Shadow Walker
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.
-Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
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Just breathe the air inside, and bring on back that lonely smile.
-Feeder, "Forget About Tomorrow"
They had argued momentarily, voices rising, eyes flashing angrily. Hermione had retreated to the place she knew well, with lofty stance and clipped Prefect voice as firmly in place as if she had been at Hogwarts yesterday. She almost couldn't believe herself. He was here; Harry was here. And she had the temerity to snap at him? Instead, she should be…
And before she could even articulate to herself what she should be doing (kissing the hem of his robes? giving thanks to all that was holy for his presence?), he leapt up from the sofa, as she'd begun moving away, and … he touched her. It was just a firm grip at her elbow, a plea for her attention, but when she turned to look at him again, it was as if electric current threaded through that contact.
Harry must have felt it too, for he all but shied away.
"I'm - I'm sorry." She wasn't sure either of them knew for what he was apologizing, but he added, "I - I should have - I should have known that you wouldn't do anything that you hadn't already sussed out ahead of time."
She could have acknowledged the compliment, this nod to her penchant for preparedness and contingency plans. Instead, they just looked at each other - although Hermione wasn't sure that it could be adequately described by a word as commonplace as look, when it was something she was feeling clear down to her toes. She reflected on the utter strangeness of this entire encounter. It was Harry, and yet it wasn't. They'd known each other for ages, and yet they hadn't. His very presence brought to full living color both the most joyful and the most desolate memories she possessed. Tragedy seemed to flare to life in his eyes, and she also knew that - at least - he did know exactly what she was thinking and feeling, understood the grievous blows that life had dealt her.
He was going through it too.
Hermione swallowed with difficulty, and tore her eyes away from his. She grasped for something clinical to talk about, and for a time, they were sidetracked with a more impersonal discussion about their plan, Luna, and Wizarding society under Malfoy.
Harry's obvious sympathy seemed to pierce through her very soul, to lay bare wounds that had never really healed. She recalled her feeling last week, standing in Muggle London, feeling untouchable, unreachable, utterly isolated.
"Sometimes I get so tired," she finished, in a small voice that did not sound like her at all. Seeing him here was just too hard. She dropped her gaze to her shoes and willed herself not to cry.
"Hey," he whispered softly, as tenderly as he would to a lover. He pulled at her arm again, and she let him. "Hey, Hermione…"
She raised her eyes toward him then, as his breath fanned her ear. So close, two friends…just two friends… She wanted contact with him so badly. Her hands were raised to cup his face, before she even realized it, and she arrested the motion awkwardly.
"Merlin, I've missed you." Her voice was a shuddering understatement. There was longing in his eyes that mirrored the yearning that she also felt, and she watched them close slowly, as he inhaled a deep, slow breath, trying to bring himself under control.
She waited for his eyes to open again, regarding every feature, as if needing to memorize him. She could feel the radiant heat of his body next to hers, and felt herself suffused with it. The want rose up, unquenchable, unfathomable, and she felt that she could easily drown in the intensity of it. Something matching glinted in his eyes, and she felt the jolt deep in the pit of her stomach.
Hermione was barely able to bite back a gasp, when his fingers touched her cheek, stroking down the line of her jaw. She struggled to hold herself together in this maelstrom.
"Hermione…" It was almost a groan, and reminded her - so much - of that terrible Last Day, but when she looked at him once more, she knew that she could not deny herself this much, this once.
She had no sense of either of them moving, but then his lips were on hers, and it was … it was everything. She couldn't breathe; she never wanted to breathe again. Her senses spun awry, until they encompassed nothing but him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he gathered her closer, as if they could somehow become one with each other by proximity alone. She felt his kiss with every nerve ending of her body; it made her pulse race, her knees wobble, and her chest heave. She thought of that day in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, before they surged out to do battle.
It would have been like this.
The pain of loss, of now knowing exactly what she had had torn away from her, poured over her afresh, like acid over a gaping wound.
At almost the same instant, he pulled away from her abruptly, recoiling from her to the opposite end of the sofa. Hermione`s lips parted, as she felt the new sting of rejection, abandonment. She pulled in a jagged breath of air, and reeled under the weight of reality that had crashed back into her.
Stupid, she thought. That was stupid. He is Harry, but he's not Harry. I can't ever wish that back. And yet, if he'd said one entreating word, made one beckoning gesture, she would have been back in his arms with the speed of a snitch in flight.
Harry looked immeasurably guilty, even though he also seemed as shaken and affected by the kiss as Hermione was. He feels as if he has betrayed her.
"We can't -" He was having trouble forming words, struggling to regulate his breathing. "We can't do this. You're not - I - I'm not - "
But I am! We are! Hermione retreated behind her personal walls, built out of anguish and isolation, before she could do something embarrassing like beg. Stiffly, as though her bones were made of glass, she stood, Summoned a scroll from her desk, and resumed packing for their clandestine trip. Careful, she told herself, step, step, step, pick up the knapsack, open it, don't look at him… good girl.
"We should get going." She felt distant, almost out of body; her mouth was moving, but she could make no sense of the words that were coming out. "We'll need to be out of there, before the first Unspeakables arrive at dawn."
"Hermione…" He said her name, and it was no longer a plea laced with desire, but an entreaty for understanding. She knew what he was not saying: she was not the one he was looking for. She knew it, but she did not want to hear it from him. The ultimate rejection… from all I have left. The pain of it was as a sledgehammer blow to her chest, and it was all she could do not to double over from the force of the heaving sobs that threatened.
"Don't!" she ordered sharply, as the knot in her throat tightened further still. If she actually had to hear him say the words …
She felt, rather than heard, him make a movement, which he immediately checked. She couldn't look at him. Then, very softly, a whispered and broken,
"I'm sorry," as if he truly realized the inadequacy of those words. She immediately felt like a beast. None of what had happened to her was his fault, after all.
"You've nothing to be sorry for," she replied truthfully, and turned to concentrate on the knapsack she was still clutching, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. This Harry at least needed her; she had offered her assistance, and she could at least do this much for him. Before she was left alone once again.
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Several hours later, they stumbled back into the secret room beyond the cellar wall, exhausted and pale. Hermione's shirt clung stickily to her shoulder, a narrow tear fringed with dangling threads and a large crimson stain.
"Will they look here?" Harry asked, as he unceremoniously dropped the knapsack over the arm of the sofa. She could feel his eyes boring into her back, as she moved across the room to the tiny loo, concealed from the rest of the room by a thick canvas curtain. And even when she had vanished behind the barrier, she still felt self-conscious as she stiffly lifted her shirt over her head.
"They know I was here once," she answered, only barely managing to stifle a gasp as the still oozing wound was pulled past its endurance. "They sweep it every now and then, but they've never found me." She leaned over the miniscule basin, using the mirror to more closely inspect the jagged hole. "Anti-Apparation wards only allow me in and out - that's why we ended up in the garden." She cast cleaning and healing spells, gritting her teeth as the burn indicated that her wound was knitting up. When she was finished, her shoulder was still a lurid red, but was no longer laid open, and she carefully affixed some gauze with a Sticking charm. There was a blue t-shirt hanging on a hook opposite the shower, and still moving her arm gingerly, she pulled it over her head.
"I've had Auror training in field medicine," Harry offered, as she came out, testing to see how far she could rotate her arm without pain. "Mind if I have a look at that?"
Hermione's eyebrows soared to her hairline. She imagined the fingers that had caressed her jaw and threaded through her hair tenderly probing the bare skin of her shoulder. There's no way in hell I could handle that.
"I'm perfectly capable of casting a healing spell on myself, thank you."
There was an awkward silence that thickly permeated the entire room. Harry was watching her, and the look in his eyes made her face flame. Her gaze darted from him, like some frightened forest creature.
"So what happens now," she asked, as she studiously avoided looking at him.
"What?"
"What are you going to do… with that?" She inclined her head in the direction of the sofa, where he'd deposited the knapsack.
"Well, I … guess - if I can figure out how, that is - then I'll use my magical signature to calibrate a new crystal. Unless I'm closer to home than to her - which I doubt - that should lead me straight to her - or - or at least the universe where she is."
"So, after it's calibrated, you'll cast the incantation and you'll…go?" She could barely make herself articulate the last word. The thought of his leaving was almost debilitating; the thought of being alone once again in that cellar room, adrift in a hostile world with no hope of rescue or even abatement. She couldn't look at him.
"Yes." She heard his strangled whisper, and nodded mechanically in response, grasping instinctively for her iron control.
"Well then, I suppose we should…" she began, but Harry was not fooled.
"Hermione!"
"What? What is there to say? We should get to work." She wanted to scream in frustration. Why was he insisting on forcing this painful conversation between the two of them? Better to pretend that none of it had ever happened.
"I - I don't want to leave you here like this."
Her eyes were mutinous. She did not want his pity.
"Then take me with you," she spoke briskly, as though pointing out a simple and obvious solution. She busied herself with the retrieval of various items from the depths of the sack, setting them down on an adjacent table without much attention.
"I… can't," he drew out reluctantly, as she'd known he would. "I was hoping you'd understand."
The pain seized her throat in its impersonal, merciless grip again. She did understand. But that did not make it hurt less.
"Understand what? I'm Hermione Granger, your best friend, genetically identical to whoever it is you're looking for! Have I really changed that much in the few years where our universes diverged? Why can't you - why can't I - ?" She pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything more, mortified beyond repair.
"Why can't I what? Why can't I love you? You think I don't? Let me tell you something right now, Hermione - I love you with my soul. Is that what you want to hear? I always have and I've never stopped. And I'll never forgive myself for not telling her - you - when I had the chance. You are every bit as much Hermione as the girl who was taken from me. But it's not about that."
"Then what is it about?" Her voice wobbled, her face burning hot from his declaration of emotion. She wondered if he even realized how his words made her heart seize up with simultaneous agony and joy.
"It's about doing what's right. It's about restoring Hermione to a universe from which she was stolen, taken against her will. It's not fair to leave her there. And if I took you both, one of you would be forced out of phase."
"You might not ever find her," she pointed out, coming perilously close to pleading with him to take her away from this place. She closed her eyes in self-loathing.
"I have to try… Besides, you would forever be fighting the pull of your own universe. I don't know what we'd have to do to keep you there. This is your universe, where you belong…"
She folded up onto the sofa, her body's willingness to hold her up melting away at the stark finality of his words.
"Where I belong... oh, God."
It was too much, and she was only vaguely aware of the compression of the sofa cushions as Harry came to sit next to her. His arm moved around her shoulders, being careful of her wound, when she began to cry.
"Leave this place, Hermione," he entreated. "Go to Australia, America, anywhere away from here. There's nothing to hold you here anymore. We lost. Harry - I failed. It's over. You should go - try to make a life for yourself somewhere else."
Tears overflowed her burning eyes, and trickled in meandering paths down her cheeks. "I could never imagine a life without you. As long as I was fighting Death Eaters, standing up for what was right - it - it felt like I was keeping you alive… like I was still fighting for you. If - if I go - then you really are dead." She recalled Ginny's words: What is it we're really trying to accomplish here? Are we fighting just for the sake of fighting, kicking against the goads, just so we won't have to admit that we lost?
"Maybe… maybe it's time you accept that." His voice was hesitant, and he wouldn't quite look at her, as if he knew she wouldn't let him off the hook so easily.
"Like you did?" There was no accusation in her voice; she was too emotionally fatigued for that.
"My journey isn't over yet."
They sat in silence for a long moment. Harry's fingers trailed down her arm, and played with the tail of her plait, curling the ends. She leaned into his side, feeling the warmth of him, the way his chest rose and fell rhythmically, and wished that it could stay like that always. She could not prevent a gusty and wistful sigh from escaping, but she forced herself to sit up.
"Then I'd best help you on your way." She was pleading with him wordlessly to drop the subject for her sake. There was another beat of silence between them, and Harry appeared to be conceding to her. "I don't even know where to begin," she admitted. "I'm not that well-versed on these theories…"
One of Harry's hands clapped his forehead.
"I completely forgot!" He retrieved a miniature book from the depths of his pocket, and passed it to Hermione after a rather hasty and excited Engorgio. Her eyes trailed over the title, stamped in shiny black against the worn leather: Multiverse Theory.
"You lifted this?"
"You think Lucius Malfoy will be pissed?" His green gaze twinkled at her, as he grinned, and she was as surprised as he was at the trill of genuine laughter that escaped her lips.
She flipped open the book, with the familiar hunger for knowledge and the challenge of a puzzle to be solved stealing over her. She was unsure how long she would have sat there on the sofa, hunched over the spidery script of the bound parchment, but for Harry's prodigious yawn.
"How long has it been since you've slept?" She asked severely, as he blinked his watery eyes. It feels so good to watch after someone again, she thought fervently.
"Luna said I wouldn't tire while I was out of phase." He lifted his shoulders slightly, conveying that he had no idea how to answer her question. "This is the first time I've been in phase for any extended period of time, but I was up for over twenty-four hours before I left. I'm not even sure how much time has passed now - or how much passed while I was moving between universes."
"Go to sleep. I'll work on this." Her voice is peremptory, emotionless, even while her heart contracted in sympathy. He'd been through so much just to get to this point, and what had she done? Cried all over him, made him feel guilty for things that weren't his fault, and bounced around from one emotion to another like someone wearing Spring-Spelled shoes. To cover her self-conscious flush, she widened the sofa, with a wave of her wand, and pointed him towards the sheets and blankets folded over the arm.
"Hermione, this is my - " He put up a token protest at the idea of letting her work, while he slept, but even as he said so, she could see the fatigue in his fluttering lashes.
"When have I ever not helped you when you needed it? Besides, you won't be able to find her if you're dead on your feet, now will you?" She gave a valiant effort to infuse levity into her voice, and she thought Harry must have been quite tired indeed, since he appeared to buy it.
"I could help you…" Even as he spoke, he was drifting toward the sofa, yawning widely. She made up the bed, with a flick of her wand. His eyes were closing, even as he landed on the cushions.
"With any luck, I'll have this all sussed out by morning."
"Night, Hermione," he slurred, in a half-intelligible murmur, already more than half asleep, as far as she could tell. His breathing relaxed and slowed.
"Good night, Harry," she said, knowing that he had not heard her. She drank in his profile, marveled at how his face looked so much younger and less careworn in sleep. The low lamplight glinted off of the swept-back locks of his hair and off of the metal rims of his glasses, perched on the arm of the sofa, where he had placed them as he lay down. She longed to run her fingers through his hair, to smooth it back from his forehead, to touch him some way, any way, so that she could assuage the great, raw void in her chest. He was here, but he was not hers, and it hurt so much.
She had taken a half-step toward him, but did not complete the motion. With a deep, fortifying breath, she closed her eyes briefly, and turned away, tamping down her wayward emotions, and compelling herself to focus on the task at hand. Settling herself in her creaky desk chair, she tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ears, flipped open Harry's stolen leather book, and began to read it.
The night passed by as if in broomflight. The lamp oil burned low, the parchment streamed from her desk to furl on the floor, her fingers cramped around her racing quill. There was a fevered gleam in her eyes, as she hunched over the desk's surface, her lips pressed tightly together. She was no stranger to being goal-oriented, but this was for Harry again, and it was bliss.
Her Muggle wristwatch gave the time as a quarter to four, when she thought she'd figured the whole thing out. She eyed the crystal speculatively, but decided against waking Harry. She'd heard nary a sound from the sofa as she'd worked, and knew how exhausted he'd been. What's a couple of more hours? She asked herself philosophically.
But then, as she turned toward the sofa, she felt her heart accelerate wildly in her chest, pounding the blood up into her ears and face, at the mere prospect of sharing a bed with him, however literally the term applied. She toed off her trainers, and could feel the coolness of the smooth concrete floor even through her socks. There's plenty of room, she told herself, more than half of the bed.
Slowly, as if she feared his reaction, were he to wake and find her there, she eased her way onto the bed, casting a quick Duplicating charm on his pillow. His body heat warmed the Widened cushions, and even his scent clung to the copy of his pillow. Tears pricked at her eyelids, as she leaned over toward him, scarcely knowing what she was going to do, even as she went into motion.
She bent over and kissed him, softly, lingering only for a moment. His lips moved slightly, reflexively, providing counter pressure to hers, and she froze, poised for flight like a deer sensing danger. A ghost of a smile whispered across his face, and she waited, both hoping and fearing that he would stir and take her into his arms.
But he did not awaken. And she swallowed the lump of disappointment and anxiety, and turned away from him, hunching with her afghan as close to the edge of the bed as she dared, and praying for morning.
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She awakened suddenly, instantly aware of his flame-fingered touch on her cheek, as he gently brushed her hair away from her face, making the motion that she had ached to make last night.
"I'm sorry, Hermione." His voice was low. His breath fanned her face. She sensed his closeness, and knew the razor's edge on which they both walked. If she just leaned a little, just the slightest yielding, and he would…
Instead, she sprang away from him as though she suspected him of nefarious intentions, dragging the tatty old afghan with her, fingers laced through some of its holes.
"You're awake," she said stupidly, blinking sleep out of her eyes. She was suddenly afraid what he might think of her, that he would think her guilty of some kind of manipulation, further play on emotions that were as volatile as hers. "I'm - I'm sorry… I tried not to take up much room, but - but the floor is cold, and - " All technically true statements, and yet she felt like she had been caught doing something wrong. Damn Harry and his bloody nobility, she thought, only half-seriously, it seems to rub off on people around him, across all universes.
"Hermione," he broke into her whirling thoughts, one corner of his mouth quirking upward in a slight smile. "It's your bed. If anything, I'm grateful that you didn't chuck me out." She watched his gaze drift longingly toward her desk, his pilfered book open atop it, scads of parchment making rustly snowdrifts on the floor. She knew he wanted to ask about her progress, yet he refrained. "You were up much later than I was. Why don't you get back in bed and rest, and I'll get us some breakfast? How's your shoulder?"
"It's fine," she muttered, after shooting a cursory glance at the rapidly fading pink slash. He gripped her gently around her upper arms, just above her elbows, and herded her back toward the bed. I wish he would stop touching me, she thought, as she sank bonelessly toward the mattress, again feeling the heat of his touch like she'd been branded.
"What do you usually eat?"
She felt her flush climb into her cheeks. She'd never been much interested in cooking on a good day, seeing food as something necessary for survival, and this tendency had only gotten worse when she had only herself to worry over. She would sometimes forget to eat at all until well past tea time. It was silly of her to somehow want to offer Harry some kind of elegant repast, but he seemed to be bringing rampant foolishness out in her every time he so much as glanced in her direction.
"Usually just toast," she admitted reluctantly. "There are some bananas under an Everfresh charm too; they should still be good." Harry appeared to have no opinion one way or the other as to the dullness of her meals, and began to move easily in her microscopic kitchenette, finding the items quickly and without undue fuss. Hermione watched him, feeling the pressure of the silence, of the hippogriff in the room, swelling up until she couldn't stand it any longer.
"Don't you want to know how much progress I made last night?"
"It can wait until after breakfast," Harry said airily, as he turned back toward her, with a plate in each hand. But she had seen the flash of hopeful desire, a kind of desperate and fearful yearning, banked in the embers of his eyes.
He was trying to spare her again, and it was damned irritating.
"I don't need your pity, Harry," she felt herself snarl. "Who wouldn't be eager to leave this wretched place?"
"I trust you remember exactly what I said to you last night?" Let me tell you something, Hermione… I love you with my soul. Her remembrance of his impassioned declaration stained her face, and he read it easily. "Then you also remember that the word `pity' was nowhere to be heard, was it?"
A headache was beginning to throb in her temples, her pulse surging madly from her runaway heart. He did not intend to hurt her, she knew, but the prolonging of his inevitable departure was profoundly painful.
"I think I've got it," she dropped in a non sequitur. She watched him stiffen, heard the plates clatter loudly to the stovetop, as his numb hands dropped them from too high up.
"R-really?" He was still preparing breakfast, spreading marmalade on toast, and peeling the bananas, but any casual demeanor had vanished. His eyes were alert, watchful; his posture was poised, ready, waiting. He wants to go. She took the plate from him, and managed to swallow a mechanical bite without choking on it.
"Yes."
He seemed to have sensed her souring mood, and they ate their breakfast without further speech. As they sent their plates back over to the worktop of the kitchenette, Hermione found herself drawing upon every shred of inner strength she had left. This is not Harry's fault. Your situation is not his fault. He has a task to accomplish, and you can help him do that. Falling apart will not help him do that.
"Are you ready?" She was proud of the cool and professional tone of her voice. Perhaps she could do this with maturity, and perhaps he would one day look back on their encounter with fondness. Small comfort.
"Reckon so." A piercing glance from him made her wonder if he could sense the façade she had conjured.
"Stand up." She tapped him with her wand, and spoke the Latin incantation as if she had learned it long before last night. She felt almost as astonished as Harry looked, when glowing blue runes began to etch themselves in the air, before their eyes.
"Is that my - ?"
"Magical signature? Yes, it is." She gestured with her wand, forcing herself to focus on the subject matter, rather than to whom she was speaking. She pulled the newly acquired theories from memory, merged with what she had already known, and speaking as if she were an expert. She felt some of her tension ease; this was where she had always excelled, after all. "This one is your individual rune - most scholars think there are no two alike - even twins' are usually slightly different. This is a family rune," she moved down the line, pointing at each rune in turn, "and this one has to do with one's astrological sign, and this one is a sort of personality rune. It - it isn't absolute by any means, but one example shows that those sorted into Gryffindor house generally have this specific rune in common, as do the other houses for other runes. And then, this one -" She showed Harry the one farthest to the left, darting a glance at him; he appeared transfixed. " - for a long time has been known as the `constant'. In all my classes and studies, this one has been the same in every magical person."
"Then which one do we - ?" He stopped talking when Hermione cast the same spell on herself, and her own magical signature began to write itself in the air under his. She felt her breath catch with that old familiar delight in being right, in correctly solving something, when she compared the two magical signatures. The `personality' rune was identical, supporting the academic theory behind House Sorting. But all of the other runes - even the `constant' - were different. Harry caught on almost immediately.
"Why are those different?"
"I was right," she breathed triumphantly, unable to help herself, as she grinned. "Our constants are different, because you are not from this universe. She tilted her head toward her overflowing desk, where Luna's leather book still lay open. "Luna had just begun to explore that aspect, but, of course, there's never been anyone around from another universe on whom to test the theory."
"So everyone - everyone from my universe has this rune?" Harry lifted one hand, without seeming to realize he'd done so, as if to caress the `constant'. "She has this rune? And that's what will draw me to her?" His eyes were luminous in the blue glow, and it was as if he were seeing her, as if his hands were already touching her, as the possibilities became probabilities right in front of him.
Hermione was all business, taking the blank crystal and embedding the imprint of Harry's constant within it. She watched the crystal flare blue briefly, then fade, and was sure that it had worked.
"Increpitare," she finalized the imprint, and held the crystal out to him, dangling from her fingers on its gold chain. "It's done."
"It's done? That's it?"
That's it? Her smile threatened to twist in on itself bitterly. As if this weren't one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do? She gave him his final instructions, her voice staying cool, precise, impersonal, even while her heart, already fractured from the losses she'd endured over and over, splintered in new ways, branching out from the original fault lines.
When she stumbled to a halt, her direction completed, the silence remained, oppressively blanketing the room in awkwardness. Harry's eyes darted toward the blank section of wall where the doorway had appeared.
"I should probably…go out - just - just in case." His stammering was all but incoherent, but she got the gist.
"Right," she replied, and her voice was sounding less natural by the second. "You wouldn't want to risk materializing where this room isn't, and be buried alive." Such lovely, sunshiny thoughts, Hermione! Her eyes swept over him and past him, without really seeing him, and she moved smoothly toward the wall to activate the door.
"You don't have to - " He protested, as she followed him out.
"I want to," she interrupted him, and it was both true and false. They clambered through the broken window into the unkempt garden. The dawn was cool and gray, and a fine sheen of dew covered every surface. Hermione could feel the damp seeping in through her trainers, as they high-stepped their way through the long grass into an open part of the yard. Harry had slipped one hand inside the collar of his shirt, and was tangling the chain in his fingers. He had sort of a dazed look of wonderment on his face, like everything he'd ever hoped for was finally being given to him. She watched him with wet eyes, and was able, through the haze of pain, to hope that he would find her. He deserves it.
"I wanted to thank you for - for everything you've…" He was speaking to her as if they were strangers, or as if he were giving a report to a superior.
"It's just me, Harry," she whispered hoarsely, through the clog in her throat.
"That's what makes it so hard." His voice echoed hers, and she could see the shine of tears in his eyes. He did not break eye contact with her, even as one hand checked blindly that his wand was in place.
Hermione could tell that she didn't have long before she came completely unglued, so she took a fortifying breath, and stuck her hand out.
"Good-bye, Harry. Best of luck." Her voice was brightly artificial, and she quelled the urge to vomit.
"Good-bye, Hermione," he gritted out, but completely bypassed her proffered hand. Instead, he scooped her into his arms for a full contact hug that took her breath away. Her hands were splayed across his back, and she pressed into him, closing her eyes and imprinting in her memory the exact feel of him at that very moment.
She thought of the way she knelt over Harry's prone body, as the light left his eyes, as the death rattle sounded in his chest, of the promises never brought to fruition, of the farewells never exchanged. She wasn't even sure if he was aware of her at the end. She thought of the way his breath had fanned her face, the way his fingers skimmed hers, the way his eyes spoke volumes, and how only hours later, she had lost all of it.
Good-bye, Harry. I love you so much. I see now it is not your destiny to be with me. So go, go to your rest, your peace. You deserve that. But oh, how it hurts, and how much I am going to miss you. Please don't forget about me, for I will never forget about you.
And then she was lifting her face to look up at this Harry, and he was already staring down at her, tears studded on his dark lashes. She felt his lips touch her forehead, and then he was angling toward her mouth. She stood on tiptoe to reach him more easily, and he kissed her, lightly, slowly, as if fulfilling some kind of solemn rite. He's saying good-bye too, she thought. For all he knows, I could be the closest thing to his Hermione that he ever sees again.
"Adjicio universum." He spoke the incantation, and still his eyes did not leave hers. She forced her lips upward into a smile, even while the tears trickled unchecked down her face.
"I meant what I said before," he said. His voice sounded as if it came from a great distance, over a bad telephone connection. "Don't stay here, Hermione, live your life. I love you."
And then, without any warning, not even a crack like Apparation, he was gone. She stood there for a moment, knee-deep in wet grass, as birds began to awaken in the tree tops, still smiling at nothing, and crying for everything her life was missing and everything it had become.
"I love you too." Her words were garbled and choked, and no one was there to hear them anyway. She moved mechanically back toward her cellar room, going through the motions of entry with no conscious thought, feeling like a marionette being forced to move at the whim of a puppeteer.
The emptiness of her hideaway assaulted her, and she had never felt more imprisoned than she did now, as the door vanished behind her. She wanted to throw herself onto the unmade bed, and give in to her despair; perhaps she could catch the lingering scent of him in the bed linens.
Instead, thinking that her initial urge was exactly the opposite of what he would want her to do, she looked toward her desk, where the book on Multiverse Theory still lay open, beckoning to her.
If there are infinite possibilities out there, if I could come up with a way to alter my `constant', perhaps there is a Harry out there who needs me as much as I need him. She felt the first embers of hope spring to life in the ashes of her dreams, and knew that - whatever else happened - this travelling Harry had done this for her.
And for that, he would always have her thanks.
To Be Continued…
Okay, from here on out should be where Shadow Walks and Shadow Walker diverge. I hope everyone will enjoy what I have planned next.
You may leave a review on your way out, if you like. I really hope you do - in times of diminished activity, they would really be much appreciated!
--lorien
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