and know that no-one remained who could have matched me as his student, and no professor that could have expected more from me. What a teacher he could have been, if only…
“There is nothing else,” I say, and I meet his gaze. He gave me comfort when I left this place, and he didn't have to. He gave me his tools, and if I refused to use them that is my fault and not his. I haven't come back as any sort of saviour, and his small gesture of faith was wasted - in his eyes at least. But there is more than one type of betrayal, and those other spells… in my worst moments I could have made them, but I could never have used them.
“Why?” he says again. “Why do you want this potion?” - and I know he deserves the simple truth.
“It would make me feel better,” I said, as plainly as I could.
And he smiles at me, a humourless grin that is as cold as any I have ever seen. “There is nothing that can do that, Miss Granger. You'll just have to live with it. Like the rest of us.” The last is said under his breath, and I know that he is speaking from experience.
Harry's curiosity is not so easily put off, but unlike Snape, he has no interest in what my failed potion can do - and more in my other acquisition.
He has no interest in Ben, and I do my best to keep them apart. If that shows a lack of faith I can live with it, but I prefer to think that it's sensitivity on my part, to keep Harry from having to confront the life I had when I left him.
I find it nerve-wracking being around him, in this swirling mixture of guilt and anger and fascination that draws us together, to try and pick out the children that we were in the remnants of the old lives that remain to us. I spend my days alternately trying to get through to him and avoid him, and it is in one of the former times that I mistakenly tell him just what it is that my stolen device does.
The interest that leaps to his eyes unnerves me, and I am grateful that in my grief I stole the one thing that absolutely could not work in Hogwarts. For all my purported genius, it escaped me that electrical objects cannot work in magical environments, and the irony is almost funny. The two things I brought as redemption are both useless, and there is only myself left.
Harry wants to know if there is a way around it, and I know that he would use what I have brought if he could. The thought is horrifying to me - in these quiet, awkward days I have had time to consider more than one type of betrayal, and have come to the conclusion that, if I intended in a fury to use what I have brought, it would have been more Unforgivable than any thing I ever could have done to Harry.
Better I die before that betrayal. Better he die before he lowers what is left of himself to actually do it either.
We argue in silences. Words would fall into the chasm between us, and neither could stand the extra loneliness that echo would give. So we argue in glances, in avoidance, in the ways that are least like us.
In the end, we argue in sex.
It's painful, consciously so. When I drag my nails down his back I mean to draw blood, to make him bleed. Does he not deserve it for losing himself so? And when he thrusts into my body the brutality makes me bite down on my lip so hard the blood runs down both our bodies - and he means for me to bleed. Do I not deserve it, for my betrayal and loss of faith? Words are meaningless between us now; we cannot seem to find the right key to make the other really hear what we have to say. The only way we can speak is with our bodies. And if at times it is gentle, if I cry into his neck in grief and he promises faith that he doesn't have the strength for then we do not speak of it, or acknowledge it, for that is more than either of us can bear. For though these moments are benediction they are not forgiveness, and the next time we come together it will be blood and pain again, until the next small grace.
It is only when the times he leaves my bed that I can truly acknowledge how much I have missed him, and how much I cannot say.
When the wards fail and the war comes, I stay - and Ben stays - for there is nowhere else for us to go. The part of me that is responsible for my brother says that I should run as far as I can, but I do not yet have the strength to break away again. What good would it do? This world is coming to an end whether I go or not - and so is Harry. Why should I stay to see it?
Perhaps because I brought one end with me, and stay to see that it is not used. Perhaps this is a cruelty on my part - to bring the hope that is not hope for a war that cannot be won and a man who cannot win it unless he damns himself. Knowing that that choice is one he would welcome, do I stay to make sure that choice is no longer his? Do I take away his redemption, or, in taking it away, do I let him stand redeemed?
I cannot cope with the choices any longer. The mazes of my mind are tangled, and there is darkness in all of them. There no longer seems any point to staying or going, and it is only in Harry's promise that he will not use what I brought him that I can find any hope, a hope sprung out of death. For using it brings death, and abstaining means death. Should I leave, I am who am at the centre of it?
And yet I find myself torn. Ben's life, Harry's redemption. Who has the greater claim? Two years ago I made a choice between families that saved one, and could not save another. I am under no illusion that my remaining here now undoes that choice, for I know that I have not chosen. I am only at the castle because I haven't yet decided whether to stay or go. A pretty limbo, that balances need with need and claim with claim.
And so I stay in indecision until the war comes to make my choice for me. A coward's conclusion, I know it, but… I thought I had longer. I had not realised how desperate things had become, had thought I had more time to balance the claims upon me, to reason out my new betrayal. Or is it the old? Perhaps this is my punishment, to have to choose and choose again through all eternity. Will it stop, I wonder, if I choose rightly this time?
But what is rightly? There is no petty fight, no girl to insult and no boy to turn away to bridge this divide and make the decision for me, and I have felt no moment since coming to the castle that comes close to that knife-edge of choice. Perhaps I stay to experience that moment, to find the crucible that will allow me to make the choice that I can most live with.
I am under no illusions. In my indecision I may have damned them both.
And when the castle falls, and the enemy swarm over it like the dark stain of madness my life has become, I find my crucible.
It does not come in fighting, in the familiar feel of the wand in my hand, and the curses that come too quickly to my lips. It does not come in the realisation that magic is my home but that my magic is now less than those who remained. For what is surprising about that? How could I have learned the same ruthlessness, whose best weapon is to strike at the heart of those that love me instead of the heads of those that don't?
It comes in the Great Hall, in the heart of what remains of my childhood, in the knowledge that I cannot save them both. When I have bound the man who would have killed me - even now, I cannot bring myself to do the same to him - and turn to see two others.
Neither of them are aiming at me.
I have heard that in times of great import, that time slows down and the senses fade, that there is a silence that can swallow worlds and shine upon darkness, revealing all. I do not feel it. There is no silence in the screams of the few survivors, no dilation of time in the realisation that one Death Eater aims at Harry, Harry who cannot see his danger because of his duel with Voldemort, a duel of such viciousness that it hurts to watch, to know what Harry is capable of, that he will not hesitate to kill. The other stands listening, his head on one side, and I know that he hears the screams of Ben, hidden in the only place I could think to shelter him, behind Snape's table, which is upturned on the floor, its heavy surface sheltering the remains of the Potion Master's efforts, the potion I failed at, the device I stole and refused to use, and my infant brother.
There is no silence, and time does not stand still - and my so efficient brain calculates faster than it ever has, and knows that I can only save one. One.
And in this crucible this choice that is no choice is burned clean, and I am moving before I realise my movement, before I have even finished reasoning - for it is not reason that moves me, but instinct.
He is five steps away, and in the time it takes for me to think `Forgive me not, Lord, for I know exactly what I do' I am crashing into him with all the strength in my body, and his shot runs awry.
It smashes the table, sends pieces shattering through the air and articles scattering along the floor. To my right I can hear a piece knock Neville down, send him fall, bleeding, to the floor. Behind me, I hear the sound of the other Death Eater send his curse, and hear the impact as it hits Harry, sends him crashing into Voldemort, sending both of them to the floor, and both their wands scatter. I can hear everything, but I can only see Ben.
Forgive me, Harry, but he is just a baby. His life is only beginning, and yours will be over soon enough. I should never have brought him back. His life should not pay for my redemption - or for yours. And then I am on him, the warm, small body pressed against mine, and I sob in relief at his screaming, too grateful to process the fact that as I turn, I can see that Harry, by some miracle, is still alive. Alive, but badly injured, the blood streaming from his head. It obscures his scar, and our eyes meet.
Silence.
Reason tells me that there is no silence now, that the crumbling of walls and the screams of the dying are echoing through the broken spaces of the castle, but the last thing I hear before it all stops within me is the quiet, metallic clinks of the device I stole from my second life as it rolls across the floor, spins in dizzy circles across the room. There is something about the noise that, for a moment, makes everyone stop - perhaps knowledge of the future isn't as silly as I imagined it, because what I have brought into this place is something that never should have been, so why shouldn't people know of it?
I know that Harry knows it, and that I know it - and when he looks at me from across the room, from across the death that I have brought and turned away from at the last, there is silence, and I see betrayal in his face. My betrayal - my second betrayal, with the baby in my arms that I chose over him. And his betrayal, that I had never hoped to see but will bargain away for Ben's life.
And there is silence, and the world does stop, and he and I understand each other at last. I know what he is about to do, and that his promise was a lie made out of kindness, to spare me the agony of his own decision.
For what links us now is betrayal, and the acceptance of it in its many forms - and the knowledge that, for everyone, there is something they cannot betray. I was able to leave Harry, to choose my family above him not once but twice, to let the knowledge of my choice twist and destroy the remains of the faith he had in himself - but I am not able to betray more than that because in doing so I would betray myself. That is my true Unforgivable, I think - not the betrayal of others, but the betrayal of self.
For Harry, the Unforgivable is different. He would never betray his friends, but will not stop at betraying himself, at performing the worst thing in the world if it will save others. It is a different kind of betrayal, for there are some things it is worth dying for to avoid doing - an evil which Voldemort himself would not hesitate to perform if only he could unbend enough to know that Muggles could be more powerful than he, but an evil where good intentions do not mitigate desecration, and will not stave off damnation.
In saving others, Harry will let himself become worse than Voldemort will ever be. In saving myself from that same fate, I will let him do it.
And in that single moment, as we stare into each other's eyes for the last time, we are able to forgive each other for what would be Unforgivable in ourselves. Amidst the wreck of my loyalty and his morality enough remains of the children we once were to understand that in each other's place we would do differently, and it would not be alright, but it would be Forgivable. Not to ourselves, but to each other. I would betray him over and over and he would let me go without protest, without betraying me in turn - and he can forgive me for it where he could not forgive himself. He is about to do, without a second thought, what I would damn the entire world before doing - and yet his betrayal stirs nothing in me but love. And pity, that he should be so driven.
Perhaps at the end, that pity is all we have. Pity as it was once understood to be - not the insulting condescension with which it is known today, but the well-spring of a love so all-encompassing that it can sympathise with anything, forgive anything.
And when he smiles at me, as he did the first time that I left him, on the grass outside the castle I can see the boy that was, the love he felt for me then and the remains of it now - remains which are still stronger than anything that Voldemort could do. At the last, it is that love which will be enough, which will be forgiveness at last.
And so, for the final time I run from him, stumble towards the entrance, towards Neville, Ben screaming on my shoulder like the end of days.
The last thing I see is Harry, running from Voldemort for the last time, running towards his wand with blood fountaining from his head and onto his hands. Stumbling, tripping. Raising his wand with himself - straight and unflinching in his betrayal, as he points towards the metal container and begins to mouth the spell that will implode it in on itself in a convulsion of energy, of Mudblood energy that even those poised between life and death, as Voldemort is, could never survive.
How ironic that, at the end, it was not to be magic that destroyed him. That destroyed either of them.
The last thing I comprehend is that Snape has also realised what is to happen, and I wonder if he saw it all along, the potential in the boy spoilt by both Voldemort and Dumbledore, a spoiling that Snape surely would have helped along in the knowledge of what was to come, and the weapon that boy needed to become. I see his dark shadow stoop and snatch a rolling vial, feel him come up to grip my arm to drag me forward, see his other hand reach for Neville, and then we are spinning away in the worst side-along Apparition I have ever been unfortunate enough to experience.
Everything is dark, and it seems to go on forever. I can barely feel the baby in my arms, or the grip of the former Potions Master on my robe, or the tears on my cheeks turned cold and frozen by the wind. Everything is dark, and despair presses upon me, the same choking pressure that paralysed me as it did when I first left Hogwarts, when my parents and I travelled across the world to escape a greater darkness, and when the light of warm sunlight on a golden lemon tree began to bring me back to life.
I think I see it now, but this light is bigger, brighter - the sun and not the mirror. The four of us fall onto a hillside far above Hogwarts and the light that burns there amidst the rising cloud flashes brighter, sharper - and even when it ends I am blinded by it, can still feel it searing my face.
For I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
And I can only think of Harry. Harry, and the light that has ended it all. The light.
The light.
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Hi all, last part, so thanks for reading. I still don't own anything. A few people have commented that they didn't like the transition from anger to sex. I do. Well, I don't like it exactly, but I it happens. It's a way to connect when all else fails, and if you think people don't sometimes have sex to fuck each other off, or in a desperate effort to connect, well… it'll happen some day, I promise you.
Oh, and if anyone else doesn't recognise the “destroyer of worlds” quote - look it up! It's important!
But then, I'm from an anti-nuke country. They're the ultimate evil, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and one more thing - I'm wanting to work this into a wider story, so will be taking this story down a couple of weeks from now. If anyone wants to save a copy for their own personal use they're welcome, please don't post it anywhere else.
Epilogue (6/6).
Before I left, when I had hope that good would prevail entirely, when I believed that right and wrong existed within their separate boxes and could be kept there through sheer force of will, I pictured this scene. It was not quite the same. I used to see, in my mind's eye, the three of us here at Hogwarts, after the war was over. Ron, Harry, and me - pureblood, half-blood, and mudblood. (Why should I not say it? It gives me now pain to admit; cannot touch me like it did when I was younger… I feel shame now in so many ways, but I will never again feel shame at that.)
Part of me is gratified to see that, with Voldemort finally gone, the mixture remains. There is still pureblood, half-blood, and mudblood here, at the end of all things. It is only the players that have changed. Neville, Snape, and myself. I suppose that I am now the common factor. I had always thought that that role would be Harry's.
The castle is gone, this place where my childhood burned away has itself been burnt, the heart scoured out of it. Only shadows remain - the shattered rocks, the charred blasted soil, the dim shapes burnt into the stone - shadows of their former selves, the only reminder that once life existed within these walls, instead of painted onto it. In this death, I come across these twisted figures and cannot tell who was who. They are blurred on the rock - was this one someone I knew? An enemy, a friend?
Neither has survived. That magic - good and evil - which was once contained within the walls of what used to be has been blown away by the science of my heritage, the very ground beneath it extirpated, sterilised of all life. I once blamed Harry for fighting Voldemort on his own terms, little realising that one day I would have to fight him on mine - the terms not of a witch but of a Muggle-born, with all the wonderful, terrible tradition of that mass of humanity behind me.
I wonder if Voldemort ever expected that we could be worse than he. I wonder if I ever expected that we could be better.
Perhaps in the end we are the same. The same capacity, the same ability to choose whether to love or to betray, or to crucify ourselves between the two. I have done both, and can no longer tell them apart. Was my betrayal born of love, or did, at the end, love come from my betrayal? Would I, could I, choose another way?
Can anything ever be done to make up for this destruction, this horrible, necessary cleansing? For I have come to see that it is indeed a cleansing, although not one that I would have ever welcomed. The fire and shadow that I brought into this valley has left it charred and unclean, but within me something has burned away, and it will never be rekindled. It is better that way, and I can say that now from a purely personal perspective, the product of months of sickness and self-loathing.
Snape helped. Or rather, he helped clarify the burning inside me, to focus that wild explosion into a fire that would harden and purify. It wasn't pleasant. I'm certain he enjoyed it. Had I to do the last few years over again, I do not believe that I could - and part of me mourns that loss. The gain has been so much greater than I anticipated, although not more than I must have hoped, silently in the dark - a hope that, unacknowledged, infused through my being. A hope that I allowed to be betrayed at the end… but a hope that could not have come to fruition without the bitter water of that betrayal.
Was this what Harry felt at the last? Was this how he felt? Did he value that feeling as I have come to value it?
For as he destroyed Voldemort, so that project that kept me sane throughout the long years of my betrayal, that unforgivable exile, has come to birth out of the burning within me to salvage the burning without.
The months since the end have done more than reconcile me to myself. Or rather, it is that reconciliation that has done more, given more. Again, it was Snape that was the catalyst, Snape that dragged me from myself into the reflected light of polished glassware and flickering burners, Snape who forced me to finish the potion that I once believed I could not finish. Perhaps the self that could not make that potion was burned away in the fire of all fires, and the strength and precision that remains - the knowledge of self that now permeates my being - was what was needed to make me capable.
Perhaps this is a potion that no child could make.
But I have left childhood behind me now, with all its illusions and the expectations of happy endings that come because that is what endings are for. When I left for the first time, I thought I had given up my childhood, with its expectation of the happy ending, but now I know that childhood doesn't end there. It ends, as mine ended after I left for the second time, with the knowledge that happy endings are possible if you make them for yourself, even if you have to make them in the midst of a midst of a darkness so enormous that no fire can put it out.
And so, when I chose to come out of that darkness, I brought something with me, and it gleamed like the end of night, small drops in a tiny vial, the product of months of a purification, of a distillation that was mostly my own. I don't know why I chose this, back in the time when sunshine on a lemon tree and the knowledge of the family I hadn't betrayed was enough to skim me over the surface of self-loathing like a stone, but not enough to prevent me from knowing that what I was doing was ultimately useless.
I have spent so long with science, and I believe that potion-making is a science in itself. The blending of ingredients, the heat and the timing of it. Yet it wasn't science or logic that made me fixate on this potion. It may have been salvation.
When my hands unscrew the lid on the little vial they do not tremble. But when I pour the small, silvery drops onto the empty grave, breath rushes through me like a sigh, like a living wind bringing life to a desert.
And that wind came, and there was life.
It doesn't show at first, the dark, scarred soil quiescent, devastated from what I have done to it - from what Harry chose to do to it. This betrayal was ours, the last thing we accomplished together, and it was death. But death is not the end - and slowly, gently, the blackness of the earth began to seem less the blackness of charring and sterilisation, and more the richness of growth. With the change, green haze began to settle over the ground. It starts in the centre of the grave; then tendrils began to reach over the cracked and broken stone, past the seared shadows and the strewn rubble. It reaches up across the hills, and a faint scent of heather came wafting back. Green tendrils reach down into the dry bowl of the lake, and a blue mist begins to roll over the bed, and to condense in the air, trickle down the dusty sides, and well up like cleansing.
There are buds pushing from the broken earth, gentle green spreading over the ruins, unfurling ivy swings from the walls, and rosemary, the flower of regret, pushes through the heather. Violets. Forget-me-nots. The air freshens, and leaves opens in the breeze. Hogwarts is gone forever, the castle blown into steaming fragments and the glen vaporised into dust… it is gone, but not dead. That damage, that betrayal, is the one I can undo.
For it is my responsibility to undo it - for Harry and for myself and for the child that grows within me and the world she will grow up into. I believe it is a girl, although I am less than certain of her status. Perhaps she will be like her uncle, perhaps she will be like her father. Perhaps she will turn her back on whatever world she inherits if she finds joy in that which comes from the other - a Muggle who studies potions-making, a witch who studies Shakespeare. I think I would like that best.
A flower opens on Harry's grave. It is small and white, petals uncurling in the slow rain like benediction, and as I turn from it I see that salvation is not a dream, because the ruin that I made of Harry's death is overshadowed here by life. For all that died in this place, there will be no rebuilding, no magical return. There are some things even my new knowledge cannot encompass.
But there will be a garden. There will be peace.
And so I leave Harry, for the last time, with lilies on his grave that are sending tendrils out into the ruined remains of Hogwarts, into the garden that will be. Once I found relief in colour, in the bright shades that reminded me of the essential vitality of life, but these tiny blossoms, with their pale petals and their soft buds have a release of their own: the tenderness of renewal, and the creeping season of hope.
I can live with his betrayal, and my own. There is a burgeoning sense of peace in that, a small still place within me that will find expression in this place - in the rehabilitation of evil, in the bringing of life and the prospect of future growth, and in the apotheosis of hope as I use the long months before the baby's birth to write, at last, the final chapter of Hogwarts: A History.
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