(A/N: As ever, I am indebted to MirielleGrey for her support and beta-skills. Any errors left over after she's scanned my copy are my own fault. The chapter's title is a play on the title of one of Harry's Divination textbooks.)
(Disclaimer: This is Paracelsus. See Paracelsus write. Write, Paracelsus, write! See Paracelsus get no money for writing. See Paracelsus deny that he is Jo Rowling. Deny, Paracelsus, deny!)
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"Coming Back Late"
by Paracelsus
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XIII: Unfogging the Past
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Hermione tried to leave the Ministry as quickly as she could, but she promptly discovered that the Senior Counsel to the Wizengamot couldn't arrive in the Ministry, even on a Saturday, without people descending on her, bearing items that required her immediate attention. Even after escaping the press of business, she was still stopped several times on her way to the Apparation point in the atrium, by people asking if she'd heard "the latest rumor". No one, thank goodness, seemed inclined to actually believe that Harry had "come back from the dead"… but interestingly, none of them dismissed it out of hand, either.
It wasn't until late afternoon that she arrived back at Enthalpy House, only to discover it empty… seemingly so, at least. "Harry?" she called out tentatively, and then more urgently when she got no reply. In a rush she looked for some sign that he'd been there: searching among the mail (from Ron, from professional journals, from others) for another charmed bit of pasteboard, dashing from room to room to see if he'd left items there.
I was afraid of this, she told herself frantically. He heard Zabini's remark, and now he's sure that I've told everyone he's not dead. He's decided he can't trust me…
There was a tiny, almost silent pop of air, and Harry Apparated into her living room. He regarded her with a neutral face, and raised a paper sack in one hand. "Hungry?" he asked. His tone was like his expression, neither hostile nor cheerful.
Hermione couldn't tell what was going through Harry's mind, but she knew she needed to clear the air at once. "Harry, I don't know how a rumor got started about your return, much less why Blaise Zabini is giving me credit for it. But please believe me: since we met in your hotel room, I haven't told a soul about you. At all."
Harry didn't react to her words at first. "I brought sarnies," he finally said, still in that neutral tone. "D'you prefer beef or chicken?"
"Chicken. Harry, please believe…"
"I do," he said curtly, without waiting for her to finish. He sat at the coffee table, unpacked the paper sack, and offered her a wrapped sandwich. Hermione hesitated, then accepted the sandwich and sat on the sofa, neither too close to him nor too far away. She very much wanted to continue probing him, making sure he accepted her word, but something held her back for the moment.
Harry broke the quiet. "You're nervous," he shrewdly noted - but though his voice was mild enough, his eyes were hard. "But really, I believe you: you haven't told anyone about seeing me in my hotel room." He paused, sighed and raised his gaze to meet hers directly. "But Ted said something about an interview, where you first brought up the possibility of my survival. In front of a crowd."
Ah. Hermione saw where his thoughts were headed. "Yes, but I only stated the possibility, Harry; it wasn't confirmed. More important, every person in that room can be trusted. You've trusted them all, Harry, in the past." She counted on her fingers. "Professors McGonagall and Longbottom. Bill and…"
"'Professor' Longbottom? Neville?" Momentarily, Harry sounded both surprised and pleased.
"He's very popular with his students, so I'm told… Bill and Fleur. Andromeda Tonks. Ron. Ted, Victoire, and Rose…" She frowned suddenly. "I've tried to teach Rose the importance of keeping confidences, but she is only eleven. She might have blurted it where people could hear."
"Mph - but probably not people who'd report to Blaise Zabini so quickly," Harry mused, turning again serious - almost grim, thought Hermione. She'd succeeded in identifying his attitude: that of a man who felt himself wrongly done by, but trying nonetheless not to rush to judgment. "Portraits, perhaps? Could any of the school portraits have overheard you?"
"Only Professor Dumbledore's, in the Headmistress's office. And you know those portraits are pledged to serve the Headmistress." Hermione took another bite of her sandwich, thinking hard how she might demonstrate her innocence. "The easiest way to trace the rumor would simply be to ask Canby where he and the other elves heard…"
"No," put in Harry hastily. "Er, no, that won't be necessary."
"What? But why not…?" Hermione began, but she didn't need to finish. The scene flashed before her mind's eye, complete in every detail: Harry comes to Enthalpy House to deliver his "Emergency contact" card - at the same time that Canby and Brillig arrive to gather my notes for my meeting with Kingsley! "I… I don't bloody believe it! I wracked my brains looking to persuade the elves to testify, and you just show up and…!"
"I didn't tell them to do anything - I didn't even know who they were!" protested Harry, suddenly on the defensive. "And I pledged them to secrecy…"
"Are you serious? Are you freaking serious?" Hermione slammed the half-eaten sandwich onto the table and glared furiously at Harry. "Let's pretend that two nuns enter a chapel and find Jesus Christ standing there. And Jesus tells them, 'Oh, this isn't the Second Coming, I'm not supposed to be here, you'll keep my secret, won't you?' Do you honestly think those nuns could keep a secret like that? And even if they did, don't you think when they rejoined their convent, the other nuns might notice a change in their behavior and act accordingly? For God's sake, Harry!"
"Uh, I really think you're overestimating…"
"No, Harry, I don't think I am! Oh, honestly!" Unable to remain seated, she stood and stalked to the opposite end of the room, folding her arms over her chest. She fumed as she waited for Harry to respond… coldly, or angrily, or whatever… but didn't expect what she heard next.
Harry was chuckling.
She whirled and fixed him with her blackest glare. He appeared not to notice. "Okay, you're right. However the rumor got started, it wasn't through you."
"Oh, thank you," she said witheringly. "And what convinced you…?"
"The way you're acting right now," Harry explained calmly. "If you'd imagined a way you might have let it slip, even accidentally, you wouldn't have suggested the elves as the source, and you wouldn't be so upset. I mean, you were never a very good actress, Hermione." At her scowl, he grinned and said in a falsetto voice, "You see, Mr. Borgin, Draco Malfoy is my friend, and I want to get him a present, oh but obviously I don't want to buy something if he's already reserved it…"
Hermione couldn't help it; the matching grin broke through her temper as she recalled the incident in Knockturn Alley. "All right, I admit that wasn't exactly one of my more brilliant moments." She uncrossed her arms and put her hands on her hips as she continued to scowl - but only a mock scowl now - at Harry. "And may I just point out, Mr. Potter, that I've had plenty of time to improve my acting skills."
"Now that you're a prosecutor? And a wife and mother? Maybe," allowed Harry, "but not that much, I don't think."
Somewhat mollified, she returned to the sofa. They finished their sandwiches in silence. There was so much they had to say to each other - and Harry's remark about "wife and mother" touched on only one of them - but for the moment, Hermione was content to sit on the sofa and eat.
She was just about to break their silence when Harry did so first. "I couldn't get through the barrier this morning. Even when I hit it with the strongest Reducto spell the Elder Wand could generate."
"Was that when Eldritch and I felt that… shock wave?"
He nodded. "Yeah… some kind of backlash. I felt it too."
"But then - don't wipe your hands on your trousers, Harry, I have serviettes - but then why would the Death Chamber have such an impenetrable barrier over its door? I was certain it was to restrict access to you alone, with the Hallows. So is it just…"
"It's not impenetrable," interrupted Harry. "Someone got through just before I lost patience and tried the Reducto." At Hermione's inquiring expression, he elaborated. "Someone's… soul. Someone had just died, and I could feel their passage. Remember the old man in the inn? It was like that: I felt someone's soul pass through me today. The threnodies were following, but I couldn't quite make out who it was from their song."
She couldn't help gaping at him… not only at what he said, but at his matter-of-fact way of saying it. "Are you saying the Arch is where our souls go when we die?"
He blew out a breath. "Well, we'd already figured it was a portal to the afterlife, didn't we? 'Course, everyone's soul can't go through there: I mean, how many people die every minute, worldwide? There'd be a huge crowd of souls in that case, but I only felt one pass through while I was there."
"Possibly the Arch is only for magical people, and Muggle souls go elsewhere," said Hermione, thinking out loud. "Or maybe there's more of them besides the Arch… legend tells of a cave in Greece, where Heracles and Orpheus made their descents to the Underworld. Or maybe the Arch is merely the druids' means of physically embodying and localizing the portal…"
"My point is, I felt the soul go past me, through me, through the barrier, and into the Arch," Harry concluded. "Whatever the barrier's supposed to keep out, it isn't the spirits of the dead."
"Which raises the question again: what is the barrier keeping out?" Hermione pondered. Neither said anything for a few moments.
"Maybe it's not supposed to keep anything out," Harry finally suggested darkly. "Maybe it's keeping something in."
*
After delivering his thoughts about the Death Chamber, Harry found himself with nothing else to say - or rather, nothing safe to say. He'd come to the Ministry at Hermione's prompting, but he'd given no thought to what he'd do if her plan had worked - if he had, at one stroke, rid the world of the Deathly Hallows. Uncomfortably, he realized he'd then have no excuse for not rejoining the wizarding world… if he'd stayed away, it would be a true rejection of that world, and everyone in it.
And while Harry didn't care if he never saw some people in the wizarding world ever again, he'd realized in the last few days that there were others who he'd missed… missed very much indeed. Foremost on that list was the bushy-haired inquisitor on whose sofa he was sitting.
So far, their conversation had concentrated on the events of the day - though that included clearing up their misunderstanding about discretion. Harry knew, however, that wouldn't last. He felt reluctant to intrude any further into the affairs of the wizarding world - Hermione's world, if no longer his - and even more reluctant to share the details of his world.
Their lunch concluded, he stood politely and said, "Well, it was a good idea… and I think your notion of other portals is worth checking out. Especially the cave in Greece… maybe it won't have a barrier across it. Thanks loads, Hermione. You still have my emergency number, so…" He made the vague motions usually made by visitors about to take their leave.
"Ah, yes, Howard Seaker's mobile." Hermione laughed but didn't stand along with Harry. "Howard Seaker, Jacob Clayman… how many pseudonyms do you have, Harry?"
He shrugged. "Warren Locke… Nigel Chanter… I thought Hal Jameson was a little too obvious, even for me." He didn't mention others he'd devised, such as Neville Thomas and Ron Granger, which he'd discarded early in his exile as too painful to use.
"But Jacob Clayman was your favorite. Or, at least, you used it longest." Harry must have looked surprised, for she sighed and explained, "How long does it take to advance to sous-chef status, Monsieur Clayman?"
"Years," Harry conceded. Without thinking, he'd reseated himself on the sofa. "Mind you, I had an advantage in my choice of spices. Mallowsweet in particular is good in sauces served with roast lamb, much better than mint, really…"
He stopped as Hermione laughed again. "Oh, Harry, I'm just trying to picture you as a gourmet chef. You must cook for us sometime, honestly. I'd really like to taste your skills."
"Maybe," he hesitated, "maybe someday." He smiled ruefully. "'Course, those 'skills' were how I was finally caught, weren't they?"
"I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that wizards might visit a Muggle restaurant." Hermione turned serious. "You cut yourself off so completely…"
This was striking a bit too close to home. Harry tried to make light of it. "Well, after I started having regular contact with Ted, I learned a little bit about what was going on. I only had one restriction: I didn't want to hear anything to do with Quidditch. Mind you, once that had been barred as a topic of conversation, he didn't have a lot to say."
"I daresay you heard a lot about Victoire Weasley, then," she smiled.
"Oh yes."
"Anything…" Hermione hesitated. "Anything else?" She tried to keep the smile on her face, but it kept flickering away.
He gave a half-shrug, not looking at her directly, but at a spot two inches to her left. "Well, I knew about Rose, of course… I suppose she told you about the book I gave her." He dropped the topic… he couldn't say more about Hermione's family life if he wanted to avoid mentioning her marriage to Ron. And everything he could see around him - from the neatness of the room, to its lack of Chudley Cannons memorabilia - told him that, whatever turn Hermione's life had taken, it didn't include Ron at Enthalpy House.
Her penetrating glance suggested that she knew exactly what he wasn't saying. Harry was saved by a timely interruption: a tapping at the window. After a moment's pause, in which she obviously debated whether to ignore the tapping, Hermione rose from the sofa. Going to the window, she opened it to admit an owl with a scroll in its beak.
She took the scroll and, when she saw that the owl was waiting for a reply, unrolled it at once. "It's from Edwin Lovinett," she read aloud to Harry, "the solicitor representing Jack Swivingham. He's requesting a meeting with me and his client, tomorrow, on a matter of the utmost importance and… hm." She glanced up at Harry. "And confidentiality."
"Who's Jack Swivingham?"
She looked momentarily astonished that he should ask. "It's too long to explain," she said. "But he's a criminal I intend to put away for a very long time. The elf you met yesterday will be one of the witnesses against him."
"Sounds like he wants to cut a deal," said Harry encouragingly.
"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She found a quill, scribbled on the back of the scroll, and handed it to the owl. The owl launched itself out the window. "I'll see him tomorrow at noon," she told Harry, sitting down again. "That'll give me time to work out any details before the trial begins on Monday."
"Well, then." He stood once more, trying to display the signs of imminent departure. "If you're going into the Ministry tomorrow, you'll need a good night's sleep, so…"
"Stay."
He barely heard the single word, she said it so softly.
"Please," she added. Her gaze was steady on him… not pleading, but not at all tentative. "Please. I'd like you to stay."
Somewhere, his voice had gone on holiday. It took Harry a minute, or possibly hours, to find it again. When he did, he responded with a single word of his own. "Ron?"
Hermione turned pink, but didn't avert her gaze. "Ron lives in Diagon Alley, in a flat above their shop. We're…" She cleared her throat and continued, "Yes, we're married, but…" She stopped, looking far less than her usual confident self, and swallowed heavily. "It's a long story," she concluded.
Harry locked eyes with her. "Do you love him?" he asked quietly.
"It's not that simple," she replied, "not anywhere near as simple as that." She said no more, merely waiting… for Harry to make the next move. Which he did, by sitting back down on the sofa near her.
Hermione clasped her hands together and stared at them, as though they contained the words she wanted to say. "Ron and I were married a few years after you'd… after the end of the War," she finally began. "We'd always been close, after all, and he'd seemed to mature so much in the last months of the conflict. I mean, he started to genuinely care about some of my interests. And he, well, he made me laugh, at a time when I never thought I'd laugh again. He could always do that. And…" She paused.
"And I was dead," Harry nodded.
Her answering nod was filled with a deep sadness. "I'd lost you - I couldn't bear to lose Ron, too. So when he asked me to marry him, I said yes."
Harry could see how it must have been. The War was over, and the losses had been great… the two survivors of the Trio had each clung hard to their one remaining friend.
"But even then - even then, we had some… friction," Hermione continued carefully. Harry could only imagine the disagreements, arguments, and outright fights contained in that one word. "I went back to Hogwarts to finish my seventh year - Ron decided to work for the Wheezes. And when I got my NEWTs and Kingsley offered me a job at the Ministry, Ron found out he couldn't do the same. None of which would've mattered, of course, if only he'd been happy at how it all turned out - but he saw himself taking a second place to me, and he couldn't bear that."
She wasn't looking at Harry now, or at anything in the room. Harry guessed that she was watching scenes from the past - scenes she'd replayed in her mind many, many times over the years. "I don't know what went wrong… or maybe, it was never really right to begin with… but we argued over so much, Harry. Even when I was first working with Kingsley, fighting to correct the most blatant injustices in our government: rights for all magical beings, an end to bloodline discrimination. And at first Ron seemed to genuinely care about my work. But the more time I spent at the Ministry, the less he seemed to care… almost, you know, like he'd used up what to say and couldn't think of anything."
No, Harry reflected, I'd reckon "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches" wouldn't cover a situation like this. He made very sure to keep the thought to himself.
"So I was putting in more and more time at the Ministry, just to get away from home. And of course, he didn't like that I was advancing in the Ministry so rapidly as a result. It seemed as though every night was spent in either yelling or not saying anything." Hermione sighed wearily.
"And then you got pregnant with Rose," guessed Harry.
Hermione looked up at him in surprise. "I've been trying to help people… secretly… for a fair few years," Harry explained. "I've watched domestic catastrophes unfold. A baby can either cement a relationship, or blow it apart."
"Don't think for a moment that Ron doesn't love Rose," Hermione said quickly, firmly. "He loves her very much, and so do I. But…"
"But that was the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were?"
"As it were." She sighed again and once more met his gaze. "So, to answer your question: I don't know that I'd call it 'love', but I suppose I do still care for Ron, somewhat. But I can't live with him." She gestured at the room around them. "He moved out when Rose was five."
"But you're still married, then?" For a moment, Harry had to wonder if Hermione had stayed with Ron to avoid damaging her Ministry career - then he rejected the thought as unworthy. Hermione had despised Percy for putting career before family: she would never do that herself.
Her expression turned incredulous for an instant, before she visibly recalled how little he still knew, even after all these years, of the wizarding world. "Vows in the wizarding world are enforced by the users' own magic, Harry. You certainly remember the magically binding contract that kept you in the Triwizard Tournament? Well, if anything, marriage vows are stronger. Ron and I can't divorce - hell, we can't even cheat on each other."
She stood jerkily. "So you see, it's perfectly safe for me to invite another wizard to spend the night in my home. Don't feel any qualms on that account. It's simply that…"
"I never assumed that was your intention, Hermione," he said quietly.
Hermione's words fumbled slightly, then she continued, "It's simply that I'd like to have my oldest friend - whom I'd thought dead for years and years - I'd like to know that he's close by. That he's alive, and safe, and near. That's all." Though she didn't say it in so many words, there was a sense of Is that so much to ask? in her tone. Harry was quite sure that Hermione wasn't even aware it was there.
She'd shared the details of her life with him… and she'd made her case. She would not ask again, Harry was certain of that. The next move was once more his - and he was acutely aware that his choice would dictate the courses of the rest of their lives, one way or another.
But for the first time in what seemed forever, he felt he really had a rest of his life.
Even before his conscious mind realized he'd made his choice, his mouth was responding with a seeming non-sequitur, delivered from a perfectly straight face. "Eggs?"
She was taken aback. "W-what…?"
"Eggs. Do you keep eggs in your icebox? Maybe some bacon, or some mild cheese? If you don't, I know a little all-night shop in Kensington that has pretty good quality…"
She blinked at him three or four times before a delighted smile spread across her face. "Oh! Um, no, I don't eat breakfast all that often. Um, usually I just grab a pastry on my way to work."
Harry stood and faced her. "Well, if you wouldn't mind decking out the sofa with pillows and such, I'll make a grocery run and be back in two shakes."
It was truly amazing how swiftly she closed the space between them, to envelop him in a massive, spine-cracking hug. And the awkwardness he expected to feel, about putting his arms around her and returning the favor, somehow never materialized.