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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Chapter Nine:
I'm a wandering soul. I'm walking the line that leads me home.
-Switchfoot, "Enough to Let Me Go"
She cringed, caught her breath, waiting, the anticipation of the pain nearly worse than the pain itself - but the wave of agony did not disappoint. She had no sensation of falling, but air jolted into her lungs as her knees hit the concrete floor. Black spots splashed, wavered, vanished, and reformed across her field of vision. She felt clammy and shaky, as if she had just been violently ill.
Crouched on all floors, she spread her fingers out to take in the cool smoothness of the cellar floor, and forced herself to breathe regularly. Her furniture slowly swam back into focus.
And so did the rune. Hovering, with a serene glow, its position over her head seemed to symbolize how the solution remained tantalizingly out of reach. It seemed to mock her; Hermione had the thought and simultaneously rejected its irrationality.
Nevertheless, she had been working for days, had turned Luna's pilfered book inside out and upside down, but she was no closer… no closer to the final answer she needed.
She needed a way to change her Constant, needed to know that it was at least possible to alter it, to permanently substitute another. Loss after loss had buffeted her against rocks of despair, and she did not think she could endure it again. Her nightmares terrified her, and they were not of wandering endless alternate timelines, but of finding Harry, and then losing him again, unable to stay anchored in a universe that was not her own. She loathed the idea of placing so much dependence on a fragile piece of jewelry made from a mineral formation
If only I knew that it could be done, she thought wistfully, pushing herself into a sitting position, then when I found him, when I found a Harry for me, then I could change my Constant, change it to his.
Unfortunately, while a Constant could be painlessly cloaked or masked by the crystal, to actually force the rune itself to change form was toying with one's essence, one's very magical being. It hurt like hell, and so far, had not resulted in any significant alteration.
"I don't know what we'd have to do to keep you there… This is your universe, where you belong…"
Harry's gentle voice rang softly in her mind. He was gone, not yet three weeks, but seemed as distantly and irretrievably gone as her Harry, whose death was both mournfully long ago and painfully fresh. She wondered absently if he'd made it, if he'd found her, and was surprised when tears splashed onto the worn knees of her jeans.
She was unsure how long she knelt there, slumped, the very picture and personification of defeat, the last one left to remember when everything went so very wrong. Maybe she couldn't do this, she thought. Maybe it was her fate, her destiny to be the one who remained, alone, to relive the loss.
Fate? Since when did you put any stock in fate? In another burst of cruelty, her inner voice sounded like Harry. Just go, Hermione - why are you stalling? What is left for you here?
Stalling? That's ridiculous. Anyone would be champing at the bit to get out of this wretched place. I'm not stalling. I'm … preparing.
Futile attempts to make a thing permanent, when you don't even know if it will happen at all? Sounds like stalling to me. She imagined Harry, strolling casually into the room, saying this with a crooked, teasing half-smile, shirt sleeves rolled up, hands tucked carelessly into pockets. Her throat stung with a renewed supply of tears to suppress. She took a moment to damn the Other Harry for freshening up her thoughts of him. It had never been very easy to tuck him away in the recesses of her mind, but it had become far less so since he had visited.
She straightened up, uncurling her spine and taking a clinical look around the room, before letting a gusty sigh escape her, smearing her tears with her hands and the frayed sleeves of her shirt, as though she could pretend they'd never happened. Inner-Harry was right, she decided. She was stalling.
She tried to muster up her self-righteous, revenge-driven, Harry-inspired hatred for the Minister of Magic, but ended up feeling only guilt for the thousands of innocent people she - they - had let down with their defeat. Even if all my efforts suddenly succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, even if Malfoy and all his cronies were ousted and the Wizarding world saw the error of its ways … it still wouldn't bring any of them back. There is nothing to keep me here, nothing left for me here… nothing but a pointless feud with a pure-blooded bigot who has always hated me for no other reason than who my parents were.
You did kill his son, Harry's gentle reminder prodded her, but it was only in a place that had once been tender, a raw and pulsing wound. Now it was only scar tissue, dense and unfeeling.
How many people did I kill? During the war… after the war… And I can't even make myself care about any of them. What have I turned into? How could anyone - much less someone like Harry - love me, seeing what I have become?
I've never stopped loving you, Hermione. And it was like he was in the room with her, lighting it up by his mere presence, her Harry, younger than the one who'd recently visited, with less haunted misery in his eyes. How she missed him! And I never would, no matter what you'd done, what you'd been driven to do.
Her thoughts followed their own sad, contorted rabbit trail. Maybe that's why he left, why he wanted to find her - maybe I'm no longer fit for -
Hermione… Harry's voice was gentle, but a strand of desperation wove through it. Hermione, you need to go.
I know, I'm stalling… she inwardly replied, with some chagrin, and going mad, quite likely. Almost in a reverie, still marveling at how close he seemed, she Accioed her duffel, and began methodically filling it with changes of clothing, one armload of books, and the few toiletries she regularly utilized. Luna's book and the various notes she'd taken, she shrank and put in a flat felt portfolio, envelope-size, looping it around her neck and under her clothing with a leather thong.
Hermione!! And suddenly she remembered her mother's dazed, glassy, dying eyes, fixated over her shoulder, seeing and hearing a Harry who was not really there, but who was warning her of very real danger.
"He says you need to go now."
There was a low, threatening rumble, even as the realization hit her with all the force of whatever had hit the house above. The very foundations of Harry's childhood home shook, and a fine spray of dirt misted down on her head with a menacing sibilance. The few pieces of mismatched china rattled in the little cabinet.
Her eyes flew, panicked, to her ward map, the entirety of which was blinking manically. There was another ominous rumble, and she heard splintering wood, the faint screech of nails ripped from their resting places. More dirt sifted down, a few clods bouncing down with dull thunks.
Keeping her head low, she Summoned a few last items into her duffel bag, and made an attempt at Apparation. Her wards were keyed to her, but Hermione suspected that they'd erected additional barriers to trap her.
Ol' Lucius finally ran out of patience, yeah? Now she heard Ron's casual and cheeky cadence in her mind. The charmed cinder blocks that hid her little hole from the world were beginning to slide askew, a crack threading its meandering path among them. As far as she knew, her own wards and her self-cast Fidelius would keep the Ministry from ever actually seeing her. But that's of no use, if you're dead in a pile of rubble with an entire house atop you, she thought ruefully, half-wondering if the reason her two boys suddenly seemed so close was that she was on the cusp of joining them.
It was not an unwelcome thought.
But she knew, before she even slung the duffel bag across her shoulders, before her feet were in motion, that she was going to run. She slid sideways through the widening crack where her hidden archway had been, and took precious seconds to dislodge her bag when it became wedged. She hoisted herself up to the first existing step, and took the rest of them two at a time. No longer even trying for any kind of stealth, she Shrunk her bag and stuffed it into a pocket, then burst through the door low, in a poised crouch.
There was a vibration, a sort of low-level electric hum that felt as if it stood her hair on end. It surged through the air around her and wafted harmlessly away. But then she watched in horror as the colors of her magic became visible, the spells and protections she had wrought hanging in the air, entwined around the place that had become the only semblance of a home she had. Her jaw dropped.
This shouldn't be possible… If they could see her wards, know exactly what they were up against, then they could dismantle them. Innovative goons, indeed, she thought with chagrin, recalling Ron's words during their ill-fated attempt to rescue Ginny. Hermione still felt the security of her Fidelius, but was taking no chances, moving in a smooth soundless arc, trying to avoid the windows.
There was a crackly, sound-system kind of noise, the harbinger of a badly cast Sonorus, and an unidentified voice said simply, "Perfringo Fidelium." The clinical part of her brain was still in the process of registering that perfringo was Latin for "to penetrate" or "to shatter", when the pain, Crucio-like in its intensity, twisted her in its grasp and sent her to the floor.
Her fingers curved into talons and scrabbled ineffectually at the wooden floor. She didn't realize she was biting her lip to keep from crying out until she became distantly aware of blood trickling down her chin. When the pain began to abate, she tried to sit up, breathing as if she had just run a sprint, and daubing at the blood on her mouth. They broke the Fidelius. They broke my Fidelius. Her ears were ringing, and her peripheral vision had blackened at the edges.
Two curses seared the air above her head, gouging chunks out of the wooden door frame. The entire house shuddered again, as if it were made out of gelatin, and Hermione had the incredible sensation that the whole thing was sliding to one side. There was a series of shattering crashes, as tiles began to rain down off the roof in quick succession.
She had obviously underestimated Lucius Malfoy and the hatred and determination that drove him to push the very boundaries of magic just to capture her. Her hand trailed up to the crystal pendant. Could she activate it here? She thought it probably transcended things like anti-Apparation wards, but she wasn't sure she was willing to risk it. There was also the very real possibility that she would be interrupted mid-transfer by the Ministry.
"Hermione Granger! Undesirable Number One!" The resounding echo of the Sonorus charm rattled what glass was left in the windows. "The Ministry has permitted your acts of terrorism to continue without reprisal long enough. You are under arrest, charged with twenty-one counts of murder. You shamelessly dishonor the memory of Harry Potter with your actions. Your Fidelius is obsolete, and headquarters are surrounded. Unforgivable Curses have been authorized. Drop your wand out the window, and give yourself over to the waiting Auror squad, and you may escape grave bodily injury for now."
Hermione was no longer listening. Her lip had curled into a snarl at the insinuation that she was guilty of some kind of dishonor, and before the didactically read tirade had been completed, she had formulated her next course of action. A long, slender splinter of wood jutted out from the edge of the cellar door frame, where a curse had partially dissected it. She wrenched it the rest of the way loose with one hand, and transfigured it into a copy of her wand.
"Okay! Okay, I'll - here's my wand." Her voice trembled, and she did not have to feign her fear and uncertainty. She threw the duplicate through the front window, and heard a furtive scuffling outside as it was retrieved. She knew that the wand would be scanned for registration, and that her ruse would only last a moment, but she hoped it would be all she needed.
The disembodied voice resumed. "You will move to the center of the room, and remain motionless. Please place your hands on top of your head, and wait for the Aurors. You will not speak. You will - "
She heard footsteps in the directions of both the front and back doors. This was real. They were coming for her. Her final trip to the Ministry had been the last straw, and Lucius Malfoy would find her and make an example of her, no matter who had to die to accomplish it.
"Incendio!" she hissed, aiming at the fireplace. It was completely non-functional, but still carefully stacked with logs - logs that she had painstakingly coated with an explosive powder as a last-ditch security measure. Without waiting to see if her spell-aim was true, she propelled herself down the hallway toward the bedrooms, and Vanished the glass in window of Harry's old nursery, without even slowing down.
There was a resounding explosion at about the same time she dove through the window. She curled herself into a ball, and rolled twice upon her impact with the ground. All the air left her lungs in a noisy wheeze, and the sky tilted crazily above her. She had landed in a fringe of brush, and she tensed, as she heard hoarse shouts and cries above the crackle of flames. But there were no crunching footfalls, no snapping rush of spellfire.
She turned her head and smiled. The house was an inferno.
Stupid, she thought. All that new spellwork, but they don't know me at all. Even after all this time.
She lay motionless in the leaves, trying to collect her scattered thoughts, and hoping that she hadn't broken anything in her bag when she rolled over it. There were shouts of alarm, urgently called instructions, and the scorching hiss of Aguamenti meeting potion-birthed fire. She knew she didn't have much time before they began scouring the grounds for her.
A twinge of pain squeezed her heart. She had been hoping for a chance to visit Harry's memorial one more time. But the churchyard was too close to the house, and she had no way of knowing if Lucius had staked it out ahead of time, or indeed, if it was even out from under the Ministry-cast anti-Apparation umbrella.
But then she thought of how close he'd seemed, only moments ago. The two Harrys seemed to meld into one, and both were entreating her to leave. Her eyes stung with tears, and she slowly reached up to her neck, tugging at the chain until she pulled the crystal from under her clothing.
"I miss you so much," she choked out, her voice not any louder than the wind-tossed rustle of leaves. She took one deep, fortifying breath and closed her eyes. "Adjicio universum."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
She felt as if she were motionless, still in the same bed of leaves and crushed bracken, as the sky, with its edging of treetops, spun around her like a carousel. After a moment, when she was sure that the world around her had stilled, she carefully stood, bracing her hand on a nearby tree trunk and noting that her hand did not pass through it.
In phase then, she thought, and wordlessly Disillusioned herself. The larger body of the forest that had been behind her, forming the back boundary of the Potter property, was much diminished in size, and could perhaps be called a copse of trees. She could see the green tinge of a lushly manicured expanse of lawn, and there appeared to be no house there at all. The murmur of voices, low laughter, cheers, and the shrieks of playing children reached her ears. She suddenly felt self-conscious, even knowing she was Disillusioned, and her hand drifted up to pluck a couple of dead leaves out of her snarled hair.
Where Harry had experienced the greatest loss in his life, there was now a park. There were benches, a walking trail, and a playground that appeared almost new. A brass and wrought iron sign was angled at one corner, and she could read, "-tter Memorial Park". A wistful smile twisted up one corner of her mouth, as she watched a tow-headed toddler hurtle down a short slide, squealing at the top of her lungs. She thought the whole park a lovely gesture, and wondered if Harry had done it.
Her eyes roved everywhere, as her feet found the footpath, and she wandered toward town, careful to avoid the joggers. Godric's Hollow was bustling. The charming quaintness of the cottages lining the cobblestoned roads was unchanged, but she found that the homey little buildings now housed various eclectic shops offering antiques and curios and rare artifacts. She had just begun wondering if the town was even magical, when a display in a bookshop window of a first edition cookery book by Helga Hufflepuff settled that question. It was a little like a more upscale Hogsmeade, she decided, and contemplated removing her Disillusionment charm.
She had just decided against doing so - at least until she had seen Harry and Ron, and knew the lay of the land, so to speak - when she rounded a blind corner and collided with someone headed in the opposite direction. She would have known the line of those shoulders and that mop of dark hair anywhere.
"Harry!" She gasped breathlessly, before she could stop herself. He instantly reacted to his name, and then did a double take at her faint outline, using Finite on her spell without so much as a by-your-leave. Color flooded her cheeks, as he bent over her hand and his lips grazed it lightly. The move was courtly and stomach-fluttering, but so unlike the Harry she knew that she only barely repressed a laugh.
"I see you know me, but I haven't had the pleasure," he murmured. As he straightened his posture, he raked her with a toe-to-head onceover, which was admiring and appreciative, without quite being lascivious, but was nevertheless not like Harry. Their gazes locked for the first time, and Hermione froze.
He was undoubtedly Harry, had even confirmed himself as such, though his glasses and clothes were obviously more expensive, and his hair, upon closer inspection, seemed more artfully tousled than merely unruly. But it was the warm shine of his eyes that caught the bulk of her attention.
They were brown.
"My name's Hermione," she managed, after her mouth had opened and closed a few times, as she tried desperately to keep herself from saying something stupid about green eyes.
"Your parents were aficionados of Shakespeare?"
"Yes, they were. And it was unfortunately the cause of many tiresome explanations in primary school." There! That came off almost naturally. He laughed, as she'd intended him to, and then said something lovely about the uniqueness of the name suiting her.
Hermione felt as if she were struggling mightily to keep her footing on a surface that was shifting beneath her unpredictably. Had she really thought that a few conversations with a universe-hopping Harry Potter would prepare her for the reality of doing the same herself? On some level, she'd realized that there would be differences, that he could be different - in fact, would be different, but that had been from an observer's point of view, regarded with a clinical amount of detachedness.
This was real. And she was going to have to decide very quickly how she was going to handle it. She couldn't constantly compare any Harry she might meet to the Harry she knew, the one who was gone permanently. She didn't suppose that the lack of green eyes was a deal breaker after all. But she had been hoping for someone a little more similar, a little more familiar.
He clearly did not know her at all, so either Hermione Granger had never existed in this universe, or had died young, mourned only in the Muggle world. Would their personalities mesh as well as they had in a universe lang syne? It was more than unnerving, starting over at square one with someone she'd once known as well as she knew herself. At least Harry's search had a clear objective, she thought with some disgust. I'm using the multiverse as my own personal dating game. That's got to be a new level of pathetic.
"And you're running from…?" He waited expectantly for her to answer, and it took her a moment to understand that he was likely questioning about the Disillusionment.
"Saw an ex I'd rather avoid," she ventured, hoping she sounded nonchalant enough. She'd never been very handy at lying. "I've - I've never been here before," she stammered, when the silence was beginning to get awkward. "Do you know it well?"
"You could say that," he replied drily. "My father owns it."
"He d - does?" She stumbled over the present tense.
"Yes. He began work on it after my mother died." A slight shadow flickered in his dark eyes. "He said it kept his mind off things. Off me mostly, I think." He mostly succeeded in making his remark sound light, but something in his face warned her against further exploration in that direction.
"I came through the park. It's lovely."
"Thank you, I'll tell my father you said so. The park was my idea. For her." Somehow, this gratified Hermione. At least I still know some things about him.
"I'm - I'm sorry … about your mother."
"Don't be," he replied, and looked embarrassed that he had let the conversation get away from him. "I had a mother who loved me, even if I don't really remember her very well. I suppose there are some people who never even had that."
"Ugh, you're so predictable, Potter," came an unseen voice from somewhere over Harry's shoulder. "You're late, of course, and I knew that you'd be out here chatting up some b - Hi!" The voice became over-bright, as its owner came into view, and Hermione knew that that was just what had been intended.
"Knock it off, Es. Merlin, you're prickly today! Slip your wand in the wrong place or something?" Hermione caught a flash of brilliant green, as the new arrival glared at Harry.
"Insulting me by way of being completely crass shows an utter lack of imagination on your part," she drawled loftily, and Hermione's eyes widened in disbelieving recognition at the precise nuances in the voice. She would have known those tones anywhere. "Esmeralda Snape." Hermione shook the proffered hand. "How d'you do?"
She was not exactly pretty, in a conventional way, Hermione thought, but she certainly would have attracted attention wherever she went. Her hair was so inky black that it seemed to completely absorb all light, and her skin was as fair and translucent as her hair was dark. Her lashes and brows were as dark as her hair, and this made the fact that they framed bright green eyes quite startling.
"Your mum married Snape?" Hermione breathed without thinking, her mind trying to come to terms with this new arrangement of facts.
"I'm sorry?" Harry was eyeing her curiously, his head slightly tilted to one side. Hermione noticed that he bore no scar.
"I was asking about Snape… er, that is, your father - does he - ?"
"Teach at Hogwarts? Or plague my life? Yes and yes." But affection for her father glimmered in Esmeralda's eyes, belying her irritated words.
"Do you know Dumbledore?" Hermione asked quickly, before one of them decided to ask her how she knew about Snape, since she had clearly not attended Hogwarts with them.
"The Headmaster? Sure. Bit of a barmy old man, but decent enough when we were in school, I suppose." Harry had answered this question, and spoke detachedly, as though he had had little personal interaction with the venerable wizard. He nudged his companion in the side mischievously. "Course, Es would know him better than I would. She visited his office quite a bit, if I recall correctly."
Esmeralda made a face at him.
"You know as well as I do that the Snakes always got blamed for everything. And Father wanted to make sure nobody thought he was playing favorites. I behaved… most of the time. Saint Harry over here never got into trouble. Bloody `Puff."
Harry had been sorted into Hufflepuff? Hermione clamped her lips shut, determined to stop evincing surprise over things that a normal person would find unremarkable, especially regarding two strangers she had just met. But her facial expression must have given her away, for Esmeralda laughed and Harry blew an irritated sigh between his lips.
"It's not a bad House, okay? And people don't get sorted there just because they're too stupid or weak to be put into the other Houses." There was mock defensiveness in his tone. Esmeralda chortled behind him.
"Yes, you're very loyal."
"Now you sound like Ron Weasley," he retorted.
The smile fell off of Esmeralda's face as though it had been magicked off. Something indefinable glittered in the depths of her eyes. Hermione wondered what story was behind that. Another flash of those green eyes up at Harry, and Hermione was hit with another undeniable truth.
Merlin's beard, she's in love with him. She wondered what was in the very essence of Potter men that seemed to elicit such devotion.
Harry was instantly contrite. He looped his arm around the other girl, and pulled her into the shoulder of his jacket.
"I'm sorry, Es. That was a rotten thing to say."
"I'm used to it," came muffled from the folds of cloth. "You're a very rotten person, really." There was no animosity in her voice. When she reappeared, the wistfulness was so deeply buried that only someone like Hermione, who knew what it was like, would have noticed it. "C'mon, let's go have our drink. You can even bring your whatsername."
"Hermione," Harry filled in, grinning at her. Hermione felt her insides warm under the light of that smile. Perhaps she could learn to -
But as she took that first step forward, she had a sensation of starting to fall, perhaps over a cobblestone, though she had not felt herself trip. She lurched unevenly, and she felt Harry's hands gripping her upper arms. She could hear him asking her if she was all right, but his voice seemed shrouded in a staticky roar, coming from very far away.
And then, just that quickly, the world was in focus again, the cobbles steady beneath her feet, and the stone wall of the adjacent shop smooth and cool at her back. Harry still held onto her, but now his breath was warm against her face, his lips grazing the lobe of her ear, the pulse point in her neck. His weight was bearing her into the wall, and he was pressed against her in a way that was most definitely not casual. Panicked, her eyes darted over his shoulder, and she saw that the streets were much quieter, almost deserted, and that Esmeralda had completely disappeared.
"Ah, come on, Hermione," he whispered, his dark eyes sweeping over her agitated face. "You can't just - "
She kneed him in the groin. As he drew in a deep, wheezing breath and his legs threated to buckle, she staggered away from him, arms thrown out wide, preparing to run if she had to. Almost belatedly, she dug into her pocket for her wand. Harry was bent against the wall, having somehow managed to keep his feet, but he looked to be in no condition to be chasing after her.
He knew who she was. They were in the same exact place. But Esmeralda was gone, and they were definitely not acting in the same way. I jumped universes. I must have jumped to one right `next door' though, where there was another Hermione, just like me, doing the same thing I was - well, almost anyway, and …
She didn't have time to make an analogy about a stone being skipped across a tranquil pond, because her environment began to fade around her once again. There was a single stomach-churning swoop of a sensation. She briefly registered Harry's shocked gaze on hers.
And then she was somewhere else entirely.
TBC
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