Shadow Walker
Hi…umm… here's a new chapter. I don't want to be this fount of excuses, because I don't really have any overriding IRL excuses, except a Mega-case of excruciating writer's block. And a completely wiped out hard drive. Took me forever to re-do what I had done (which was precious little), and then complete it enough to post. I had trouble figuring out exactly what I wanted with this story, so here is where I'm going. I know everyone wants to see "our" Harry meet up with Other Hermione from her POV, and then where she goes following his visit. That is what I want to focus on also: how she got to be the person Harry found, and what she did after. I was having trouble wrangling out how much of Hermione's personal "resistance" against the establishment I was going to include, so the answer is: Not much. It will be referenced obliquely, but the political/espionage angles are going to be minimalized save where it advances the main plot. Hope that sits well with everyone. I am hoping that the next chapter comes more easily; once we hit their meeting, it should move better.
I hope I'm forgiven enough that I still have readers!
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.
-Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
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Chapter Four:
Two scared little runaways hold fast to the break of daylight.
-Switchfoot, "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine"
Hermione looked up from the cauldron she was stirring, as the Burrow's front door flew open abruptly, banging against the wall. A bristly rustle met her ears, along with a few well-chosen curse words, and the tramp of wet snow boots. Ron was completely hidden behind a wall of pine branches, until he let it fall to the floor with a final swish and muffled thump.
"Damn, that's heavier than it looked," was all he said, pretending not to notice the look of bewildered resignation she was giving him. He shook the snow from his ginger hair, and began to unwind his scarf.
"What the hell is that?" came a voice from beyond Ron, out of Hermione's line of sight. Ginny was on the stairs. Ron looked helplessly at Hermione, who shrugged as if to say, you made this dumb decision on your own, you handle it.
"It's a - it's a Christmas tree, Gin." He tried to smile at her, the same tentative way one would try to placate an angry animal.
"I know what it is," his sister amended, sounding more weary than wrathful. "Why did you bring it here?"
"I thought we - I thought it might take our minds off - it's Christmas… they wouldn't want us to - " He stopped, as both he and Hermione saw Ginny's features shutter and close off.
"They're dead, Ron. There's no way to know what they'd want us to do." Her voice was withering, almost Draco Malfoy-esque in its condescending cruelty. "And there's certainly nothing to celebrate."
She turned swiftly, and marched back up the stairs, quiet until she reached her door, which she opened and shut with decisive force, the sound distorted through a hasty and ill-cast Silencio. Ron made a move toward the stairs, but stopped at Hermione's gentle remonstrance.
"Ron, don't." She knew how Ginny felt, knew the pangs of missing someone so acutely that one nearly choked on it. She longed for just one more glimpse of Harry's crooked smile, his striking eyes, the half-hopeful, half-wary look that disclosed how unworthy of friendship he believed himself to be. "Ginny's - she's had a bad day at work - Merlin knows I couldn't handle working at that awful place, interacting with those… those people, and… ever since Neville…" She trailed off into silence, and both of their faces reflected the pall of grief that hung on the room like a heavy curtain. It didn't take any skill at Legilimency for Hermione to know that Ron was also thinking about their fallen classmate.
"She shouldn't - we … we can't keep living like this, Hermione."
"Living like what, Ronald?" Hermione's tone was acrid. Ron looked at her dubiously, clearly aware of the dangerous path he was treading.
"Like this. Constant mourning, gloom … we've frozen Time back to that bloody Day, and we can't ever go forward. It's like having Dementors camped out in the bloody garden."
"So you want us to what, Ron? Have a party?" Ron sighed the frustrated sigh of one who is being deliberately misunderstood, but Hermione plunged on. "So sorry H-Harry had to go and die, so that you had to deal with all of us being in a bad mood." Her voice wobbled and cracked a little on the last phrase.
"That's not what I meant, Hermione," Ron said mildly. His face was so uncharacteristically gentle that it made her want to weep anew, made her want to think of something incredibly swotty to say, just so he'd yell at her. But her inborn forthrightness made her answer honestly, made her acknowledge that she was lashing out blindly, like a wounded creature striking at whatever lay within reach, whether or not it was that which had caused the pain in the first place.
"I know it's not."
"I want us to … to make an attempt, Hermione. Christmas seemed like a decent time to do that, to - I dunno - to pretend, maybe, not to actually forget. I know it's hard, and I know it still hurts like hell. Of all people, Ginny and I - we know." He kicked at the tree, sending up a fine spray of water where the snow had melted. His features seemed pinched and older somehow, and Hermione was stricken by how much he resembled his father. His gaze drifted over the empty room, and he seemed to be seeing it as it had been: warm and noisy and full of life. He sighed. "Everything seems so bleak right now, but - but wouldn't… wouldn't he - wouldn't all of them want us to live our lives, to try to make the best of things? I mean, he bloody well lived in a cupboard, and he still - he didn't let it change who he was. We're - we're walking around here like ghosts, like shadows of who we used to be. We might as well have died on the battlefield with everyone else."
"I sometimes wish I had," Hermione admitted softly. For a moment, Ron looked like he wanted to take her to task, but then his rangy shoulders slumped, and he admitted,
"So do I."
The house was utterly silent, save for the soft frothy noise of Hermione's concoction bubbling in the cauldron. Hermione could feel it, like Ron had described: almost tangible despair, Dementor's ice in her soul, a heavy cloak on her shoulders, burdensome and ponderous. And yet, she wasn't sure she could give it up. The anguish paved her path to Harry, was her last remaining link to him, and she clung to it fiercely.
And yet… she could almost hear him too, fancied that she could see the reproach in his vivid gaze. The repressed childhood he'd endured, the constant reminders of what a burden he was to his guardians, had often made him worry that he was causing someone unnecessary trouble. She could only imagine how he'd feel if he knew how his three dearest friends were existing, how their grief would grieve him.
"I've thought about leaving," she blurted suddenly, and then looked surprised that she'd said it. Ron's Adam's apple worked up and down in his neck as he swallowed, but she registered with some astonishment that he didn't look surprised.
"Where?" was his simple question.
"Back to my parents. Back to … a Muggle life. Where I can…" She struggled to define her expectations of abandoning the world where her heart had resided since she was eleven years old.
"Where you can pretend none of this ever happened?" Ron spoke lightly, with the feigned nonchalance of one who is desperately trying to sound controlled. The anguish reared up within her, sank its taloned claws further into her chest. None of this ever happened… she imagined going to Oxford, going to museums, clubs, restaurants, whiling away her time with new Muggle friends who had no idea that who Harry Potter even was, or that another world was locked in its death throes. It was a dream and a nightmare all at once.
Harry! She caught her breath suddenly, feeling as if he'd died all over again.
"I said I'd thought about it. I didn't say I was going to do it."
"Couldn't say I'd blame you if you did. It'd be nice to have that option… to just chuck it all, I mean."
Hermione's indignant gasp at the inelegant phrase bespoke her true feelings, her guilt that `chucking it' would be exactly what she was doing, abandoning them, abandoning him and everything he'd fought for, died for.
"Why couldn't you and Ginny have that option too?" she asked. Ron laughed bitterly.
"Snap our wands? Function without magic?" he shook his head. "It's ingrained in our lives even more than it is in yours. I probably couldn't even pass a Muggle driving test without Confunding the instructor. And for better or for worse, it is our world, it's all we know… `Sides, I'm not the one Lucius has painted a target on." He nodded toward the parchment on the kitchen table, half-furled from where it had been attached to the leg of an officious Ministry owl. "What're you going to do with those?"
Hermione's eyes were distant as she stirred her cauldron again, but she managed to crack a harsh half-smile.
"What would I like to do with them? Or what am I actually going to do with them?" She strode over to the heavy wooden table, and lit the papers with her wand. Ron made a muffled exclamation of protest, as the flames flared up briefly and then died. He was able to make out Hermione J. Granger, Registered Muggle-born, in fluid calligraphy, before the parchment was consumed and ashes fluttered down to frost the table's surface.
"Mightn't it have been better to mull it over briefly first?"
Hermione raked him with an incredulous look. "Mull over what? I certainly wasn't going to sign it, now or ever."
"We could've faked…" Ron began, but she overrode him before he could finish.
"Lucius Malfoy knows exactly where I stand, and will continue to stand." Her eyes took on a gleam, as she seemed to suddenly come to a decision; she almost looked like the Hermione he remembered. "I'm going to fight his injustices every way I can, for as long as I can. If nothing else, we can irritate the hell out of him, frustrate his attempts to subjugate non-Purebloods, and make sure that people don't forget Harry." She seemed to suddenly realize her plural pronoun, and turned beseeching eyes on Ron, reaching out to clasp his hand. "We can fight him… can't we?"
"You know I'm with you, Hermione," Ron said. She lifted her other hand, so that his large fingers were sandwiched between all ten of hers, and fixed him with a grateful smile.
"I think we should start an underground network - a Wireless program or a periodical, something to get out word of what's really going on. And we have Ginny and Luna on the inside. They could probably get information…maybe other contacts…" She looked as animated as Ron had seen her in several months, before their world had been obliterated.
"All of that is well and good, Hermione," Ron said, clearing his throat. "But if you don't sign the registration papers, then they're going to arrest you. Probably paint you as some crazed vigilante who can't get over Harry's death, splash it in all the papers... "
"I won't sign them, Ron."
"Then we can't stay here." His voice was quiet, and there was a new inflection in it, one that she had not noticed before. Her expression softened at his immediate offer to accompany her, but she chose to ignore the underlying tone.
"Do you think Ginny will be willing to leave?" She kept her voice brisk.
"'Ginny' should stay here," came from the doorway, and she and Ron both jumped as Ginny entered the kitchen. Her hair was disheveled, and her face still held traces of redness and puffiness that even a Refreshing charm couldn't quite cover up, but she seemed mostly composed.
"We can't leave you here alone," Ron immediately blustered. His sister waved him off with an airy hand gesture.
"I'm an adult, Ronald. And I have a job. A legitimate job, and one that can help us. If I go with you, the Ministry will either sack me, or follow me to you, and neither of those options is acceptable. We should work out a contact system between you and me and Luna before you go." She read both of their appraising looks. "I'll be fine."
"Well…" Hermione drew out slowly, her eyes moving back and forth between the siblings. "We've got to be gone before the deadline expires. That means we've got about one week to find a place, ward it, ward the Burrow, set up…" Her voice wobbled into silence. The Weasleys were regarding her gravely. It wasn't as if any of them were strangers to a sort of "outlaw" status, but it felt like a point of no return, a step off of a precipice, a decision made with no Harry, nor hope of him.
Going forward… Ron's words rang suddenly in her ears. Was that what this was? Maybe, she conceded, but I'm not going to forget, and I'm not going to allow what Harry fought for to die.
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It was late. As they opened the kitchen door that led to the Burrow's garden, the warmth and light spilled its bounds to the shadowy black, but was soon swallowed up and consumed. Hermione stepped through the doorway, and her eyes flickered back in the direction of the clock-shaped outline on the faded wallpaper. A gust of icy wind cut through her like a blade, and she sucked her breath in through her teeth. She pivoted on one heel, making a scuffing sound in the dirt, and turned back toward the house.
Ron was standing in between her and the house, hands shoved in pockets, his eyes roving over the humped dark shape of the house with undisguised longing. Ginny was standing on the threshold, leaning against the jamb, her hair twisted into a messy updo, her eyes dark and brimful with sorrow. Fingers of wind tangled in the wayward strands, and tossed them around her face.
For a long time, nobody spoke. The mournful solo of the wind in the trees seemed to echo their emotions adeptly. Finally, Hermione said, struggling to speak through a tight throat,
"The wards will activate at midnight, Ron."
"Ginny…" Ron breathed. He sniffed loudly, and put his sleeve up to his eyes. Hermione couldn't see his face, but she could see Ginny's. The younger girl looked frail and weary, as if an enormous burden were weighing her down.
"I'll be fine, Ron," Ginny said, entreating him wordlessly to at least pretend to believe her. "The wards you and Hermione have set up - they're top-notch. And … and as far as any of them are concerned, I'm a loyal employee, right?"
"Until your brother and the unregistered Muggle-born he's aiding and abetting disappear, on the eve of her arrest," Ron muttered grimly.
"So they take me in for questioning." Ginny shrugged. "They've got nothing. I won't know where you are. Nothing here can lead them to you - almost nothing," she amended quickly.
"Have you got it on?" Hermione asked suddenly. Ginny nodded and clutched at something hidden beneath her shirt.
"I won't take it off."
Ron moved toward her then, squashing her into a fierce hug on her last words. Ginny let one sob escape before hugging him as if her life depended on it.
"Be careful, Ginny. Please."
His sister nodded, apparently not trusting herself to speak, and she moved toward Hermione, arms open. Their embrace was a little stiffer, but no less heartfelt.
"You have always been the strong one, Hermione," Ginny said. "Be strong for him, like you were for Harry."
"Of course," Hermione's murmur was almost automatic. She couldn't dwell too much on Ginny's words; they danced too closely to wounds that would never fully heal. Who is there to lend strength to the strongest?
Finally, Ginny straightened, looking businesslike, and tucking the loosened strands of hair behind her ears. "Okay. Do it."
Clearly lost, Ron was already opening his mouth to question his sister, when Hermione raised her wand.
"Confundus."
Ginny's eyes went unfocused, and she smiled at both of them blearily. Before she could say anything, Hermione had gently taken her by both shoulders and steered her to a kitchen chair, sitting her down where a steaming cup of tea waited. She exited, shut the door firmly, locked it with her wand, and turned to face Ron's onslaught.
"You - you Confunded her?" He was utterly flabbergasted, but Hermione could see the anger rising. "We're leaving her alone, at the mercy of who knows what kind of people - and you - you - "
"It was her idea. She put Dreamless Sleep in the tea as well. When she wakes up, the details of our departure should be very fuzzy. They're going to question her, Ron. There's no way to know how intensively. We've got to cover our bases, or it's all for nothing."
"I - I know, but…" He seemed to want to protest, but was unsure how to proceed.
"Come on." She thumbed the straps of her knapsack more securely onto her shoulders. "We've got to make it to the property line before everything turns on." She moved at a brisk stride over the uneven ground, using only the barest hint of light from her wandtip.
Ron walked slowly at first, backward, drinking in the sight of the only home he'd ever known, once a-brim with love and light and laughter; now just a shell of what it had been, empty save for memories and ghosts and sorrow - and his baby sister, sitting alone in the deserted kitchen, wondering who had been nice enough to make her tea. He tripped over a protruding rock, nearly fell, and swore. Hermione could hear the tears clogging his voice. Her heart contracted in sympathy, but she said nothing, intent on the shadowy outline of a hedgerow. Ron turned away from the Burrow, squared his shoulders, and fell in stride with her, as they ducked through the clinging brambles of the hedge.
"The Portkey will activate in five minutes," she told Ron, as they kept close to the hedge, staying in the deepest of the shadows. They came to the large spread of an oak tree, and Hermione stepped close to it, her hands roving carefully over its trunk before reaching into a knothole at its heart.
"Are you ready?" she asked him. She was referring to more than just the activation of the illegal Portkey - a tarnished ring of old keys - hooked on one of her fingers. Ron's eyes were like a stranger's. Hermione thought of the exchange she and Ron had had the night he'd brought home the Christmas tree. We might as well have died on that battlefield with everyone else. I sometimes wish I had. So do I. In a way, they all had. Standing there, in near-pitch darkness, with Ron, with the tangible absence of Harry - it was clear that the people they had once been were gone forever, hurtled into the abyss, into the "next great adventure" as surely as if they'd stopped breathing when Harry had.
"Ron?" she prodded again, when no answer was forthcoming.
"She's all I've got left," he blurted clumsily. Hermione reached out to lay light fingers on his forearm.
"No, she's not." She tried to infuse heartfelt compassion into her voice, but was unsure how much he was actually registering.
Ron took a deep breath, and glanced back in the direction of the Burrow, though it lay hidden beyond a gentle rise and a small copse of trees. He met her gaze squarely, the low wand-light reflecting in his eyes.
"I know. I'm ready," he said, and it was more like a sigh of acquiescence than actual words. He slid his finger alongside Hermione's and hooked it around the opposite side of the key ring.
There was the merest hint of a rustle, an almost soundless surge of power, and they both looked back toward the house with simultaneous and abrupt motions.
"Wards are up." They were as cut off from Ginny and the Burrow, as if an insurmountable wall had sprung up between them.
"And that - this thing you've worked up between the two of you," Ron asked. "Are you sure it will work? A necklace seems an awfully delicate thing to base this on."
"It's perfect - or as near to it as we can get. The pendant is password accessible only, so there's no chance of someone activating it accidentally. If someone tries to dismantle it, all they'll find is a portable Bluebell Flame. But Ginny says the password and the spell, and her little candle pendant becomes a Mini Floo."
"Just large enough to get a preset Portkey through," Ron finished for her, in the singsong tone of one who has heard something many times before. "That covers emergency exits, but doesn't cover Veritaserum or torture or…"
"Ron, she's practically the only remaining member of a decimated blood traitor family. She has no money, no influence, and any connections she once had are gone. Lucius Malfoy won the government through legal channels; he's still trying to put on the charade of legitimacy. He wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that. He can come after me, make an example of me, because as of now, I'm breaking the law. But why would he go after Ginny - and risk making her sympathetic… a friend of Harry Potter, and the lost, last daughter of an old Wizarding line?"
"You're just like Harry," Ron told her with no small amount of weary amazement. She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, the Portkey swirled them away.
They rematerialized in the living area of a tiny stone cottage. Ron staggered a bit upon landing, and a wooden chair slid noisily along the slate floor as he collided with it.
"Mind the furniture, Ron," Hermione said absently. "Lumos!" A flick of her wand sent small orbs of light arcing into the waiting lamps, and the little room was cozily illumined. They both stood and regarded it rather dispassionately. The kitchen was basically a wood-burning stove, sink, and table; through an arched doorway were two bedrooms and a tiny loo. Hermione could feel, rather than actually see, the oppressive pine forest threatening to smother the tiny building from all directions. They knew, from their reconnaissance and preparations, that even in the brightest part of the day, only filtered sunlight made it to the woodland floor.
Hermione eyed the fireplace with askance, knowing that the Floo Network would be monitored for her, once the Ministry realized she had not registered, had no intentions of registering. Ginny's candle pendant was for emergencies only. She began to realize just how cut off and forlorn their new dwelling place made her feel.
"The wards will let us know the movements of any human movement up to 200 meters. No Apparation save our own, no magic save our own. We're as safe as we can possibly be - under the circumstances," Hermione informed him, but she knew that Malfoy would continue to look for her, that his pride would demand nothing less. The Ministry would be searching for loopholes, developing innovations, counter-measures. She only hoped that Luna and Ginny could keep them appropriately apprised.
Hermione thought once again of the irony of what they were doing: the instinct to flee, to hide, to preserve oneself, to survive, coming to the forefront, even though they had both admitted at least a partial desire for death.
Ron strode through the archway and into one of the bedrooms. Hermione heard the creak of springs as something heavy, presumably his knapsack, landed on the bed. There was a moment of rustling, and he reappeared, cupping something in his hands.
"Brought this for you," he said laconically, and opened his hands over hers.
"What on earth?" she murmured as a small, irregularly shaped black object fell into her palms.
"'S'a transmitter," Ron explained. "It belonged to … Fred and George. I thought you could use it to - to, you know… broadcast our dissension. It's Unplottable, but I don't know what new tricks the Ministry will have up their slimy sleeves."
Hermione felt a real smile spread over her face, as she cupped the small device.
"Thank you, Ron. I was afraid we'd have to use Muggle methods, and wasn't sure if any magical folk would even be able to hear it. This is far better."
"You're welcome." His voice was warm with sincerity and something else that drew her attention away from the transmitter to his face. There was something in his gaze that set alarm bells off in her brain, something that had not exactly grown into longing or desire, but more like wistfulness or fledgling hope. Hermione supposed that it was only to be expected: surviving harrowing experiences tended to bond people together, and they were in this cabin alone…
And yet, Harry's loss was still as a knife wound in her gut, and she found herself taking a couple of involuntary steps away from him, hasty and graceless movements. Her face colored brilliantly; she might as well have shouted her rejection at him.
The pinched forlorn quality began to creep back into his face, not unlike the encroaching spread of ice across the surface of a gray winter lake.
"Ron…" There was a plea in her voice for understanding, for absolution, but his upraised hand squelched her voice as surely as a Silencio.
"Where do you want to set it up?" he said, and his voice was almost normal. "There's not a clear line in any direction, but it looked like southern-facing would be the most likely."
"Th - that corner," she gestured, following his lead, and indicated the back corner of the small living area, opposite the fireplace.
In the ensuing silence, broken only by shifting furniture and softly spoken spells, Hermione wondered if they could overcome the tension that seemed like a new and unwelcome visitor, or if it would rise up and consume them both.
TBC….
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