Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I'm only playing.
A/N: Thank you, thank you miconic, I forgot to do that last time. Also, thank you so much for the reviews, everyone; I haven't got around to answering all, but I really am grateful. Enjoy.
***
--Chapter Thirteen--
It's the feeling Harry recognizes, rather than the place. He's only been here once before but it's one of those places, like the cupboard under the stairs, that he'll never leave. The air's caustic and clammy, the surrounding sea hoarse as if it's been wailing for years. He can't see much, so it could just be his imagination, but the walls still seem to glisten faintly green from the glowing potion Dumbledore had drunk. From terrified children to animated corpses, a shard of a soul and a potion of slow death, malice had been perfected here lovingly like a master vintner his signature vintage. It's as though someone's dug a handful of earth from a putrefying grave and pressed it to his nose.
Almost like being inside Voldemort's head.
Knees raw from pinning Malfoy to the hard, uneven floor, he stares about wildly. For a second, he's simply thankful to be in one piece, then his mind begins to race. A light hobbles into view, followed by footsteps.
"Good boy, good boy. You've got it…bring it up closer."
It's a frail, croaking voice, but that too, he recognizes instantly. His hold loosens, and Malfoy makes a feeble attempt to pull free. Harry struggles to his feet, hauling Malfoy along.
"Draco? Answer me, boy. Do you have the--YOU!"
Bellatrix Lestrange drops the lamp. Malfoy makes another bid for freedom. Swearing, Harry pushes him away, then spits out a binding charm. There's a sharp thud and a yell, and Malfoy slides to a sitting position against the hard wall, thick ropes around him. The lamp trundles over the uneven floor, light rolling over the glistening cave walls. Harry turns to Bellatrix, wand aloft.
"Yes. It's me," he growls.
She snaps to life. She backs up, tries to run, trips on her robe and falls. Her mouth moves soundlessly, jaw sunk from a few missing teeth. Her eyes, darting madly, are yellow and sunk deep in her waxy face. Claw-like hands fumbling inside the folds of her ripped, filthy robe, she stares up at Harry.
Harry lowers his wand. "A bit slow now, are you?"
He turns to pick up the lamp. From the corner of his eye he sees Bellatrix finally pull out her wand. He sets the lamp upright on the floor and straightens, ready for her. But Bella seem to have other things in mind. With a deranged shriek, she throws herself at Malfoy, hands grabbing him around the neck, her emaciated weight slamming him against the cave wall.
"What have you done? What have you DONE?"
"Get OFF me you filthy hag--"
"Why did you bring him here? Idiot, IDIOT--"
"I didn't bring him--"
"I was SO close--now you've RUINED it!"
"It's your own FUCKING fault, if you weren't so greedy--you don't need that damned bike--"
"It belongs to the Black family!"
"I told you that filthy house was a bad idea but you didn't listen!"
"It's RUINED now, all I've--"
"SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!"
Heart pounding, Harry grips his wand. Bright red sparks erupt off its end. Coughing and spluttering, Bellatrix stumbles off Malfoy. Blood stands on her chin and she swipes at it and misses. Malfoy hisses and kicks out at his ropes, a trickle of blood running down his neck. Harry stares at them for a moment, both of them wheezing and white, all bone, sallow flesh and matted, filthy hair. Then he raises the lamp at what he's just glimpsed over their heads.
They're in a small chamber that Harry can't remember from the last time he was here; the cave taking on a rough L shape, its longer leg veering to the right past the wall where Malfoy slumps. Harry walks over, feeling winded with disbelief. To one side, a grubby pallet is set against the cave wall, piled with robes. On the other side, heaped haphazardly all along the walls and floor are what seems to be the entire contents of Borgins and Burke's, or the Malfoy Manor, or Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
He picks his way among the hoard, recognizing a few things, staring at others. Mrs Black's portrait is there, half covered with a dirty curtain. There are several crates of jars and bottles that look as if they belonged in Snape's office, some full of preserved animals, others of potions that glint eerily in lamplight. Harry peers into a carved wooden chest with an open, broken lid and recoils at the sight of a dozen or so swords, some blades still crusted dark. Kicking the corner of a plastic wrap aside, he glimpses several crates of books. He picks up a bell jar lying on its side on the floor, its contents seeping, but Bellatrix begins to shriek again. Teeth gritted, he rushes back around the corner.
"I'm dying boy, I'm dying--"
"Oh no you don't bitch--you can't die yet, you promised me!"
"It's your duty too, to the Dark Lord, to the Dark Arts--"
"Stop snivelling you idiot woman!"
"..the Dark Lord…one day…another…you MUST remember this place, Draco, you must--"
"I said STOP SNIVELLING! You can't die yet! Get me out of these!"
Standing back, his wand hand slack, Harry watches them incredulously. It's as if they've completely forgotten his presence now that it's been established it's him. As if he was not really himself, but an idea, like good or evil or fear, that spelled the end to whatever they were planning. Vaguely, he wonders if he ought to be flattered; isn't that what people hope power will bring them--the ability strike fear into the heart of enemies with a mere whisper, the barest hint of presence?
But he was never after power, and all he feels is a strange tinge of disappointment. What was he expecting? Some sort of perilous struggle in which he saved the world again? Where he was useful, his existence justified?
Certainly not this, he thinks, staring, unable to reconcile the two shrivelled beings clawing and screeching at each other in front of him with the Bellatrix and Malfoy he once knew. True, the war wore them down as it did everyone. The last time Harry saw her, in the castle on that final day, Bellatrix was a mere shell that seemed alive only on account of the final vestiges of her fanatic flair and energy. Malfoy was no better; the sheen missing from his blond hair, his bravado threadbare from the years spent as Voldemort's errand boy, accomplishing small tasks on which no respectable Death Eater's time could be wasted.
Yet that was barely over a month ago and they were both still Death Eaters then, still capable, still to be feared. But this is something else. Snarling and hissing at each other, splattered with flecks of blood from Bella's coughing fits, their cruelty seems withered to the feeble, squabbling vehemence of a pair of emaciated dogs over a pile of offal.
But as he watches, something happens to set wheels turning elsewhere, in parts of his mind under lock and key. Still screaming at Malfoy, Bellatrix suddenly hoists up her wand. Some part of Harry realises what she's about to do; he's seen, felt her do this many times before. Her wand suddenly steady and aimed at Malfoy, eyes bulging, a dribble of blood and spit down her chin, Bellatrix screams.
"Crucio!"
Harry doesn't know what makes him do it. Perhaps it's the presence of death in so many guises, sheer malevolence in all its forms; the shrunken Death Eaters in front of him, the Dark objects behind him, and all the horrifying things the cave had witnessed, beginning from the children Tom Riddle had lured to the cave so many years ago. Or perhaps it's the Cruciatus Curse, the way it arrows through his nerves from all the times he's been on its receiving end. In Bellatrix's face twisted with effort, and Malfoy's howl of pain and convulsing body, Harry glimpses everyone who'd died, friends and family, way back from the beginning; his parents, Sirius, Cedric, Dumbledore, Neville, Lupin, the Weasleys and all those faceless, nameless hundreds who'd been maimed, tortured, killed for this, and those who could have died, Ron, Hermione--
It's not like being inside Voldemort's head, it's like being inside my own head--I would have liked to kill, rip from limb to limb every one of them for what they did to ME, to the people I loved--
His wand rises in his hand, his hair stands on end, his back straightens. The curse rises roaring from deep in his belly, from the most hurtful depths and the first syllable is almost out of his mouth when Bellatrix turns. Her eyes widen and with a yelp, she drops her wand, scuttling back against the cave wall as Malfoy's screams fade into a whimper. "Avada--" Harry yells, then finds he has trouble getting the rest of it out. His ears seem blocked out, his wand shakes in his hand, his whole body is shaking, and he wonders why; every time he'd done this before, he hadn't wanted to--but now he does, doesn't he? Now! He clutches his wand in both his hands, opens his mouth again, there's a wild sound in his ears, his blood's searing through his veins and he doesn't hear the crack of Apparition--
"AVADA--"
"Harry, NO!"
Several things happen at once. Something--someone slams into his back and he falls over, winded, his wand flying out of his hand. Hermione--
Someone else bounds past him, a wild scream tearing through stone.
"YOU! I will KILL you today! I WILL KILL YOU!"
Harry barely catches Bellatrix's look of sheer astonishment as Tonks launches herself at the Death Eater.
His cheek to the ground, his own breath louder in his ears than the sound of the sea, he watches as Hermione gets to her feet and lunges after Tonks, Bellatrix almost crushed beneath the weight of two bodies.
"NOOO, Tonks, no--Harry, help me--"
He raises his head from the floor, blood trickling into his eyes.
"Stop it, STOP IT, Tonks, please--no, DON'T! Harry, come ON--help me!"
He struggles to his feet and stumbles over. He doesn't feel much, he thinks, he knows there's blood, and pain somewhere, but he doesn't feel any of it. He pushes Hermione away, then grabs Tonks by the upper arms, this Tonks who he almost doesn't recognise, her face misshapen as if her bones themselves felt the pain, her hands around Bellatrix's throat, who's now blue in the face--
Then Malfoy begins to scream.
"NOO, you can't die yet--you promised--my mother--you have to tell me, you PROMISED ME--you hag, YOU HAG! WHERE DID YOU BURY MY MOTHER?"
Harry claws at Tonks' hands, Hermione points her wand, and in a flash Tonks' hands come away, she and Harry toppling backwards on the ground. Coughing, spluttering, her eyes rolling back in her head, Bellatrix croaks, her hands twitching convulsively.
"You useless, stupid boy, she burned. She burned with the city, boy…she burned…"
Something close to a cackle bubble on her lips, but dissolves in the blood on her chin, splattering down her throat and she lays her head back down. Malfoy's howl fills the cave again. Tonks sprawls on the ground, her body heaving, Hermione's arms around her.
*
Night again. He shuffles around his room for some time, thinking of a shower, of scrubbing himself clean of the stench of the sea. Of the cave, you mean. Of death. He gets as far as taking his shoes, socks and shirt off. Then it seems like too much trouble, and it wouldn't work anyway; he couldn't be scrubbed clean of himself, could he?
So he lies down in bed on top of the sheets. It's cold but he can't really feel it. His forehead's cut, he smells blood, sees it on his fingertips but can't really feel that either.
The window's open a fraction, the street hushed. The floorboards and rafters mutter to themselves. The ragged sphere of a streetlight looks into the room, a pale, unwelcome scrutiny. A breeze drifts in; the night smells fresh, drained of the fumes and noise of the day.
The door creaks open. He averts his eyes.
She stands still at the doorway for a minute, then pads over to the bed. A candle comes to life. The room used to have an oil lamp, but it snuffed out as soon as Harry moved in. She sets down a small bowl of water and the first aid box on the bedside table, then sits on the bed beside him.
"Harry."
He shifts further.
She sighs and brings her hand up to his cheek, turning his face towards her.
"I'm just going to clean this cut. Lie still."
Pushing the sleeves of her jumper up to her elbows, she settles closer, hair dangling over her shoulder in sweaty loops and ringlets. She holds up the candle, and her fingers drift over his forehead, stroking back his hair, gauging the fresh cut, thumb gentle over the lightning scar. His throat thickens and in horror, he thinks he might start crying. Drawing a breath, he casts about for something to distract himself.
"We need to find a place to live."
In the paltry light, her face seems too still. He wonders whether it's because he said 'we', but doesn't care.
"I mean it, Hermione. We need to find a place."
Setting the candle down, she reaches for water and swabs. "All right. Let's talk about that, then. We need to find a place to live. Where? We could always move to the Burrow but Fred hates both of us and Ginny hates me."
"Ginny hates you?"
She bites her lip; it's not something she'd planned to say. "This is not very deep. Should heal really quickly."
"Why does Ginny hate you?"
She sighs. "She thinks that if it were you and not Ron that got hit with the Crippler, I'd have said yes in a flash to the St Mungo's apprenticeship."
He closes his eyes as she cleans out the caked blood.
"She thinks that? How do you know?"
Laying aside the first aid things, she reaches for her wand. "She said so. The day when I asked her to go after…Snape. Now, keep your eyes closed."
She whispers an incantation and he feels the skin close up, the stinging stop. With a small satisfied sigh, she sits back, her wand in her lap. Her eyes hold his, determined and bright despite the darkness, waiting. Once again his throat thickens but this time it's bile. He swallows, trying to get words out, his voice hoarse.
"I almost killed again today, Hermione."
She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "You didn't."
"If you and Tonks hadn't turned up--"
"No, Harry, no. You wouldn't have. I heard you the first time…when you tried the curse the first time. You couldn't do it, could you?"
"The second time I would've. She was sick, defenceless, out of her mind, and I would've killed her."
"Harry, she's Bellatrix Lestrange."
He shakes his head briefly, sinking into silence. He can feel the cold now, but also how warm she is, sitting so close. How does she do this? Be near him without flinching, with a constancy he couldn't fathom, doesn't deserve? Something crackles under his elbow and he pulls out the Muggle newspapers from that afternoon and drops them on the floor.
"How did you get there? How did you know to Apparate there?"
"Tonks has access to an Apparation tracker. She was sleeping downstairs. Only Aurors can use them under the Privacy Act."
Harry swallows again. "How is she?"
Hermione shrugs. "She won't talk much and…she didn't want to go to St Mungo's."
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her voice soft.
"She's been looking for Bellatrix all this time, Harry. Shacklebolt said that when they found Snape dead, Tonks was livid. He thinks that maybe she was hoping to find out Bellatrix's whereabouts from him."
She takes a deep breath, a nail scratching at the faded embroidery on her skirt. "I just can't imagine how she must be feeling. It's like she's suddenly not there, as if, the only thing that kept her going all these weeks was the thought of getting her hands on Bellatrix…" She trails away with a small shudder.
He closes his eyes again. A spell for numbness, that's what he needs. She waits till he looks at her again.
"Bellatrix and Malfoy have been taken to St Mungo's under full security. They'll be charged when they can actually speak. She was building some sort of a funeral chamber, Harry. She was still gabbling when they took her. She wanted to collect as many Dark objects as she could find, a Dark legacy, for whoever came next…all the knowledge, all the magic inherent in those things she had there, in Voldemort's memory. Malfoy helped her because he...he--"
"Wanted to know where his mother was buried. Yeah, I heard that part. He didn't seem very interested in avenging his father, so I'm guessing that he wasn't after me either."
He grits his teeth and stares at the canopy of the four-poster. A breeze riffles the paper on the floor.
"Why was it so easy before?"
"What was?"
"The killing curse. All those times…"
He looks at her to find her staring at him. When she speaks, her voice is a vehement whisper.
"It was never easy for you!"
"It was. I almost didn't have to think--"
"That's because if you thought about it you couldn't do it! Don't argue, Harry, I was there. It wasn't easy."
"Is that why you wanted to stop me going after them? Snape and Malfoy?"
"What?"
"Did you stop me from going after Snape and Malfoy because you thought I might murder them?"
"Harry! How could you say that?"
"Or maybe you didn't, not outright, but did the thought cross you mind?"
"Harry--"
"Because if you did, you'd have been right. How can anyone think I'm some kind of hero when a sick, wretched woman isn't safe with me?"
"It wasn't any wretched woman, it was Bell--"
"That the moment I think of revenge, it's all over? All that work you did, Hermione, trying to save my…soul--" he spits the word out with a harsh laugh; he despises what he's saying, what he sounds like, but it's only with her that these words are safe, only to her can he say them "--that's all quite useless, isn't it?"
"Oh, stop it!"
She stands up, her wand clattering to the floor. Something, a stray cat perhaps, passes under the window, the eye of the streetlight blinking. He watches her throat work, her breathing rushed. She turns away, a hand over her mouth, then turns back towards him.
"I've had enough of this, d'you hear me? Enough! You don't know what it is you do, Harry! Everything that you had to do during the war, you did knowing that afterwards you're not going to be able to live with yourself. But you did it anyway because it was not about YOU. It was about a whole bloody world waiting to be saved and you did what you had to. How many more times do you want me to tell you that?"
He turns away. She drops down on the bed again and pulls his face back towards her, nails scraping his skin. Her lip trembles but her voice is steady.
"You did what was right by them, never what was right by yourself. That's what you do, Harry, that's why you're their fucking hero, because you always put yourself aside! And you know what? People took advantage of that! This is why--because you always bring it upon yourself! You HAVE to get past this! All this blame, you have to let it go!"
He stares into her eyes for a second, then gives a short laugh. "Let it go? Funny you should say that."
Her shoulders droop abruptly, and immediately he hates himself. She swipes at a tear with the back of her hand. He tries to summon an apology but finds them all trite. For a second, he thinks she's about to get up and go, but she remains seated. Funny how it all comes down to this, back to the drawing board, down to this impasse between them. They were right here when Malfoy interrupted, and they're here now.
What was it that he was trying to tell her with his bumbling words before? Something about knowing that he's selfish, pigheaded, asking for all or nothing, that he's terrified of being half a person, less of a person even, and that she'd be brilliant no matter what she did, magic or Muggle. But also about how he was scared for her, for like him, she was of both worlds, wasn't she, and you couldn't cancel parts of yourself just like that.
But does he care about it anymore? Does he care about being the saviour again, about magic waning, about Muggle exposure, about the world they supposedly saved becoming undone again?
Laughter bubbles out in the street, two women, footsteps staccato on the cobbles. A tear trickles down Hermione's cheek and onto his skin just below his bellybutton. With a finger, she wipes it out. Her palm settles on his skin, hesitant, faintly searching, almost absent minded, as if she's trying to clear a way.
"What do you want to me do, Harry?" she whispers.
He sighs and rubs his eyes. If she can't see a way through, how can he? "I don't know."
Maybe he could follow her, instead of the other way around as it always seems to happen, and they could go live in some nondescript village, suburb, and she'll study Muggle medicine and continue to be brilliant and do good, and it would be a normal life, together. Someone else can worry about everything else. And once she had the hang of it, she'll teach him how to stop being magical. Or maybe they wouldn't have to worry about it anyway, there might not be any magic left.
Her fingers run lightly over his skin. Silence settles in the room. Another tear falls. Once again she touches it, but this time it's as if she's trying to press it right through his skin, leave an imprint, a watermark. Then suddenly, he senses a change. Like a quick breath, a swift, binding decision; he glances at her, but her eyes are on her hand. Her palm slides lower, pauses at his jeans. A thumb slips in. She meets his eye.
Harry stares.
She bends to kiss him, her hand still at the perilous point past his belly. "Harry--" she whispers into his mouth, but he still doesn't understand. Is this how people come together? When words couldn't fix things and promises couldn't be sealed? And it's important that he understands, because this is Hermione, and there are no words for this. Sitting up, he pulls her in again for a soft, querying kiss.
"Hermione, we can't--should we--"
Her hands come up to his face and fingers curl in his hair, pulling painfully.
"We can. I love you and if this is the only way I can reach you--" She slides his glasses off. "I will."
There's nothing to wait for after that, nothing to think about. Slow down, he tells himself, but it's difficult; she's whispering into his mouth, her fingers relentless, on his skin, in his hair. The room contracts around them, space thickening into scent and tremulous touch. His feverish hands run up her back, beneath her shirt, under the swell of her breast, then with a hiss of impatience he reverses their positions, laying her on the bed. Pausing only a moment to find assent in her eyes, he begins to peel off her clothes.
Skin slips, hands and fingers falter, artless, graceless; neither has been here before. She and Ron fell by the wayside long ago, he and Ginny were set down, never picked up again, and there hasn't been anyone else. His hand slides trembling down past her belly, and the discovery of a warm wet cleft draws a whimper from her. There's a moment of panic; looking, fumbling down, it's as if they've truly hit the limit to their symmetry. Surely their bodies couldn't fit this way, the way their hearts do. But she raises her knees, hips, he holds her tight through her pained clench, whispering, his mouth faithful on hers. Later, her knees still tight around him, he blinks into the sticky hollow of her neck and thinks of a house again. One with uncountable rooms, floors--where if one room was dark, hindered, impassable, there's always another in which to find each other.
*
When he drifts awake a few hours later, arms firm around her, nose in her hair, the house is still on his mind, half drenched in a dream. The morning looks on heavy-lidded, the window misted over. Beneath the covers, her bare body is heavy, dewy against him, his heartbeat effortlessly meandering along with hers. He kisses the back of her neck, nuzzling her shoulder. He was dreaming of a place that obliged the sun and hope, uncluttered with reminders of what he'd lost but filled with what he had. There were two listings that caught his eye in the Muggle paper; a bit more research wouldn't hurt.
He slides out of bed and she stirs sleepily, mumbling, a hand reaching out. He steps around the bed, runs his fingers down her bare back and, kneeling, kisses her. "Be back soon." The sheets pulled up over her and the heating charm restored, he ducks into the shower.
It's just past the rush hour out in the city, the streets knee-deep in the mid-morning lull. Idlers gaze from almost empty coffee shops, smokers linger in patches of sun. He stops at a newsstand and scans the papers for more news on Hogwarts or magic, and finds nothing more alarming than different versions of the stories from the day before. Still, he picks up one of each, thinking that she might see something he doesn't, then pauses at a pastry shop to pick up breakfast. Seeing the sign of a real estate agent across the street, he decides to go in briefly. Heading back to Grimmauld Place about half an hour later, deep in thought, faintly smiling to himself, it's not until the first fire engine begins its shrill call that he looks around and notices the smoke gambolling in great strides up into the cloudless sky.
*
A little raw between her legs, cheeks faintly flushed, she sits on a stair, contemplating her feet. Harry's right of course, they need somewhere else to live. Ron's fish continue to steadfastly snare the scanty light from the window, bestowing it in liquid parcels all over the gloomy hallway, but that simply isn't enough. They're into February now, though she's vague about the dates; the single calendar in the house lay in a dusty corner in her room where she'd sent it flying. She's not so sentimental to think that everything is going to be all right, but sometimes everything had to be given a chance to be all right.
A sharp rap sounds at the door. Frowning, she gets to her feet. The knock sounds again, this time louder, urgent.
Suddenly anxious, she bounds down the stairs and wrenches open the door.
"You!"
She pushes wet hair off her face and stares. Sally stands at the doorway, the cowl of her cloak pulled well over her face.
"I'm sorry to disturb. I haven't got much time. Can I come in?"
Hermione considers her for a moment, then stands aside. Shutting the door, she leads Sally into the kitchen. Not standing on ceremony, she throws a few logs in the fire, then turns to glare at Sally.
"Have you been in London all this time?" she demands. "I thought you left the country!"
Sally throws her hood back and sinks into a chair with a sigh.
"Yes, I've been in London all this time. Upstairs, in my father's house."
"He told me you'd left the country."
Sally looks up, then laughs harshly. "Do you think I'm in league with my father? That he and I are both running some elaborate charade to make you think we hate each other, to lure your precious Harry into some trap? Come on, you have better brains than that." She reaches for the jug on the table and a glass, and pours herself some water. Hermione stares at this newly reckless Sally; she still seems jumpy, but more out of a sense of brittle determination than nervousness.
"Trust me, it's not an act. He hates me, and I hate him." Sally tips her head back and downs the water in a gulp, setting the glass down heavily.
"He's got me locked up and watched twenty-four hours a day. He didn't think I'd leave London just because he wanted me to. He knows me well. I slipped some catnip and camomile under my good friend Cruddens' pillow last night," she smirks.
Hermione decides to get to the point. "You left a box behind. When you moved out of the Chamber of Magic."
Sally drops her gaze, fingers drumming on the table. "Of course." Looking up, she gives Hermione a dry smile. "So, I suppose you figured it all out?"
"Extraction? Your Honorary position at the Ministry?" Hermione nods at the tip of the wand sticking out of the voluminous sleeve of Sally's cloak. "And the wand made of bone? Yes, I did. Come to think of it, how come your father hasn't confiscated that, if he's so keen to have you locked up?"
Sally laughs. "Because he knows it's useless. I can barely heat my soup with magic, even with a bone wand."
Hermione leans forward.
"Why? Why Harry? What were you planning to do?"
"Look, I haven't got the time," she begins, then, at the look on Hermione's face, sighs. "Fine, let's start from the beginning. If you ever thought that I was going to extract Harry's magic--" she laughs "--well, then I overestimated you."
Hermione refuses to rise to the bait, still against Sally's blustery motions. Combing her hair back severely with her fingers, Sally sighs.
"So, no. I wasn't planning to extract magic. I just…" She sits up straight. "You don't understand what something's worth, unless you've had to endure not having it." She looks up, a touch of hysteria in her eye. Hermione quails a little inside, wondering if Sally knows about her application to Muggle university.
"I'm the daughter of one of the most powerful men in England. My mother's a powerful witch, in her own way. But I have hardly a drop of magic in me."
Sally shifts and looks around the room aimlessly.
"This is why my father can't stand me. Mother was really angry with him. My father was a junior officer at the Ministry then, but mother knew his ambitions. When Father realised that my magic wasn't what he hoped it would be, he…began to isolate me from the magical world. I was just six but once I heard them arguing. He didn't want me to go to Hogwarts when the time came. Mum was furious. That's why she took me to France."
Hermione clasps her hands on the table and tips her head. "Maybe he was trying to protect you, in his own way." She's known many who made do with less, and who often did so gracefully. Harry for example, and Neville, Hagrid, Luna. Besides, she is partial to fathers these days.
"I'm not saying he would've been right, but still." She shrugs stubbornly. "One of my good friends is--was…a bit like you. He got much better, but in the early days I thought it would have been kinder to let him grow up away from a bunch of people who could do magic."
Sally stares for a minute, and suddenly Hermione feels sorry at the gleam of hurt in her pale eyes.
"Yeah, well," says Sally briskly, straightening in her chair. "About Harry. The main thing you need to know is I meant no harm. I'd been following Harry's…life, for some time. There was a flurry of excitement in France when he won the Triwizard Tournament, against that girl from Bauxbatons. And then the last couple of years, after Father became the Minister, with Voldemort on the rise again and all that, suddenly everyone everywhere was talking about Harry."
She drums her fingers on the wood again and shakes her head.
"Look. I didn't wake up one day and think, I'm going to go to England to see Harry. It just sort of…happened, things converged. I finished my studies in extraction and I got the position here. I've been with the Ministry for about a year. It was just within the last few months that I started becoming interested in magic running out here, started seeing what Mother and I had been studying all these years. Of course, I was also closer to Harry than I'd ever been, so…"
Her voice taking on an apologetic, almost embarrassed timbre, she looks at Hermione. "I just, wanted to see him. Meet him. It sounds ridiculous, I know. I guess I just wanted to see how he worked. Inside. What made him so powerful a wizard."
"See how he worked inside?" Hermione bats away an insect hovering over the water jug. "Like some sort of winding toy?"
"No, of course not. You're just being dramatic now. Look, I don't know how to explain it anymore. Harry has what I don't. He's the epitome of what I don't have. You wouldn't understand what an obsession it can become with what you don't, can't really have. What you think you should."
"Why do you keep doing it, then?"
"Doing what?"
"You keep defining yourself by something you can't help. You can't help it that you were born without magical ability, it's not your fault. It's just so arbitrary, anyway. You are the expert in magic, you should know that better then anyone. There's no explanation why some people are born with it, and some are not."
"Yeah, well." Shrinking into her seat, Sally glances at her watch. "Look, I'm running out of time. The soporific I used on Cruddens wasn't all that strong, but it was all I could find. The reason I came here was because I thought…there's something Harry should know. Is he here?"
Hermione shakes her head.
"Okay, well. Does your cousin, Nick, know exactly how London blew up?"
Eyes narrowing, a small flutter of anxiety in her stomach, Hermione looks up sharply.
"Yes--I mean, not the details. Just that it was because of magical activity--"
Sally interrupts with an impatient noise. "But not that it was your magical activity? That it was because you and Harry chose to use the Incinerator, rather than the killing curse?"
Hermione draws a breath. "How do you--no, he doesn't know that."
"Well, he does now."
"W--What do you mean?"
"And the wizarding world in general, they don't know either, do they? Oh, they think it was because the Horcrux pieces blew up, but they don't know why the Horcruxes pieces blew up?"
"No. It was agreed that it should be left at that--your father agreed, along with the Wizengamot, not to reveal. What're you getting at?"
A blob of orange bounds against the window from the outside and begins a frenzied scratching at the glass. Hermione flips the window up and returns to the table with the comfortable weight of Crookshanks pressed to her stomach.
"I've been listening to the comings and goings in the house. They all think their charms and spells are watertight, so I've been making use of my father's pigheadedness. He's trying to very hard to bring back The Daily Prophet. Very close to it. One of the first things he plans to do is make it public knowledge that it was Harry's choice of curse that burned London."
"What?" Crookshanks squalls at the arms clamping around him, but Hermione's oblivious. "That's going too far for vengeance!"
"Oh, it's not about vengeance, nor just about that Auror position. My father's smart, don't forget. His rebuilding of London's not getting anywhere, and the pressure's on him from both sides, Muggle and magic. Actually, Harry should be honoured." She laughs. "That's how much my father believes in Harry, in his own warped way. He thinks that if Harry puts his weight behind it, things can actually be fixed."
Finally, Crookshanks paws at a loop of Hermione's hair in a bid for freedom, and she lets go with a hiss.
"But why now? He could have blackmailed Harry a long time ago--Scrimgeour knew all along exactly how London burnt. Besides, wasn't he going to bring some sort of conscription law in? If that came in then he wouldn't need…this!"
Unable to sit still anymore, she pushes back her chair and grabs to kettle to fill it up at the sink.
"Yes, but he thought he could get Harry on his side without much trouble, you see. In which case it would've been detrimental to my father's own cause to have the world know that Harry had a big part in burning London down. But now, if he handles it right, people could be made to put pressure on Harry to step up and take responsibility for what happened."
Hermione sets the kettle on the stove, the gas rings sparking at the impact. Sally's voice winds round and round at her back, beating up a tightening spiral with no way out.
"You see, this is Father's last and best card. The conscription thing is taking too long, and the Wizengamot's not convinced we need it. Much quicker this way, easier. He's got people who'll just drop a few hints here and there over a pint of ale, in both worlds. In fact, this is how your cousin found out about it. He was browsing in this second-hand shop in Diagon Alley when a stranger struck up a conversation."
Hermione turns around and runs her hands over her face, the kettle forgotten.
"But The Prophet's lost all credibility, the way it was tooting your father's horn all this time. Harry and the Order--we fought the war all by ourselves but The Prophet tried hard to make sure Scrimgeour got the credit. If it wasn't for The Quibbler--" she returns to the table and sits down angrily "--if they bring something like this up, when people adore Harry, they're going to light their fires with that rag!"
"Exactly." Sally leans forward. "So The Prophet isn't going to go against public sentiment, you see. At first, they're going to go with Harry being the hero."
"You can't build credibility in just a few issues!"
Sally shrugs. "Well, if the rumours come from all sides, then when they see it in The Prophet, it just confirms what they already know. Don't forget, The Quibbler's still a monthly. By the time they get on the case, it might be too late."
"Harry's not going to be a sitting duck to all of this!"
A jeering smile comes over Sally's face, her father's features suddenly prominent.
"Well, what is he now, Hermione? Stuck in this house, doing nothing? That's what people will remember when the cat gets out of the bag! That he hid himself, he stayed away--they're not going to be very sympathetic. Sure, he gets a lot of fan mail now, I hear, which is exactly why you have to do something now. While people still believe in Harry. Before it's too late. Public sentiment's a very easy thing to mould, in the right hands, with the right words. And my father's quite clever in his own way."
Hermione glares at Sally, trying to summon some dignity, a vestige of calm, a look of steely scepticism. She must have succeeded despite the wild scrambling in her heart for Sally throws up her hands.
"Look, I'm not the enemy! Nor is my father for that matter, nor are a couple of batty Death Eaters of some Dark order which has no legs to stand on anymore! Yes, I heard about them--but never mind that--can't you see? This, this dithering is your problem! You're just waiting for someone else to come along and set things right, pretending that you can't do anything about it! Oh, I know about your Muggle application. You used quite a clever and unusual bit of magic on those qualification sheets and that sort of thing gets registered in the Ministry."
"Why are you so keen on this anyway?" Hermione manages to spit out.
Sally's jaw works. She pushes her chair back and gets to her feet. "I've done some sickening things in the name of magic. My mother--never mind. I'd like to do at least one thing of which I'm not going be ashamed of before I go back to France to see her." She fumbles in her cloak pocket. "And I've got to go now. Here," she pulls out the black and silver scroll case and sets on the table. "This is exactly what you knew it to be. Authentic and dated. I kept it out of the registration books at the Ministry though, so you can hang on to it as long as you need."
Hermione looks up at Sally. Every word is true, all of it. Dithering is a good way of putting it. Pretending is another. But the question is, what's she going to do about it? Hermione makes a sudden decision, and earmarks it as one made for Harry, something he would have done.
"Don't leave England. Stay."
Sally, already at the door, turns.
"What?"
"Look, you know more about magic than anyone. And we're going to need your knowledge, help. I mean, even if we wanted to, there's hardly much we can find out about magic running out ourselves, is there? Stay, we'll keep you safe."
One hand on the door handle, the other clutching the clasp of her cloak, Sally looks on silently. She opens her mouth to speak, then pauses, listening. Hermione gets to her feet too, reaching for her wand. Within minutes the faint thud of footsteps down the street bursts in through the front door, as Sally and Hermione rush out into the hallway.
The front door slams back and Harry bends, hands on his knees, trying to breathe. Hermione smells the smoke before he speaks, and her nerves begin to clamour.
"There's….there's--a fire, out there!"
He straightens, then bounds up the stairs.
"Where are you going?"
Racing round the landing, he gasps for breath again. "I couldn't see from the ground--you can't get close--too thick--people…hurt, everywhere--"
Through the fog in her mind--memory and fear, but mostly, frighteningly, memory--she realises where he's headed. She rushes after him and into Buckbeak's room just as he's halfway levitating the bike through the trapdoor.
"Stay," he begins over his shoulder, but she climbs the ladder and onto the roof after him.
"Hermione, stay here, please--"
"Oh, don't be daft!"
She climbs behind him, hands clamped around his waist, teeth gritted against the bile and urges him on, let's go, Harry, just GO, for now she can see the smoke up ahead, the billowing edges of the fire, the sky obscenely blue above it, flesh below.
--end chapter thirteen--