Bridges
Chapter Five: To Bridge the Great Divide
Harry saw Hermione's hand flex on the door handle, fingers fluttering ever so slightly, as if her muscles were already imagining what it would feel like to shove the door shut right in his face. She was debating whether or not she was even going to let him in, he realized. Her clear gaze on him faltered, and she swung the door wide, even as she said,
"I can't imagine what we'd have to talk about - after all these years."
"We were friends for a long time, Hermione. Surely we could think of something," Harry suggested, his tone falsely cheerful, while his eyes remained distant and remote, chips of glacial ice.
Hermione turned her back on him, and led him into the small, cozy living room of the flat. A small leather sofa was squashed into one corner, with a tall lamp on a stand behind it and a overstuffed chair opposite. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by multiple bookshelves, filled to capacity - and then some - with a variety of titles.
"Nice place," he commented with studied indifference. He could see her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, as she tried to hang on to her composure. Anger battered him, and threatened to knock him from his feet like the sucking trough of a wave, as he struggled with a sudden desire to do exactly what Ron had mentioned: shove the bloody birth record into her face and demand answers.
"Thank you," she replied, the words utterly meaningless, proceeding from her mouth mechanically and without an ounce of emotion. The silence stretched and filled every nook and cranny of the flat, seeming to gain actual mass and presence, as if there were a third party privy to the painful face-to-face meeting.
Harry felt his blood pressure rising with the extended stillness, and he simultaneously ran one hand through his hair and jammed the other in his pockets, the crackle of the parchment seeming to resound off of Hermione's walls. His hand slid against it, sweat-slick with nerves, and he finally burst out,
"Dammit, Hermione!"
She looked at him with carefully manufactured surprise, arching her brows delicately, as if she could not understand why he was making such an outburst.
"As I recall, you said that you felt we needed to talk," she said coolly, erecting figurative barriers between them with her overly precise pronunciation. "So…talk."
He sighed noisily, looking at a loss for words. He didn't know where to begin.
"I'm - I was called in from Australia on a case," he said, almost disinterestedly. "The attack on Annemarie Ludlow?"
There was a sheen of emotion in Hermione's eyes, as she nodded.
"I spoke with Ron at the wake," she offered, sounding nearly normal. "Annemarie's mother and I worked at St. Mungo's together."
"They - they called me back because the girl was found with a - a lightning bolt carved into her face." He darted a look at Hermione, and found the expected horrified sympathy there. He noted that it made him feel slightly better; he could always count on Hermione to understand, if nothing else - she had always been able to discern just what it felt like to be Harry Potter, trampled upon by notoriety for which he had not asked or sought.
Granger, Lily Catherine bludgeoned him behind the eyes again. If Hermione was so bloody understanding and compassionate, then how the hell was he supposed to reconcile the events of the last decade or more?
"Death Eaters, then?" she spoke with a kind of calm assurance. "Remnants of those who followed Voldemort?"
Harry shrugged a noncommittal kind of agreement with one shoulder.
"'Swhat we thought at first - but we - we were down in Archives, researching her family…" The words stuck awkwardly in his throat, and he had difficulty forcing them out. The birth record seemed to be shouting its existence from the depths of his robes. "And being as how Tabitha Ludlow was a Muggle-born who married into a elite pureblood family, Ron thinks that it mayn't have had anything to do with me at all, except because - except as - "
"A figurehead," Hermione filled in for him. She was sitting nervously in the plump leather chair, perched on the very edge with most of her balance still forward on her feet, as if to permit quick and easy flight, should the situation come to require it. "The most famous Half-blood to destroy everything purebloods ever stood for." Murky and troubled emotion shadowed her dark eyes. She wiped the palms of her hands in her lap, as if she'd touched something slimy, and pursed her lips. "You didn't come here to discuss your case, Harry."
"No, I didn't," he said, fixing his green gaze unwaveringly on her, admitting the truth easily.
She waited for a moment, and then exhaled in frustration when she saw that he was going to make her ask the thousand-galleon question.
"Then why are you here?"
"I told you why," he answered her, thankful that his voice remained even. Part of him rejoiced at the frustration building up in her eyes and posture, perversely enjoying her discomfort, as one who is miserable loves the companionship of others in a similar state. "We need to talk."
Hermione actually let herself lean back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest, and staring pointedly at Harry, her expression the very picture of defiance. He would not make her ask again.
"The first thing I thought when I saw Miss Ludlow bruised and unconscious in her hospital bed with her face disfigured like that was, `Thank Merlin I have no children'," Harry said, his voice trembling only slightly, as he tried to sound nonchalant. His heart felt like it was going to beat its way out of his chest, or perhaps merely explode. "Can you imagine," he continued, "what Death Eaters bent on making a statement could think to do to a child of Harry Potter himself? But luckily, you were able to make it clear how you really felt about me, and we never had to worry about that, did we? I suppose, on some level, I should be grateful to you."
Hermione rolled her eyes and stood up.
"This is all very dramatic and passive-aggressive of you, Harry. And I'm truly sorry that some little girl's terrible personal tragedy has brought our entire pathetic saga back into the forefront of your mind, but I have no inclination to listen to whatever has festered in your brain about me for the last twelve years." She moved toward the door, clearly planning on throwing him out.
Harry felt as if his jaw would swing open on a hinge. He was sitting in her living room, all but calling her out about their baby, and she still wasn't going to admit it. Deciding to abandon subtlety altogether, he pulled the folded parchment, now slightly worse for the wear, from the confines of his pocket and waved it in her general direction.
"At one time, I would've thought that I knew Hermione Granger better than anyone else knew her, and better than I knew anyone else on this planet," he said, and the false friendliness had fled his tone; it sounded granite-hard and sharp as whetted knives. "Imagine my surprise down in Archives, when I - completely by accident, you understand - found out that all of that was a lie."
He watched her, half-triumphant and fearful, half-sickened with anger and regret, as her eyes moved back and forth over the inked words on the parchment. He watched the color drain away from her face. She looked at him, eyes wide with shame and sorrow, and said nothing.
"Is she mine?" he asked.
"Harry - " she began, though her voice was the barest of squeaks.
"Is she mine?"
And he knew the answer, he knew the answer, but when she softly replied in the affirmative without looking at him, it still felt like a sucker punch that drove all the air from his lungs and sent him all but reeling to his knees. There was a little girl, somewhere, who was half him, and he didn't know her, and perhaps she was wondering why her parents hadn't wanted her, and - he had never felt such rage against Hermione - Hermione, the person who had, at one time, inspired the purest and most positive emotions in him - in his life.
*~~~~~*
"Oi!" came Ron's voice, echoing down the hallway from the large and still empty living room. "Oi, is anyone here?"
Hermione stirred sleepily in Harry's arms, and then sprang frantically from them, her eyes wide with alarm and realization.
"Harry," she hissed, elbowing him none too gently in the ribs. "Harry, wake up! Ron's already here!"
"What?" Harry mumbled, as he struggled to come fully awake. "Why in the hell did he have to pick today to become an early riser?"
Hermione flung a frenzied glance at her watch, as she threw Harry's shirt back over her head, and looked wildly around for her knickers.
"It's not early, Harry. It's half-ten!"
There were footfalls in the corridor. Harry had thrown on his boxers, and Hermione was hurrying on bare feet, clothes hastily piled in her arms, to the small mattress on the floor.
Harry made a dissenting noise, and Hermione looked back at him questioningly.
"Ron would never believe that I'd make you sleep on the floor. Get back in the bed."
Hermione appeared to concede his point, and they quickly switched places, tucking themselves into separate beds, as if Ron had newly roused them.
"We're in here, Ron! The room in the back - `sthe only one with furniture in it." Harry called, hoping that his voice didn't crack mid-sentence. "'Fraid you've caught us having a bit of a lie-in." In a softer voice, he said to Hermione, "I dunno why we can't just tell Ron the truth - don't you think he's grown up enough to handle it? It's been ages since you and he … anyway."
"And what is the truth, Harry?" Hermione asked quietly, watching him from the bed with large, dark eyes. "What are we?" The question tumbled from her lips, unbidden, and inwardly, she winced, but Harry didn't get the chance to answer, because another voice sang out cheerily,
"A lie-in? On a day like today? Mum's sent us over with brunch, and I think she cooked everything in the house."
Hermione and Harry exchanged glances, and Harry let his eyes slowly slide shut in ambivalent exasperation.
Ron's little sister had apparently decided to accompany him.
"Camping out together, just like the horcrux days, eh?" Ron said jovially, as he swung the door wide and then whistled low under his breath when he took in the nicely appointed room. "Only…not. This is great, Harry! Which room's mine?"
"Whichever one you want - if Hermione hasn't already claimed it, that is," Harry replied, scrunching down under the sheets, and trying to act unconcerned at the sight of Ginny's vivid head striving to peer over her brother's shoulder.
"Well," Hermione said briskly, Summoning her jeans from where she'd hastily draped them over a chair, and folding them neatly across her sheet-covered lap. "Now that you've properly shamed us, Ron, let us get dressed, and try to do something productive with what's left of the morning."
"Productive…" Ron all but groaned, rolling his eyes theatrically. "Right, of course."
Ginny took the opportunity to thrust a basket through the door beneath Ron's arm.
"Mum's sent breakfast," she offered, as several tantalizing aromas drifted into the room. Harry's stomach gurgled audibly, and the Weasleys laughed. Hermione caught Harry's suspicious glance at Ginny, as he obviously wondered at her casual and cheery outlook, given the words they had exchanged the night before.
"See what happens when you sleep all day," Ron teased. "You miss out on food!"
Harry and Hermione exchanged surreptitious looks, each privately thinking that it was the activity engaged in while not sleeping that had caused Harry's hunger.
"Ron's guide to a perfect day," Ginny sighed, with long-suffering good humor. "A kip and enough food for an army." She turned away from the door, calling back over her shoulder, "Don't be long. I'm not sure how long Ron can be put off!"
*~~~~~*
"Where is she?" Harry asked, the raw pain in his voice enough to make Hermione flinch visibly. She couldn't look at him, her gaze fixed on her interwoven fingers, suspended over the backdrop of her stockinged toes, looking for all the world like a Petrified version of herself. She didn't not immediately respond, her lips trembling and tears standing like diamonds in her eyes. "Holy hell, Hermione," he said in utter frustration. "Did you really think you could keep her from me? Did you think I wouldn't care what you did or where she is? She's my daughter, and I - if I can't be in her life on a regular basis, I at least want to see for myself that she's well… and - and happy."
"She's dead!" Hermione burst out suddenly, overlapping his last words, her statement overly loud in the quiet flat. The incriminating word sounded like it had propelled itself between her teeth and landed in the middle of the room with a half-sob.
"What?" Harry asked, very carefully, willing himself to have heard wrong. Hermione was wringing her hands.
"She - she died. Harry, oh God - she - she was only a few hours old… there - there was some kind of - it was a congenital heart condition - not even magic… there was nothing anyone could do."
Stunned, Harry dropped his eyes to the wrinkled parchment again, as if to look for some newly appeared Date of Death, of which he had hitherto been unaware.
"Death Records are filed separately," Hermione murmured distractedly, her hand lifting automatically to dash away the tears that began to overspill their bounds.
Harry didn't know what to say, as his fingers lost their grip on the birth record, and the parchment fluttered lazily to the floor. His anger had been squelched like a snuffed candle, and he felt only a gnawing emptiness in his gut, the hollow feeling that he had been irrevocably cheated of something, and hadn't even realized it until now, which somehow made it all worse.
"Why - " he said, hoarsely, his voice all but giving out on him. He had to clear his throat and start again. "Why didn't you tell me, Hermione? For the love of Merlin, why?"
"I didn't - I didn't tell anybody, except Mum - she was with me, but I - I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone else …and then - then she died, and it - it hurt too much to tell anybody, and it - it was just so much easier to pretend she - she never… existed…at all…" Her voice dwindled to a whisper. "I shouldn't have come back - I should've known someone would find out eventually… but I wanted my mother." More tears left slick tracks down her face, and she wiped at them with a magicked hanky that she'd procured from somewhere.
"That's not what I asked, Hermione," Harry said, his voice rough, but no longer heated with emotion. "Why didn't you tell me? I would've come - in a heartbeat, an instant." He reached out as if to touch her, beseeching her to believe him, but stopped abruptly, and tucked his hands behind his back.
"Does it really matter now?" Hermione asked, in a shell of a voice, looking newly ravaged by the old grief.
"Hell, yes, it matters!" Harry burst out in frustration again. "We could've - we - we might have - " He couldn't articulate the bitterness of dreams that had trickled between his fingers like fine granules of sand, before he'd even realized they were out of reach and that it was forever.
"Your presence there wouldn't have saved her," Hermione pointed out mechanically, beginning to recover her poise, and Harry suddenly wanted to break something, to release the acrid energy building in his soul by flinging a vase across the room and listening to it smash.
"But things might have been different afterward," he said stubbornly, even as Hermione was shaking her head.
"If - if you wanted things to be different, then why did you leave?" Her chin wobbled, and she was on the verge of losing her iron-willed control again.
"If you wanted me to stay, why did you let me go?" he countered.
Hermione balled the handkerchief up in one fist, and flung her hands up into the air angrily.
"Good God, Harry! I'm not your mother! You are perfectly capable of making your own decisions! If you wanted to stay, you could have stayed. You didn't. It's as simple as that."
"I came back," he blurted quietly, and her lips parted over her teeth in surprise. "I wanted you to come with me. I wanted you to want me to stay. And I came back not an hour later, but you were already bloody well gone."
He could tell by the blank look on her face that she'd had no idea he'd returned after their last conversation. He felt a bitter smile twist itself onto his face.
"I was too late then. And I guess it's too late to change anything now. I'm truly sorry, Hermione," he said, and, unable to bear any more, turned on his heel, swiftly exiting her little flat.
*~~~~~*
Hermione finally ventured into their kitchen, newly showered, changed into her clothing, which had been hit with a particularly well-done Refreshing charm, and her hair twisted into a damp knot on top of her head. Ginny was bustling around, muttering about the general lack of anything useful in the kitchen, and she flicked her eyes over as Hermione entered.
"Where's Ron?" The older girl asked. Softly, toward the rear of the flat, she could hear the water running as Harry showered.
"He's gotten you hooked into the Floo network - don't worry, it's well warded," Ginny answered, tacking on the last phrase at Hermione's look of concern. "He went back home to get some dishes and things." She reached into the obviously charmed basket, her upper torso all but disappearing inside it, and pulled some more containers out, stacking them onto the countertop with precise thwacks.
Hermione shifted uneasily, feeling the cool linoleum under her bare feet, and absent-mindedly chewed at a fingernail. She didn't really know what to say to Ginny.
"So, how are you doing today?" she finally asked awkwardly.
Ginny slanted a cool, knowing glance at her.
"You mean, since Harry dumped me and you slept with him?"
Hermione felt the heat rise so quickly into her face that she knew she must be glowing. She clutched blindly for the countertop, afraid that she might otherwise fall into a writhing heap on the floor. Distantly, she was aware of the sound of running water from Harry's shower.
"Ex -- cuse me?" she coughed, in an unconvincing attempt at shocked denial.
Ginny's almost-smirk was sardonic enough to be worthy of a Malfoy, but this time, Hermione caught the glints of anger and jealousy in her eyes. The redhead was masking it well.
"It's written all over your face, Hermione. I could tell the moment I laid eyes on the two of you this morning - even with the `separate beds'. You don't think I mind?" Ginny's tone said that she found that mildly amusing. "Look, I know that Harry's confused. I know that he's been through a lot in the last year, and that he's never really had a normal life anyway. I know he needs time to sort himself out and - I can wait."
Hermione was flabbergasted.
"But he's - he's not - you - "
"If he needs an - an outlet, and you can give that to him, then - then who am I to stand in his way? But I remember the look on his face the first time he kissed me, I remember the way he smiled, and the way he held me, and we can have that again. I can be patient while he … works out his issues." Ginny's smile was both magnanimous and condescending. Hermione suddenly understood from whence came the urge to claw someone's eyes out.
The perceived truths in Ginny's words didn't help either. Hadn't she thought of herself as a substitute for a good wank only hours ago? Hadn't Harry thanked her for what had happened between them. Inwardly, she wanted to curl into a ball and scream with humiliation.
"What if he's not working out any issues? What if he's genuinely interesting in me? Did you ever think of that?" Hermione asked, frigidly, one brow raised in inquiry. She locked her hands behind her back and hoped Ginny would not see them tremble.
Ginny looked, at first, as if she did not believe Hermione could be serious. Then her musical laugh lilted throughout the kitchen.
"With you?" she managed to sputter. "Just…like that?"
"Eight years of friendship is hardly `just like that'," Hermione snapped, revealing how much Ginny's words bothered her more than she wanted to let on.
"Did he ever tell you that the time he was with me was the only time he felt normal?" Ginny asked, amazingly managing to sound off-hand.
Hermione couldn't help but draw in a quiet gasp at the sting of the seemingly innocuous question. Harry had mentioned it more than once, during the gloomy mourning period of the horcrux hunt. Dumbledore's death had cast a lengthy pall over the mission, and Bill and Fleur's wedding was a distant and unreal memory in the gray and bleak abandoned places in which they searched.
What he wants more than anything is to have a `normal life', she admitted to herself, knowing it was true. She had been with him to the end - what if she was too much of a reminder of everything that happened, everything that he wanted to forget? What if she was his crutch, his fall-back, his `wank', something that he wanted to be free of, but couldn't quite manage on his own…an addiction?
One hand had risen to lay flat across her breastbone. Her heart still beat within her chest, but each breath had suddenly become painful. She looked up at Ginny, who was regarding her impassively, her arms folded across her chest.
Ginny's right, Hermione realized, deliberately closing her eyes to the fact that the unplanned coupling between herself and Harry meant more to her than she would've previously guessed. I'm going to have to let him go.
TBC
Some more answers for you, but this is not all I have planned, not by a long shot. Hope everyone is still enjoying the story!
You may leave a review on the way out, if you like. They are always much appreciated, even if I don't have the time to reply to all of them, as I'd like.
lorien
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