Bridges
Chapter Four: Bridging the Gap
"Harry?" Ron's voice came again, nearer now, and his best mate of so many years stepped around the end of the shelving, behind which Harry still crouched, staring at the rumpled section of parchment. "You did find something on Annemarie, eh?" He didn't wait to let Harry respond. "I must say, I thought this was a random attack aimed at sending you some kind of message, but now - with Tabitha Ludlow being a Muggle-born marrying into an elite Pureblood line against their wishes, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we found out that the entire family had been targeted deliberately. What do you have?"
Slowly, Harry dragged his eyes from the incriminating paper - Granger, Lily Catherine seemed permanently seared behind his eyelids - as if his gaze weighed several tons. He looked at Ron without comprehension, without recognition, total blank nothingness in his stare.
Ron shifted his weight from foot to foot, eying Harry warily, as if he might spontaneously burst into flames.
"Harry…?" He said again, very tentatively. "You - you all right, mate?"
It can't be mine - she can't be mine, Harry's mind was reeling, pinwheeling away from the truth, refusing to see it, not for what it was itself, but for what it inherently implied. The dates were right; it might explain why Hermione had not attempted to contact him since he'd been gone. But she couldn't - she couldn't hate me like that, could she? If the baby were mine, why wouldn't she tell me? But if it weren't mine, why would she name her Lily? The pain of the emotional wound was great, as if he'd sustained a sledgehammer blow to the chest, and he sucked in a noisy gasp, as if he'd just remembered that he wasn't breathing; the sound startled both men. Vaguely, Harry registered that Ron was speaking again.
"Ron," he interrupted, and was pleasantly surprised at how normal his voice sounded. "Did Tonks give me clearance for records duplication?"
"Sure, mate," Ron replied slowly, cutting a sideways glance at him that assured Harry that Ron was still well aware of his bizarre behavior. "It was given when your temporary assignment here came through." A heavy pause pulsed through the silent Archive room.
He leaned closer to Harry, who instinctively pressed the life-altering scrap of parchment to his chest. Ron gave him an odd look, and tried to laugh it off, but was clearly befuddled at the way Harry was acting.
"It's - it's not about Annemarie," he explained, by way of defending the motion away from Ron. "It's… nothing to do with the case at all, actually. I was just wondering… about the duplication, I mean." He gestured expansively at the messy floor with his free hand, the one that was not clutching the incriminating paper, indicating the snarled scrolls that lay scattered hither and yon. "I - I haven't found the records for Annemarie yet."
Ron was still looking at him suspiciously, clearly not mollified by his stammered explanation, clearly wondering about the parchment Harry held, which he claimed to be innocuous.
"Right then," he said slowly. "I'm going to start going through the Genealogy Records. I want to see how far back this Ludlow line goes, and what other elite families it connects with. The purity of the line could be enough to kill for - and you should've seen the way that Ludlow woman sneered at Herm - well, it's obvious enough that she's got no love lost for Muggle-borns."
"Would she really take out her flesh and blood? Her own granddaughter, her son?" Harry surprised them both by speaking aloud. I have a daughter, I have a daughter - his own situation was definitively stamping its image onto the case they were currently investigating.
Ron shrugged expansively.
"I dunno," he replied. "But you saw her, Harry. Cold-hearted harpy, if there ever was one."
Harry made himself move again, scrabbling woodenly in the piles of paperwork with disinterested fingers. Ron ambled back to the end of the aisle, the presence of something he didn't understand in the least looming up over Harry like a tangible cloud. He chucked a thumb over his shoulder.
"I'll just be over - " he began, when Harry blurted,
"Ron!" and stopped.
"Yeah?" the redhead asked, when no additional conversation was forthcoming. Harry appeared to be rather surprised that he'd spoken at all.
"Is - is Hermione…is she married or - or serious … with anyone, at all?" The trembling of his voice and the audible rattling of the parchment he held completely overthrew the casual air he half-heartedly attempted. Ron squinted at him, as if a spell had suddenly rendered him near-sighted.
"No, she's not. `S one of the reasons she got pissed off at me today," he added brightly, hoping to lighten his friend's mood. "Seems she objected to my use of the phrase `flavor of the week'." He waited for Harry to smile, to appreciate the fact that Hermione was not serious about anyone, but there was no change in his expression.
"She - she doesn't still live at the flat, does she?" he asked, in almost a monotone. The return address on Ron's post had changed at least twice in the dozen years he'd been gone. For reasons unknown even to himself, he had continued to pay rent on the flat, but he didn't really expect that Hermione still lived there.
"No…er…no, she got a smaller place - closer to St. Mungo's, after she got back from her internship on the Continent." Ron scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. This line of questioning wasn't as random as it seemed, and it certainly hadn't started because Harry suddenly felt in the mood to discuss Hermione. His eyes flicked back to the paper Harry held.
Harry for his part sighed angrily at Ron's words. Ah, yes, he thought, that damned internship. He had soothed himself for about two years by blaming that particular opportunity for the destruction of the fledgling relationship, but knew in the deepest part of his soul that that was not the case.
"You…still see her often? Go to her place?" he continued, the words dragging out of him against their will.
"Sure…sure," Ron said, trying to force amiability and normalcy into his voice. "She comes to the Burrow some weekends for lunch… and we get together- Fred, George, some of the old Gryffindor gang - about once a month or so for dinner and drinks, sometimes at her place or mine, or a restaurant or pub… Harry, will you please tell me what the hell you're on about?"
Harry looked at Ron with a baffled, yet wounded expression. He was trying to reconcile two seemingly incongruous facts with each other - Ron was still close to Hermione, but Ron had no idea that Hermione had a child. He couldn't fathom the possibility that Ron had withheld something like this from him, even if their best mate hadn't known of their dalliance. If Harry found out that Ron had known… well, he'd be on the next Floo back to Australia, Annemarie Ludlow or no. He tried not to think of the pale, brutalized, scarred little girl in the bed at St. Mungo's.
He swallowed hard and actually shut his eyes, as he extended his arm toward Ron, displaying the parchment to him.
The ensuing silence grew so lengthy and deafening that Harry finally risked a peek, and found Ron staring at the paper with as dumbfounded a look as Harry had ever seen on his face.
"That's - that's gotta be a mistake," was the first thing out of Ron's mouth, even though they both knew it wasn't. "Some kind of mix-up…even - even a blatant falsification, although I dunno why anyone would do such a … she - she…" He trailed off, and looked helplessly at Harry.
"So… so you didn't know?" Harry pressed, wanting to hear it from Ron himself.
"No. Harry, no. I swear I had no idea. She never even - I don't see how she could have kept it from me - from our friends… she wasn't - " he stopped suddenly, and scrutinized the entry more closely. Dawning awareness lit his eyes and blossomed in his cheeks.
"Sweet Merlin, Harry… is it - is she yours?"
"Looks like," was the sullen reply.
Ron gaped at him in horrified sympathy, wanting to reach out and clap him on the shoulder, but slightly wary of doing so, wondering what else he didn't know about his two best friends, wondering how these two had morphed into apparent strangers.
"If this - 4 March… that's not very long after she came back from her internship," Ron mused, thinking aloud. "One of her first days back was my birthday. I remember it being really awkward - probably one of the only times she asked about you. She - she could have cloaked her p - pregnancy for that long, I reckon," Ron shook his head, as if the whole thing were too incredible to be believed.
Harry was still in his crouched position, sunken on the floor, finally having become aware of the ache in his knees. She came home to have the baby. She came home to have the baby, but still didn't tell me, didn't tell anyone. He wondered what had become of the child, but if Ron was aware of no such person, he figured Hermione had to have put her up for adoption.
The bitterness was acute and painful. Harry felt it stoke its hands in the fires of his righteous indignation and rise up like bile in his throat. With one quick, tersely spoken spell, he had duplicated the entry marking Lily Granger's birth, and stood fluidly to his feet, sloppily folding the new copy and shoving it in his pocket.
He spoke roughly to Ron, biting off the words as if they tasted foully in his mouth.
"Where does she live?"
*~~~~~*
Hermione padded into the nearly empty kitchen, her bare feet slapping smoothly against the linoleum. There was a refrigerator, charmed to stay cool, rather than powered by electricity. Opening the door revealed a full carafe of pumpkin juice, and absolutely nothing else.
Retrieving the juice, she looked askance at the array of cabinets, wondering if there were any glasses to be had. Her search yielded exactly one, and she used a simple Duplication charm to create its twin. She wasn't sure whether this evidence encouraged or further disheartened her. Harry had clearly not been planning on entertaining anyone tonight. She didn't even know when he'd managed to supply what sparse furnishings there were.
She sighed slightly, filled both glasses to the brim, and headed back to the corner bedroom.
Harry had had the growing impression, ever since Hermione had all but leapt from the bed and fled the room, that something was not quite right, and the thought filled him with dread. He had certainly not planned this, but - but maybe they could work something out. There was surely no one as precious or important to him as Hermione - though he shied skittishly away from the word `love' -- and there was obviously mutual attraction between them. He wanted her - and she had wanted him - but there was something else there as well, something deeper. His brow crinkled as he tried to determine exactly what it was.
The shrill little instinct to flee still wailed its klaxon call in his head, but now a soberer, more rational voice added that perhaps Hermione could accompany him on his search, perhaps she was the one who could help a bloke find the answers he sought. He felt his heart rate accelerate as he thought of the smoky, unfocused look in her eyes, when he had lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath her half-open blouse.
He tucked his arms behind his head and smiled at the ceiling, thinking of deserted and exotic tropical locales, where he and Hermione might as well be the only people in the world. He had been mulling over the idea of an extended vacation for quite some time - since the battle had ended, really -- thinking that it would serve the two-fold purpose of getting him away from the slavering, obsessive wolves of the wizarding media and give him the alone time and the personal freedom that he had never had the chance to experience before. The Dursleys had certainly never taken him anywhere on holiday, and his life in the wizarding world thus far had chiefly been concerned with staying alive.
Hermione was certainly in need of time away as much as the next person; he knew that better than anybody. He rather reluctantly supposed that Ron could accompany them as well, though their other best mate had more of a support system already in place than either of them did.
A niggling fear trickled like icy water down his spine, as he thought of what had scared him so badly at the Burrow. Hermione has put her entire life on hold for me up until now; what if she wants to keep her distance, fulfill her own dreams? What if there was no place for him in this new world? But then he thought again of Hermione's warm, lithe limbs wrapped around him, the look on her face when he had advanced on her to kiss her - those weren't the actions of someone who didn't want to be involved, were they? He wanted to know, and yet, at the same time, didn't want to know - thinking that the uncertainty was preferable to knowing that she didn't want the same things he wanted.
Harry jumped as guiltily as if he'd been speaking his thoughts aloud, when Hermione reentered the room, holding two juices aloft. She proffered him one, and he took it, with thanks, watching her warily to see what she was going to do next.
She walked around the foot of the bed, and sat in the spot she'd only recently vacated, pulling the sheet up into her lap, and sipping on the drink. When she'd dispatched half the juice, she reached across him to set her cup on the table, and then curled up into his side, tucking her knees up into the oversized shirt. He finished his drink, set it aside, and wrapped both arms around her, laying his cheek atop her head, and closing his eyes in utter contentment.
Why can't it always stay this way? Part of him wondered.
Who said it has to change? Another inner voice replied. Harry felt sure that Hermione had to have heard the thundering of his heart. He opened his mouth to say something, although he wasn't really sure what.
Say, Hermione - I don't know about you, but I certainly had fun a few moments ago, and I rather think I'd like to do that again. We seem to get along well together, and we already know all of our bad habits, so what say we see where this whole thing is headed? His shoulders scrunched up in a cringe, as he mentally shook his head. He'd be lucky if he wasn't pulling his wand out of his arse after something like that - it sounded like something Ron might say.
"Harry?" Hermione interrupted his inner castigation by speaking his name in a questioning tone. He turned his head to look at her; her face was very close, and why hadn't he ever noticed how long and dark her eyelashes were?
"We should conjure up a mattress and bedding to put in the corner," she said, and he stared at her, unable to comprehend the purpose of her non sequitur.
"What?" he finally said, stupidly.
"Well, Ron's probably going to come over in the morning, and do you really want him to know that we - we slept together?"
Why not? Part of Harry wanted to retort, some primitive side of him wanting to beat his chest and proclaim his sexual prowess from the rooftops. Instead, he said,
"Ron doesn't know where we - oh…" He stopped in mid-stream of his denial, as Hermione wiggled her fingers in front of him, and he dropped his gaze to the silver band on his right hand as well. Each of the Trio had one, a silver ring, unadorned except for a small series of runes, enabling them to locate and Apparate directly to either of the others. Hermione had fashioned them during the horcrux hunt. "All right, then," he conceded her point, and reached for his wand, transfiguring a book into a mattress, which he directed to the floor by the desk, and his pillowcase into linens, which he tossed haphazardly in the general direction of the makeshift bed.
Hermione rolled her eyes at him fondly, and murmured a spell that pristinely made the little bed, complete with one corner of the sheet turned back. Harry felt disappointment - and something else he couldn't pinpoint - roil through his gut like a wave of nausea.
"Well," he mumbled, swinging his legs over the side, and bracing his hands on the mattress to push himself up, "G'night then, Hermione…"
His feet had barely touched the polished wooden floor, when he felt an insistent hand on his elbow. He looked back into a pair of gently amused brown eyes.
"I just said we should conjure up a mattress - not that you should actually sleep on it," she teased softly, as she tugged him down into the bed with her.
"You want me to stay?" he asked, sounded rather more surprised than he meant to. Uncertainty flickered in her luminous gaze.
"Only if you want to…" she hedged, tucking the edge of her bottom lip between her teeth. He could see her pulse beating in the column of her neck, and he scooted down under the covers alongside her, until his face was mere centimeters from hers.
"Do you want me to stay?" he enunciated carefully, not taking his eyes off of her face. He had to know for certain; he had to hear it from her.
Wordlessly, she nodded, as entranced with him as he seemed to be with her. One long bare thigh slid between his legs.
"Nox," they murmured in unison, against each other's mouths.
*~~~~~*
Harry was so overwrought that he nearly fell upon Apparation onto the dead-end side street in Hermione's neighborhood to which Ron had somewhat unwillingly directed him. He had vanished practically before Ron finished speaking. Ignoring the wrench in his ankle, as he struggled to stay on his feet and then pivoted toward the main road, he used long ground-eating strides to close the distance between himself and the building where she lived.
There was a crack behind him, but he ignored it. However, he could not shrug off the firm grip that closed around his arm and shoulder, as Ron's longer-legged gait caught up to him.
"Ron, I swear to Merlin, if you don't let me go, I'll - " he spun around, jerking his arm away from his mate, but the threat remained unspoken on his lips.
"Harry, come on! Just - just let's not go off half-cocked, all right? Have you thought about what you're going to say to her? Just going to shove that piece of paper in her face, are you? You haven't seen her in twelve years. You - you don't know what she's been through… evidently nobody does, but there - there has to be a reason..." It was Hermione, Ron seemed to be saying; she wouldn't ever do anything without a reason.
"If she had told me - if she had said one word… I'd have been there, Ron. In half a second." Harry's voice vibrated with what seemed to be anger, but there were guilt, despair, regret, and longing all present as well.
"Harry, I know," Ron said meaningfully. "I don't know why things went south between you two, and I certainly don't know why - or how - Hermione kept this from everybody, but the fact is that you can't change what happened. You can only decide what you're going to do now."
Harry eyed Ron sideways with a kind of sullen admiration.
"I'd hate to think that you're the most mature of the three of us now," he muttered, with a grudging half-smile.
"I've known it for years," Ron replied, thumbing his robes with mock pomposity.
Harry ran his hands through his dark hair, and walked in a small circle, seemingly lost in his own turmoil. After a moment, he took a deep breath, and looked up at Ron.
"I've got to see her," he finally said. "I can't say I really want to, and I'm not sure what I'm going to say to her, but I - I promise I'll keep control of myself, Ron. You have my word."
Ron nodded at him, the words, Remember she's my best friend too, not even needing to be spoken.
"You want me to come with?" he asked, sounding uncharacteristically gentle.
"No - no, but thanks anyway, mate. This is something that's been a long time coming, I reckon. I need to do it on my own." He couldn't believe that the mere thought of facing her again turned his insides into water. His palms were clammy, and he wiped his damp hands on his robes.
Ron took two or three steps backwards, and shoved his hands into his pockets, head bobbing up and down in a nod, as he strove for something meaningful to say.
"Guess I'll … head back to the Ministry, keep going over those records. We are supposed to be working a case, you know." It was a gently thrown jab, and Harry took it in kind.
"Thanks, Ron," he said sincerely. "I'll - I'm sure it'll be a short meeting." His voice was flat and held no expectations. Ron found it vaguely depressing.
Harry turned away from him and strode toward Hermione's building with all the swift rigidity of someone who knows a painful event is coming and wants only to get it over with. He did not turn when Ron Disapparated.
As he entered the building and climbed to the fifth floor, it felt as if the slight weight of the parchment in his pocket had increased a hundredfold.
Granger, Lily Catherine. Granger, Lily Catherine. It seemed to throb in his brain in sync with his pulse. Where was she? Why hadn't Hermione told him? He'd thought she'd known how he felt about family. Hadn't he made his envy of the Weasleys abundantly clear?
His stomach churned uneasily as he faced the door marked 5-C. Belatedly, he realized that he had no idea if she was even home. His arm rose stiffly, as if under power other than his own, his hand closed into a fist, and rapped lightly at the door.
His hope - or maybe it was fear - that she might be out was crushed when he heard movement beyond the door; the handle rattled, and the door eased open.
And there she was, still in the black sheath she'd worn at the wake, but in her stocking feet. She was thinner than he remembered, and there were the faintest beginnings of lines at the corners of her eyes. A couple of wayward locks of hair had escaped her chignon to frame her face. She was looking at him with unadulterated alarm that did not exactly extend to surprise, though she did remember to finally force her mouth upward in a plastic smile.
"H - Harry," she struggled to sound natural, but her voice rang high and false. He could tell that she was far from pleased to see him. "Whatever brings you here?"
"I'm back in England on temporary assignment." He couldn't keep slight emphasis off the word `temporary'. His voice sounded much more polite than his stony face indicated. "And I think it's high time we talked."
TBC
Wow! The response to chapter 3 was awesome. I'm so glad people are reading the story and are intrigued by it. It definitely makes it easier to churn out another chapter, when there are so many people waiting for it!
Hope you enjoy this one as well. You may leave a review on your way out, if you like!
lorien
-->