Bridges
Chapter Eleven: Drawbridge
The further Harry and Hermione proceeded down the tiled corridor of St. Mungo's, the shorter Hermione's strides became, and the closer she drew to Harry. By the time, they'd climbed the stairs to the appropriate floor, she was walking just behind his left elbow.
"Hey, are you okay?" he finally turned to ask, his voice solicitous and concerned. He seemed to quickly assess the reasoning behind the uncharacteristic uncertainty. "She's almost eleven, Hermione. She's not going to shoot flames out of her eyes or rip your head off."
"How is she?" she asked suddenly, almost breathily, as though the words escaped without permission.
"Physically, she's rather frail right now. She looks pretty rough, Hermione." His tone was meant in warning, to prepare her. "Emotionally, she's lost, bewildered, grieving… Her personality though - " A small grin twisted his lips as he thought of his conversation with Annemarie. "She's very smart, sounds a lot older than she actually is… kinda ballsy. She actually reminded me a bit of you - even though I didn't really realize it before..." He cocked his head thoughtfully at her.
Hermione staggered a couple of steps backward, as if he'd struck her full in the face, but managed to recover, and turn smoothly on one heel.
"I - I can't do this…" she stammered, beginning to walk briskly back in the direction from which they'd come.
Harry grabbed her by the elbow.
"Nobody said we had to go in there and spill the whole sorry tale tonight." His voice was even, but there was a take-charge note in it that Hermione was having trouble adjusting to. "It's after three, and she's probably sleeping. I just figured we'd … peek in, let you see her." Suddenly, he peered closely at her. "You do want to see her?" His forehead was puckered with doubt.
"Of course I do," Hermione moaned, scrubbing her hands over her face and making her voice sound muffled and uncertain. "I used to see her at work with Tabitha quite a bit, but - it seems so different now, knowing that… It's just - I'm not sure I can look at her, and - and not be completely overwhelmed…"
"By what?"
"By the ramifications, Harry! She's alive! She's been alive this whole time. If it hadn't
been for - we could have - she … what if she can't forgive us? What if she'd be better off…?"
"We're going to have to tell her at some point," Harry said, infusing more confidence than he actually felt into his tone.
"I - I understand that, Harry. I know she deserves to know. It's just - it's just… Peter and Tabitha were her parents, her real parents, and they're - they were good people. We can't - we're not going to be able to replace them, Harry."
There was an odd note in her voice, and Harry looked down to see her small hand cupping his shoulder; she looked as serious as one would trying to convey something very important to a small child.
"I'm not trying to replace anybody, Hermione." Exasperation tiptoed in on the fringes of his voice.
"I know you just found out about her today, and I know how you get when you decide to be terribly ferocious and protective, but - "
"I don't think either of us can presume to know how the other `gets' after all this time, do you?" He meant it as somewhat of a jest, but Hermione's face blossomed into slow flame, marred with more than just slight worry. He hastened to assuage it, all too aware, more than ever, of what happened when things went unsaid. "That doesn't mean I don't love you. I've loved you for so long that I don't think I'd know how to feel things differently. It does mean that we're going to have to get reacquainted… at least a little…"
A look of nostalgia washed briefly across his face. Has anyone seen a toad? A boy named Neville's lost one. But he straightened his shoulders, and returned to the task at hand: their daughter, Annemarie.
"Leaving her with any of that family is not an option. Her parents were obviously an aberration. And I think she'll be okay - with the concept of us, anyway - after a while. Kids are adaptable. And she does come from very open-minded stock…"
He meant his last words to be light-hearted, but the second reminder of Annemarie's true origins only caused Hermione to groan and move the wrong way down the hall once again.
He grabbed her around the upper arms, and pulled her a few shuffling steps nearer, bending his knees so that he could peer into her face.
"Hey," he said, shaking her gently, his voice very soft, even in the wee-hours-quiet of the hospital. "What is all this really about?"
"I don't have legitimate reason to be upset?" She wiped at her damp cheeks with the backs of her hands, sounding slightly miffed.
"Is it Annemarie you're afraid to face, or what she represents?"
Her face was blank, though there was tension evident in her shoulders.
"I didn't know pop psychology was part of Auror training." Her voice was blandly sardonic, and, Harry realized with an unpleasant start, reminded him vaguely of Draco Malfoy.
"Personal failure," Harry pushed on with his prior point.
She laughed at him, and he took a half-step back. He had not been expecting that particular reaction.
"You and Ron used to always place me up on this pedestal as a paragon of intellect and virtue. Ron finally stopped doing it seven or eight years ago. I do hope it doesn't take you quite that long."
He stammered something inarticulate, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say to that.
"You've just said that you've loved me for so long… I hope you aren't still just… carrying a torch for Hermione Granger, that shining pillar of humanity." She splayed one hand across her breastbone, and sarcastic tears were in her voice. "Because she has feet of clay, Harry. She made hash out of her life twelve years ago, and she has regretted it every second ever since."
"You didn't make the hash by yourself," Harry said, roughly and unevenly. There was a beat of heavy silence. "We are going to have to let go of all this regret eventually." He unfurled his fingers outward, as if releasing a Snitch.
"The millstone around our necks." Again, she sounded as if she did not know whether to laugh or cry. Harry was reminded once more of how tired he was, as the weariness seemed to leach through muscle, sinew, and bone. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his robes, and exhaled a sigh that seemed to rattle through him.
"We can't… go back," he said slowly, choosing his words with care - or perhaps finding them with difficulty. "We can't reclaim what we had once - whatever it was. And we've got to accept that it's lost. We can only … start over again. You know?"
"Yeah." The word was the barest of whispers. He crooked his arm toward her, with an unasked question: Can you do that? With me? And she tucked her hand into his elbow in unspoken assent.
The air was thick and sticky in the tiny windowless bathroom of Hermione's walk-up flat in the heart of wizarding Prague. She could feel her hair sticking to the back of her neck, and the walls and closed door seemed to press in on her - or was that just the utter panic swelling up and spreading out?
Part of her wanted to fling the door open and go out to the miniscule balcony for a breath of fresh air, but another part of her was afraid that if she flung open that door, she'd take off running and wouldn't stop - as if she could flee this.
The white plastic stick was gripped woodenly between numb and unfeeling fingers. The double lines were accusing slashes. The crumbly tile seemed to spin around her, and her other hand groped blindly for the edge of the sink to ward off a fall.
She was pregnant.
She wondered why the little display just didn't say, Look what you've done! Or maybe, for brevity's sake, just, You idiot.
She thought she had done what was best. Harry hardly seemed certain of his feelings, and she had no desire to manipulate him into something that was not heartfelt or sincere. So, she had removed herself from the equation, thinking that this would enable him to decide, without the guilt that her presence would be likely to induce, how he really felt and what he really wanted to do about it.
Deep down, a tiny voice admitted - I thought he'd come.
She'd seen it - flashes of it - the warmth in his eyes when he looked at her, kissed her, touched her. She'd felt it - the way his smile made her stomach flip, the strength of his arms around her, like she'd come home.
But she was Hermione Granger - unable to really believe anything she hadn't seen in print, failing to find the logic in suddenly falling in love with someone who'd been only a friend for years. She had doubted its plausibility.
And he hadn't come.
She'd been in Prague for more than a month, and he hadn't come.
She and Ron had Owled back and forth a few times - Ron's missives being all too short, lacking in details, and generally haphazardly spelled - and he had even Apparated in for a quick lunch once on his way to Rome for some Ministry photo op.
She had heard exactly nothing from Harry.
When Ron's third letter came, bearing this terrible and perfunctory shred of fact: "Harry left today," she had felt the bile rise up in her throat, the nausea coming on so suddenly that she had nearly not made it to the toilet.
And now, three days later, she had discovered that the nausea was Harry's fault in more ways than one. Harry's fault… her fault…
She dropped the test into the small bin, where it landed with a soft noise among used tissues, and walked unseeingly into her living area. Still feeling like a marionette - or someone under Imperius - she sat gingerly at her desk, and picked up her quill.
She sat that way, quill poised over empty parchment, for a very long time.
Dear Harry, she finally wrote, I have something very important to tell you. She scratched that out. Better to start out with a salutation of some kind. I hope you are doing well. Things are splendid here in Prague. She groaned. Lies! And she sounded like Lavender Brown. A quick spell obliterated all of the ink from the scroll.
Dear Harry, she started again. I hope you will forgive my long silence. Another pause. Did she hope he would? He hasn't exactly been Mr. Correspondence himself, part of her sniped. She waved her wand, and the fresh parchment beckoned her.
Dear Harry, I've never written a letter like this before. Why did people always start letters like that? She scratched through it so heavily that she tore holes in the parchment, and swore under her breath as she used Reparo.
Dear Harry, I miss you so much, and I was an utter little fool to let you leave the way you did. I was scared and I panicked, and if you'll only come home, I promise that… She was hardly building a case for herself as a viable love interest here. She sounded like one of those desperate little fan-girls that he was so loath to confront. She obliterated the parchment again, and it was beginning to look shiny and worn at the top. She chewed on the end of her quill in agitation.
He's Harry, a small, but clear voice reminded her. He's your friend, and surely he'll at least listen to what you have to say. Just tell him the truth.
He'll feel tied down. He'll feel obligated. You know he will, she argued back. He's too noble for anything else. I don't want him this way.
He still deserves to know that he is going to be a father.
Dear Harry, she began again with a heavy sigh. I know this letter is long overdue, and I cannot apologize enough. If it helps, I've thought of you every day that I've been gone, and have hoped that you are doing well. I miss you. I hope I did not leave things too irreparably damaged between us. I've some very important news, and would rather not relay it by Owl post. I hate to ask you, but if you had a weekend free, could you come up to Prague? There is much to be said. I would appreciate a prompt reply, as it really is very important. Love, Hermione
She eyed the letter critically. It really sounded very stilted and formal, but she wasn't sure she could improve upon it, without completely losing her composure. She supposed that it was plain enough what she wanted to tell him, but she was hoping that the sort of genial obtuseness that he had always possessed might keep him clueless until he arrived.
She stood and moved over to the window, her palms slick with sweat, her stomach roiling and uneasy. She felt guilty, as if someone would burst into her flat at any moment, and catch her in the act of - of what? Sending someone an Owl? Being pregnant? She felt ridiculous. The mounting nausea was striving to capture her full attention, and she knew a trip back to the bathroom was inevitable, though she was trying to forestall it.
Her tawny owl soared down to perch on the balcony railing, as she opened the window sash. A heavy whump startled her, and she realized that he had delivered the day's issue of the Daily Prophet. Idly, her gaze drifted down to the headline, and her hand clenched the rolled letter so hard that it was crushed in the middle.
Love Down Under?
She scanned it quickly, over the rising protests of her stomach, and her head pronounced it rubbish. The picture was of Harry Potter and a young woman, obviously in conversation. Harry was smiling. There was nothing romantic or possessive in either of their postures, and they appeared to be in some kind of crowded corridor. The article merely identified her as a colleague at the Ministry offices in Sydney, and alluded to a couple of `working lunches'.
She knew it was probably nothing; she could recognize the filler phrases that the Prophet was in the habit of using to enhance a story when there wasn't really one at all.
And, it still jabbed her just a little, like a pointy stone in her shoe. It still sent a frisson of worry and fear up her spine. What if it was true? If Harry really loved her, why wasn't he… moping or something?
You are ridiculous.
She rolled her eyes, but was shredding up his letter, even as she castigated herself for doing it.
I can't handle this today, she told herself. I need to think about it. I need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do, what I'm going to say or not say. She knew her pregnancy would be news, no matter who the father was. She would have to suss out how to mask it, for how long, and to whom. She needed to have a plan - she was good at those - how to explain things to Healer Spurgeon, to her fellow interns, to her parents, to Ron… and to Harry.
If he ever speaks to you again, part of her added snippily.
She threw the scraps in the waste basket by the desk, and used Incendio on them for good measure.
The guards on Annemarie's room moved aside for Harry and Hermione, but did not relax. The Auror in Charge performed a quick scan to prove their identities, while almost apologizing to Harry as he did so. Harry waved off the apology and escorted Hermione into the dimly lit room. The Intercessor, Finnuala Rafferty, slept in a chair that she had elongated into a chaise.
Annemarie slept, cocked slightly off-center, as if she was accustomed to sleeping on her side, but could not manage it in her state. Her hair had been washed and brushed, and Harry could now see the glints of red among the chestnut. Lily Catherine. He almost could not believe it.
Hermione's breath had caught when they entered the room. She was feasting her eyes on her daughter, but Harry could tell when she'd begun to process the injuries, welling with tears.
"Her face…" she said, in scarcely more than a whisper, careful not to disturb those who slumbered.
Harry's brow was lowered, and his eyes were stormy.
"We've been so busy casting blame, but it's not hard to see whose fault it is." He gestured toward the livid lightning bolt slashed across Annemarie's cheek. "If we'd had her with us all this time, perhaps they'd have only targeted her sooner. The second the Ludlows found out she was mine…."
Hermione almost relaxed. This was Harry-carrying-the-weight-of-the-world. She knew this Harry.
"It's just like Voldemort, Harry. He still had choices. The Ludlows had choices. The fact that you are you didn't drive them to do something they couldn't control. They'd known Annemarie since she was born - they thought she was their niece. Most adoptive families love the children as if they did share genes, but they chose to revoke that love. You didn't make them do that, anymore than you made Voldemort take on a vendetta against you."
"I know, Hermione. I know," he conceded. "It's just…" he moved away from her to the bedside, and softly smoothed his daughter's hair with one open palm. "God, I'm so tired."
"How long has it been since you've slept?" Hermione was speaking to him, but still looking at Annemarie.
"I dunno." His voice was apathetic. "Thirty hours? Give or take."
"You need to sleep." Hermione leaned into him as she spoke, laying her hand carefully atop Annemarie's, not wanting to wake her. "Especially if you're going to be arresting people tomorrow."
"I got a room at the Cauldron." He met her gaze meaningfully.
"I think we should go home," she said simply, and he knew she didn't mean her ransacked flat.
Even as they turned to go, the noise from outside reached their ears: the hiss of spellfire, the sound of running feet, shouts of alarm. Something hit the door to Annemarie's hospital room with enough force to cause the door to rattle loudly within its frame.
"They've come," Harry said hoarsely. Annemarie stirred. Someone outside screamed, and they could hear one of the Aurors yelling for backup. "I should go out there…"
Hermione was already in motion, dashing across the room to roughly shake the Intercessor awake. Harry eased toward the door, hoping to gain some inkling of information as to where the hostiles were and what they were doing. He was already fairly certain as to their objective.
He addressed the two women, without fully removing his attention from the door. There was a loud bang, and light flickered beneath the door like distant lightning.
"Get Annemarie as far away from the door as you can. Ward up her bed. They'll not get to her, if I have anything to say about it, but…" He met Hermione's eyes briefly, and they exchanged a look of understanding. "If anything happens…"
"Healer Granger?" came Annemarie's voice, bewildered and sleepy. "Harry Potter?" A faint smile flickered over her face, even as she sounded more confused. "What's going on?"
Harry was at the door, his back flush against it, and one hand on the door handle. Annemarie's eyes moved from his readied wand, to the tense and alert postures of the other two.
"Did they come back?" She was tremulous with fear, her mind fastening unerringly on the most frightening thing she could think of.
Hermione nodded once, carefully, not wanting to lie to the girl.
"But they won't get past Harry," she said, with confidence. She cocked her head toward the most distant corner, the place in the room most shrouded in shadows. "Let's get her over here," she said to Rafferty, and with their wands, they smoothly directed Annemarie's bed in that direction. The girl did not take her eyes off of Harry, as he eased the door open, and the sounds of altercation became louder.
Harry would have preferred it if the door had opened outward, so he could better use it for cover, but he was going to have to pull it toward him. The majority of the Auror guard had attempted to draw the assailants further down the corridor, away from Annemarie's room. There was a crumpled body at Harry's feet, across the very threshold of the door, but other than that, Harry was completely exposed. For all practical purposes, he was as trapped in the room as Annemarie was.
Spellfire whisked past him in a myriad of colors, but nothing hit the door, leaving Harry hopeful that no one had spotted him yet. He carefully eased the door shut again, and leaned back against it.
Hermione, briskly erecting wards around the bed, could tell that he was thinking fiercely, and she was not surprised when he Disillusioned himself, and the trickling effect of the spell all but blotted him from sight.
There was a gasp of amazement from Annemarie.
"That's a Disillusionment charm?" she said, and Hermione almost laughed, though it had a bittersweet note in it.
She actually reminded me a bit of you, Harry's words rang in her mind, and Hermione couldn't help but see the truth in them. Who else could take time to appreciate the intellectual or magical skill inherent in doing a particular thing, even when the act was being performed because of a life-threatening situation?
"It sure is," Hermione replied out loud, keeping her voice calm and upbeat, without sounding like she was talking to a little child. She saw Annemarie's throat quiver nervously, her eyes still fixed on Harry's pale edges, as he crouched down low, and silently opened the door again.
"Will he be all right?" Annemarie asked suddenly, for the first time sounding her age.
"He's going to be fine," Hermione heard herself say, and marveled at her composure. She could not let herself think about the danger, of Harry going out to face opponents who would maim a little girl without the least remorse. She could not let herself think of losing Harry - and her daughter - again, after they had so recently been regained.
She swished her wand smoothly through the air, and the bedside table began to swell and elongate until it was an exact replica of her hospital bed, down to the silver railing and wheels. The cushion from the chair that the Intercessor had been resting in became the lumpy shape of a sleeping human form, and Hermione tucked it neatly beneath the transfigured sheets.
"Nice work," Intercessor Rafferty said appreciatively, and she and Hermione cast Disillusionments on each other, and then on Annemarie and the bed.
The sounds of the fight sounded simultaneously far away and all too near, but in Annemarie's room, Hermione found that her heart was pounding so loudly that she could hear the pulse beat throbbing in he r ears. She and the Intercessor wordlessly took positions in between Annemarie and the door.
"Now, sweetheart," she said in a low whisper. "You be very still and very quiet."
TBC
Okay, so this is not the end. There is going to be (I hope just) one more chapter, and then maybe an epilogue, if y'all haven't been totally soured on epilogues, that is!
Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Thanks for being patient with the gaps in between! You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.
lorien
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