Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I'm only playing.
A/N: Sorry I'm a bit late, it's been a crazy week for me. I'm behind on replying reviews too, I'm going to get to them soon. So, this chapter; some questions will hopefully be answered with quite a bit of melodrama. But hey, life's like that sometimes, isn't it? Enjoy and let me know if the wait's been worth it. After this chapter it's all about putting Humpty together again. *bites nails*
***
--Chapter Seven--
"Look, Harry, I'm sorry about…about the other day. That night, you know, when I said I'll tell Hermione if you didn't let me take the bike…I didn't really mean it."
"Yeah, I know."
"Right. I mean, I'd never do something like that. You know that."
"Yeah, I know."
Ron sighs and tries to match Harry's pace. The road's littered with twigs and leaves frantic in the wake of their footsteps. Ron keeps looking over his shoulder, thinking they're being followed.
"Harry, I'm not sure we should be doing this. Let her have some time to herself. She's probably just sick to death of the two of us."
"Probably."
Ron shakes his head at Harry's back. It's been four long days. They pass a small playground snug against a dip in the land, two rusty swings creaking in the wind. The sun is out, the day polished and shining, but there is no warmth. Round another corner, up a small hill, and they soon come out to a narrow, tree-lined street.
The house sits primly in the trimmed garden, a tall evergreen guarding the gate. The tree softens the harsh winter glare and sheds needles onto the driveway. The garage door is open, empty. A window upstairs is open too.
Harry runs a hand through his hair, suddenly looking uncertain. But before Ron can open his mouth again, he's stepped up to the door.
Fine, Ron thinks, fine then, let's do this. Two can play the game. No, three can.
*
There's a heartbeat of silence and he's almost certain she won't open the door.
Then there are footsteps, muffled and thoughtful, and a chain snaps.
The first thing he notices, much to his relief, is that she is okay. None of the wild scenarios in his head are real; she hasn't been kidnapped, cursed, maimed or murdered.
The second thing he notices is that she is not okay. She looks as miserable as he feels, her lips raw from worry, her eyes weighted with lack of sleep. He stares, trying to gather her in with his eyes.
"Hi," she stammers.
"Hey, Hermione." Ron pushes past them, into the house.
She stands aside to let Ron in, her eyes on Harry. Her glance flickers quickly over his hurt arm and face, a furtive, rough caress. Guilt flecks her eyes. He feels a pinprick of hope.
She clears her throat. "What're you doing here?"
He shifts from foot to foot. The wind yanks at his cloak, hair flying in his eyes. "We just…just wanted to see how you--"
Ron interrupts from inside. "Bullshit. He's going mental, can you please come home?"
Hermione stares at Harry round-eyed. He tries to duck her glance, making a note to hex Ron the first chance he gets. She twists a strand of hair around her finger and steps inside, Harry following.
He's been inside the Granger residence a few times before, while Mr Granger was alive and much later, during the funeral. He looks around, distracted for a moment by how unchanged everything seems, how ordinary, unperturbed.
"Come into the kitchen. I'll get you something to drink. Mum's gone to drop something off at the surgery."
Ron drags himself reluctantly from the chair he's collapsed into. Harry follows him. While they settle in the airy, clean kitchen, Hermione rummages the cupboards.
"Tea or coffee? Or…I think I have beer."
Ron pulls out a chair at the small table. "Yeah, that's great, Hermione. Whatever's easy. Look, can we get to the point here?"
Hermione lets the fridge door shut, eyes on Ron. Harry begins to sort through all the hexes he knows.
Ron glares back at both of them.
"Yeah, I'm sorry to pass up on the niceties, but I've had to put up with this miserable sod for four days, all on my own, and I'm running out of patience, all right? I don't know what's going on between the two of you but you'd better fix it very soon or I'm going to hex you both to the middle of next decade, for Merlin's sake!"
He takes a long swig of the beer Hermione sets in front of him.
"Ah, I needed that!"
He leans back in his chair, stretching his legs beneath the table, crutch rattling against wood.
"All right. So. What's the deal? You coming home?" He looks at Hermione.
Hermione opens and closes her mouth, eyes wide. Confusion, indignation and worry flit across her face, all entangled. She sighs and drops to a chair. A carelessly turned tap drills a dull ache in Harry's head.
"What's going on? Is everything all right?" Her voice is strained, flighty round the edges.
"Of course it's not all right! Were you even listening to me?"
"Oh for the love of--" Pushing his chair back savagely, Harry gets to his feet. "Ron, what the fuck is the matter with you?"
He glowers at Ron. Drip drip goes the tap, unrelenting. Ron returns his look with equal vigour.
"What is the matter with me? With me? I just don't know what to do with you, that's what's the matter. You've spent four fucking days up on that roof and haven't had a scrap to eat and you've the nerve to ask me what's the matter? And not to forget you've gone off and signed yourself up with the bloody Ministry as well."
A beat of stillness, an indrawn breath.
"You what?"
Ron turns to Hermione, out of steam. Harry strides over to the window and leans his hands on the counter, dipping his head. They've been in the house barely for five minutes.
"Harry, did you really?" She seeks his eyes but he evades her.
He grits his teeth. "I didn't sign myself up, I just said yes to…to helping them out with…with whatever it is."
"Exactly, he hasn't the foggiest idea what he's getting himself into and he said ye--"
"Oh, shut up, Ron!"
Ron ignores him. "How could you skip that day, Hermione? Luna turned up with her archaeologist friend who says magic's running out--hold on, let me finish. I don't quite get what she's on about, but she says the wizarding world might die out soon, and that we might not be able to use magic at all, do the things we do as witches and wizards."
Silence descends suddenly, dark wings out. Harry feels its flexing claws, its breath down his neck. He tries to issue a warning, staring at Ron incredulously, but his breath's caught in his throat. Unaware where he's heading, Ron carries on.
"I mean, if we can no longer do the things we do, will we still be witches and wizards? What's going to happen to the way we live, the things we rely on, and what about times of war, how will we protect ourselves?"
Hermione gets to her feet. A brittle laugh crackles through the kitchen.
"Yes, it'll be an utter tragedy if we can't use magic to darn our socks and boil our kettles."
She snaps the switch on the electric kettle, wrenches a cupboard door open, pulls out two mugs and sets them on the counter louder than necessary.
"And as for protection…"
She turns around and slams a container of sugar down on the table.
"Magic protected us this time around, did it?" Her voice rises to a dangerous pitch. Ron's eyes widen in horror, just realising what he's said. Harry simply stares, unable to move. A part of him knows he ought to intervene, shush her, calm her down, but another part whispers--finally, finally.
"Please, continue. Refresh my memory. I might have missed certain details…"
"I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean that--"
"--the exact number of people that died, how they died, how much they knew about why they died, and of what they died. Magic might be the answer to just some of those questions."
"Listen--"
"But no, don't take my word for it, I might be completely wrong--"
"Hermione--"
"But when I checked there were hundreds, Ron, hundreds! They didn't have a clue, they had done nothing to deserve it, and…and then the castle…have you forgotten how many the castle killed? It killed your brother, it killed George! Have you two EVER stopped to think about what magic's done to us? You, for instance, Harry. You thought it was a dream come true when you got the letter from Hogwarts, didn't you? Beyond your wildest dreams. And then you got to Hogwarts and it was even better than you thought, except there was this slight glitch about a Prophecy and you being the saviour of the whole bloody world and nobody even told you until after you'd been nearly murdered a couple of times, and don't tell me, don't you DARE tell me that there wasn't a single time when you thought that you'd never left the Dursley's--"
She breaks off to catch her breath, suddenly looking confused. Her shoulder makes an odd, flinching motion like a wounded bird trying to defend itself with a wing. Harry watches her wild eyes and strangled breath and feels something snap inside him. Reticence and patience perhaps, the thought he'd nursed for the past weeks that eventually she'll be okay, that soon she'll be back to herself. That if only he was patient enough, silent enough, soon she'll stop trying to be someone else.
Enough, he thinks, enough. Let's have it out.
He pins her with his glance, watching her struggle. He speaks quietly. "Have you ever thought about what magic has done for us?" He crosses his arms over his chest.
"If nothing else, just the fact that we're here together? The fact that we would probably never have met if not for the letter from Hogwarts? Or does that not mean anything to you anymore?"
Her fists clenched, blood rushes up the smooth curve of her neck where her hair folds away.
"How long are you going to keep this up, Hermione? How long are you going to pretend that if only you could forget you're a witch, you could forget everything else too?"
She turns away, walking off but he's quicker. He grabs her upper arm.
"No, you're not going anywhere. We're fixing this today. "
She hisses at him, trying to wrench her arm free. "Oh, you bastard--Just let me--"
He tightens his grip.
"Your Dad didn't die because of magic." He takes care to speak clearly.
"And he didn't die because you were careless. It was an accident. You couldn't have known he'd come looking for you." She's staring at him, eyes full of disbelief. A sense of unreality grabs him, his mind retreating far, far away, watching himself, her, and Ron gaping from the table. The polished surfaces glint like a hundred lights, the designs on the curtain, the tablecloth and the china all bright like motifs in a dream. I'm losing her completely now, he thinks, losing her completely. Nothing more to hold back for, nothing more to lose.
"And it's not your fault that London burned. We were all in it. We were all stupid enough to think there was no catch in it when he came so easily. And I was the coward. I chose not to do Killing Curse, I chose the Incinerator."
He lets go of her arm and she staggers back. His eyes flicker over the red marks he's left, heart squeezing. He recovers quickly with a sharp breath.
"So there you have it." He cocks his head, watching her eyes burn, the set of her jaw.
"We were all in it, Hermione. Not just you." He smiles as blandly as he can manage and shrugs. "Sorry to crash your pity party."
Something flies across the air at him. Still feeling as if he's outside his own skin, he watches with detachment as the glass zooms towards him. In the periphery of his vision, Ron struggles to his feet. There's a jangling of keys and the kitchen door swings open. Harry ducks his head and raises an elbow, realizing too late it's the wrong one, the one already hurt. The glass hits him and shatters to the ground.
"HERMIONE!"
Mrs Granger stands at the doorway, incredulous.
"What on earth are you DOING?"
His arm shrieks with pain. He feels the dampness of blood spreading beneath the bandage. He looks at Hermione but she's already rushing out, hands over her face. Ron gawps, half out of the chair.
"Goodness, Harry, Ron, what's going on?"
Harry tucks his arm against his chest and moves across the kitchen.
"Nothing, Mrs Granger. I'm sorry to have barged in. We were just on our way out. Ron--"
"You can't go like that, you're arm's bleeding. Let me look at it--"
"No, no, it's all right. It's an old wound, I'm fine. Come on, Ron."
"I don't know what's come over Hermione--"
"And I'm sorry about the glass--"
"Oh, this is awful, what's--"
"--please say bye to Hermione for us--"
"Harry!"
The air seems to tangle around his feet, slowing him down. He strides across the driveway, out through the gate, crunching pine needles underfoot. He doesn't look back to see if Ron's following, the rushing in his ears blocks out all sounds. It's done it's done it's done, he thinks, you've done it.
Now you've done it, Harry, you've really broken it all, and there will be no mending.
*
"Darling, just tell me what happened."
"You wouldn't understand, Mum!"
"Try me."
She wipes her nose with her sleeve and leans her head back against the sofa. She aches all over, her heart most of all.
"I did it all wrong, Mum."
"Start at the beginning, love."
She looks at her mother and wonders where the beginning is. A dim lamp lights the study, deep shadows silent in the room.
"Do you remember how I told you about Horcruxes, a long time ago, right after Dumbledore died and we had to leave school?"
Helen returns from rummaging in a shelf and hands her a box of tissues. "Pieces of a soul?"
"Yes. Ones that you've created by murder because that's the only way."
"Go on." Helen settles on the other end of the sofa.
"Well, it's very advanced Dark Magic, and almost no mention anywhere in any book, and almost no one knows about it. But we managed to track them down, all of them except for Voldemort himself."
Hermione presses her fingers to her forehead, her voice thick. There isn't a beginning, she thinks, only a string of mistakes and miscalculations, hopelessly snarled.
"But…we didn't know--"
She halts, her heart cavernous. Suddenly she's back in those months; blind with exhaustion, reeking of fear, the only light Harry, still alive. She takes a deep breath and wills courage.
"We didn't know that you can't split your soul cleanly. When you create a Horcrux, there are pieces that fly off everywhere, residue…you can't control them. You can't keep track of them, you can't pin them down like the parts of soul you put into a Horcrux."
"And the pieces go…wherever. Everywhere. Mostly they settle where the Horcruxes were created."
"Because Voldemort created all his Horcruxes while in London, that's where the residue settled. But some it seems to have trailed Harry too, all the way to Surrey…we still don't understand why."
She stares out the window darkly pearled with rain, imagining a different kind of rain, tiny particles of soul falling all over London like pollen from a venomous plant.
She pulls her knees up, settling her aching head on them.
"It seemed so easy right towards the end, we had almost no trouble with the fifth and sixth Horcruxes--we should've known something was wrong. But we were so tired, And Harry…" She turns her head away.
Helen waits for a long moment. "What do you mean you should have known?"
Hermione takes a deep, noisy breath to continue. "Where Voldemort was concerned, nothing was ever easy. So when things got easy, that meant he was planning something else. And it turned out that he was. Turned out that he knew he had no chance but he planned it so he'd…he'd have the last word."
"You see, Mum, he knew about the lost particles. He and Snape. They knew more about Dark Magic than anyone. Voldemort knew what those particles were capable of. And of course, he knew Harry, too. He knew Harry very well."
"The thing with Horcruxes is that once they are found, they're easy to destroy. But only if they're inanimate, and all of them were, except for Voldemort. If they're alive, there's only one way, the Killing Curse. And Harry was so tired of it. He was so tired."
The rain rises in pitch momentarily, slamming against the shutters, then dying away.
"Of the…Killing Curse?"
Her eyes clearing for a moment, she looks at her mother. Helen's eyes are dark, faintly edged with fear. Hermione smiles, brittle, bitter.
"I never kept count, but a third of Death Eaters died at Harry's hands."
When her mother speaks, her voice is pitched low.
"And you? Did you…?"
"Did I kill? No. I think it was obvious that I'd not be any good at it. I thought too much." She lifts a shoulder.
"Ron was no good either. He's always had trouble doing things under pressure. He let several go free when he was on security duty. He was better suited to planning, strategy, the kind of thing where you decide who does what and when. But Harry--he was so good at smoking them out, quick with his spell work and footwork, single-minded. Nobody went free once he found them. He'd had almost no proper Auror training and yet there he was, matching the best in the Order. He was so good at it." She sighs and slumps against the couch. "And he hated it."
A car splashes down the street, headlights runny yellow. Hermione winces, remembering a terrible joke about unintentional Horcruxes. They'd still been months away from the end, and Harry had held up five fingers. If I were making Horcruxes, I could make this many…
Barely aware that Helen has to lean forward to hear her, she carries on. "Now he pretends he doesn't want to take up a place in the Auror ranks because he can't stand the Ministry. Not true. So not true." She falls silent, her eyes on the window, at the faint reflection etched there of a grey face and messy hair. Then she straightens up briskly, pulling a wad of tissues.
"So, anyway. When I found out about a curse called Incinerator that could destroy a live Horcrux, well, I didn't even think about it.
"It was so naïve of me, so bloody blind. It's pretty much the same thing whether you used an Incinerator or the Killing Curse, you'd still be destroying a living, breathing being. I didn't see it then…so stupid. All that mattered was there was a way for Harry to not have to kill."
"And what does it do? This…Incinerator?"
She blinks at her mother as if just remembering she's there. She suddenly feels tired of talking, as if enough's been said.
"It burns a Horcrux down. That's all I knew then. Fred and George warned me, told me something was off about the curse. They were helping me, testing stuff. They knew a lot about all sorts of magic because of their joke shop. Fred said the curse seemed too…safe to be true. But of course I didn't listen." She blows her nose, lobs the tissues at the bin in the corner, misses.
"There was even less said about the Incinerator than about Horcruxes in the darkest books I could find, and with good reason too.
"I didn't think about why that was. And now we know that the little I knew about the spell was information Voldemort--and Snape--planted under my nose, and…." She rubs her eyes and pushes back her hair.
"…What I didn't know was that it didn't just burn the Horcrux. It burns all parts of the soul, every tiny particle ever to escape. So, there. That's the story of how London burnt, Mum. How I set fire to it."
The little clock on her father's desk whirrs and rings out the hour. Helen sighs.
"Hermione, that's not true. From what you've just told me--"
"Oh, don't start now, Mum." She lays her head on her knees again. "Harry's already told me."
"Is that why you're so angry with him?"
She blinks into the dark between her palms. Yes, Hermione, why are you so angry with him? It's got nothing to do with any of this, does it?
Her eyes begin to burn again. Annoyed, she grinds her knuckles into them and decides to lie, because the truth sounds stupid, utterly stupid to say, no, I'm angry because he kissed me, and it was just so wrong, and I want him to, again, but we can't, he won't now.
"Yes."
Helen heaves a sigh and leans back, hands on her lap. Hermione listens to the sound of the rain. How tired she is of its rasping breath, the constant, drowning rattle. By the time Helen speaks again, all the aches and pains in Hermione's body have concentrated into a brutally pounding head.
"Is this how your father died? That night when the fire began--because of these soul pieces?" Helen looks at her hands. Hermione turns to her, eyes widening.
"I know. You explained to me, right after the funeral, but I suppose I wasn't paying attention."
Hermione stares at her mother's profile, the smooth skin faintly traced with wrinkles, the neat features, neater hair.
"No, that was…different. That was because of a fault in the security measures we had at Grimmauld Place…we'd just replaced the old security charm with a new, stronger one, one that would kill anyone who hadn't left a blood signature, anyone who tried to--oh Mum, I'm so sorry--"
It's been so easy to stay away, to stand at a distance and rail at her Mum's insistence on normality. But this close she can see the fissures; the sellotape of routine and glue of familiar chores holding a broken heart together, secured with the pin of a still glossy wedding band.
Helen turns and smiles reassuringly. "Oh, I'm all right, darling. I'm all right." She touches Hermione's cheek. "But you--you need to go home."
Hermione raises an eyebrow with difficulty. "Go home? You're always asking me to come home."
Helen smiles again, her eyes unreadable. "Well, I'm telling you now to go home." She squeezes Hermione's hand. "You love Harry very much. You need to go home."
--end chapter seven--