Shadow Walker

lorien829

Rating: PG13
Genres: Angst, Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 7
Published: 15/07/2008
Last Updated: 10/06/2015
Status: completed

What happened to the Other Hermione that Harry encountered in "Shadow Walks"? As she struggles to survive, despite immense loss, in a world that no longer has a place for her, how will the reappearance of someone she'd thought she'd never see again change her life completely? Reading "Shadow Walks" first is advised. Companion piece; alternate universe.

Chapters

1. One

2. Two

3. Three

4. Chapter Four

5. Five

6. Six

7. Seven

8. Eight

9. Nine

10. Ten

11. Eleven

12. Twelve

13. Thirteen

14. Fourteen

15. Fifteen

16. Sixteen

17. Seventeen

18. Eighteen

1. One

Brief Notes:

This is the start of a companion piece to my story, “Shadow Walks”. While possibly not totally necessary, it would probably be advisable to read that story first. This is not a sequel, per se, as events in this story do not progress out of events in the other story, but it moves in a tangent - or maybe a parallel - involving the Other Hermione whom our Harry encountered in his travels through the multiverse. “Shadow Walks” moved more or less from canon prior to book 7. “Shadow Walker” takes place in one of the alternate universes depicted in the first story. The AU alters from general canon with Dumbledore's murder by Draco in the Trio's sixth year and the subsequent delay of the Horcrux Hunt. I refer you to chapters 16-19 in “Shadow Walks” as a refresher, if needed.

I had originally contemplated a short two- or three-shot about Other Hermione's search, but decided that she deserved a story too. The story begins at the Final Battle, which occurs three years later than it did in “Shadow Walks”…

Enjoy.

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 One:

Now that I know what I'm without, you can't just leave me.

-Evanescence, “Bring Me to Life”

“Hermione,” His voice was reedy and desperate, vibrating the escaped ringlets around her ear, causing them to swish around her neck like a lover's caress. She turned to look at him, and all the truths that they had never said seemed to be singing from his brilliant eyes.

Someone behind him shouted. The frightened, yet determined crush of people surged forward.

“Hermione,” he said again, and it was almost a groan. Trapped in the Army of the Light, his hand found hers, fingers tangled briefly together. He had moved closer; she could feel the heat of him. His lips touched the shell of her ear only slightly - they were best friends, whispering together before battle.

He breathed her name again, one more time, and it was a sigh and a promise. “When this is over, you - we - I want …”

“I know, Harry,” she said, stopping to search his eyes with hers, to let him see how she felt, to let herself mirror all the emotions that she now saw swimming in his gaze.

His fingers touched hers again, slid up her arm, leaving trails of fire in their wake. Her breathing quickened, became erratic. His breath was warm on her jaw, on the point of her chin. His eyes burned into hers.

Almost imperceptibly, he leaned forward. Hermione felt her lashes flutter, as her eyes began to close.

He was going to kiss her.

It was the culmination of years of secret longings that she had not admitted she even had - not even to herself. It was going to happen here, in the unlikeliest of places, the most unromantic of company, squashed just outside the Great Hall, with the Order of the Phoenix and all who stood with them, ready to face what ultimately awaited them.

Hermione had been content with the idea of death, at least in the abstract. She had prepared for this day as best she could, had helped prepare Harry as best she could, and she had found herself almost calm. What did it matter, really, if she perished in battle, as long as the sought objectives were attained? What was most important was ensuring Voldemort's utter demise. But now, as this whole new vista opened before her, a path that she had thought closed - or non-existent - she found herself railing a little at the timing. Why must they go save the world now? But she knew she wouldn't expect anything less of him - or of herself.

Her head tilted back ever so slightly. They were not quite touching, but she could feel his radiant heat, spreading outward from where his hand rested on her elbow. His breath had moved upward, and now fanned her face.

The clamor grew deafening. Wands were raised; there were shouts of challenge, claiming triumph, covering fear. Someone was speaking. Hermione thought it might have been Remus Lupin, but she wasn't sure. The voice seemed distant and garbled, as if played at too slow a speed or heard from too far away.

“Promise me…” he said, whispering almost into her mouth, his lips barely skimming hers, still treading that fine line - two friends whispering, just two friends whispering together. She wondered if he were being mindful of the Weasleys sprinkled through the crowd.

“Of course, Harry,” she finished, though he did not. He didn't need to. She'd give him anything, sacrifice anything, go anywhere… in spite of - or perhaps because of - the fact that he'd never ask it of her. She had loved him for so long.

His hand slid back down to hers, two jaunty short squeezes, and a feather-light kiss on the cheek - just two friends, just two friends - and the great double doors of Hogwarts began to swing open ponderously.

She saw Harry's chin lift, the dying light from the west now breaking through to glint off of his glasses. She searched for Ron in the crowd, spied his ginger head, gilded fiery copper. He tapped his wand to his temple in silent salute. She nodded back, just one quick downward tug of her chin. They had all said good-bye in the Gryffindor common room earlier.

“One quick murder and this'll all be over, yeah?” Harry quipped at her, twisting his mouth up hopefully, begging for her to find a modicum of humor in what he said. Her instinct was to reprimand him school-marmishly. Harry, don't even joke about such things. Instead she replied,

“We should all be back in time for supper.”

The appreciation that lit his eyes did her heart good.

And then Remus and Ron were there, moving into pre-planned formation, and the mass of humanity was moving forward.

And there was no time to say anything else.

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The Order of the Phoenix had done their best to prepare for the onslaught. The secret passage to Honeyduke's cellar had been well worn by fighters, planning to approach the castle from Hogsmeade and outflank the Death Eaters. Order members were crouching in almost every available window and turret, trying not to gape at the sheer number of giants, werewolves, trolls, and menacing figures in hoods and cloaks that were arrayed across the Hogwarts green.

Hermione, Harry, and Ron were stationed with the frontal assault, their chief objective to find Voldemort and dispatch him - or allow Harry to dispatch him - as quickly as possible. They were gambling on the premise that there were orders not to harm Harry, that Voldemort wanted the pleasure of murdering Harry personally.

A quiet tide of despair began welling up in Hermione as the two groups of people surged to meet each other. They'd gone through so much in the last three years since they'd finished school: translating and deciphering the meaning behind the cryptic notes Dumbledore had left for them after he'd been so shockingly murdered, poisoned by a bottle of mead, of all things; gradually unearthing the horrific truth of horcruxes, and the lengths to which Voldemort had gone to avoid death - this had involved a rather unpleasant trip to Azkaban prison and an intense session involving former Professor Slughorn, who was being held for the Headmaster's murder, and had been force-fed Veritaserum. It had taken three years, years of frustration and desperation and pain and heartache and death. They had lost many: Percy, Bill, Moody, Professor McGonagall. Somehow the three of them had survived, though Hermione occasionally wondered if her character had been so irrevocably compromised that, even when the war concluded, she'd never be able to reclaim herself.

But a light had dawned at the end of the tunnel. Here it was, facing them at last: the Minotaur, finally looming before them, after they had stumbled, half-blind, cringing and fearful, through the maze for years. There would be no side-stepping, no fleeing, no denying, no retreating - nothing to do now, but fight. Hermione was all too familiar with the dread of a thing being actually worse than the thing itself.

And Harry had touched her, barely kissed her - a promise, a vow of what was to come. Could he possibly, truly love her? Were they really to have a chance? Her heart seized at the tiny tendril of hope, curled it protectively inside herself, tucked it away for safekeeping.

The clash of the fight drove out the remembrance of his whispered words in her ear. The cool twilight wind, bringing with it, not refreshment, but the stench of blood and burned flesh and death, blew away the sensation of his breath caressing her face. The sight of Seamus, with his torso torn open, falling into a puddle of his own blood, blotted out the memory of the desire that had glowed in Harry's eyes.

She hurled herself to the ground as a curse sang over her head. The grass prickled her cheek, dirt slid and caked beneath her fingernails, and her blood thrummed in accelerated response to the staccato race of her heart.

There was no more time to dwell on Harry, to even look sideways at him.

She threw herself into the business of bringing the curtain down on the accursed War.

Her ears rang as she fought, picking her way through the melee, her arm movements emphatic and precise, her wand a slender and slashing brown blur. She could feel the heat of her blood in her face, the surging, thrilling swell of adrenaline, and every now and then an inarticulate cry of rage or effort would reach her ears, and she would realize in astonishment that she was its source. An uncounted number of masked wizards and witches fell before her, and she could not have told anyone afterwards what exactly happened.

And then the entire scenario seemed to come to an abrupt halt. She could have sworn she actually heard the screech of a phonograph needle across vinyl. A frantic toss of her head allowed her a glimpse of Harry and Ron, not unscathed but still standing, just to her left. Harry exchanged an unreadable glance with Ron, and began to move in front of her, pushing her hand down gently, where it had begun to lift, to aim and wield the wand she clenched so tightly that she had left miniature furrows in the slim handle.

Her lips parted, but the protest died in her throat, as she and Ron began to slide toward each other, as if choreographed to do so. Harry did not look back at them, but his spine was straight, his shoulders square, his head lifted. It was clear that he was not afraid, and that irrefutable fact made Hermione even more ashamed of the fear that made her tremble all over.

Voldemort was waiting, and it was as if time had literally stopped. A fell hush draped across the battlefield like heavy, smothering velvet, as everyone waited, knowing too well that this would be the penultimate act, that the end was imminent. A sweeping arc of the Dark Wizard's wand formed a great domed shield, translucent, but preventing anyone from affecting the outcome. A random Death Eater could have easily taken a pot shot at Harry, as he'd moved, totally focused, toward his nemesis, but of course, Voldemort's ego would not have permitted it.

Sweat trickled from Hermione's hairline into her eyes, burning and commingling with the tears. The dome shimmered and swam gelatinously in her vision. She felt Ron's grimy fingers entwine with hers.

And the duel was engaged.

The two men circled each other like wary panthers, each unsure of the proper opening gambit, each searching for something to exploit. Harry's eyes were blazing with a righteous fury that was discernible even through Voldemort's shield. His teeth were gritted, his chest heaved; Hermione could feel herself breathing in tandem with him. For a moment, she let herself recall once again the feather-light whisper of his lips against hers, and when the first curse sang out, it startled her badly.

The spells came with rapid fury, streaking, multi-colored beams of light that either ricocheted erratically - and terrifyingly - off of the dome, or melded into it with a series of crackling pops and hisses. Other than those noises, there was an eerie, near-total silence, as all of the casting was done non-verbally. Hermione was rather astonished at how good Harry had become.

The battle seemed to stretch on for hours. What Harry lacked in experience or in Darkness, he made up for with youth and unconventional thinking. Still, Hermione could tell he was tiring, as his wand arm began to sag, trembling from the strain, and leaving his right side dangerously open to attack. His hair was wringing wet, and there were sweat stains on his clothes. He seemed to be having trouble keeping his glasses in place in front of his eyes, and he reached up an unsteady left hand to adjust them.

Voldemort made his move.

“Harry!” Hermione shrieked involuntarily, although she had no way of knowing whether or not outside sound could even penetrate the dome. Her fingers bit into Ron's.

But then she saw Harry's head snap up, saw the trajectory of his gaze, his wand, saw the trembling cease, and she knew that he was more than aware of what was going on around him.

The fatigue had been an act.

Green light boiled from the tip of Voldemort's wand, aimed like a true arrow toward Harry's chest. The Boy Who Lived stood, feet planted widely, making no attempt to dodge or block or counter-attack.

Hermione knew what they had practiced, knew what Harry held as his trump card, and her heart was still in her throat. Ron's face was as pale as old milk.

At the last possible second, Harry screamed a single word in Latin.

“Inflecto!”

Hermione was holding her breath, without realizing it. The green glow hit the end of Harry's wand for the briefest of moments, and began moving in the opposite direction even faster, as if it had bounced itself off of the wand the way a competitive swimmer turns at the end of a lane. She distantly registered the murmur of voices rising to crescendo like ocean swells.

Voldemort's wand was a blur, red panic in his eyes, and even as his thin lips formed words, the Avada struck the one who'd birthed it, turning, at the last, on its master. His body arced through the air, the parabola ending at the base of the dome, which flickered and shrank into nothingness.

Harry took a cautious step forward, quietly Summoning the Dark Wizard's wand. The silence lay thickly on Hermione's ears like pads of cotton, only to be broken by the crisp snap of Voldemort's wand in Harry's fingers.

Voldemort's gasping inhalation gave fresh fuel to the murmurs. Hermione made an involuntary move toward Harry, as if in warning, but Ron forced her to stay back. The Dark Lord was prone, wandless, his chest sunken in and black from the impact of the rebounded spell. He had obviously been hastily performing some spell to counter the Avada Kedavra, but, while it had kept him from dying immediately, it hadn't been enough, hadn't come in time.

The sullen red light began to fade from his fell eyes; his breaths were effortful and slowing. One by one, muted cries of agony rose up from the field of battle in discordant and despairing chorus, as the Dark Marks began to respond to the fall of their Master. Death Eaters began to wobble and collapse, as what remained of the Order tried to confiscate as many wands as they could.

Ron let go of Hermione's hand, as her eyes slid shut, and she felt the massive cinder-block weight of anxiety lift itself from her chest. Harry swiveled on one heel, turned to look at her, and the brilliant certainty that he had not forgotten their hasty touches in the Great Hall - that, in fact, he had not stopped thinking about it - made her take a half-step back to keep from falling.

She did not know when she had started crying, but she was almost laughing at the same time, a high, shaky, euphoric sound born of fatigue and relief. She knew they had losses, grievous ones, but she could not make herself process anything beyond the fact that he was alive and they had won.

A faint movement teased at the periphery of her vision, and she looked back at their fallen nemesis. One skeletally curved hand still moved, inching its way across to its mate on the other side. It scrabbled blindly for a moment, and Hermione began to think that it was merely a last instinctual movement, with no rational forethought present, when the fingers locked on to a heavy signet ring and gave it a deliberate twist. Barely perceptibly, the lips, though drawing back in the rictus of death, began to move.

Dread initiated an accelerating drumbeat in Hermione's temples, and before her lips had even parted, Harry had gone down, as if clothes-lined.

“Harry!” Her unearthly wail all but shredded the lining from her throat. She felt, rather than saw, Ron whirl at her cry, but she noticed with horrible clarity the two duelists, separated by less than two meters, breathing horribly slowly, in time with each other.

She flung herself toward him, her vision telescoping until she saw just him, only him, noting the dirt stains on the knees of his jeans, the laceration on his arm, the trailing lace of his trainer that had come untied.

“Harry. Oh dear God, Harry. Somebody!” She was reaching for her wand, casting everything she could think of, as fast as she could articulate it, barely feeling the scalding tears wetting her cheeks.

The futility hit her like a Bludger. She could not counter what she did not know. Her questing hands moved over his shoulders, his face, straightening his glasses, tangling in his hair, enfolding his hands in their grip. His skin was clammy.

“Harry, please Harry, stay with me. Stay with me. You promised.”

Ron was on his knees beside her.

“What happened?” He seemed as shocked as she. There was movement above and around and behind her. She recognized the voice of Madam Pomfrey.

“I don't know. That ring - he said something, I don't know…” Her voice was watery and incoherent. She held more tightly onto Harry's hand, as if she could will life through her fingertips into his. She pressed her lips to his hands, thought she felt a faint flicker of movement, but when she glanced sharply at his face, his eyes were distant, glassy, unresponsive.

There were clawed hands tearing at her chest. Her face was sticky, her nose was running, and yet she watched his face avidly. Be the Boy Who Lived, please Harry.

Another breath drawn in, shallower and slower, noisy but ineffective. His lips took on a bluish cast. Madam Pomfrey was administering potions and casting spells like someone possessed, but Hermione could dimly hear the resignation in her voice.

The cries from the Death Eaters rose up in even louder cacophony, and Hermione realized that Voldemort had finally ceased to be. At almost exactly the same time - barely a breath later - she felt Harry's fingers go limp in hers.

“No,” she breathed, barely audibly. Then louder, “No! NO!”

Madam Pomfrey made a flourish with her wand, and began marking time of death. Hermione felt herself slowly falling apart; she was curling up, like a Morning Glory at twilight, her hair washing across his chest.

The tears began to flow as if a dam had burst, completely obscuring her vision, as she wiped her face with his sleeve. Great gulping, heaving, hysterical sobs were coming from somewhere, and she was vaguely surprised to feel them rattling from her own chest, which felt as achingly empty as if her heart had been physically removed - nay, destroyed.

She could still feel the brush of his lips on her cheek, her ear, her mouth, could still feel the funny jump in her stomach when their hands touched. Now, their hands touched again, but Harry's did not feel, and never would again. Her eyes roved over Harry's face; the blue-gray tinge changed him so much that it hurt. She tried to remember what he looked like, when his dark hair and green eyes added vivid strokes of color to his general pallor, the somber gaze, the flash-quick smile… She gently caressed his hair back from his forehead. The grief was an unbearable load that threatened to grow exponentially, to crush her beneath its insensate weight.

I'll never see him smile at me again, I'll never meet his gaze and know he's thinking exactly what I'm thinking, I'll never have a conversation with him in the middle of the night after everyone else is sleeping. Never had always been a tragic word, she thought, but now it was a weapon, and she slashed mercilessly at herself with it, wanted to choke on it. It's too much, too much… please…

The finality, the enormity of the loss was paralyzing; she was trying desperately to process it, but there was a fist in her gut, clenched fingers around her throat; she couldn't breathe, she couldn't think; she could only touch him, and weep for what was gone.

Gentle hands encircled her upper arms, and she fought their attempt to draw her away.

“Stop it. Stop it. Leave me alone. I can't go; I can't leave him. I promised.”

“Hermione… love… he's - he's gone.” There were tears in Ron's voice too, and she looked beseechingly up into his face, mourning, with red-rimmed eyes.

“You don't understand. We promised.”

“I do understand,” he replied. She had never seen him look so old and weary. Her eyes were beseeching him, as if begging him to tell her that it wasn't true, that this hadn't happened.

“Let me stay here, with him, please.” He touched her again, tentatively, and she jerked away.

“Hermione, you've got to come on!” Ron's voice was harder now, and it made her angry. When she felt him grip her arms again, with more force, and lift her to her feet, she felt murderous.

“Leave me alone.” She bit out the words with furious finality. He ignored her. When she planted her feet, he merely dragged her, leaving several meters of parallel grooves dug into the dirt by her heels.

She started screaming then, not caring who heard, pleading for Harry, stretching her arms out toward him, and calling Ron every foul epithet she could think of.

“Hermione!” Ron's voice was broken, imploring. His eyes and cheeks were as wet and red as hers. “Hermione, you can't do this here, not now, not like this.” Her chin trembled mutinously, but she was listening.

“They're going to have to move his - his - him, Hermione.” Ron was speaking carefully, so carefully, as if his words were projectiles that might injure her.

“What's the hurry?” She asked tiredly.

“It's not safe. For Merlin's sake, look around you, Hermione.” He was standing sentry-like at her back, wand still out, and Hermione felt her insides leap and clench with returned fear.

She looked, slowly, unwillingly, gulping back a sob, and following Ron's terse instruction.

Twilight had long since fallen, and the gray haze of lingering smoke made it seem even darker. Bright white sparks of multiple Lumos spells darted hither and yon around the battlefield. Even in their variable light, Hermione recognized many of the fallen.

“Oh God…” she breathed. There was Parvati Patil, kneeling, weeping over the prone form of her twin. Seamus, she already knew, was gone, and it seemed that Dean had been killed as well. Two Ravenclaws were tumbled close together, face down, so that she could only identify them by house colors. Shiny, blonde hair could have been Luna or Lavender, but the bright and immaculate manicure told the tale. There were two or three fallen that could have had red hair, but the uncertain light made it difficult to tell. It seemed that those in the white-banded robes of the Order far, far outnumbered black-cloaked Death Eaters among the fallen. Those of the Order still standing each clutched five or six confiscated wands in their hands.

Ron let her look until he knew she had understood, then leaned down, speaking into her ear in a low voice.

“I don't know how long the Dark Mark will keep affecting them. Or when they'll realize that they still have us outnumbered. Or when their allies will realize it and come back out of the Forbidden Forest and finish us off.” Hermione noted with a start that he was right, and not one non-human remained on the green. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

She met his eyes, and his gaze was black in the darkness. Her lips quivered, and she clamped them together, and nodded.

She understood. He was saying that they still weren't safe, that their losses were monumental, that even though they'd won - He'd won - that it might not be over. It seemed utterly unfair.

“Madam Pomfrey! Madam Pomfrey!” cried a familiar voice. “Please… Charlie - he's - it looks bad - I tried to - Ron!” There was a shriek and a flying figure, ginger hair streaming out like a scarlet pennant in the wind, hurtled itself into his arms.

“Ginny!' He gasped, hugging her tightly, and then moving away so that he could look into her face.

“Have you seen the others? Mum? Dad?”

Ginny shook her head, and her face twisted as she attempted to force her mouth to make normal words. “I found… Daddy…” The little-girl way she referred to her father pierced Hermione like a rapier blade. “And Charlie… I think he's - ” Her throat closed up around the word dying.

Ron's head sagged down between his shoulders, and Hermione stroked her hand absently down his arm, her gaze returning to Harry. The youngest Weasley followed her line of sight.

“So it is true,” was all Ginny said, in a dull, dead voice, and that seemed to have drained her completely. The word had evidently begun to filter around, but there was still much to do, ends to tie up, prisoners to deal with. The rational part of Hermione understood this, but the rest of her was impatient and angry.

“Hermione,” Ron was speaking again, trying to sound calm, but she could catch the desperate undercurrent. She was supposed to be the strong one, the calm and rational one, the one who held everyone else together. I can't handle this if you fall apart too, he seemed to be saying.

“We should find Remus or - or - ” She groped for the name of someone who could still be alive, but managed to keep her voice mostly steady. “If they're - if we can't, then you - then you'll have to take charge, Ron.” She tried to smile reassuringly, but her voice wobbled dangerously on his name. Neville had come, and was moving Harry's body under Madam Pomfrey's departing instructions. The mediwitch hastily moved in the direction of Ginny's outstretched arm, but Hermione followed their classmate with her eyes all the way to the great double Doors of Hogwarts.

She remembered the look in Harry's eyes, the way his fingers felt teasing against hers. She felt Ron's hand under her elbow, as they picked their way carefully through the fallen. She knelt beside him, threading her fingers through his hair at the sobs that racked him when the light left Charlie's eyes, and she wondered if there would ever come a time where she wouldn't feel such pain.

TBC

Ready for another go?

You may leave a review on your way out, if you like. I'll be happy to answer any questions as well.

lorien

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2. Two

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 Two:

But love won't cure the chaos, and hope won't hide the loss.

-Jars of Clay, “Surprise”

She was sitting next to Ron, and knew she was, but she couldn't really feel anything. Her limbs were heavy, wooden. The place where her shoulder touched his felt as if it were padded under several layers of thick clothing. Her nerves were sluggish, shrouded, trains running behind schedule. Her breathing sounded noisy in her own ears, but the speaker's voice drifted in from what seemed like a great distance. Wind snarled her hair and chafed at her cheeks, but it was like watching the whole tableau while hovering above herself.

She was at Harry's memorial service, and wondered how close she was to a psychotic break.

It wasn't really only Harry's service, though he was clearly the focal point of it. They had lost so many, so many: Ron and Ginny, alone of the Weasleys surviving; all of the Hogwarts staff cut down like wheat before a scythe; Tonks had lived, but not Remus; Luna Lovegood, Parvati Patil, and Neville Longbottom had made it, but almost no one else from the erstwhile D.A. The Aurors had been decimated, as had much of the Ministry; bartering was commonplace, as only the autonomy of the Gringotts goblins kept the tottering economy from completely collapsing. Azkaban was full; the Ministry jail was full, and still there were not enough prosecutors, not enough guards, not enough MLE agents. The closest person in the line of succession surviving was an obscure little Undersecretary, who had previously worked at staffing the International Magical Embassies, and she was so clearly out of her league that the skeletal remains of the Wizengamot had called for a new vote, less than a fortnight after she took office.

The speaker droned on about heroism in general, and Harry's heroism in particular, and Hermione thought that she might scream. She wondered what people would do if she did. Most of them probably already thought she was barking mad. This man - this officious Bureaucrat, another one raised only by catastrophic war and death from utter unimportance- did not know Harry. How dare he presume to know him?

Yet, she knew, most of those who had been able to call him friend were dead. And those survivors who had occupied Harry's inner circle were in no condition to speak of it. Hermione had always been one who'd been able to look squarely at her limitations - flying, for instance - and she knew that she could not climb a dais and speak nostalgic, reflective, empty words about Harry Potter.

Especially not with Lucius Malfoy looking on from a place of honor.

Her derisive snort must have been audible, because Ron shifted slightly next to her, accidentally-on-purpose nudging her in the side. She dragged her gaze from the aristocratic coolness of the new Minister for Magic, and looked instead at the intricately carved tomb, brilliant white and polished to a high luster. Behind it, a marble plaque proclaimed this to be the resting place of Harry Potter, Hero for the Light, Destroyer of the Dark Lord, in letters fully 20 cm high.

He would have loathed it.

She was achingly conscious of the empty seat on her other side. Out of habit, she, Ron, and Ginny had scooted down to make four seats available, before realizing with heart-rending pangs that they only needed three. Hermione had not moved back, leaving that aisle seat open, wishing that he would come strolling in to take that seat, with such fervency that she thought her heart would burst. The familiar tightness was knotting its way around her throat, and her eyes were stinging.

She would not cry here.

A subdued trickle of applause greeted the conclusion of the speaker's remarks. In the interim silence, there were more than a few sniffles, and Lucius Malfoy moved smoothly, in a swirl of gold and black fabric, to the podium.

“Honored citizens of Wizarding England,” he began in a rich, cultured voice that rolled well to the ears. “I stand before you now as a symbol of a new Era - ”

Lucius Malfoy had been the first Death Eater given a pardon, as, amazingly, there was absolutely no one left alive who would admit that he had been present at the battle. Neither Hermione nor Ron had ever seen him, though neither had any doubts as to his presence. Unfortunately, he had retreated back to his old claim of Imperius, and “come on, you know he had to be there” was not considered sufficient cause for arrest.

Still, his ascension to the position of Minister had come as a shock. It had not even registered as a possibility to the remnants of the Order until it was too late. The doddering Old Guard who made up the remnants of the Wizengamot had reacted in fear: knee-jerk reflex at the tottering tower of their world forcing them back to an old family, a noble family, one who understood The Way Things Should Be.

This would never have happened if Harry had lived, Hermione thought, and her contempt o f them was as a living thing.

“—have been grieving together as a people for our tremendous losses, and - ” Narcissa had been found dead at Malfoy Manor, shortly after the battle, but it appeared that she had been dead for quite some time. Lucius claimed she'd been murdered by Voldemort, as repayment for defying him at the last, while he'd only barely escaped. “While not forgetting the sacrifices so bravely made by our comrades-in-arms - ” He gestured gallantly down toward Harry's tomb. Comrades-in-arms! Hermione felt the bile threaten to rise in her throat on a current of disgust. “—agree that we must move forward as a unified people once again. To this end, I have proposed a general amnesty for - ”

Loud murmurs fluttered around the room like disturbed and resettling doves.

“ - ighters, regardless of on which side they fought. This modification will include those already imprisoned. Of course, those whose actions can be proven to have been extraordinarily aggravating - ” Hermione had a sinking feeling that this would somehow turn out to be impossible. “— be tried to the full extent of Wizarding Law. I know you will agree that - “

There was a buzzing sound in Hermione's ears, and it was growing louder. She clenched at the back of the chair in front of her blindly. How dare he - how dare he… insinuate that the entire War could be blotted out, made as a slate wiped with a wet sponge. Voldemort was dead, but one of them was in charge, and trying to pretend that this was nothing but a small spat among friends, that Harry's death was vanity, easily glossed over and forgotten.

“ - for I want nothing more than justice to be served here, for Wizarding life to return to the quality we once so enjoyed. There were murders committed on both sides of the battle lines, and in light of this - as well as the immense loss of life sustained - I feel that the most expedient and rewarding path to restoration is to extend the olive branch of brotherhood to all wizards and witches, regardless of on which side they fought. Our society must be reconstructed, and that cannot happen if integral pieces wither away in prison. But ours is not an irreparable breach, not a fatal wound…” He extended one hand out toward the audience, a peacemaking smile on his entreating face. “I know it would be Harry Potter's fond wish that this world - our world, which he fought so gallantly to save - be mended as quickly as possible.”

The rage and contempt spiraled up so quickly in Hermione that it made her dizzy.

“What a crop of dragon dung,” she said, without worrying about keeping her voice down.

There was uneasy rustling among the crowd, though her remark was also greeted with a smattering of applause. Lucius eyed her icily, even while forcing his smile into a conciliatory mask.

“I am not ignorant of the after-effects of the trauma of battle and death that have been inflicted on our society,” he said, staring at her squarely. “Rest assured every possible effort will be made to help restore our brave fighters to their full, pre-War capabilities.”

He was calling her crazy. In front of everyone. At Harry's memorial.

She moved out into the aisle with a jerky, uneven motion, like something being clumsily unfolded, and watched as two MLE agents almost casually placed themselves in between the dais and herself.

“He would have hated this, you know,” she cried out, her voice ringing in the open air, her arm arcing outward to encompass all of them. They seemed to recoil at her condemnation. “He would have hated what you're doing, and worse… what you're allowing to happen.”

The silence was deafening. Ron and Ginny stood, and for a moment, Hermione feared that they were going to try to placate her back to her seat. But they moved to flank her, a Trio once again - or was it a Quartet missing a member? - and she was able to pinpoint the exact moment that Lucius's patience was lost.

Something iron glinted deep within his eyes; his smile flickered, threatened to falter. He made a gesture with one hand, and the MLE agents began to move, though not without hesitation. Hermione knew that their prior closeness to Harry still made them somewhat untouchable - though the window for that seemed to be rapidly closing. Before the agents could even close half the distance, the three of them turned, in sync, and strode down the aisle, robes snapping impressively behind them.

“Screw you, Lucius!” Hermione shouted, and the triple crack of their Apparation resounded off of the nearby hills.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hermione had to admit that Lucius Malfoy had a hell of an ability to spin events and perceptions in a direction favorable to him.

Two days after the Gryffindors' exit from the memorial service had made the front page of the Prophet, the Minister himself had arrived at the Burrow, without an entourage, ostensibly for a “private” conversation with those who had known and loved Harry Potter best. However, Hermione reflected cynically, if Malfoy had truly had no idea that reporters had continually staked out the ramshackle home since Harry's death, then he was stupider than she'd thought. And though Lucius Malfoy was many things, she had an inkling that stupid was not one of them.

He knew that this meeting would be duly circulated in the press.

“Miss Weasley, Miss Granger, forgive my intrusion,” he said, seemingly oblivious to their sullen reaction to his presence. He gave them a slight bow, one gloved hand pressed to an immaculate cravat. Hermione felt Ginny shrink slightly behind her, and knew that the younger girl was acutely aware of her own bare feet, worn jeans, and baggy t-shirt.

“How…unexpected to see you, Lucius,” Hermione muttered faintly, grasping at the veneers of politeness, but vowing to herself that words like “honor” or “privilege” would not escape her lips.

“I wanted to speak with the two of you - and Mr. Weasley as well, if he is available.” His eyes darted around in innocent inquiry, and Hermione fought the urge to roll her eyes. As if Ron - as if any of them - had any semblance of a demanding social schedule, licking their wounds in semi-exile as they were.

Not yet moving aside to admit the Minister, Hermione hollered inelegantly over her shoulder,

“Ron!” She waited until she could hear the indistinct sounds of shambling footsteps, and turned expectantly back toward their “guest”.

“Perhaps we could sit down?” Lucius asked, and she could see his patience beginning to erode ever so slightly. The fraying edges of his composure gave her no small amount of satisfaction, though she still felt stiff, as if all of her bones had been wired into a fixed position.

“If you like,” she gritted between her teeth, and allowed him inside. The periphery of her vision caught a camera flash, as she shut the weathered wooden door.

Ron had made it to the bottom of the staircase as they crossed into the living area, and swore vilely under his breath, whirling on her for an explanation.

“Hermione, what the hell?”

“I think he thinks there's been some kind of misunderstanding,” she informed him with false sweetness, and looked back at Lucius, innocently, as if to add, isn't that so?

“I believe you have pre-judged me, based on my prior… associations,” Malfoy began. “And I - ”

“Associations with who? Voldemort? Positively unreasonable, that,” Ron interrupted bluntly.

“I wanted to assure you, in person,” the Minister continued, as if Ron had not spoken, “that our goals - our desires - for the Wizarding world are the same.”

“I find it highly unlikely that you wish you were dead, Malfoy,” Ron drawled again, and this time, faint color stained the former Death Eater's cheeks. There was no other outward sign that he'd even heard Ron.

“None of us wants the Wizarding world to perish. I'm extending the hand of amnesty to you three as well. I know you have been through much, and even though I continue to be so summarily insulted, I - ”

“Amnesty?” Ron was incensed. “We don't need amnesty - we were in the right. We didn't - ”

“He needs us,” Hermione interrupted, her voice as hard and flat as Hagrid's rock cakes. “Don't you?” She smiled at him, a tight, mirthless knife-slash across her face. “We would be the final jewel in your victory crown - the last of the Order, Harry Potter's nearest and dearest - as allies in your new regime! What did Neville Longbottom say to you when you… propositioned him? I'll wager he threw your man right out on his arse. If we joined you, it would silence any remaining nay-sayers, wouldn't it? Bring around the last hold-outs? The only thing that would be better would be having the endorsement of Harry Potter himself, but - even if he were alive - you know that it would never happen.”

The venom in her tone seemed to have startled even the Weasleys.

“What can be gained from dwelling on the past?” Lucius was still speaking in his politician's voice. “I simply ask that we begin to move on - together. Fighting me won't bring him back.”

Hermione jerked her head as if she'd been slapped.

“You,” she spat as if the pronoun were something filthy in her mouth. “You think that you can lecture me on recognizing the enormity of loss? Of my loss - our loss? There is no one in this country who has lost as much as we have.” With one hand, she indicated the two remaining Weasleys. “Even if Harry were here, I would still fight you. But we all know that if Harry were here, he would have put a stop to this madness before it even started.” An indefinable sadness and regret shadowed her dark eyes. “I guess we're just not strong enough to do it for him.”

Hermione's throat clogged up at the thought of somehow letting Harry down, and she fixed her gaze away from the others in the room, dwelling on the clock-shaped outline of unfaded wallpaper, opposite. Ron had thrown it out into the back garden on their first night back, having been unable to bear seeing so many of its hands blackened and permanently fixed on “Mortal Peril”. The clock had landed in the overgrown grass with a satisfying splintering sound, and had, evidently, being carted off by gnomes, because no one had seen it - or its remnants - since.

“I urge you to consider your own … well-being, Miss Granger,” Lucius spoke as he stood, casually inspecting his fine attire for spot or blemish. “And that of your friends, as well.”

“Are you threatening us?”

“Consider it a friendly warning.” Lucius' smile was anything but. “If you are not with us, you are against us - I'm quite sure you are a knowledgeable proponent of that particular philosophy. There is much to rebuild - and you three have the unique opportunity to stake your claim in the new order of things. You could name your position, wield your influence over circles that would only widen. Should you choose unwisely…” He lifted his shoulders as he left the end of the sentence dangling. “There will be no place for those who cling to the past.”

Hermione glared back at him in stony silence, before she could finally trust herself to respond.

“I believe we are at an impasse,” she finally noted. “I think you've said everything you came to say.”

“I thought you not at all a fool - even though Muggle blood runs through your veins,” Lucius said. “The Most Brilliant Witch of your Age, some have said. And yet you would throw it all away - for a corpse.”

“Harry will never be dead, as long as those remain who love him and believe in what he represented,” Hermione said, keeping her voice steady, though she was more than half-blind with tears. She refused to let them fall in front of Lucius Malfoy.

There was a comforting presence behind her, a warm arm around her shoulders.

“Get out of this house,” Ron spoke stolidly, his wand in his hand, but not aimed at their visitor…yet.

“Take care that you do not regret these rash actions,” the Minister warned, muttering a parting rejoinder as he opened the door. “You cannot eat ideals.”

The three young people made no move to stop him, as he shut the front door and strode coolly down the path to the front gate, ever mindful of the reporters, even while in a high temper.

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Ginny swept into the Burrow, bringing with her a rather chill wind, and flopped down on the sagging old sofa, letting out a noisy sigh as she unwound her scarf. Hermione was at the battered old desk, scribbling furiously with an old quill, an impressive coil of parchment already reaching the floor. She held up one finger at Ginny, without looking, in a signal to wait, and finished the end of her thought with a flourish and decisive punctuation. Finally, she swiveled around in the chair, and looked expectantly at the younger girl.

“Well?”

“Well…” Ginny drew out the syllable, savoring Hermione's expectation. “You are looking at the newest employee of the rebuilt Ministry - just a lowly clerk in the Magical Probate Department - but it's a start.”

“Ginny, that's brilliant.” Hermione's smile was genuine - or at least, what approximated genuine for her, as there was a shadow there that even the brightest smile never fully eclipsed. “Did you see Malfoy?”

“I did,” Ginny said, amazed and admiring that Hermione's hunch had been so accurate. “As soon as the moron in human resources realized who I was, they marched me straight into the inner sanctum, past a right seedy lot of people waiting in the outer office - for favors, I reckon. Anyway, Malfoy did just what you thought. Wanted to `welcome me personally'. I told him just what we practiced. That I didn't agree with your high-handed attitudes, and that even though I was sorry Harry was dead, and I'd probably never trust him - I still wanted in on the fashioning of a new world. Told him that I was practical, I had always hated living in poverty, and I needed a job. I asked him please not to tell you. He seemed to think that amusing. I start tomorrow.”

“Well done,” Hermione replied. “Just remember - do your job, keep your head down. Don't do anything that might get you in trouble - right now, it's more important that we have someone on the inside.”

“Two someones, actually,” Ginny said suddenly, as if just remembering something. “Luna's there too. Got in as a junior-grade Unspeakable. I saw her in the Atrium. She says such daft things that I'll bet the goons at the Ministry have no idea where she stands. You know she's still with us, you know she is.”

“Sound her out, then - carefully - if you can,” Hermione conceded.

Ginny nodded, then pushed against the cushions of the sofa, as if she would rise, but stopped.

“Hermione, what is it we're really trying to accomplish here?” she asked honestly, dashing her long red hair over her shoulder, so she could meet Hermione's gaze.

“You know… you know that Malfoy as Minister is not right. That he's made it this far is - is the height of folly, and I - I just know that we haven't even begun to see what he is capable of - and he'll mask it all for as long as he can - disguise it as being for the benefit of the people…” The phrase was said with not a little bitterness.

“But what good will it do? We're overwhelmingly outnumbered. Are we just fighting - just for the sake of fighting, kicking against the goads …just so we - just so we won't - “

“So we won't have to admit that we lost?” Hermione's voice sounded as dry as dead leaves.

“Well… yeah…” Ginny ventured slowly, not at all liking the look in Hermione's eye.

“If Lucius Malfoy continues down this path, unimpeded - if we don't stop him, stall him, hinder him - something - then by the time the rest of the Wizarding world wakes up to what he's done, it will be too late. We'll have lost. And if we lose, then he died for nothing, Ginny. Do you understand that? For nothing.” Raw agony flowed through her voice like electric current.

“And you can't let that happen,” Ginny finished the thought declaratively.

“I've got to try,” Hermione corrected her. “Because Harry would have tried. But in the end, it won't matter - not for me. I've already lost everything anyway.”

“You still have us - me and Ron. Maybe Luna… Neville… It's not all gone, you know…” Ginny's voice was thistle-down soft, the type of voice one might use to comfort a very frightened, much abused child.

“I love him, Ginny,” Hermione blurted suddenly, her tears beginning to make themselves known. Ginny did not seem surprised, by either the admission or Hermione's use of the present tense. “I never told him - and now I never can. I - I don't know how you move past the pain of that - it hurts so much here.” She patted her chest, sounding distant and almost clinical. “I can barely breathe… like it could paralyze me, if I let it.”

She felt ridiculous and small, speaking of her feelings to Ginny, who had lost infinitely more than she had. Being Weasleys, she and Ron had responded to the deaths with typical effusiveness. There had been screaming and cursing and thrown objects, including the clock, mostly in the shelter of a Silencioed Burrow. Hermione had had to Reparo most of Molly Weasley's china, and had later found Ron crying amidst a cluttered pile of plugs and sockets in the shed. Yet, they had each other, and somehow, that seemed to help them to stand. Hermione couldn't help but marvel at how they bore what shouldn't have to be borne.

“Listen to me,” Ginny said, squaring Hermione's shoulders so that they were fully facing each other. “You may not have ever told Harry how you felt, but I think he knew - and I think he felt the same way.”

“How do - ?”

“I saw you,” Ginny said, and for the first time, disappointment flickered in her eyes. “At Hogwarts - that last day. It - the look in his eyes, when your hands touched - just your hands, Hermione. It was - it was amazing… almost consuming, like it -” She shrugged her shoulders, at a loss. “Well, I've snogged him, and he never looked at me like that.”

Her words sent a temporary thrill shivering through Hermione, but the comfort was slight, like medicated balm on the stump of a severed limb. What did it matter, how he or she had felt or not felt, what they had declared or left unsaid, what had been seen or heard or only intuited? What did it matter?

She couldn't have any of it back.

And before she knew it, she had leaned forward, collapsing on Ginny, all ungainly angles and jutting joints, feeling the scratchy wool of Ginny's loosened scarf beneath her cheek. Tears flowed down her cheeks, scalding like acid, and harsh sobs forced themselves from her convulsing throat.

And Ginny - Ginny, the girl who had lived to know that her idol, her crush had been ruthlessly cut down on the cusp of victory, the girl who had lost her entire family, save one brother, in one lethal day, the girl standing amid the smoldering flames and smoking ruins of the only world she'd ever known - was patting her head, stroking strands of hair back from her sticky, wet cheeks, and making a soothing, white-noise sort of sound. And after a moment, when Hermione was completely drained, feeling as thick and groggy as if she'd awakened from a too-long nap, she sat up, deftly cast a Refreshing charm on herself, and dried the shoulder of Ginny's sweater. She sniffed noisily and with finality.

“Sorry about that,” she said, and brushed off whatever Ginny was going to say in response, feeling acutely ashamed of herself.

It was the last time any of them ever saw her cry.

TBC

I was pleased at the response to the first chapter, and thrilled that so many of you professed such attachment for our Other Hermione.

The timeline on this chapter was left intentionally vague, but a couple of months elapsed between the Battle and the service (think of all the “triage” and damage control and restructuring before they could even hold such an event), and maybe close to that between Lucius' meeting and Ginny's job. There will be about 2 years covered before Harry's appearance to this Hermione, and it will be traversed fairly quickly.

Reviews are always appreciated; the more, the merrier, says I. You may leave one on your way out, if you like.

lorien

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3. Three

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 Three:

She's just reminiscing; blood, sweat, and one thing's missing. She's been breaking up inside.

--Switchfoot, “Lonely Nation”

“I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one,” Ron hissed, darting an accusing glance at her as he stepped over a puddle. It wasn't raining, but had before, and promised to again. “We're not Glamored or anything. I don't think we should be doing this…. Not like this, anyway.” He tried to dodge the hanging fringe of the awning over Eeylops, but missed, and cursed, as a shower of water sprinkled down the side of his neck into his collar.

“How many times do I have to keep telling you, Ron?” Hermione's words were bitten off and distinct, flying at him like so many little darts. “We haven't done anything wrong.”

“Was I the only one at Malfoy's little `conference' who thought he was making threats?”

“He can't do anything to us - he's bound by Wizarding law just like everyone else, and the Wizengamot - “

“He makes the bloody law, Hermione. He's got the Wizengamot by the nose; else, he'd never have been elected in the first place - “

Hermione spat a warning at him to lower his voice. The dreary weather made Diagon Alley rather more sparsely populated than normal, which was lower still than in days of yore, but they were managing to attract attention. Even as they passed the bakery, two women in floured aprons stood in the doorway were nodding toward them and whispering behind their hands - Harry Potter's best friends.

“We shouldn't have come here,” Ron continued, albeit somewhat more sulkily. “We could've sent Luna or Neville - we could have done this by Owl.”

“Gringotts only allows estate settlements to be done in person now,” Hermione reminded him in her trademarked snippy tone, though most of the fight had gone out of her voice. Ron's shoulders had drooped even further as they passed the vacant joke shop that had once belonged to his brothers. The windows gaped like blind and empty eyes. Hermione pressed her lips together in sympathy and touched his arm, but he was gazing fixedly toward the grocer's and would not look at her.

They walked in silence for a time, but once they had reached the marble steps at the foot of the goblin's towering edifice, Ron had regained enough of his composure to remember why he was irritated.

“Why couldn't we have done this earlier then?” He challenged her, seizing on a new tack. “In the chaos of everything afterward, we'd have been less likely to be noticed.”

“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione's long-suffering sigh was perhaps more plaintive than in times past. “Don't you remember how long it took us to get the Dumbledore's Pensieve after he died? The Ministry kept it for as long as they legally could, trying to figure out what treachery it held. Thank Merlin Dumbledore hid the memories, instead of willing them to us directly.”

“Sent us all on a sodding wild goose chase,” Ron grumbled, but he seemed to concede Hermione's point. They were quiet as they mounted the stairs, both thinking of those difficult and frustrating days hunting for Horcruxes with almost nothing to go on. Hermione found herself yearning for those days, because even in the midst of flaring tempers, sleepless nights, cold food, paranoia, booby traps, and attacks, even then, they had been three - they had been whole.

Ron's pensive face mirrored her own, as he held open the large door for her to enter Gringotts' lobby. There were several queues, and people were scattered through out the large room, as goblins darted hither and yon on various business tasks. She and Ron seemed to attract attention almost immediately, and as Hermione's face began a slow burn, she let herself wonder if Ron had been right.

“Hermione!” called out a voice, clearly in greeting, but still discreetly low. She knew who it was without turning.

“Hi, Neville,” she replied.

“What brings you here today?” There was no preamble, and concern laced his voice. Hermione fought the urge to roll her eyes. Not Neville too, she thought. He carried some sort of official document, and shifted the rolled parchment from one hand to the other. The purple seal of Gringotts peeked out.

“Harry's will,” she answered him. “I thought Ron was just being his usual paranoid self. Is something going on?”

“You didn't read the Prophet this morning, did you?”

“I stopped taking it.” Harry had always hated the magazine, and somehow, continuing to shell out galleons for it had seemed disloyal. Plus, she had been loath to give money to an organization so clearly acting as a mouthpiece for Lucius Malfoy. In the interests of staying `fully informed', however, she read Luna's copy in the evening, when Luna had finished and Owled it to her. She told Neville so.

Neville's mouth crimped in an expression akin to pity, as if he heartily wished that she had read the paper that morning. Her eyes narrowed.

“What's wrong?” Her voice brooked no opposition, no stalling or smoothing over.

“It's begun,” was all he said, but the portents of doom were easily discernible. She knew instantly to what he was referring.

“How is that even possible? How can people allow - ?”

“People are scared, Hermione. The economy is depressed, too many people have died - or disappeared. It's happened twice in twenty years! No one wants it to happen again, and he's promising a way to ensure it won't.” He seemed to realize that he sounded like a ringing endorsement, and amended his tone. “I'm not saying I agree with him, or with those who are placing their trust in him; I am saying that I understand why they might…”

“Why they might what - be willing to throw over everything we fought for?” Ron queried sarcastically.

“Why they might feel as if he's their only option at this point.” Neville spoke to Ron, but was watching Hermione. Ron's face took on an expression of unsurprised long-suffering.

“So what's he gone and done?”

“He's started implementing the Registry.” Neville's voice lowered until it was nearly inaudible. Ron's eyes grew saucer-sized, and he grasped for Hermione's elbow.

“We need to get you out of here now!”

“Oh, honestly, Ron,” Hermione groused, yanking her arm away from him, and rolling her eyes. “They're not going to drag me out of Gringotts in chains, with a hood over my head. It's too public; it's too soon.”

“Only six months,” Neville agreed, nodding sagely. “Not long enough for people to forget Harry Potter - and your relationship with him.” His glance included both of them. “I'd say you're safe - for the time being.”

“Is there a deadline?”

“By the New Year. Gives everybody forty-five days to register. Purebloods are exempt, of course.”

“And then what happens? Yellow star sewn on Muggle-born's clothes?” Hermione's bitterness was easy enough to detect, though her Muggle reference was lost on Neville and Ron.

“Malfoy says there'll be no change, that law-abiding Muggle-borns are wizarding citizens as necessary as anyone else. He merely wants the information, numbers and locations of Muggle-borns and half-bloods, for statistical purposes and preventive measures.”

Hermione snorted in derision, even though the ache in her chest was acute. The isolation she felt - even standing in a populous lobby with two close friends - threatened to smother her. Ron and Neville were pureblood, and therefore, immune. And Harry - half-blood Harry - who might have understood; hell, who would have prevented this from happening at all - was gone.

Somehow, there in the bank, she missed him more than ever.

“That's what he'll say, at first. How long before he starts reminding people that Voldemort was half-blood, therefore, half-bloods are not to be trusted? How long before the first Muggle-born perpetrating a heinous crime on wizardkind is caught red-handed and thrown into Azkaban with great fanfare, to be made an example of?”

“Are you - are you going to - ?” Neville asked, miming writing a signature. His question was hesitant, as if he'd already sussed out the vehemence of her response.

“The hell I am,” she replied. “Those lists will be charmed; addresses will be automatically changed, if one moves. If they think I'll allow myself to be tracked, like some kind of animal, they are sadly mistaken. And if you think that those laws are not going to be progressively more restrictive and abusive, then you're sadly mistaken.” She shot a warning look at Neville, who raised placating hands in her direction.

A goblin clerk became available for assistance, and Hermione walked toward him with clipped and decisive steps. Ron had to trot for a couple of strides to catch up with her.

“You know Neville doesn't think that you - ” he began, as they arrived at the counter.

“I know,” Hermione answered. “We're here for the processing of Harry Potter's bequests.” Ron couldn't help but admire the cool authority in her voice, marveling at how she always managed to keep control, or at least maintain the illusion of doing so.

The goblin paused infinitesimally, darting measuring glances at both of them, and then descended from his wooden stool.

“This way, please.”

He led them through a door, and through a veritable rabbit warren of corridors. Ron was fairly certain they had gone down one particular hallway more than once, when they arrived at a heavy and intimidating wooden door, studded with brass.

“Wand print and blood verification is required,” the clerk informed them, tersely.

Hermione quickly cut her fingertip with her wand, and pressed both the bloody digit and the tip of her wand to a softly glowing plate beside the door. Ron watched her for a moment, nonplussed, and then copied her motions. When he had done so, the plate glowed green and the latches of the door disengaged with noisy clanks.

The room that greeted them looked surprisingly like a Muggle boardroom, except for the torches gleaming in heavy metal sconces along the walls. There was a long shiny conference table, green leather chairs, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined with heavy tomes.

Another goblin, whose array of medallions pinned to his chest indicated his higher rank, sat at the head of the table, awaiting them.

“Granger, Weasley,” he rasped. He gave no other movement or gesture of greeting. An abortive motion of his stumpy arm apparently indicated that they sit. Wordlessly, they both did so.

When the silence had stretched to the breaking point - Ron having shifted unsubtly in his seat several times - the goblin withdrew a heavy roll of parchment sealed in thick wax. He broke the seal, and unfurled the scroll halfway down the length of the table, but the odd angle and the archaic, heavily inked script made it impossible for either Hermione or Ron to read.

“You wish to claim the entitlements left you in one Harry Potter's last will and testament?” The question was calm, indifferent, and Hermione somehow felt that she was taking advantage, as if she'd been caught looting an abandoned house.

“Yes… sir,” she tacked on uncertainly.

The goblin scrutinized the parchment for a few more moments, just because he could, Hermione figured.

“Very well. Your identity is in order. The documents in question are in order. Vukglut will escort you to the Potter vault.” He was standing up, moving toward a door, smaller than the one through which they'd entered, and tucked unobtrusively into a dim corner.

“Wait…” Ron managed to speak before Hermione. The goblin rotated austerely toward him, brow ridge arched, as if to question Ron's temerity in saying anything at all. “You mean - you mean, that's it… what - what about the - the others…?”

“The entire Potter estate has been given into your joint custody,” said the goblin, as if it were patently obvious. “Anyone else to whom Mr. Potter wished to bequeath something has predeceased you. If you'll excuse me…”

For a long terrible moment, Hermione and Ron stood in the official-looking opulence of the boardroom, staring at each other. They had not even begun to articulate this horror, a new, fresh way of reminding them how much was gone, when their escort rasped from his position by the main door.

“I'll escort you to the vault now, if you wish.” The obsequiousness of the question covered his lofty disdain by only the thinnest of veils.

“Thank you,” Hermione acquiesced faintly, and they meandered down the maze of corridors to the loading platform, where they endured a hair-raising cart ride to Harry's vault.

Vukglut opened the vault, and stood by the cart, politely putting up the front that he was thoroughly uninterested in anything they might do down here. Hermione stepped over the threshold, with a tight throat, and dry, burning eyes.

There were stacks and stacks of galleons and sickles, though the amount had diminished somewhat, since her last trip down here. Paintings were stacked in the corner, leaning against the back wall, next to several trunks holding Merlin only knew what, and there was a shelf holding a pile of rolled parchments, which Hermione assumed were deeds or titles, or perhaps receipts of investments. There was a clear glass cabinet to one side, full of antique vases and the like, glowing faintly with Cushioning Charms.

“So….er, what are we getting today?” Ron fidgeted, sticking his hands in his back pockets. “Might not be able to get back here for awhile.”

“We're not coming back here, Ron,” Hermione hissed at him. “We're taking it all.”

“Now?” Ron gaped.

“You heard Neville,” Hermione reminded him. “And you - you weren't so far off the mark, either. Malfoy will be itching to get his hands on this. While the money might not be so important - “ Ron snorted derisively. “ - he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these,” she indicated the moldy looking scrolls, “or these,” and a pile of ponderous looking tomes, thickly bound in cracked leather.

“How - how are we going to take all this?” Ron's gesture encompassed the entire vault.

“Honestly, Ron, are you a wizard or aren't you?” The teasing look and tone of voice were as light-hearted as Ron had seen Hermione in a long time.

It took quite some time to shrink or transfigure everything to Hermione's satisfaction. They had lined their jackets with rows of pouches, complete with Everfill charms, of course. A tiara became a pair of sunglasses. The paintings in the corner became a book of stamps. The rolls of parchment were a packet of tissues. At last, the vault was empty save for scattered detritus and cobwebs.

“Ready?” Ron breathed. He looked nervous, and Hermione thought, understandably so. It was difficult to remember that all they carried was, in fact, their property, that they weren't technically doing anything wrong. The myriad of spells would have been utterly impossible in the vault of another.

“One more thing.” She cast an Illusory spell of Duplication, and in a single flash of light, the vault appeared to be filled entirely once again. Eying her work with satisfaction, she thought that it wouldn't fool goblins and probably wouldn't fool cursebreakers, but it might fool the Ministry.

Their escort came to reseal the vault, and, if he noted that anything was different, his stoic façade did not give it away. They made their way back to Gringotts' lobby in silence.

The large entry-room looked no less crowded when they surfaced, and Neville was waiting for them by the door, tossing his scroll lightly from one hand to the other in twitchy boredom.

“Neville, you didn't have to stay.” Hermione's tone said that she was glad he had.

“I didn't mind,” he replied amiably. “Hadn't seen you two in awhile anyway. D'you want to grab a bite to eat?”

Before either of them could reply, there was a thunderous trumpeting sound that rattled the panes of the windows, and the double doors that served as Gringotts' main entrance flew open. The three of them stared at the dim cloudy light that flooded the marbled lobby floor, instinctively shrinking back and drawing their wands, as they assessed the situation. Hermione keenly felt the slight weight of Harry's shrunken inheritance, as if it were a millstone around her neck.

“Goblin Bankers!” boomed a magically-enhanced voice. “You are hereby under notice that this bank is now under Ministry control. You will cede all keys and magical codes effective immediately, under Financial Degree 114-20-A. Attempts to deny access to any part of this facility will be met with force. You will be given transport back to the Goblin stronghold of your choice in the Black Forest or the Ural Mountains. You will prepare for departure immediately.”

“They're - they're deporting all the Goblins?” Ron's voice was a wheezy, disbelieving shadow of its usual self.

“They won't stand for it - they won't allow - ” But Hermione's voice was weak too; she had seen too much happen that she'd thought wouldn't be allowed.

“Well,” Ron added, apparently thinking of the defenses the goblins would try. “Too bad they don't have a dragon down there anymore.”

The Ministry official, whose wand had been Amplifying his voice, strode through the flung-wide doors, with a troop of black-cloaked and hooded Enforcers moving in step behind him. The Enforcers had been brought into play after the war, as a quasi-police force/militia for the function of keeping order in a society struggling to keep its head above water. Lately, there had been darker rumors of their actions against wizarding populace, though nothing proven.

Already the goblins had disappeared, as the humans either pressed themselves into the walls, trying to look as unthreatening as possible, slipped out a side entrance, or cheered or whistled, albeit somewhat half-heartedly. They were largely ignored; clearly, the Enforcers had no quibble with the bank's customers. One Enforcer tried the door through which Hermione and Ron had been led, only a few minutes before.

“It's sealed,” he said.

“Blast it,” came the order.

“This ought to be fun,” Ron muttered. Everyone knew the extent of the goblins' prowess for engineering and manufacturing.

But then the Enforcer drew out something from the depths of the swirling black cloak. Hermione could see a glint of silver. He aimed it at the door and murmured something in a tongue that Hermione didn't understand. The resulting shockwave from the pulse of energy made her ears ring and the very bones in her skull vibrate like a struck gong. There was a crackling noise, like the flow of electric current, and then the door was gone, a blackened, smoking hole where it had once been.

A small goblin had been in the process of retreating down the now exposed corridor, its arms laden with bulky scrolls, all affixed with purple seals. The noise of the explosion caused him to freeze and slowly rotate back toward the lobby, shock and horror clearly etched on his grotesque little face.

Hermione then realized what the silver object was.

“They've gotten their hands on Goblin talismans,” she whispered. “How in the hell…?”

A quick gesture from the goblin's taloned hand Vanished the scrolls in a blink of light, and this seemed to anger the Lead Enforcer.

“You,” he said, “you will take us into the vaults, and you will give us access to what we require.” His tone was arrogant, imperious, and Hermione wanted to writhe in shame for her species.

The goblin said nothing, the contempt obvious, and bared his teeth with defiance. Hermione watched the red flush slowly rise up the Lead Enforcer's face.

“It can be an example for the others.”

The goblin seemed to realize what this meant as soon as Hermione had, and raised both palms toward the humans, in a gesture that would have seemed like surrender on anyone else. White-blue light seemed to boil on his hands, waiting.

His magic met that from the silver talisman in mid-air, and there was a deafening crack. More Enforcers joined the side of the first, wands out.

“Wait!” Hermione cried.

“Hermione, shut up,” Ron said. “Let's get out of here.” He gestured toward the side door at the far end of the lobby.

“No, look - look what they're doing. He can't fight so many. Stop!” Her voice was barely audible above the din. Several other goblins had crept from their hidey-holes to join the fray, but they were still outnumbered - and wandless.

“Hermione, come on!” He was trying to drag her now, appealing to Neville for help, though her murderous glare was keeping the latter at a safe distance.

A wave of Goblin magic flowed past them, from a new direction, and they realized that a small band of goblins were concealed behind a tapestry, just beyond them. An Enforcer noticed the new battlefront, and called a warning, swiveling quickly toward the tapestry, and raising her wand.

“Please don't do this,” Hermione pleaded, stepping towards the tapesty, at the same time as the Enforcer fired her wand.

“Hermione!” Ron yelled, and then a heavy weight fell into her, knocking the wind out of her, as she hit the cold marble tile with enough force to make her see stars.

Ron was still yelling her name, though it seemed very far away, and someone shrieked Neville's name once. The thing on top of her was heavy, pressing all the air out of her lungs, and she tried to will the room to stop spinning.

Finally, the weight was lifted, and Ron's face came into view, still calling her name in distinct panic.

“I'm - I'm alright, Ron,” she said, feeling more than a little nauseated. “Just … hit my head. Neville?” As Ron lifted her carefully to her feet, she had caught sight of Neville's prone form, the weight that had collided with her, knocked her down. “N - Neville?”

“He's dead, Hermione,” Ron said heavily.

Hermione's eyes were dry and burning, fixed on the body; she could not believe it. Neville - dancing with Ginny, babying his Mimbulus Mimbletonia, returning to Hogwarts after graduation to lead the students in insurrection - it was unthinkable that he could be dead that quickly, without warning or farewell. Ron was still holding her as if he'd never let her go again, but his cold stare was fixed toward the main fight, which was now beginning to wind down, the humans clearly the victors. There was no sign of the goblin that had been carrying the parchments, and the tapesty now flapped emptily behind them.

The lone Enforcer, who had fired was still standing there, wand arm limp at her side, hood down, staring at Neville in horror.

“Parvati?” Hermione's voice was a disbelieving squeak. Ron's ears began to slowly turn red.

The remaining Patil took a step back, as if driven by their censure.

“It was - it was a job… I - I thought it was just a job.”

“You were using Avada Kedavra?” It was both like and unlike a question, and there was no accusation there, just disbelief.

“They - they said you couldn't Stun a goblin - that - that it wouldn't work… I - I wasn't trying to - I didn't - ” Tears were streaming down her face, coating her cheeks like shiny lacquer.

“I suppose you are skilled,” Hermione said calmly, after a moment. “Harry did train you, after all.”

A sob burst from Parvati at the mention of Harry's name.

“I didn't know - I didn't think it - ”

“Yes,” Hermione interrupted, seeming to cordially agree. Her voice was lifeless enough to give Ron the creeps. “You didn't think, did you?”

She turned, woodenly, Disillusioned Neville, and Levitated his body from the floor.

“Let's go, Ron. Tell Malfoy to have fun with his new toy,” she directed the jibe over her shoulder at Parvati.

“Hermione, please.” The plea escaped from Parvati's lips among the faint weeping.

Hermione didn't turn around, moving automatically toward the side entrance, waving her wand disinterestedly to direct Neville. Ron thought she looked for all the world like a living Inferius. Somehow, he felt awful, hollow at the thought of leaving Parvati alone there, swallowed whole by the knowledge of what she'd done and that she could never go back, never undo it. Then, he saw Neville's hovering corpse, and wasn't sure who to loathe - or to blame.

“Hermione, maybe we should - ”

“She's made her choice,” Hermione looked over her shoulder at Parvati one time, her eyes as cool and impersonal as glacial ice. “And it's cost her everything, hasn't it?” Something in Ron's face must have stricken Hermione, for her own features softened. “Come on,” she amended. “We can put him by his Gran. He'd like that, don't you think?”

“Here,” Ron said, holding the door open by way of reply. “Let me help too.”

TBC

Sorry for the delay on this one. My muse abandoned me completely, but after I chained her to a chair and threatened to withhold chocolate, she was a little more cooperative.

Hope everyone is still interested, and hopefully, the next chapter won't be quite so long in coming.

You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.

lorien

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4. Chapter Four

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.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

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….

-->

5. Five

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

Chapter Five:

Now all the demons look like prophets, and I'm living out every word they speak.

-Jars of Clay, “Work”

They'd been expecting something of the sort at some point, but it still startled both Hermione and Ron quite badly one evening, when the fire suddenly birthed a miniature green tongue of flame at its heart. But before their wands had even been fully raised, a partially singed scroll had been shoved through. It landed with a chuff of embers on the hearthrug, and the green flame winked out as though it had never existed.

Hermione and Ron exchanged glances. A few tendrils of smoke wafted up from the scroll and disappeared. Without having to voice any kind of instruction, both inhabitants of the remote cabin smoothly moved into action. Ron went to do a sweep of the grounds and check the wards. Hermione Levitated the scroll and made sure there were no hidden Portkeys or nefarious hexes worked into it, rotating it with her wand and examining it from all angles.

“We're clear,” Ron informed her succinctly, closing and latching the door with a flick of his wand, as he re-entered. “What's it say?”

“I think it's from Luna. It's in code. Some kind of ancient rune.” Hermione squinted at a line in the scroll at eye level, where it was still hovering. “Could be a Germanic Goblin variant. Trust Luna to pick something so obscure less than two hundred people in the world could even hope to translate it.”

Ron almost smiled.

“And how long will it take you?”

Hermione did not even look up from the parchment. “At least four hours.” She traced a couple of figures in the air with her wand, clearly thinking to herself, lips moving slightly. She shook her head and blew air upward in exasperation. “Make that six. It looks like she's anagrammed everything as well.”

“What can I do?”

The question caught Hermione by surprise, and a grateful smile flashed onto her face before she even realized it.

“It looks like I'm going to need the Gringotts Reference volume, Dumbledore's notes on the European dialects of 12th century Goblins, and the Gobbledygook-English dictionary. Oh and my Advanced Arithmancy text. Don't Accio the notes. Dumbledore put a Scattering Charm on them. We'd be forever gathering them all back up.” Hermione was speaking as she efficiently Summoned parchment, quill, and ink from a drawer in the roll top desk opposite the sofa. They arranged themselves neatly on the desk's surface, as a ponderous stack of books floated into the room. Hermione could hear rustling from her bedroom.

“These on the bottom shelf?” Ron called.

“They're in the cabinet to the left. Under the file marker “Dumbledore”, sub-tabbed …

“'G' for Goblin…” Ron chimed in. “You don't think I know your filing habits by now, Hermione?”

The question was good-natured enough in tone, but it snagged something in Hermione's thought process, as did her earlier surprise. She was continuing to attribute to Ron the attitudes and habits he'd had in school, and she supposed that was grossly unfair. He'd become almost unfailingly solicitous, nearly too thoughtful, in fact. She thought she might rather enjoy a good row with him every now and then, but a lot of Ron's snap and zing had gone out of him since the Battle.

Shadows of who we used to be… ghosts… he'd said. She supposed that was true. They had become pale, translucent copies of the vibrant, full-color people they'd been once. She tried to shrug off the hovering aura of sorrow; there was work to do.

When Ron returned with the sheaf of parchments, Hermione was crouched over the desk, writing furiously. She had not even taken the time to sit down.

“She's got our names, and both code words. It's definitely from Luna,” Hermione said, in the breathless tone she always used when in a rush to suss out something. Ron slid the chair over beneath her, and she sat down in it, without even looking. “Thanks.”

“Anything else?” His voice held faint traces of amusement.

“What?” She flashed her eyes up at him for an instant, as she raked her hair out of her face, and resumed writing. Ron opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, clearly unsure how to proceed.

“It's…good to see you like this, Hermione. Almost like … almost like old times.” He said the last phrase delicately, seemingly worried that he might unleash another Christmas-tree-type onslaught. Hermione set her quill down, and regarded him for a moment.

“I never thought I'd see the day that you would enjoy my being in one of my trademark free-for-alls.” A smile glimmered briefly in her eyes, and then vanished. “But then, I never thought I'd see a lot of the things we've seen.” She sighed, and picked up her quill again. “I'm sorry, Ron. I'm … I'm like a constant little grey raincloud, aren't I?” There was a halfhearted laugh in her voice.

“Hey,” Ron said softly, kneeling beside her. “Hey, it's not as if you don't - as if we all don't have reason.” His voice twisted a little on the word `all', as if belatedly realizing that such an encompassing word was hardly applicable anymore. He laid his big hand gently on top of hers. She squirmed in her chair when their skin made contact, and her hand trembled in the urge to snatch it away, but she forced herself to remain still.

“Ron - “ The tone was a plea again. Please don't ask this of me. Please don't force me to hurt you. Please don't destroy what little remains.

He hadn't let her articulate her protest last time, and he forestalled her once again. He zigzagged his thumb across the back of her hand once, squeezed her knuckles, and used his other hand to brace himself on the desk to rise. When he had stood to his feet, he moved toward the fireplace, leaning against the mantel with one hand, and gazing into the flames.

“I'm not - I'm not making a move, Hermione. I promise. But don't - “he stopped, sighing, and raked one hand through his hair, which was glinting burnished gold in the firelight. “Don't be so afraid of the other that you stop letting me be your friend.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears, twisted it into a knot, and stuck her wand through it.

“Of course not, Ron,” she said succinctly, though the matter of fact tone was tempered with tenderness.

There was silence. She sat motionless for a moment, her hands limp and still in her lap. There was so much to say; there was nothing to say. Ron seemed to want her; she wanted Harry. Their desires were incompatible with each other, and impossible in and of themselves. She found that she was pathetically grateful that Ron was at least attempting to be an adult about it.

“You've only got five hours and forty-five minutes left,” he chided her gently, breaking into her reverie.

“Right,” she breathed, shaking herself back to reality and flexing her fingers in preparation.

A moment later, the sounds of quill-scratch on parchment and the snap of flame were the only things to be heard in the tiny cabin.

~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*

“Ron! Ron, wake up!” Hermione shook his shoulder fiercely, her voice a hissing whisper, despite the fact that there was no one else around to disturb. Ron's lanky form was sprawled out on the worn sofa, head thrown back, where he'd fallen asleep waiting for Hermione to finish her translation. A Weasley family photo album was open across his lap. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, in rather dated hair and dress, were kissing behind a towering wedding cake that looked as if it were on the verge of collapsing entirely.

He startled awake, arms and legs pin wheeling, groping in his pocket for his wand. The album fell to the floor with a thump, closing of its own accord.

“What? What's going --?” He came more fully awake, and relaxed when he saw her. “Oh, you've finished then?” She waited for the second realization to come, that if she'd finished, and was waking him in the middle of the night, then something was up. And it probably was not good. “What does it say?” His face was guarded, his voice fearful.

“They've arrested Ginny.”

“Arrested -? Then why isn't she here? Why didn't she let us know? Isn't that what her necklace was bloody well for?”

Hermione's expression was pure chagrin.

“Luna says that they've developed some kind of Nullification Charm for portkeys. The detention area is covered with them, so any portkey we'd have sent her wouldn't have worked. Ginny managed to get the pendant to Luna somehow, before she was taken down there.”

“But -- but Ginny's done nothing. You said - “he stopped, clearly trying to gather himself, and remove the accusatory tone from his voice. “You said they wouldn't bother with her, that they'd only question her…”

“Luna says they gave her Veritaserum, and there was a question - Luna doesn't say what - that Ginny refused to answer. It was the Corklehaven Strain - from trying to overpower the Veritaserum.”

“She muted herself?” Ron was aghast. The Corklehaven Strain was a documented wizarding phenomenon of a sort of magical implosion. In fighting the urge to tell the truth, Ginny had literally rendered herself unable to speak. “When will it wear off?”

Hermione shrugged.

“There have been cases that lasted minutes and cases that lasted months. But in the meantime…”

“They've got her for obstruction, don't they?” Ron finished for her.

“It sounds mostly trumped up, really only a technicality, but the legal procedure is sound. Luna says she contacted a cousin of the Patils, who's a solicitor, and sympathetic, but she's on the Continent right now. Something's wonky with her Muggle passport and the International Floo network, and… well, you can be assured that isn't a coincidence. Luna says the appointed solicitor is supposed to be randomly selected, but she doubts that it's true in this case. She calls him a… ” Hermione referenced her parchment, a mass of scrawls, spell deletions, crossed lines, and arrows pointing to corrected translations. “'A piece of Nargle-ridden dung from a flatulent Skrewt', and says that he is undoubtedly in Malfoy's pocket.”

“What will they do?” Ron was speaking carefully, clearly trying to hang onto his control by tenterhooks. His hands were jammed into his pockets, as he paced the length and breadth of the small room.

“Probably try to fast-track a trial. Get her sentenced before Luna's friend can make it back into the country.”

“But it - it's at least a minor offense, isn't it? It couldn't be - wouldn't be long…”

“Luna says that Malfoy's upgraded anything dealing with subversive activities or harboring fugitives to automatic Azkaban time.”

“Azkaban!?” Ron lunged for the battered cabinet above the sink, retrieved the small wooden chest there, and began to mutter the series of spells required to unlock it.

“Ron, what are you doing? Ron!” Hermione dove after him, grabbing at his wrists, shouting over his attempts to hear himself speak, and trying to wrest the box from his grasp.

“I need the Floo Powder, Hermione,” he growled, prying her fingers off of him, twisting to block her from the chest with his body.

“You aren't going anywhere!”

“I'm going to get my sister!”

“That's ridiculous, Ron. If you go to the Ministry, wand blazing, you'll end up in Azkaban as well. We need a plan.”

Ron stopped struggling instantly at this unexpected acquiescence.

“I thought - I thought you'd -“he spluttered. Hermione slanted a dirty look at him, reset the spell-locks on the chest, and carefully replaced it in its cabinet.

“I know exactly what you thought.” She strode back into the main body of the living area, pausing to pick up her translation of Luna's missive, half-crushed where she had dropped it and stepped on it, in her mad dash to stop Ron's half-cocked flight attempt. Ron followed her, his slumped posture and sheepish expression doing more to convince her that he was sorry than any actual words could. “Now, would you like to listen to the rest of Luna's letter??” Her voice was syrupy and over-enunciated. Ron's ears were radiant, as he mumbled an obvious assent.

She settled back into the desk chair, and cast a Restoring Charm on the parchment. There was a soft crinkle as it smoothed itself back out.

“Now, Luna says that we can't get into the Ministry using any of the, er… traditional covert methods. They've got a Cascade now, like the waterfall at Gringotts, to remove any enchantments, Glamours, or effects of ingested potions. They're also in the process of putting in Magical detectors, to flag any and all magical output - she says this is mainly to prevent or detect any illicit activity after-hours. Anti-Apparation wards are up, the Fireplaces are under surveillance, and Portkeys can be tracked.”

“So how can we even hope to get in?”

“Luna says that she's been working on using Shielding Charms, within the Ministry itself.”

“How would Shielding Charms help us unless we're already under attack?”

“Not for Shielding a person, Ron. She's talking about Shielding a location. Like the vent that leads down from the roof to … well, anywhere in the building you'd take a fancy to go. And if it's during regular Ministry hours, we'll be freer to move around, since the magical detectors couldn't possibly differentiate our magic from the magic of the Ministry employees. But Luna says that - for Merlin's sake, Ron, what are you doing?”

Ron arrested his motion, half off of the sofa, as if he were ready to head to the Ministry then and there.

“Luna is still testing these shields. We're not going to be able to rescue Ginny tonight.” Apology flashed in her warm eyes, but she sat quite still, looking like Serenity personified in the desk chair, ankles crossed, hands daintily folded.

Ron let himself drop back onto the sagging sofa cushions. His eyes were snapping protest and his hair glowed vividly in the firelight. He was motionless, and yet managed to look like a mass of kinetic energy only momentarily suspended. Mrs. Weasley had once remarked that it was only Ron's skin that seemed to keep him from flying in all directions at once when he was younger. As he grew up, age had tempered this - age, and the somewhat more moderating influences of Harry and Hermione.

“When?” he ground out with some effort.

“I think we should use brooms,” was the next surprising thing she said. “To get to the roof, I mean. Luna says the patrols are light, and she can tell us their configurations. We'll need schematics of the ventilation system, so we'll know how to get down to the dungeons, and - ” She broke off at Ron's long-suffering look and raised eyebrows of inquiry, remembering his original question. “Luna says two weeks, at the most.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It took Luna half that time to send them another message that everything was in readiness, and so it was eight days later that Hermione found herself beneath the invisibility cloak with Ron in a deserted side corridor of the lower detention level. It was dank and dim, with a vague moldish smell, and Everlight torches glimmered serenely on the walls. Ron was bent nearly double, and could not have been comfortable, but Hermione was having a rather more unexpected problem.

The bloody cloak smelled like him. She would not have thought that smell could so infuse a fabric, but the gossamer veil brought him to her mind so sharply that it was painful. It was Harry's distinctive scent, a sort of outdoorsy, evergreen kind of smell, like Quidditch and sunshine and forests. Tears were pricking the backs of her eyelids, and she swore under her breath, forcing herself to focus on the situation at hand.

“Where the hell is she?” She voiced her frustration in the only way available to her, as she breathed in sharply through both nostrils and closed her eyes. Harry, Harry, Harry….

Even as she spoke, they both heard light footfalls from the main corridor, growing louder. A moment later, a stranger with honey-gold curls and a figure far more voluptuous than Luna's waif-like form drifted into view at the junction, her face mostly eclipsed by a large pair of Spectrespecs. Moving in a distinctively absent-minded way that could only be polyjuiced Luna, she fluttered her fingers at them, without raising her arm, and then flashed a deliberate five fingers, before continuing on in the direction she'd been headed. Hermione glimpsed her removing the bizarre eyewear, as she passed out of sight.

“Five minutes to get rid of the guard,” Hermione muttered. Ron snorted a little, mocking her compulsion to explain everything, even the obvious. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as tense as a wire. Hermione rubbed sweaty fingers against sweatier palms, as she rotated her wrist to look at her watch. She felt a tension headache strengthening its grip around her temples; it had begun as she tried to tamp down her terror on the broom ride to the Ministry roof, and was intensifying as she contemplated their precarious situation.

It was make or break, do or die. They would free Ginny or all end up in Azkaban.

We might as well have died on that battlefield with everyone else.

I sometimes wish I had.

Five seconds before Luna's time limit expired, Hermione tugged gently on Ron's sleeve, and they crept into motion. The main corridor was empty (Hermione knew that the main guard station was farther down, by the lifts), and largely unremarkable, save for an open door marked “Maintenance” some distance away. Hermione caught a flash of Luna and a scarlet-robed guard twined in an embrace before the door was shut decisively.

“Is she going to - ?” Ron asked. He had seen it too. Something inside Hermione broke a little.

“She is one of the most selfless people I've ever known,” she murmured softly. Ron stared at the closed door, appearing somewhat stricken, but recovered himself as they reached the door to Ginny's cell.

It was made of heavy wood, windowless and imposing. There was no knob or handle. To the right of the door was a small placard reading simply, “4”, and an unmarked slot just beneath it. Hermione cast her eyes toward the floor, and Luna had not disappointed. The guard's wand had rolled up against the wall, in the shadowy place beneath one of the torch sconces. She bent down to retrieve it -- an onlooker would have seen the wand lurch upwards and vanish - and inserted it into the slot. There was an almost immediate chirp, followed by the clank of Alohomora'd locks and latches.

Hermione felt Ron let out a gusty sigh of relief, as she pushed open the door, and stepped out from under the cloak.

“Ginny, come on. There's not much time.”

Ginny was sleeping on the unappealing looking camp bed, curled onto her side like a little child. Her vivid hair seemed to be the only splash of color in the cell, and it fanned out across her limp pillow and dangled off the edge of the mattress. She opened her eyes immediately at Hermione's voice, with no reaction of surprise, but merely arose, all business, shoving her feet into her shoes, and grabbing the work robes that draped over the cell's lone chair.

As she took in the noticeable relief on Ron's and Hermione's faces, a real smile flickered briefly across her face and then vanished.

I knew you'd come, she mouthed, still rendered speechless by her ordeal with the Veritaserum. Thank you.

“We haven't done anything yet,” Ron remarked dourly, keeping watch through the open doorway into the deserted corridor. He Disillusioned himself, fading from sight from the crown of his head downward, until he looked like nothing more than a quivering mass of twisted air and shadow. Hermione furled the invisibility cloak out at the corners, and threw it over her and Ginny's head.

“Follow me,” Hermione hissed to Ginny in the barest of whispers. “We'll be headed to the roof through the ventilation network, and then we've got br—”

Her voice died in her throat and her blood iced in her veins. As Ginny crossed the threshold of the cell, an unearthly wail arose, undulating and horrific, until Hermione wanted nothing more than shrink down to the floor, hands clamped over ears, until it ceased; she could see it was affecting Ginny similarly. The torches changed color, blinked orange once, and then settled into a lurid and foreboding red.

Ginny grabbed Hermione's arm, her eyes wide and fearful, the question clear in her penetrating gaze. What's going on?

“They know there's been a breach. But we checked! We detected no wards up around the cell itself. The air shafts bypass the general wards of the building!”

“Obviously Lucius Malfoy has some innovative goons working for him. Who knew?” Ron muttered sarcastically. “I suggest we get out of here before the company arrives.”

Now heedless of anyone who might be watching, they ran, the invisibility cloak streaming out behind the girls like a splendid banner in the wind. The lower parts of their legs periodically became visible, just as quickly winking out again. They careened around the corner into the smaller corridor where they'd waited, and Ron yanked the grate from the wall with a sharp, panicked flourish of his wand. What would have seemed like a deafeningly loud clatter onto the floor was hidden beneath a sudden noise of voices and rush of feet.

Ginny and Hermione clambered into the vent, situated low to the ground and in the far corner, and Ron had only just pulled the entirety of his lanky form inside and Summoned the grate, when their pursuers appeared, storming past the junction towards Ginny's cell, wands at the ready.

The grate clicked into place softly, and for an instant, nobody dared to breathe

“Let's go,” Hermione mouthed. “We need to be a couple of floors up before they start sending out Detection Charms.”

Neither of the Weasleys had to be told twice. Trying to move as quietly as possible, they crawled and slid and clambered through untold meters of ductwork, finally arriving at the hooded cover on the roof. Hermione thrust her head through the opening first, and, when all she saw was a deserted rooftop, she let herself breathe, feeling the steel band around her head ease somewhat, as the roaring in her ears abated.

Each of them Accioed a broomstick, and they were airborne almost before they were fully out of the vent onto the rooftop. Over her shoulder, Hermione heard a musical laugh - odd, she thought, that Corklehaven did not hinder all vocalizations - and she turned hesitantly to see Ginny looking utterly enraptured to be in the air on a broom. Hermione felt herself uplift, start hoping again… they had done it!

And just as quickly, Ginny's euphoric look vanished, as fear took its place.

Incredibly quickly - so quickly that Hermione could hardly make sense of it - they were practically surrounded by black-cloaked figures, also on broomstick. More surged from where they'd been hiding, hovering, waiting, just below the roofline of the Ministry, out of sight.

The three Gryffindors frantically tried to maneuver, but Hermione was out of her element, and it seemed like it did not take the pursuers long to realize it. Their spiraling flight closed in - Hermione could make out the Auror crests on the breasts of their robes - and she realized that they were being herded.

They're keeping us beneath the Ministry umbrella so we can't Apparate! Some wandfire had been exchanged, but the feints and constant motion had added an extra layer of difficulty. Ron managed to wing one, and Hermione hexed another in the face, forcing the injured Aurors - one blinded, one wandless - to peel away from the others, and return to the Ministry.

Suddenly there was a rush of fiery air, a crackle, and Ginny went rigid, as though she had been stabbed between the shoulder blades. Her lips were pulled back in a rictus, as though she'd been caught in the exact instant before she screamed. Hermione's wand rapidly changed direction, but Ginny had already tilted sideways off her broom. She was limp, plunging toward certain death with frightening speed.

“Arresto -“ Grief tore at Hermione's throat and made her voice crack, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The last thing she saw was Ginny's flaming hair streaming upward, before it was extinguished in a cloudbank.

She looked frantically for Ron, and saw him, angled into a steep dive, already several hundred meters away, going after his sister. He'd made it through the hole left by the Aurors they'd wounded, and there were startled cries of protest, orders barked; three of the remaining guard broke away to pursue him. Hermione told herself that it was the frigid air causing her eyes to stream water. Her blurred vision did not create havoc with her aim, and this time she caught one of the pursuers right in the chest. He let out a muffled cry before toppling backwards off his broom.

She broke into an evasive pattern that they'd trained with during the last year before the Final Battle, but Hermione knew that her feints were too slow, her hands too tentative, causing the broom to be sluggish in response. Where was Ron? Had Ginny survived? She let a stream of rapid-fire curses fly in one direction as she darted in another, hoping to throw them off. It seemed like an eternity, when Hermione knew it had been only seconds. She also knew that unless she could get through the Anti-Apparation wards, she had no hope of eluding all of the Aurors.

Her broom lurched and wobbled suddenly, as though someone had jumped down onto the bundle of straw, and Hermione felt herself lose control. Paranoid that perhaps she did somehow have a passenger on her broom, she tossed a look over her shoulder, only to see that her broom was, in fact, ablaze. It faltered, wobbled, and began to slow. The three remaining wizards were almost upon her.

Still hanging onto her damaged broom for dear life, she managed to douse most of the fire. The device simply would no longer obey her guiding hands, and the next several curses she fired missed widely.

Her broom's treacherous behavior saved her from being hexed outright, but the lead Auror was obviously getting impatient at his team's inability to get off an accurate shot. He flew perilously close to her, and darted out one hand to grab her wrist. She let out a startled cry, and flailed wildly, sparks spewing from her wandtip. Her broom moaned in protest, and Hermione felt the wood splinter. It gave one last might heave - a death throe - and bucked her off. A Stunner must have grazed the top of her head at the moment of her fall, for she became suddenly groggy and thick-headed, having to force herself to stay conscious.

Panic worked like a dash of cold water, even as it seized her by the throat, gripping her so fiercely with its talons that she thought it might suffocate her. Yet she managed to scream, and the high shriek spiraled away above her as she succumbed to gravity's inexorable pull. There were still hands, wrenching and wresting at her, merciless fingers plucking at her wand. Her fall had toppled the Auror as well. He must have lost his wand, she thought distantly. I'll be damned if I let him have mine. She wondered futilely what had happened to Ron and Ginny. Strangely, the scene replaying itself in the forefront of her mind was one that was more than a year gone: Harry, the blazing look in his eyes extinguished, as he collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.

Her fingers were slipping on the wood, but she managed to shout, ”Expelliarmus!” The Auror ricocheted away from her in a graceful arc, and Hermione felt her mind clear further still.

Still the world spun up at her with dizzying speed, and she misjudged the distance of the winding grey-brown snake that was a river, wending its way through an industrial section on the outskirts of a city. She had no time to figure out which city, time enough only to shout a frenzied, Arresto Momentum!, before she plunged beneath its surface.

She penetrated deeper than she'd thought, must have been going faster than she realized, and when she emerged, it was with much floundering, noisy splashing, and great draughts of oxygen. Her clothing dragged at her limbs, and she shrugged off her robes, shivering and gasping, as she made for a rickety dock at the shoreline.

She pulled herself out of the water with much effort, struggling for a few desperate seconds to focus, turning her eyes hopefully up and down the nearby shoreline. She had no idea where she'd fallen or when she'd crossed the wards, but she wished with all her might that she would see Ron and Ginny dragging themselves to dry land as well.

No, she thought, they'd have Apparated away. If they made it, they'll go back to the cabin - Ron will take Ginny back to the cabin. At any rate, she couldn't stay here; Aurors would be following her down the same way they followed Ron. Even as she became conscious of this fact, she thought she spied a few dark specks appear in the sky above, growing ever larger. Her time was up.

Harry fell; Ginny fell; Ron… oh God, what was all this for? Despair was a knot in her gut, a clog in her throat, burning eyes, burning nose, fingernails digging fiercely into palms. Don't leave me alone!

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the tiny cabin far away in that smothering forest; with a small crack, like a snapped twig, she was in the tiny living room, a banked fire still glowing in the hearth, even though it felt like they'd left a lifetime ago.

There was no relief, merely an aching emptiness that threatened to consume her completely. Hermione sank to her knees on the hearthrug, and shrank to the floor, heedless of her sodden clothes pooling water on the floor, of the shivers that were violent enough to nearly be spasms. She lay there, curled up like a frightened child, and waited for the Weasleys to come.

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6. Six

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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Every word you spoke and everything you said, everything you left me rambles in my head.

-The Killers, “Goodnight, Travel Well”

The sheer concussive force of the explosion flung Hermione to the ground, but she did not cry out when the jagged fingers of a broken tree branch clawed at her face. She scrambled back to her feet, dusted her hands off on the seat of her jeans, touched the bloody laceration lightly, and hissed. A high-pitched whine rang in her ears, and she shook her head as if to clear out the noise. She turned back toward the forest, and looked dispassionately toward the ballooning pillar of smoke and the rapidly expanding inferno.

There was a strange glint in her eyes, as the corners of her lips up-tilted. She kissed her bloody fingers toward the blaze, wondering how many of them she'd killed, hoping that it was the entire patrol.

You don't know who they were. There could have been people like Luna, like Parvati… people with families and small childr - Hermione squelched the voice fiercely. They were looking for me. They traced me back to this place. If they could have found me, they would have brought me in to Malfoy - or killed me; the outcomes are the same either way.

These people killed Neville, killed Ginny, killed Ron. They don't deserve my mercy.

Malfoy's henchmen had tracked her as far as the forest, but had found themselves unable to breach her wards. The forest was kept under constant watchful eyes, and while there were other avenues of escape Hermione could have explored, she chose instead the risky maneuver of dropping her wards, and waiting until they were upon her, before she blew up the cabin… with her pursuers inside. It had been as simple as a highly flammable potion used as an accelerant and an Incendio spell. Hermione had glimpsed Draco Malfoy's distinctively white-blond hair at the front of the Auror column, and had felt a ferocious satisfaction welling up inside her.

Good, she'd thought. Good enough, Lucius. I hope you hurt like I've hurt. I hope everyone you've ever cared about dies… Assuming you can care about anybody at all.

She knew it wouldn't be long before another squad arrived to check things out, knew the alarms would sound when the Stealth Owl never arrived with the younger Malfoy's report of Hermione's capture. She took a few precious seconds to Glamour her appearance, as she watched the forest be consumed like so much tinder. The Water Extraction spells she'd performed ahead of time were doing their job; everything was going up that much faster.

Harry, that other voice whimpered, very quietly. Oh, Harry, look what I've done. I miss you so much.

She Apparated to Godric's Hollow, and, deliberately chose a path that took her by the dilapidated remnants of the Potter house, though she would not look at it with anything other than her peripheral vision. Somehow, that house seemed to symbolize the sheer massiveness of everything she'd lost. And even though the day was warm, Hermione could almost smell snow in the air, feel her cheeks chapped with cold, feel her hand snugly in Harry's, as it had been that night where she visited his parents' graves with him. She walked unhesitatingly to the pair of marble stones labeled James Potter and Lily Evans Potter, and knelt before them. A waist-high obsidian obelisk was nearby - not Harry's actual grave, not the ostentatious marble display commissioned by the Ministry, but merely a memorial that she, Ginny, and Ron had had erected - but she could not look at it, not just yet.

“I'm sorry,” she said aloud, but her voice was wobbly and broken, cracking between syllables. “I'm sorry that I could not save your son.” It had been some time since she had visited, but she always felt compelled to apologize; she could not have explained exactly why. She shuffled on her knees, less than a meter away, and looked at Harry's marker. In Memory of Harry James Potter, 30 June 2001, “A three-fold cord is not quickly broken.”

“Harry, I'm sorry.” It seemed like apologies were all she had left. She had not saved anyone; she had not changed anything. “They're gone; everyone's gone - and I - I guess I really am a criminal now. I don't want to leave you… but there's nowhere left to go. My mum and dad will...” Her voice faded into a sob, and there was silence, save the wind in the tree tops. She reached out to caress the face of the marker with the tips of her fingers. “I love you.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as the slight breeze wafted forlornly through her hair, imagining that it was Harry touching her hand, her face, Harry's warm breath in her ear, promising someday without speaking a word. The ache in her throat grew to an almost unbearable pressure, and she wondered if anything would ever assuage the painful emptiness.

Finally, she leaned around at a slight angle, her hand resting against the top of the stone for support, to look at the side of the marker. Unobtrusively, beginning at the lower third of the obelisk, were two more names, finely -though hastily - etched by her own vine wood wand. Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley, 26/4/02. And then, below that, more deeply inscribed, but nearly illegible, obviously driven by raw emotion were the words I'll Never Forget. She had no way of knowing whether the last Weasleys had lived beyond that fateful flight from the Ministry, but they had not been heard from or seen since, and even Luna at her most … persuasive… had been able to unearth nothing.

It seemed to Hermione that the searing acid of longing and loneliness surged through her with every pulse of her heart, and sometimes she wondered why it continued to function. It would be so much easier, she reflected, if the damned organ would just stop beating. She thought of just collapsing here, in the shadow of those who had loved Harry the most; she imagined lying insensate as the grass ruffled around her and her eyes sightlessly reflected the sky. She wished for it in the same manner that one might wish to win the lottery, when one has never purchased a ticket.

She couldn't imagine actively doing something to cause her own death. For one thing, it would please Lucius Malfoy to no end. And then there was Harry… his imagined reproach pierced through to the very center of her. Those eyes…telling her that everything they'd endured had been for nothing, that he'd died for nothing, that they'd all died for nothing… No, she had to take up the flag of their cause and continue the fight, for as long as it took, even if she was the only one left, even if the only thing she could do was spit in the faces of those who told her she was one of the untermenschen, and defy them by simply continuing to exist.

Slowly, she got to her feet, feeling as though she'd aged years in the small span of time she'd been kneeling. She kept one hand on Harry's marker for as long as she could, grazing it with her fingertips as she backed away, feeling bereft as the contact was broken. She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for an unpleasant task, and then Apparated away with a small crack, not even taking the time to lower her outstretched arm.

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Hermione reappeared in a narrow cobblestoned alleyway between two nicely kept houses. Neither had windows facing the alley, and Hermione was confident that she had not been seen, as she pushed open the small white gate and entered the back garden. The back door was locked, so she rapped three times and waited, fingering her wand lightly where it rested up her sleeve.

Just as she was beginning to wonder if anyone was home, there was a rustle, the click of the bolt being turned back, and the rattle of the door handle being turned.

“Mum!” Hermione said joyfully, and threw herself into her mother's arms, almost before the door was fully opened. Mrs. Granger held herself stiffly, startled by the fervent embrace by an apparent stranger, before finally wrapping her own arms around her daughter.

“Hermione? This is a surprise. It's been so long. Why -?”

“I know, Mum. It's been too long. I - there's so much I need to tell you. So many things - “ Her mother's comforting hands were stroking her hair.

“You've changed, Hermione …”

“The Wizarding world is not—it's not the way it used to be. I have to be careful, Mum. There are people… looking for me.” Hermione did another visual sweep of the garden, before closing and re-locking the door. “Where's Dad?”

“At the office,” her mother replied, moving into the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, thank you. Why did he go in on a Saturday?”

“He had an emergency.” Hermione waited for more details, but none were forthcoming. There was a soft clink of china, as two cups were set on the table. Something prickled on the back of Hermione's neck, and she swiveled in the chair to look down the empty, dim hallway. She turned back, feeling even more foolish with her mother's mild gaze on her. “Is something wrong, dear?”

“Everything's wrong, Mum.” She struggled to keep her chin from wobbling as she spoke. “You know about - about Harry. I don't even know what happened to Ron and Ginny … and I - the Ministry wants to arrest me, and - “

“Well, you're here now. And your father will be so glad to have you home!” Hermione blinked at her mother's lack of reaction to the news about Ron and Ginny.

“Mum, I just wanted to see you one more time, to tell you I was okay. I can't stay.” Her tone was one of stating the patently obvious, even though she'd only just realized that it was true. Her intentions had been nebulous when she Apparated to her childhood home; even so, whatever she had been hoping would happen was clearly a non-issue. The chasm between her and her parents was vast; turning her back on the Wizarding world would be turning her back on Harry. She could not do it. “They probably watch this place from time to time, hoping I'll come here. And after what I did today…” Curiously, her mother showed no interest in details, no maternal trepidation over what was worrying Hermione so.

“You can at least wait until your father gets home. He'd want to see you. I'm sure that it'd be safe that long, at least.”

“I - I can't, Mum.” Hermione couldn't keep the hesitant note out of her voice. How nice it would be to go to her room and burrow into her coverlet, surrounded by her old books and childhood things, knowing that her parents were there, and nothing could harm her. If only that were true. But there was no longer shelter or solace in this place. Hermione wasn't sure she'd be able to find it anywhere.

“Until your father gets home, Hermione. Then, you may go, if you must.” Her mother's voice had a hint of iron in it, and it surprised Hermione once more. It had been quite a long time since she had been spoken to like that. “Drink your tea.”

Hermione raised the cup to her lips, her feelings of unease a tightening knot in her stomach. The house seemed oppressively shadowy; its stillness foreboding rather than soothing. All the drapes were drawn, yet she could not shake the feeling of being watched.

She stopped, with her lips touching the rim of the cup, wondering at the unfamiliar smell of the tea.

“Is this a new blend, Mum?”

“Why - why yes, it is.” Her mother stumbled over the reply, and Hermione replaced the cup in the saucer with a decisive noise.

“Mum, has anyone - ” And then she heard it: the scuff of shoe sole against carpet, so softly that she might have missed it altogether. Without hesitation, she flung herself sideways out of her chair, hitting the ground and rolling, wand at the ready. A spell had barely missed her head, and taken out a cabinet or two, judging from the noise of splintering wood.

“Expelliarmus!”

”Protego!”

“Dad?” Hermione said stupidly, staring at her father, armed with a wand of all things. She had to dodge another hex before she could say anything else, diving for what cover she could near the refrigerator. The realizations were almost immediate and very nearly crippling. “You're not my father!”

“They did say you were the brightest witch in your year.” It was not her father's voice. She fired blind, and heard him swear, as the Stinging Hex narrowly missed him.

“What have you done with him?” Her voice was almost unintelligible with rage and terror.

“I assure you, he is quite beyond your concern.” There was a sob from behind her, from her mother. Hermione looked at her, startled, having thought if one was a Polyjuiced impostor, then both must be. Imperius, she realized, taking in her mother's motionless stance in the middle of a magical firefight. The moment of inattention cost her. “Expelliarmus!” Her wand landed neatly inside the vase of flowers in the center of the kitchen table. “Avello!”

The scream ripped from Hermione's throat, and she crumpled as the curse hit her. It felt like her skin was on the cusp of being forcibly separated from the sinew; it rippled and twisted, as if living things were writhing just beneath it. She realized she had fallen, when she felt her head smash against the Spanish tile; her sensory awareness was swamped beneath overwhelming pain.

“Stop!” Her mother's tear-clogged scream met her ears, as if from a great distance. There were sounds of wooden chairs scraping the floor and toppling over, the noises of shattering glass. Her assailant was evidently trying to reassert the Imperius curse over her mother. Quietly, she rolled over, blinking furiously to remove the points of light from behind her eyes, and saw her wand lying in a puddle of water, leaves, and broken glass. Breathing heavily with effort, she retrieved it and pushed herself to her feet.

“Leave my mother alone! Your master's quarrel is with me. She's nothing to you!” The man-who-was-not-her-father was fending off her mother with one hand, brandishing his wand with the other. Mrs. Granger was fighting him wildly; Hermione could not get a clear shot.

“Imperio!” He finally hit her, and her mother's features settled back into a placid mask. He flicked his wand in Hermione's direction. “Kill her.”

Mrs. Granger moved toward back into the kitchen, removing a long knife from the block on the countertop with a metallic shhiing. Their attacker was flicking his wand back and forth, causing the older woman to walk in an odd pattern that kept her in - and him out of - Hermione's line of fire.

“M - mum?” Hermione could see tears streaming down her mother's cheeks, even though her eyes were impersonally cold. Hermione raised her wand, and it trembled so violently in her hand that she wasn't sure she could aim it with any kind of accuracy. “Impedimenta!”

Her mother was repelled violently in the opposite direction, as if shoved by rough, invisible hands. For a split second, her Polyjuiced father was distracted by the movement, and all Hermione needed was a quick Reductor at the ceiling.

There was a rumbling crash that quickly crescendoed to a roar, as the white plaster, followed by the attic flooring and stored items came raining down with an avalanche of force. White dust and insulation billowed forth, engulfing the room in a cloud and swallowing up their foe. For a long moment, there was utter silence. Hermione balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to move quickly should the fight commence again. She opened her mouth to speak, and was rewarded by choking powder, which coated her tongue and the inside of her mouth.

“Mu - Mum?” she said, in a dusty rasp. There was a moan in reply, followed by the rattle of sliding debris. “Mum, don't try to move. I'm coming.” She slipped and slid across sawdust, random articles of clothing, and irregular slabs of drywall. Once she had moved closer, she could see the body of their assailant; his neck was bent at an unnatural angle and his gaze was directed over her head at nothing. She could muster up no emotion other than grim satisfaction.

Further towards the back of the room, she saw her mother, struggling to free herself from a pile of debris. Hermione was horrified to see that one of the ceiling beams had given way, and was crushing her mother's midsection. “Mum, please… try not to move.”

“Your… your father - they - they killed him.” Her breaths were coming in inadequate pants; her hands were scrabbling at the heavy wood with utter futility.

“I know, Mum. Wingardium Leviosa.” The beam lifted, moved aside. The pain-wracked look on her mother's face eased slightly, but her breathing wouldn't regulate. Hermione moved her hands over her mother, frantically at first, and then more mechanically, as the reality of the situation set in.

“He - he would never - he would never hurt me - or you, sweetheart.”

“I - I know he wouldn't.” The tears were scalding her eyes, her cheeks, dripping down her chin and onto her fingers. How much could one person cry? How much could one person bear? Harry - Merlin help me, I'm not as strong as you.

“They did - they did something to my - to my mind. I - I tried to stop them - I wanted to warn you, but I - but I - “

“It's okay, Mum. I know you tried. It's okay.”

“Are - are you in trouble, Hermione? Are they - are they going to come - come after you?”

“I can handle myself, Mum. Don't you worry about me.”

“You're my little girl. Of - of course, I worry. `Smy job.” Her breathing became erratic, with heaving, convulsive inhalations. Hermione noticed that the pupils of her mother's eyes were different sizes. When she leaned over to check her mother's head, her palms came down in something sticky and dark.

“I love you, Mum,” she managed to make herself say clearly. “I'm sorry I - I wasn't there more.”

“You— you were doing something important. Your father and I - always knew you would do big things. We - we always knew…” She suddenly stiffened, her facial features tensing. Her hand clamped around Hermione's wrist. “You need to go.”

“Mum, I can't leave you here. I - “

“Please - please, Hermione. You must save yourself. There's nothing - nothing you can do - for me. He says you need to go - now! .”

Hermione stumbled to her feet, half-blinded and covered in dust. She tripped over a couple of smashed crates and nearly fell, a sobbed curse escaping her lips.

“Wh - who says, Mum? Who? What are you talking about?”

“Why, Harry, dear. Such a nice young man.” Her mother's eyes were glassy and pain-dazed, with nothing of lucidity left in them, her voice slurred, yet her feeble hand-gesture made Hermione whirl, hoping against hope for some sight of him, even as she knew it was ridiculous. Her mother was dying, hallucinating; there was no rational reason she should -

Multiple cracks of Apparation, distant, yet all too close snapped her from her reverie. When she glanced back, she knew her mother was dead. She reeled from the realization, but felt no pain. The first hammer blow had fallen with Harry's death, had been fatal; these successive strikes were unnecessary, overkill as she staggered around, careening from one tragedy to the next, stunned and senseless, while Fate waited for her to give up and stop moving.

Sorry, not today. She maneuvered quickly around the rest of the mess, and slipped smoothly out of the kitchen door, breaking into a run once she cleared the steps. She vaulted the low stone wall separating their garden from the neighbor's, with one blood-smeared hand. She had just done so, when there was a surge of magic that rippled behind her, crackling at the ends of her hair. She had just barely made it outside the range of the Anti-Apparation wards. Before any Aurors could make it round the house, she Apparated away.

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She had not consciously decided where to go, but found herself back at Godric's Hollow, near the wall enclosing the cemetery. The Potter house, she knew, was just out of side around a bend in the footpath. The little hamlet was quiet, even sleepy, and she had the sudden stabbing sensation of being the only person left on the planet. If I just ceased to exist - right now - who is left that would even care? And her mother had seen Harry… yearning sliced through her, as if death were a reunion among old friends, to which she had not been invited.

Hermione Granger, you are losing your mind. Resolutely, she pushed thoughts of Harry, of her parents, of the Weasleys aside. She could not afford to let herself feel anything; if she did, she knew that she would crumble to the ground like a discarded cloak. She needed a new place to hole up, a new way to remain in contact with Luna, a new method to disperse her insights, to remind people of the Boy Who Lived and Lucius' true allegiances.

She let her gaze drag itself up the path to where it disappeared around an outflung arm of forest, beyond which was situated Harry's childhood home. They had stayed there for awhile, the three of them, during a phase of the Horcrux hunt: cold, wet, frightened, and miserable. The house was decrepit and leaky, which they tried to offset with a distracted Sealing Spell every now and then. Dumbledore was dead, the Ministry was less than accommodating, and Death Eaters had orders to lethally curse her and Ron on sight, and then escort Harry to his final destination. They had stumbled across a random patrol one evening, and it had turned into a brief skirmish. Clambering through the back door of Harry's erstwhile home, they had frantically erased all evidence of their presence, and hidden in the cellar. Hermione had Banished their research to a Muggle storage unit she had rented in her father's name for just this sort of eventuality, and they had crouched in the most shadowy corner, beneath the Invisibility Cloak, watching the half-flight of rickety stairs (the bottommost steps having crumbled into rotted splinters long before they arrived), and scarcely daring to breathe.

Hermione remembered how she had felt, with the dampness of the wall seeping through one side of her jumper, Ron all but sitting on her feet, and what seemed like blazing warmth, where Harry was pressed up against her on the other side. In the dark, she had groped for his hand, as Ron had reached for hers, and they had clung together, hoping that the imminent danger would pass them by. In the end, the Death Eaters had evidently been satisfied by the abandonment of the house, because they gave the utter darkness and broken stairs of the cellar only the most cursory of inspections. Thereafter, the Trio had blanketed the small town with layers of Detection Wards, and had slept beneath the Cloak each night, until moving on to their next Horcrux lead, two months later.

She cast a Disillusionment spell on herself before coming into view of the house, and hitched a jagged breath as she lifted her eyes and looked, really looked, at the old building. She waited for the expected pain to throb through her, and then did a careful perimeter sweep before entering through an already broken window. She wanted to leave the rotten door intact, so as to draw no undue attention to her presence. It was empty, derelict, forsaken, as it had been when she stayed there with her boys; dust coated the floors, and cobwebs festooned the ceilings and corners. The house was empty, as it had been three years ago - nobody had known who cleared out the house following the occupants' deaths, and where the furnishings had gone.

Hermione was careful to erase her footprints, and to touch nothing, using her wand to stealthily open the cellar door. She would feel more at ease down there, where she could control access, where there were no windows at her back or unused rooms where assailants could lurk. She leapt lightly to the mucky cellar floor, and risked a little wandlight to look around. It was just as bare as the rest of the house; they had been painstaking in their efforts to leave no trace behind. Even so, Hermione almost thought she could see the three of them, as they had been: herself, hunched over a leatherbound book in the corner, charmed quill taking notes on a roll of parchment affixed to the wall; Ron, with Extendable Ear in place, monitoring his brothers' Wireless program, and other news reports; and Harry, poring over their Horcrux notes, looking pale and weary, flashing a strained smile at some humorous comment from Ron. She could almost hear Ron's laugh, and she shivered, the loneliness pressing down on her as though she were entombed.

Entombed… The oppressive darkness came roaring back with the force of a tsunami. Mum, Dad, Harry, Ron, Ginny, MumDadHarryRonGinny … She had not gotten to say good-bye to any of them. She felt smothered, sluggish, spent, rent asunder; the weight of her isolation was crushing.

She eyed the door to the house, positioned high on the wall from where she stood, with trepidation. It was still too open, too assailable, not far enough in the bowels of the earth for someone Forgotten as she. She had made a circuit of the room, and was standing near a far wall, rolling her wand between two fingers, only half-listening to the click, click, click it made against the damp brick.

The noise made her think of Diagon Alley, and that made her look at the dreary wall in a new and different light. A new room, an invisible undetectable flat off the cellar… I would be hidden, I would be close to Harry, somewhere that once meant something to Harry…

She traced the outline of the bricks into the vague shape of a doorway; the mortared lines glowed briefly as her wand touched them, and she was filled with an odd sort of melancholy joy, as she struggled to salvage the tattered remnants of what she had left.

Everything that's gone… everything I've got left… it's all the same. Despite her earlier reluctance to even look at the house, it seemed appropriate somehow, to retreat here, in this place of Death, to mourn what was gone, what she would forever miss. And maybe, somehow, to fight those who had destroyed her life, to make those who had taken everything sorely regret the taking…

Harry, I'm here…

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Thanks to all of you who are still reading H/Hr. Maybe the `ship has sunk, but she was glorious while she was seaworthy! As long as there is still good H/Hr fanfiction out there, I'll keep reading it! You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.

--lorien

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7. Seven

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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A thousand other boys could never reach you. How could I have been the one?

-Goo Goo Dolls, “Black Balloon”

The gaily striped umbrellas shielding the outdoor seating from the overhead sun did not match Hermione's mood. Maybe if they were gunmetal gray, she mused, or some kind of sick, murky green. She thumbed the strap of her handbag more securely onto her shoulder, as she threaded through the white tables, crowded with Muggles having lunch and taking advantage of the lovely weather.

Behind her sunglasses, she let her eyes roam over the scattered individuals who were sitting alone. Once, twice, three times… all the while, keeping her movements casual, in the effort to be just one of a herd, a nondescript young Englishwoman looking for somewhere to sit.

After the fourth time, she strolled over to a bench, her stride fluid and unconcerned, even as her insides coiled into knots. She unfolded a random daily paper - she had bought it at a stand two blocks back, without even looking at the masthead - and pretended to read it. Letters, words, sentences, paragraphs all swam before uncomprehending eyes. She uncrossed her legs, then recrossed them the other way.

She sat there for close to an hour before forcing herself to admit that Luna had not shown up.

They had been meeting covertly for over a year now: dates, times, and places that rotated in a system the two of them had gradually developed. They didn't always speak, and a few times, had not even seen one another… but the contact had always been made. Once, Luna had left her message in a discarded, half-finished crossword. Another time, Hermione had dropped hers in Luna's bag when they collided. Oh, excuse me. I'm terribly sorry. They had continued on in opposite directions.

They always met in Muggle London, and, if necessity required it, Hermione would sometimes sneak into the Ministry - using Luna's shields - for a little covert surveillance. Luna had never spoken of the guard stationed at Ginny's cell, but occasional comments led Hermione to believe that she was continuing such actions, at even higher, more influential levels. When Hermione had looked at her with concern, Luna had shrugged. We all make our sacrifices, Hermione. Her information had helped Hermione fill her underground newsletter, and a couple of times they had used it to sabotage a meeting or a public rally, forcing Lucius Malfoy's propaganda machines to cancel the gatherings.

Luna had never missed a meeting before. It had been a couple of weeks since Hermione had heard from her at all, though no contact was scheduled until today.

It was unusual. And unusual meant worrisome.

Hermione sighed. There was no point in continuing to sit here, when it was obvious that Luna was not coming. Perhaps she would send word later. She folded the paper and immediately forgot about it, running her eyes over the happy crowds of people, as she stood.

The sun was warm on the top of her head, and she looked at all of them - Muggles - chatting with friends, talking on phones, eating ice cream, and felt a sudden swamping longing to belong. There was a profound loneliness so cold and complete that she felt as if she surveyed the throngs from some high and icy spire, rather than standing among them. The ever-present shards of grief and pain pricked at her, as she moved, smooth and unobtrusive, to an isolated alcove and Apparated back to Godric's Hollow.

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One week later, she was still feeling the vague sense of dread, wondering what had happened to Luna. Her heart was not in her task, as she jotted her thoughts on Malfoy's latest injunctions against the Muggle Born. Her knees were cramped under the rickety desk, and she turned in her chair to straighten out her legs and point her toes.

Her gaze drifted around the tiny, secret cellar room, taking in the sagging sofa upholstered in an indiscriminate bluish-grey, which she Widened and slept on at night, the twin bookcases, filled to overflowing, the pristine little potions lab in one corner, and the sad kitchenette that was just beyond her elbow. No windows, no human contact, no sense of belonging… it was - it was just a place to stay, she thought, something that kept the rain off, the cold out, and the bad people away. It wasn't home, and she was beginning to believe that she'd lost that place forever.

Absently, she picked up her quill and doodled in the margins of her parchment, any real desire to finish her memo flattened beyond repair. What is even the point? She wondered disconsolately. I'm a criminal, a Muggle-born terrorist, and everyone who ever really knew me is gone. There are some sympathetic to the cause, but so few are afraid to stand. At this point, I'm not sure a battalion would be enough, but I know I can't do it alone.

It had been quite some time since she had ventured out to the graveyard to visit Harry. She was fairly certain that it was being watched. Lucius had send Ministry goons out to sweep Godric's Hollow once or twice, to no avail - not only had they gained no hard evidence of her presence there, but she was pretty sure one of the wizards was still in St. Mungo's trying to relearn how to tie his shoes.

No Ministry representatives had been back. Hermione sighed, not feeling comforted. Lucius Malfoy was patient; she was alone; he probably thought he could wait her out. She had the sensation of treading water, knowing that she should either strike out for shore, or let herself drown… but somehow she could not bring herself to do either one. It would mean letting Harry down, betraying him, abandoning him, and so she flailed rhythmically to no real purpose, and tried to keep her head above water.

A soft tone interrupted her melancholy musings, and her eyes flew swiftly to the parchment map Stuck to the opposite wall. It was a plan of the house, each room drawn to scale and the ward placements carefully marked.

A ward had been breached.

Her eyes flickered to her getaway bag, but she didn't move to begin filling it. She should have had some warning when a living being set foot across the perimeter of the property. An alarm should have sounded when any of the doors or windows had opened. It was as if the intruder had Apparated into the kitchen, but that should not have been possible. The person was alone, and was making no move to conceal his presence. Hermione had not credited the Ministry with much penchant for subtlety, but they were obviously trying out some new tactics.

It didn't matter, she decided. She could handle one lone Ministry stooge with her wand tied behind her back, and he had been there long enough.

Soundlessly she crept up the broken stairs, and eased into the living room, thankful that she kept the cellar door so well oiled. She crouched low to the floor near the farthest corner, and strained her eyes to see something besides utter blackness. The house was dark and completely silent; the silence seemed to be breathing, waiting… and then, she heard? - sensed? - something move from the kitchen, maybe the faintest whispery brushing of cloth against the edge of the doorframe.

Not allowing herself to hesitate, she fired off a Stunning spell in the direction of that tiny sound. Splinters of wood erupted from the kitchen door, and she heard a hiss of startled air between clenched teeth. She balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to move at the slightest provocation, and allowed a small smile to play on her lips. He would be moving now, she knew, toward her or toward the nearest exit of the front door? She took a guess, and fired again, hoping she could see something in the flash of light, but the spell was too quickly swallowed up in the fathomless black.

Her eyes were beginning to adjust, and she should have been able to see movement at least, but there was nothing save the faint gray light coming from the windows. Then, she heard a whispered word, too low for her to catch. She braced herself for an onslaught, but found herself choking on a cloud of noxious smoke instead. Her trespasser was going for the front door, and attempting to mask his escape. Hermione supposed she could just let him go, but she wanted answers. She needed to know how he'd breached her wards, how he'd managed to get inside with her being none the wiser.

As she heard the sudden crackle of electric current, and realized that he had touched the charged handle of the front door, the urge to cough became too great to quell.

“Ven-tosus…” she managed to hack, and the spelled breeze wafted through the room to blow away the smoke. Hoping that his nerve endings had been sufficiently shocked so as to slow his retreat, she aimed Expelliarmus and a Leg-Locker jinx at the place she knew he'd have to be standing. She was rewarded by the hollow wooden clatter of his wand rolling away and the heavier, more substantial thump of a body hitting the floor. Quietly, she crept to his side.

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?” There was quiet anger in her voice.

“Oh God.” The voice was wheezy; he'd had the wind knocked out of him when he fell. Her heart leapt into her throat when she heard it, and she squeaked out a gasp without really meaning to. Even as her head argued that it couldn't possibly be him, irrepressible hope surged up inside, hot and eager. No, it's just someone who sounds a little like him, and you are finally truly losing your mind.

“Lumos!” she whispered harshly, lowering her wand so that he was nearly blinded by the bright light. He squinted away from it reflexively. She was almost trembling in her desire to see who had the voice of the Boy She Loved, to see in what other creative ways Fate could torture her. She saw the dark swatch of hair, the glint of metal frames on his face, the strong set of his jaw, and the lithe outline of his body.

The wild frisson of hope was quenched beneath a tidal wave of anger. It did look like him, but could not be him. Therefore, someone was tricking her, in order to trap her, and someone had put an unerring finger right on the cruelest way to do so.

She jammed her wand between his ribs rather harder than was strictly necessary.

“Who sent you here? Who are you?” She was so angry she could barely speak. Harry!

“It's me - it's Harry,” he gasped, arching away from the insistent tip of her wand. He looked up at her then, and she had difficulty controlling the emotion that washed over her. His eyes - the expression - it even looked like Harry. He was looking at her, like Harry would have looked at her. Tears surged to her eyes, and she blinked them back with self-righteous fury.

“Who sent you here?” She wanted to kill him, to hurt him for hurting her, for daring to sully the treasured image of Harry Potter, when he was not worthy to lace Harry's trainers.

“Nobody sent me.” He was speaking quickly, evidently detecting her rapidly unraveling patience. “I came here on my own. I've been - “

“Harry's dead.” Oh, how it still hurt to say those words. “I'll ask one last time: who are you?”

“I am Harry Potter, just like I said.” He raised his hands, as if to ward her off. His eyes were beseeching her. Those green eyes…she swallowed with difficulty. “I'm just not from this universe.”

Hermione let out a bitter half-laugh. Did he think her an utter fool? She rolled her eyes, and did not lower her wand.

“That's original, at least. Did the Ministry send you here?” She gritted her teeth so that her jaw would not tremble.

“The Ministry? No! I'm telling you the truth. I'm from another universe.” He certainly looked sincere. His acting skills were prodigious indeed. “I'm looking for - for you…”His voice sounded wistful, hopeful, longing. Something uncomfortable churned up in her stomach. A ruse, it's all an elaborate ruse.

“For me?” She jabbed him again with her wand, hoping she could sound properly skeptical, while drinking in the sight of him.

“I was in - we were fighting the Final Battle - against… Voldemort?” He said the name uncertainly, waiting for her to verify. Against her will, she nodded. “You were taken hostage, sent to another universe, stranded there. For five years, everyone thought you were dead. I've been looking for you - that is, my - my universe's you.” His face crinkled up, as though he realized how ridiculous he sounded. “Does that - does that sound familiar at all?”

“I think I would remember being transported to another reality against my will. I did fight in the Final Battle two years ago. You - Harry - “ she caught herself quickly. This is not Harry!! “defeated Voldemort, but he was killed doing so. Nearly everyone was…” Harry, Mum, Dad, Charlie, Neville, Ron, Ginny, Lavender… Luna? “I've been living in hell since then, but I suppose it's the hell I belong in.” She shook off her reminiscences, and tried to focus on the task before her. “I doubt you could prove any of this to me. Why should I believe you?”

And then he said the one thing that would slay her.

“Would Harry have ever lied to you…done anything to hurt you?” She felt frozen by the intensity of his gaze, like he knew what she was thinking. Of course he wouldn't. He'd rather die than hurt me in any way. The hope rekindled its little flame in her chest, and she almost smiled.

“No,” she sighed. “He wouldn't have.”

She wasn't at all sure where the truth lay, but she no longer truly believed it was his intent to harm her.

“Finite…” she took the Leg-Locker curse on him, and ordered him up. “We've been up here too long already.”

She retrieved his wand and poked him in the back, directing him ahead of her toward the cellar door. She walked quietly, still wary for any sudden or unexpected moves.

“Do you… live here?” He asked, his voice sounding oddly disembodied in the dark.

The lonely despair surged back into the forefront of her brain, as she thought of her solitary existence in her tiny little windowless cell of a hideaway.

“I don't live anywhere.” She could practically taste the bitterness of the words on her tongue. She nearly walked into his back, as he hesitated, and she almost chuckled when she realized that he was uncertain about grasping the door handle.

“Only the front door's rigged. Little concept I borrowed from the Weasley twins. I suppose you know them.”

“Sure, I know Fred and George…” The ready acceptance in his voice, the easy way he spoke the twins' names stabbed at her. Obviously, he knew them well, and had seen them not long ago. Her very existence seemed to mock at her, laughing at the way she clung to the shredded fragments of what was left of her life.

She prodded him on down the stairs, and she could hear the hesitation in his footfalls, the careful way he placed each foot as he descending into even more complete blackness. She thought, My God, the stairs! at almost the exact same time that she felt him waver, and she grabbed the back of his shirt collar to keep him from toppling to the cellar floor. She had forgotten all about the missing steps.

“The bottom four steps are gone. Sorry.” She winced at how peremptory the words sounded, but she was hanging onto her emotional control by a thread. It was just too hard having him here. She brushed by him in the dark, trying to ignore the way it felt to be so close to him, to feel him breathe, to feel his warmth. “I left it that way because it makes people think nobody's been down here in ages.”

She jumped off the last stair, and her shoes made a scuffling sound on the mucky cellar floor. She moved to the wall with the hidden door, and began to tap out the coded pattern on the bricks. She pretended that she didn't care whether Harry followed her or not, but she still felt her heart accelerate when he landed lightly at the bottom of the stairs.

The bricks formed themselves into a small arched doorway, and she looked back at him briefly, nodding her head in the direction of the little apartment, not trusting herself to speak. He did a double take as the secret door disappeared once again after they'd entered, and she could see the flare of concern in his eyes as he surveyed her dreary little domicile. It seemed like he looked around for a long time, and she felt her defenses rise at the thought that he might be judging her, pitying her.

“Approve?” she asked, biting sarcasm in her tone. He must have been a thousand kilometers away, for he flinched at her voice.

“Hermione, why?” She bristled at the presumption in his voice. You don't know me, and I don't know you. But her inward aching gave lie to her brave front. Her eye fell on her little potions lab, and she moved toward it with a purpose. At the very least, she could determine this. She ticked her finger down her alphabetized rack of potions, and withdrew a small vial of clear liquid.

“Drink this.”

He looked almost offended, as his eyes flickered between her face and the vial she held.

“You're making me drink Veritaserum?”

“If you don't have anything to hide, then it won't matter, will it?” As she handed him the potion, she scanned him with her wand, setting his own wand down carefully on the back of the sofa. “No traces of polyjuice or recent Imperius activity.”

He really almost seemed hurt at her pointed lack of trust, but he poured the contents of the vial down his throat, without further protest. She saw him relax ever so slightly as the Veritaserum took hold in his system.

She began to fire questions at him in rapid sequence: first to satisfy her curiosity, then to trip him up, and then just because she wanted to hear his voice. For it was him, she could no longer deny it. The inflections, the gestures, the body language were all Harry's. She was content to listen to him, to bask in his presence, hopefully without being terribly obvious about it.

She thought she was doing quite well, until he mentioned that he lived with Ron and Luna. Just the curve of his mouth as he spoke that one syllable of their best friend's name was enough to send a pang shooting through her like electric current.

“Do they - do they know you're - ” Her voice cracked, as her throat closed up over her words. She swallowed forcefully to keep the sobs from bubbling up, and swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “Damn it.”

“What's wrong?” His voice was warm and low with concern, concern for her.

“It's just - it's just been a long time since I've heard anyone say Ron's name. And - and Luna…” She sniffed again, blinking the tears away, and tried to sound more composed. “I last saw Luna three weeks ago. She wasn't at our usual meeting place last week.” She's probably dead too. Just like everyone else. Hermione could not alter the morbid direction of her thoughts. She thought maybe she could understand where Harry's paranoia had come from: everyone who loves me, dies.

“So - so Ron - they're … gone…here…?” She watched the sadness flit across Harry's face as he contemplated the idea of Ron's death.

She nodded, irritated at her weepiness, and her mind cast about frantically for another question, any innocuous thing she could ask him.

Harry could obviously read her like a book.

“Don't you believe me yet?”

“You came - you came all this way to look for - for H - Hermione?” Her mouth tripped over the syllables of her own name. It seemed so odd to speak of herself in the third person.

“Yes.” The reply was terse; his gaze had dropped to his hands, fidgety in his lap.

“Why?”

She knew the answer before she asked it, knew it like she knew what her answer would have been, were the situation reversed. And it still shook her to her core, when he raised his eyes to meet hers. The brilliant green color fairly blazed with the intensity of his feelings for his Hermione. His gaze moved over her face, and she felt the heat of the look like she would feel his touch. She felt her face grow hot, and her knees wobbled. Without breaking eye contact with him, she groped for the back of the chair to hold herself up.

“Why do you think?” He asked, somewhat unnecessarily at this point. She clamped her hands around the back of the chair, feeling her fingernails bite into the lacquered wood, in the effort to keep herself from crossing the small space and flinging herself into his arms. Clinically, she took note of the oddness of being jealous of oneself.

“Well, she's very lucky.” Her voice was light and artificial, and something flickered in Harry's face. She turned away from him, feeling somehow that she had hurt him, that she had belittled what he felt for this woman, when it was every bit as strong as what she felt for him. He must have seen some traces of her love in her face, for he blurted,

“Wait! Were you - were you and Harry - ?” He stumbled to an ungainly halt, and waited, appearing to hope she'd understood what he had not said.

“Promise me…” Harry had said, whispering almost into her mouth, his lips barely skimming hers, still treading that fine line - two friends whispering, just two friends whispering together.

*

…his eyes were distant, glassy, unresponsive.

There were clawed hands tearing at her chest. Her face was sticky, her nose was running, and yet she watched his face avidly. Be the Boy Who Lived, please Harry.

Another breath drawn in, shallower and slower, noisy but ineffective. His lips took on a bluish cast.

She could still feel the brush of his lips on her cheek, her ear, her mouth, could still feel the funny jump in her stomach when their hands touched.

*

She seemed to draw herself back from far away, as she shook her head at this interloper, this Other Harry.

“No,” she said, realizing again how sadly true it was. They had had nothing but hope, nothing but the promise of someday, that turned out to be an empty promise indeed. She said it again. “No, we - we never…I - I sometimes hoped that - but there wasn't any time, and he - you - he - then he - “

“Then he died,” Harry interjected gently, as she visibly struggled. She closed her eyes, and nodded, feeling the old pain wash over her, the familiarity of it was almost like a long-lost friend. “Voldemort killed him?”

She told him what had happened in a wooden voice, brittle and unyielding around the words that had sculpted her agony, built her a castle in which to suffer. She had never told anyone her version of the story, and she found herself falteringly spilling the whole sorry tale, speaking as if she were speaking to her Harry, and not this lookalike, who watched her as if he felt her pain.

“…you don't know what it feels like to see you again…”

Harry's eyes flashed, and she thought he might reach out and touch her.

“I do understand, more than you know.” They looked at each other for a moment, and she remembered the reason he was here, that he was looking for Hermione. She read his loss clearly in his face, and knew that he did understand.

And then he was asking questions about the cellar room, about the aftermath of the war, and some part of her relished the disbelieving horror on his face; some part of her was relieved that he still saw things the same way, that she was not the only one who knew that the order of things was wrong. Somehow it made her feel closer to this Harry, made her feel so much less alone. Harry, if only you'd been here.

“Why don't you leave?”

Her neck muscles pulled taut, as she jerked her gaze up to his. Maybe she'd been wrong; maybe he didn't understand at all.

“Leave?”

“Leave!” he repeated, as if she spoke English poorly or something. He flung his arms outward in a frustrated gesture that took in her hideaway. She could see the protectiveness rising up in him, and longed to hide herself beneath that security. “Get out of this place. Go to America, go anywhere - anywhere but here.”

She sighed, and sat down, her entire posture bespeaking defeat. He wasn't saying anything that she hadn't already said to herself, hadn't already argued endlessly over with herself.

“I feel closer to him here.”

“He's gone, Hermione.” The voice was oh-so-gentle, but Hermione flinched as if he'd slapped her. She couldn't bring herself to look at the tenderness she knew would be in his eyes. “He's gone, and he's not coming back. He wouldn't want to see you like this. He - it hurts me to see you like this. If there really is no one left, nothing else that can be done, you ought to wash your hands of this affair and have a life of your own, instead of - of mourning after ghosts.”

His voice rekindled her ire, and she straightened, raking him with a regally fierce look. How dare he lecture me on moving on with one's life??

“As you've done?” She raised one skeptical eyebrow at him. “You've given yourself away by what you haven't said. You were torn apart when she disappeared, weren't you? You've been drifting for five years, pretending to have a life, even knowing she would have rather died that day than see you like this.” He blanched under her assault, but she did not waver. “And now, you're grasping at the faintest threads of hope, on this wild goose chase to find her! Do you even have a plan? Do you even have a glimmer of a strategy? Or are you planning on drifting around different universes for the rest of your life, hoping you'll bump into her accidentally?”

She had spewed all this at him out of her knowledge of her Harry, and when she saw the angry flush stain his cheeks, she knew she'd guessed correctly.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a plan,” he informed her, sounding defensive and annoyed. She leaned forward, propping her chin on her hands, and looked at him expectantly. Okay, let's hear it, her posture said.

“In the last universe I was in, I saw Sir Nicholas…”

Okay, I think we're getting into the part everyone was waiting for! I hope everyone enjoyed it, even though a lot of it was a rehash.

You may leave a review on your way out if you like. It would be so, so much appreciated!!

--lorien

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8. Eight

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

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.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

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.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

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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9. Nine

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

-->

10. Ten

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

Between the lines of fear and blame, you begin to wonder why you came.

-The Fray, “How to Save a Life”

Chapter Ten:

Hermione had the sensation of a lurching movement, though whether she was the object in motion, or her very environment was shifting around her, she could not tell. There were streaks of light and blurs of activity around her, but she found herself unable to distinguish or differentiate between them in any way, before the dizzying speed would whip her onward. Her foray into the study of physics was spotty at best, but if she were accurate in comparing her situation as being like a stone skipped off the surface of a lake, she should be slowing down, as she gradually lost energy.

At least she thought so.

And then, all analytical thought was quite forcefully driven from her mind, as the building closest to her suddenly “grew” a raised front porch in one of the universes through which she careened. The unyielding stone lip collided with the side of her head hard enough to knock her to the ground and make her eyes stream. She could feel the grit between the lumpy cobblestones beneath the pads of her fingers, and she struggled to rise to her feet before something else changed, and she ended up with her extended legs merged into a fence or garbage bin or something.

She wobbled gracelessly into a standing position, trying to ignore the furious throbbing in her temple. A ginger touch discovered a sizeable knot, and her fingers came away reddened. At the same time, her breakneck journey seemed to come to an end, the world around her see-sawing back and forth a couple of times, before finally subsiding into stillness. She felt like someone who had lost her sea-legs, and tried to mentally tamp down her rising nausea. Blinking her eyes hard, in an effort to focus her attention on her surroundings, she took a first look at this particular version of Godric's Hollow.

It seemed less like an adorable, kitschy-cute tourist town, and more like a run-of-the-mill English village. Hermione took a couple of experimental steps to make sure she wasn't going to fall, and risked the most basic of painkilling charms to take the edge off her head injury. She had become decent at field healing, out of necessity, but still did not feel that casting spells on herself when she felt like she was either going to vomit or pass out - or possibly both - was the best of ideas. As almost an afterthought, she pulled the crystal necklace out of her shirt, and murmured the incantation that would deactivate it, something she had uncharacteristically neglected earlier. The thought of spinning through any more universes was enough to make her stomach pretzel in on itself.

She managed to turn herself back in the direction from which she had originally come, as the wrought iron street lamps begin to light themselves in the deepening twilight. Down this road had been the memorial park for Harry's mother; down this road had been the boarded up, abandoned Potter home that she had lived in for so long.

Truthfully, she had no idea what to expect this time.

She had to stop twice and allow her swimming head to clear, leaning on the low wall that bordered each side of the rutted lane. It took much longer than she would have thought, and the remnants of the sunset had disappeared completely by the time the house came into view.

It was obvious at one glance that somebody lived in the house. Lights streamed from various windows, and the lawn was meticulously maintained. A mounted lamp by the front door displayed a shiny coat of fresh, forest green paint. A white gate bridged the gap in the low stone wall that continued bordering the road, but Hermione eschewed that to clamber clumsily over the wall, making for the kitchen window at the side of the house, rather than the front door. She tensed as she felt a thrum vibrate her very bones, a warm rush of magic coating her skin that meant she had passed through wards - fairly hefty ones too, she surmised. Her skull pounded in protest, as she dropped to a crouch, waiting for the residents to come spilling out into the garden, wands blazing.

Nothing happened, and, when it became clear after several heartbeats that nothing was going to happen, Hermione resumed her stealthy progress around the house. She murmured heartfelt thanks under her breath when she saw the long sweeping arms of a willow adjacent to a brightly lit kitchen window. She cast a Disillusionment charm on herself, and crept under the sheltering branches to peer inside the house.

Gingham curtains jauntily bordered the window over the sink, and their hems flapped lazily in the four-inch gap between the sash and sill. Hermione could hear the indistinct babble of casual conversation, amid the clinks and rattles of dinnerware. She sidled through the flowing willow fronds, and cautiously peered inside.

There he was. Sitting casually at the table, elbows spread, dark green shirt sleeves rolled up over his forearms, raven-wing hair as disheveled as ever, he quirked a self-deprecating half-smile at his companion, as the overhead light reflected off the metallic frames of his glasses. He answered something in a low murmur that she could not quite catch, and she moved her attention to the woman with whom he ate.

Hermione recognized her. Her hair was blonder that she remembered, and her face had lost any girlish roundness, but there was no mistaking who it was. And no mistaking the look on her face. Even as Hermione assessed her, she looked across at Harry, and there was transparent, affectionate joy in her sparkling eyes.

Hermione knew her heart hadn't actually stopped beating, if only because she could feel her pulse throbbing painfully in her head. Still, the odd agonized pang of seeing Harry with Susan Bones could not be ignored, even as the churning in her stomach ramped up to a new level. She had lost the ability to even attempt rational thinking about the whole situation, as the window before her blurred, divided, and merged back together.

And then several things happened at once.

Somewhere in the depths of the house, a small child cried. It immediately arrested Harry and Susan's attention. Harry paused with a forkful of vegetables en route to his mouth, but Susan laid a hand on Harry's arm and offered to retrieve “her”. Hermione saw both wedding bands then, glinting in the kitchen light the way Harry's glasses had. The nausea came over her so quickly that it was almost overwhelming. She staggered backwards, stepping heavily on a fallen branch that cracked like a flicked whip. She vaguely registered Harry's startled gaze flashing up at the open window, as she fell to her knees and retched. Her vision had tunneled; she could feel the grass beneath her fingers and her hair clinging to her cheeks and neck, but she could barely see. The pain in her head had ratcheted up to an untenable frequency, and when she heard the front door open and close, it sounded as if it did so from a very great distance.

*****

Hermione was first aware of the smell and texture of buttery soft leather. She blinked sandy eyes cautiously, and waited for more pain or nausea. Some of the tension ebbed out of her body when they did not come. Even as the ceiling came into focus from the sofa on which she lay prone, she recognized the layout of the house, differences in the décor and furniture notwithstanding.

He's found me. He's brought me inside, and healed me. Does he even know who I am?

She turned her neck and saw him, standing in a stiff and vaguely dazed way, as if she had caught him frozen in the very moment between the blunt force trauma and the toppling over. His eyes were suspiciously wet and reddened; that fact, along with the wary and almost unwelcoming way Susan was looking at her, answered her own mental question.

“Who are you?” Harry's voice was rough, and in it, she could hear the echoes of her own accusing questions, when the other Harry had set off her wards in Godric's Hollow. His wand was in his hand, but was angled toward the shiny, hardwood floor, rather than at her. Still, she felt at a distinct disadvantage lying down, and strove to push herself upright, while trying to disguise how the room began to spin and sway around her. He made an involuntary movement toward her, instinctively desiring to offer aid, which he checked. She lifted her chin to meet his tortured gaze with her own.

“You know who I am.”

“That's not possible.”

She realized that they must have checked her for Polyjuice and other conventional methods used for impersonation, while she was unconscious. Her appearance could not be explained by any means they had, and so they were waiting to see if she could give an accounting of herself.

“That's what I thought at first too,” she responded cryptically, a bitterly amused smirk twisting her lips. For the first time, she took full notice of the toddler cradled in Susan's arms, slumped over her shoulder, clearly asleep.

“Her - Hermione Granger has been dead for two years.” What it took out of him to say those words was quite apparent in his face. A shadow flickered in Susan's eyes, and she shifted the child to her other side, brushing the rumpled brown curls away from her face.

“I'll just go put Jeannie back in her cot.” She spoke to Harry only, emphatically ignoring the interloper in their lounge, as she glided toward the foot of the stairs, trying not to jostle the child.

“I was there, you see, when she - when she passed on, so I'm - I'm asking you to explain - to - ” he trailed off into heavy silence. Hermione was not listening; she had instead tracked Susan's progress across the room and out of sight. The quiet footfalls faded up the staircase.

Something in the little girl's posture, in the cascade of tumbled hair…

“Jeannie?” She arched an eyebrow at him, even while her heart pounded furiously against her breastbone. She thought she might have achieved nonchalance if she weren't the color of waxed parchment and struggling to sit upright.

Harry's face paled as though he had been hit with a singularly effective Bleaching Charm. She could see several emotions parade across his face in sequence: pain, grief, chagrin, wistfulness.

“She's hers, isn't she? Your Hermione's, I mean.”

Harry's dark brows lowered stormily over his brilliant eyes. “What the hell does that even mean?”

She took a deep breath to begin explaining, but Jeannie's overtired sobs drifted down the stairs, along with Susan's sing-song voice of frustration.

“Harry, she wants you.”

He moved toward the stairway immediately, though it was several heartbeats before he broke away from her gaze. He swiveled back toward her, with one foot on the lowest stair, gripping the finial in one tense hand.

“We're not done,” he reminded her, and though his voice carried a definite tone of assertive authority, there was something so Harry in his eyes that she felt the corners of her mouth uptilt in the slightest of smiles.

His heavier tread dwindled to the upper floor of the house, and she could hear Jeannie's discontent fade into silence. As she eyed the cheery stone fireplace opposite the sofa on which she said, she gingerly reached up to feel the knot at her temple. It was still tender, but no longer throbbing or raw, and seemed to have been reduced in size as well. Deft work, she thought, a Healer's work, and she wondered which of them had performed the spells. She let her gaze drift around the room, taking in the simple, tasteful décor and the pictures of Jeannie in various stages of development that were sprinkled around the room, and utterly missed the lighter steps descending until Susan was standing before her.

The other woman regarded her somewhat helplessly for a moment, as if she were trying to reconcile what she knew with what she saw before her. Hermione twisted her hands together tightly in her lap, as the silence drew out interminably.

“What are you?” Susan finally asked, a pleading note leaking through. Explain this away, she did not say. Give me any kind of reason that would make you someone other than Hermione Granger… please.

“My name is Hermione Granger. I finished Hogwarts in 1998. I was in Gryffindor House. Most likely, all the things you knew about Hermione when you met her in school are true about me.” She began her narrative quietly, speaking in a manner meant to engender calm discourse. It took some effort on her part; she had grown used to being blunt-edged and confrontational for survival's sake.

“When I met her? As opposed to you?”

“I am Hermione Granger. But I am not the Hermione Granger that you knew.” She breathed in and out, once, deeply, and plunged ahead. “ When did Harry defeat Voldemort?”

“Our fourth year,” Susan replied almost mechanically. “There was a tournament. Harry was kidnapped. There was a magical ritual that was supposed to use Harry's blood to give Voldemort a new body, but something went wrong… Why don't you know that?” Suspicion reappeared, fringing the edges of her voice.

“I fought in a Final Battle against Voldemort in 2001. Harry Potter was killed just seconds after he dealt Voldemort a death blow.” Hermione had forced herself to speak placidly, but drew in a painful, shuddering breath that made her feelings apparent. “In the universe I'm from, the Order members, my schoolmates, everyone I loved is dead. Lucius Malfoy is the Minister, and I'm a wanted criminal.”

“Your universe…” Susan echoed faintly. She had a distant stare, as though she were groping for the shreds of a dream or a lost idea. “Sweet Merlin - the Unspeakables…they have a room - it's so highly classified that not even my boss at the MLE knows much about it. But it's - it's something like that… I heard them talking about it. They said, `There's more than one of everything.'”

“The Multiverse Room,” Hermione nodded. “I've seen it - in my universe, that is. I met with another Harry, who was searching the universes for his Hermione, who was lost. I - I realized that I had nothing - nothing left in my universe to stay for, and so… so I decided to leave it - “

“To what end?” Harry's voice carried over to them, as he descended the final three stairs and reentered the room. Hermione flushed, and her gaze danced over Harry, then Susan, and then away from them both.

“To - to find - ” Hermione stammered, but wasn't sure how to proceed.

“To find you,” Susan finished flatly, directing her response to him. The color in her cheeks was heightened, and she pressed her lips together firmly, as if that would head off any rising emotion.

“Susan, I certainly don't - ”

“I'm sure the two of you have a lot to talk about. I'm going to check on Jeannie.” She carried herself almost regally, something in her last sentence holding a subtle reminder of her place in this house, in this family. Even so, there was a faint shadow in her eyes as she darted one last look at Hermione. You could take him from me…if you so chose. Please don't take him from me.

A heavy silence draped over the room, broken only by the crackle-click of the flames in the grate. Harry glanced at her, and jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. She trailed behind him, and watched from the doorway, as he began to clear the table and set the dishes to washing.

“What happened to her?” Hermione's voice was barely audible over the rattle of plates and the rush of running water.

“There've been isolated skirmishes between Aurors and Death Eaters ever since Voldemort was killed. There were usually no casualties, and it was more of a nuisance involving destruction of property than anything else.” Harry was staying carefully clinical, choosing his phrasing with great deliberation. “During one of them, my - my wife took a curse to the back. She fell, struck her head… caused a severe subdural hematoma. The increase in intracranial pressure caused irreversible brain damage.” He heaved a deep breath, keeping his back to her as he stood at the sink. “She was three weeks pregnant - we weren't trying; she didn't know - she wouldn't have been ordered to the firefight otherwise. We - I kept her on LSP until she - until she had Jeannie. She never regained consciousness or any kind of independent brain function.”

LSP - Hermione dredged the acronym from somewhere in the depths of her prodigious memory, life-sustaining potions.

“You're a Healer?” She cocked her head to one side contemplatively, trying to imagine a world where Harry was the Healer and she the Auror.

“Not good enough of one.” His bitterness was palpable, with the weariness of chronic regret. “I was still finishing my training. The Healers wouldn't have let me work on my wife in any case. Still I wonder what should've have been done differently - if anything would have made a difference. Should I have recognized the signs that she was expecting? Wouldn't that have kept her from being on the raid at all? Was I selfish to keep her alive - just to be able to keep a piece of her with me?”

Hermione approached him tentatively, the compassionate nature that she thought long ago suffocated and trampled out of existence rising back to the forefront. She tried to imagine herself killed in the line of duty, and then Harry living with the realization that his training, his job hadn't been able to save her. To discover the pregnancy on top of everything else was most likely another level of pain altogether.

“I am sure that - that she would have wanted her baby - your baby - to live, no matter what it took. And now you have Jeannie - you have an expression, an embodiment of your love for her. In my universe, Harry and I weren't - we had just begun to realize that we had feelings for each other. And then the Final Battle came. Voldemort killed Harry, even as he was dying at Harry's hand. For one perfect moment, we thought it was over and we had all the time in the world. And then he was taken from me… I was sure it was forever. But with the Multiverse Room, I thought - I thought there would be someone - another Harry somewhere - who had lost me, who needed me like I needed him.” She lifted dark lashes to gaze at him with wet eyes. She took his hand, and felt it tremble in her grasp. “This would appear to be a tailor-made situation, almost exactly what I was hoping for.”

“Almost?”

“If not for Susan. She loves you very much. I can see it on her face. How long have you been married?”

“Four months.” Harry sighed and gently disengaged his hand. “I love her too. She was there at a time when I was barely functioning. She helped me when I was a grieving new father who had no idea what he was doing. And she did it all selflessly - knowing that there was a possibility that I might never feel the same way about her.” An ethereal smile drifted across his face. “And then one day, I discovered that I did. But seeing you again - ”

“I'm not her,” she quietly reminded him. “Maybe I was like her… once. But I - I've lived as an outlaw, I've committed terrorist acts, I've killed people. I look back at the girl who finished Hogwarts at the top of her class, and I don't even recognize her anymore.”

“I can still see her. She's there - in the deepest part of your eyes.” His eyebrows crinkled, as he quirked the half-smile that had always made her heart melt. “Don't give up on her.” Before Hermione could truly process what she was doing, she had flung herself into Harry's startled arms, squeezing him for all he was worth. The last day she'd seen him alive was so vividly seared into her memory, along with those fledgling feelings, that she had forgotten this Harry, the Harry she had first loved, the one who had come after her to warn her about a troll, her best friend.

Harry's arms flailed for purchase briefly, but then relaxed and encircled her. Hermione felt as if all of her perception was dialed up to eleven: the wiry-strong way his arms held her, the familiar, outdoorsy smell of him - albeit with a new undertone of medicinal potions, the feel of his hair against her cheek.

“I've missed him so much,” she breathed softly, and felt his arms tighten in a wordless response. After a moment, he extricated himself from her embrace, and held her by her upper arms, looking into her eyes with a recognizable green intensity.

“What can we do to help you?”

It was such a comforting question, so direct, cutting to the chase, that Hermione felt the burning tears tickle her nose anew. How long had it been since she had been offered assistance - not to further an agenda or cause, or to facilitate revenge, but simply because she had needed it? She coughed out a semi-hysterical laugh as she realized that it was probably Harry that had done it - the one searching for his Lost Hermione.

Her eyes flicked over Harry's shoulder, instinctively following Susan's movement into the room. Hermione felt the blush paint her cheeks with heat, and she opened her mouth to … she wasn't sure… point out the platonic nature of the hug?

“It's all right, Hermione,” Susan said carefully. There was something new in her eyes, a warming - pity, perhaps? Or was she seeing the flashes of her stepdaughter in Hermione's face? The latter couldn't be sure. Disdain wanted to rise within her; contempt she was used to - pity was somewhat harder to stomach. With an absent-mindedness born of familiarity and comfort, Harry scooped his wife around her waist, and pulled her to his side. Hermione couldn't stop a pang of envy as Susan leaned her head into the crook of Harry's shoulder, not necessarily for the man himself (maybe a bit, she admitted inwardly), but for the familiarity of the closeness. “I know it's been a long time…since you've seen him.”

Hermione stammered an inarticulate thank you, and squared her shoulders, struggling to don a more businesslike exterior. She picked up her tale with the loss of Ron and Ginny, the slow, subtle oppression by the Ministry, the death of Draco Malfoy at her hand, Harry's appearance, Luna's murder (Harry and Susan exchanged aghast looks)… and finally, the day where Lucius Malfoy came after her - Undesirable Number One.

“He - he told me - the other Harry - ” she clarified hastily, her voice only semisolid from unshed tears. “He had told me to get out of there, to go anywhere else - and I just couldn't face abandoning my Harry, giving the victory to everything he died fighting against. I took too long - I almost didn't make it out - and now I guess - I'm … adrift in the multiverse. I can't go back, but I'm not sure I can stay either.”

At Harry's quizzical look, she gave a brief rundown of the Constant, and what it meant in one's magical signature, how her attempts to alter hers had failed, quite painfully.

“You know, I - I lunch with Luna a couple of times a month,” Harry ventured. “She's an Unspeakable, on the very cutting edge of healing research… pretty good with Runes too. We've bounced ideas off each other more times than I can count. Maybe she could help you. Susan might be able to get you down there - Merlin knows, I don't have any clearance.”

Susan rolled her eyes good-naturedly, which Hermione took to mean: Oh please, like anyone at the Ministry wouldn't roll out the red carpet for you, no matter which restricted area you wanted to see.

“Wouldn't the fact that I'm dead here cause some problems?” Hermione spoke the significant word rather gingerly, not wanting to trample over Harry's feelings.

“For the Department of Mysteries?” Susan's tone was incredulous. “This is only `mildly outlandish' on their scale.”

“It might be a good idea not to broadcast your presence to the … regular… Ministry employees,” Harry interposed casually. “Not everyone is as open-minded as Luna is. We can go first thing in the morning - I've got second shift in Spell Damage tomorrow.”

Hermione suddenly felt as though fatigue had snuck up behind her and quietly leached away every last scrap of energy. She realized that she'd had no idea what time it was, and she vaguely wondered when she'd last slept. There was an odd energy in the room, between the three of them. It was as if the shock of her presence had worn off, and the implications and possibilities were making themselves ever more apparent. Harry was looking anywhere but at her.

“We've… there's a guest bedroom.” Susan gestured absently toward where the stairs spilled into the living area. “If - if you'd like to…” Her cadence was odd, and Hermione couldn't help but take note of the way Susan's attitude toward her had been fluctuating throughout the evening. She was trying, Hermione realized, but this situation was probably beyond difficult: knowing that your husband's first wife, tragically lost, was his soul mate; taking care of a little girl that, while you loved her dearly, looked just like said first wife; finding an alternate version of that wife on your doorstep, looking for your husband. The truth was clear: Susan was trying to be polite, but Susan did not feel comfortable having her sleeping upstairs in the guest bedroom.

“I'll just kip down here,” Hermione offered. “It's not that much longer until morning anyway, right? Oh!” She jumped as remembrance hit her. “I - I had a bag…”

“It's just there.” Harry pointed toward the far end of the sofa, where Hermione could see a loop of the black canvas strap peeking out.

“Thanks,” she murmured, almost swallowing the word. Flames crackled in the grate, and the silence grew awkward.

“The loo is just through there,” Susan pointed toward a door just down a stubby corridor. Hermione refrained from indicating that she already knew where every room in the house was, and just nodded in response. “Good night, Hermione.”

She stood at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Harry to finish twiddling with the bronze sconce at the end of the fireplace mantel, disconnecting the Floo for the night.

“You're not on call?” Susan asked.

“Not until Friday. Good night, Hermione.” Harry managed a smile, but actually spoke his words to the picture frame on the wall just beyond her right shoulder. The couple drifted up the stairs together, and just before they had disappeared from her view - in fact, Harry probably already thought they were out of her sight - she saw Harry press a tender kiss to the tips of his wife's fingers.

The longing threatened to rise up and crush her. She let out a wobbly sigh that seemed to rebound off of all the shadowy corners, as she propped a square cushion against one end of the sofa, and pulled down the throw that lay across the back. She kicked off her shoes, and pulled the blanket up to her chin, pointing her wand at the fire to lower it. Her eyelids had already begun sliding closed, when she was startled by a figure standing at the other end of the sofa.

“I brought you a better pillow,” Harry said, almost apologetically, proffering a larger pillow made for a bed.

“Thank you, Harry,” she replied automatically, taking note of the way his eyes glowed in the low firelight, the way the banked coals shot streaks of dark copper into his hair. He was holding himself rigidly, almost as if some outside party were exerting Imperius over him, like he'd rather be anywhere else, and yet he did not leave.

“Harry?” she queried in confusion, at the same time that he blurted,

“I'm so sorry, Hermione.”

“Whatever for?” She managed to lace her tone with light bewilderment.

And then she knew. He missed her. He wanted her. And he could sense - or perhaps see written all over her face - how much she yearned for him. But there were bridges that had been traversed and then burned; there were doors that had been shut and locked. He was married. He was married. And in that moment, Hermione knew that they could not - that even if they had been presented with the perfect opportunity, they would not - act upon it. “…loved I not honor more,” she thought with wry admiration.

“I just wanted to look at you - ” he spoke clumsily, almost stammering. “To remember her. Again.” He scrunched his shoulders up awkwardly, suddenly seeming much younger. “I'm sorry if that makes me a bit creepy.”

She laughed a little, but grew sober quickly.

“No, I understand. Believe me, I do.”

“Jeannie's so much like you. There's not much of me in her at all. It's - it's wonderful and horrible all at the same time…”

“You're a good father, Harry.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment of her compliment, and his hair swept across his forehead in disarray.

“I just wish…” There were a thousand things that he could have spoken into the trailing silence. I just wish you would stay. I wish you had appeared six months ago. I wish my Hermione was here. I wish you had never come. I wish I loved Susan as much as she deserved. Hermione wondered which ending he would have chosen, had he completed the sentence.

“I know,” she soothed. “Harry, tomorrow I'll be gone. She wouldn't have wanted to see you this way. And - and Susan doesn't deserve it. You were starting to let go, weren't you? You were starting to love her - and then I had to muck it all up by coming here.” Harry opened his mouth to defend her from herself, but she rushed onward. “Don't push her away, Harry. Don't let this ruin what you were building together. Promise me.” He tried to protest again, but she forestalled him, spearing him with her own dark, firelit gaze. “Promise me.”

There was a helpless look in his eyes, as he acquiesced to her request.

“I promise.”

“Thank you. Harry - ?” She spoke quickly, as he was turning away from her, then waited for him to complete his revolution and face her again. “Why didn't - why didn't the wards alert you when I came onto the property?”

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face, something feather-light caught in a spring zephyr.

“Because you're Hermione Granger,” he said simply. “Good night.” He swiveled up the stairs, using the finial as a pivot, in what must have been a habitual movement for him. She drank him in one last time, arranged the new pillow behind her head, and made herself close her eyes.

I am Hermione Granger.

She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

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11. Eleven

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

Feels like I travel, but I never arrive. I want to thrive, not just survive.

-Switchfoot, “Thrive”

Chapter Eleven:

Hermione was awakened by the curious sensation of something apparently walking across her face. She remained quite still, allowing her senses to provide feedback to her now conscious mind. There was the clatter and rustle of meal preparation in the kitchen, accompanied by the murmur of low voices from a Wireless. Low light filtered through the windows and glowed beyond her eyelids at an early morning angle. She could smell bacon. And her feet were cold.

“Jeannie!” came Harry's voice, an equal mixture of amused and chastising. Hermione's eyes shot open at the responding stream of toddler babble issued right next to her head. “You're disturbing Miss Granger.” The little girl's adorably round face, so close as to be almost out of focus, immediately became contrite, and the exploring fingers straightened and gentled to softly pat her cheek in apology. There was another incomprehensible parade of syllables, culminating in a repeated goo-nite, goo-nite, evidently an invitation to return to sleep.

“Well, it's too late for that, Miss Jean,” Harry responded, light and loving, appearing to understand every scrap of gibberish his daughter said. “You've already awakened her now, so why don't we invite her to breakfast?”

The little patting hand drummed a rhythm on her cheek, and Hermione struggled with the myriad of feelings that unfurled because of those baby fingers.

“Bik-fus?” Jeannie asked. “Bik-fus?” She pointed a finger toward the kitchen, and looked back at Hermione with a questioning smile. The expression on the little girl's face suddenly looked so much like the framed pictures that had once been in her parents' home - minus the dated clothing and the somewhat prominent teeth - that Hermione felt wetness on her cheeks before she even realized that she was crying. When Jeannie's little eyes grew somber with empathy, and her lower lip started to protrude, Hermione sat up decisively, dashing away the stubborn, sneaky tears.

“I'm okay, Jeannie. It's all right. I would love to have breakfast with you.”

Harry stood at the hob, managing a skillet full of eggs with one hand and directing bacon onto a plate with his wand, shirt tail out and hair still damp from his shower. His too-casual stance meant that he was pretending to ignore the exchange between herself and Jeannie, but was actually all too aware of it.

“Have a seat,” he nodded toward the table brusquely, as he dished up the food, and sent toast arcing over from the toaster to the rack. She chose a chair that was not one of the ones Susan and Harry had been using the night before, and watched with bemusement as Jeannie chose the most difficult way to sit down, climbing up and over the arm of her wooden high chair, before sitting in it and reaching for the tray, which rested behind the chair on two hinged arms.

Hermione assisted by lifting the tray up and over, until it was within reach of the toddler's dimpled arms, a move that brought a remonstrating and indignant,

“I do it,” from the little girl, as she settled the tray into place. Harry sighed.

“She's getting very independent. Doesn't ever want anyone to help her - ”

“ - even if that means it takes three times as long,” Susan finished for her husband upon entering the kitchen, pressed Ministry robes unfurling behind her. She was still fastening the catch on one of her hoop earrings.

“Good morning, love,” Harry smiled and bussed her lightly on the mouth. “Have time for breakfast?” Susan shook her head apologetically, even as he pressed toast into her hand.

“I have a meeting first thing. But I should be done by nine. So if you bring her by then, I'll available to help out… if there are any problems.” Harry's eyes flitted from Hermione to Susan, and he nodded, handing a plastic plate of eggs and toast to Jeannie, while Susan tucked a stray tendril back into her upswept hair.

“Bye, Jeannie-bean,” she sang, leaning down for a hug, utterly unmindful of the messy hands that dribbled crumbs on her robes. She nuzzled into the little girl's neck, until Jeannie giggled, pushing her away with a laughingly reproving,

“Mum-ma!”

The three adults in the room all seemed to freeze for a moment, with Susan pausing infinitesimally, and then faking cheeriness for Jeannie's sake. Harry's hands stilled on the spatula, and was so determinedly not looking at either one of them that he might as well have been staring. Hermione knotted her fingers into her lap, wondering if one could take oneself to another universe merely by wishing.

“I will see you later on, angel,” she said to the toddler. “We'll see you at the Ministry, yeah?” Her eyes were almost apologetic, as the question included both Harry and Hermione. The latter nodded absently, wondering how it could feel so much like an elbow to the solar plexus for a little girl that wasn't really hers to begin with to call someone else `mother'.

Harry twined his hand with Susan's, and walked her around the corner to the fireplace. Hermione heard a murmured exchange, another kiss, and then the familiar rush of flames. She caught a glimpse of Jeannie, studiously using her fingers to situate bites of egg on her fork prior to actually using the utensil, before lowering her gaze to the placemat in front of her, which blurred with her dazed and fatigued tears. She didn't even notice Harry reenter the room, until he set a plate in front of her and joined her at the table, which caused her to jolt visibly.

“You're too thin. You really should eat something.” Harry remarked blandly, pulling the marmalade toward him and spooning some onto his bread. Hermione felt herself flush as she caught sight of the bony wrists that hung out of her fraying, much Reparoed sleeves.

“Food's not always been easy to come by.”

“How's your head feeling this morning?”

“It's fine.”

“Any nausea?”

“Damn it, Harry! Don't you dare try to Heal me!” Tears clogged her voice, and she wasn't even sure that she understood why: only that she felt like she knew him, and he was treating her like some random patient, and their little girl was sitting in a high chair eating breakfast, and she was going to have to leave… Her outburst was unjust, and he would have been within his rights to say so, but he was just looking so sorrowfully at her that it made her heart constrict.

I am Hermione Granger.

She thought of those words, the ones he had given her, the last thing she had thought before falling asleep. She clung to them, to that knowledge, that one thing that lasted when everything else - Harry, Ron, Ginny, Mum, Dad, Luna - even her very universe, had been ripped away.

She jerked her chin up, her gaze violently colliding with his, as he reached out and took her hand. He seemed to read her as easily as he - or any version of him - always had.

“She was always one of the strongest people I'd ever known,” he said softly. “I stand by what I said last night. I think you're more like her than you know. I'm going to do whatever it takes to help you however I can.” She managed to force an audible expression of thanks through her clogged throat, as he squeezed her hand, his thumb skidding across her knuckles, and finished eating his breakfast.

“I'm going to take Jeannie over to the Burrow. Molly usually watches her during my shifts, if Susan's at work. You're welcome to use the shower upstairs. I'll be back in a bit, and we'll head over and see Luna.” The last part of his speech was almost a question; he looked inquiringly at her, as he wiped off Jeannie's face and hands. “Would you - would you want to see Ron? He and Charlotte - his wife - have a little house in Ottery St. Catchpole.”

The image of Ron, breaking through the Auror lines, in a steep dive that was a long shot effort to save his sister, flashed through her mind like it had occurred yesterday. She remembered the warmth of his hand atop hers, as she saw in his eyes feelings to which he would never give voice. She wondered for the thousandth time what had happened to him.

“No,” she replied apologetically, shaking her head in a jerky, uneven way. “This - this is hard enough. He doesn't need to know. And you - I don't want to hurt you anymore, if I can possibly help it. I'm - I'm incredibly sorry for all this.”

“Don't be,” he almost whispered. “I miss her every day, like there is part of me that is permanently gone. I didn't get to tell her good-bye… at least, not where she was aware of it. And we never got to share in the joy that is Jeannie. Getting to see you see her, and talk to her - that's a gift, Hermione.” He spoke her name carefully, reverently.

“I didn't get to say good-bye either… not until the - the other Harry came, looking for his Hermione.”

“Did it help?”

“Yeah…” she said, tentatively at first, and then with more certainty. “Yeah, it did. And I certainly never would have even known to try this, if he hadn't come. I wonder if he ever found her.”

“My falling hopelessly in love with you seems to be a recurring theme across universes,” he remarked with a melancholy smile, humor briefly brightening his olivine eyes. “Surely not all of them end tragically.” Her voice echoed his faintly, as a faint furrow appeared between her brows.

“Surely not…”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The generous folds of the nondescript gray cloak that swathed her head and body also muffled her hearing and cut off her peripheral vision. She kept her chin angled down, and tried to keep Harry in her line of sight, while walking several strides behind him. It was not easy, as he was stopped equally as often by people who knew him and by those who knew of him and just wanted to shake his hand. He was dressed unassumingly in Muggle street clothes, with his Healer's robes tucked into a leather messenger bag slung across his shoulders. Even so, he attracted attention without even trying. The fifth time he was greeted and she changed her trajectory so that she had stopped her progress without really stopping her motion, she wondered if perhaps Ministry security would detain her, thinking she was stalking the Boy Who Lived.

It wasn't until they arrived at the Department of Mysteries that she understood the two-fold purpose of her cloak. The Unspeakables wore a grey robe and hood not unlike the one she had donned. It appeared they remained hooded any time they left their department. As they approached the door that she still sometimes saw in dreams, she saw Susan waiting for them, a long slender bag in her hands.

“You made it.” There was more than slight relief in the other woman's voice. She held out the DMLE Shield-Charmed Evidence Pouch that contained Hermione's wand, safely getting it past the checkpoint at the entry, and Hermione took it gratefully.

Together, the three of them stepped through the nondescript doorway at the corridor's end, and Susan had barked out, “Reception,” almost before the Entrance Chamber had begun to spin. The door that flung itself open in response led them into a very innocuous looking waiting room, complete with ugly floral-upholstered furniture, where Susan showed her wand and her MLE badge, and asked for Luna Lovegood.

A moment later, the elfin blonde appeared from the Entrance Chamber, the gray cloak giving her an even stronger appearance of gliding.

“Susan! And Harry! Whatever are you doing here? Did the wrackspurt infestation expand beyond level Eight? I don't see how - the interns painted everything yellow.”

“We need to consult with you about something.” Almost imperceptibly, Susan's eyes flickered over to Hermione's shadow-shrouded form. Luna noticed the glance, but gave only the barest of outward signs.

“Of course. My office is this way on Tuesdays.” The former Ravenclaw led them to a nondescript door just beyond the reception desk, gestured them into a neglected-looking corridor, and clapped her hands three times. A door materialized in the wall, L. Lovegood, engraved in a brass plaque to one side.

“Looks like the wrackspurts left something on your hand,” Harry pointed out cheekily, his eyes drawn to the spot when she clapped.

“Don't be silly, Harry. Wrackspurt droppings are usually lilac in color. Rolf gave this to me.” She colored faintly as she looked at the quirkily fashioned diamond in a setting of what looked like metallic vines, on the fourth finger of her left hand. “He promised me a Snorkack expedition if I would marry him… so I said yes.”

“Seems like a fair exchange,” Harry said seriously.

“He put his foot down at taking my name though.”

“What's wrong with Scamander? `Snot such a bad handle.”

“You wouldn't say that if it were your last name. Harry Scamander?” The ease of their conversation struck Hermione as both unusual and enviable.

“You're right,” her best friend mused. “Sounds like some sort of awful sexually transmitted disease.”

Susan snorted, and muttered a mildly reproving, “Harry!” As Luna opened her door and ushered them in, Hermione tugged on Harry's sleeve surreptitiously.

“You speak Luna quite well.”

“It took years of study,” he affirmed softly, though it seemed harder for him to pull off a light-hearted tone with her than with Luna, to whom he heartily directed what he said next. “Well, congratulations to my favorite Eagle.” His fondness was evident in his voice.

“And give our regards to Rolf,” Susan added, moving to hug the smaller woman. Luna returned the gesture, and made as if to hug Harry as well, but she stopped short and coughed, waving her hand in front of her face as if to clear the air. “Your aura wants shampooing, Harry. I know you don't cleanse it as often as you should.”

“I've had some things come up.”

“I suppose those things have to do with the shade of Hermione that you brought with you?” The other three occupants of her office looked at each other with baffled surprise. Hermione pulled her hood back with one thin hand.

“I'm not a shade, Luna.” The Unspeakable regarded Hermione carefully, as if taking her measure.

“Well, then that makes you a bigamist, Harry Potter. Unless you've just figured out how to solidify the ethereal, in which case I think Burney Oglethorpe is going to want to talk to you. He hasn't been able to do it in the seventeen years he's been down here.”

“I'm Hermione Granger, but I'm from another universe. And it's really good to see you again, Luna.” She tried not to think of the gruesome last image she had of her friend, wanting to imprint instead the one she saw before her today: a serene, contented Luna, happily engaged.

“So, I'm dead in your universe then?” She seemed to assume its truth with amazing equanimity, while Hermione was busy being shocked at her perceptiveness. “I do hope you didn't have to witness it. That kind of shock makes one susceptible to colonies of Insidious Reaverfangs, you know.”

“Could you get us into the room? I mean, do you have access?”

“Yes, I can get you in. Not that you couldn't get Stubby Boardman to let you in, if I couldn't.” She first inclined her head at Harry as she spoke, and then she shook it, a few strands of her hair that had escaped her clip swishing behind her like wind-blown wheat. “I still don't understand how a rock star gets elected Minister.”

“It'd be easier if we involved as few people as possible,” Harry answered for Hermione, who was trying not to look as flummoxed as she felt, on hearing of “Stubby Boardman's” position in the Wizarding Government. “Considering how quiet your department enjoys keeping things, I would think that having to explain to the Wizarding public how Hermione is suddenly back with us would be … potentially problematic.”

“Not to mention the bigamy,” Luna added matter-of-factly.

“That too.” Harry shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“So, Hermione, what is it you are trying to accomplish here?”

“Life in my universe has become… untenable for me. Everyone I know is dead. Harry killed Voldemort, but his followers still managed to come into power. I - I tried… but it wasn't enough… I wasn't enough. I'm trying to find a new home. In a world where… someone's… circumstances might be different.” She felt the heat climb from her neck into her face, and she kept her gaze on the scrolled edge of Luna's desk.

“You have a crystal, don't you?” At Hermione's nod, Luna continued. “Then you don't really need me - or the Multiverse Room - at all. You would be at the mercy of the multiversal tide, but you would be able to move through universes without hindrance. You could stay in a universe indefinitely, if your crystal is deactivated, but not removed. Unless you're completing a thesis on the mating habits of Heliopaths, I'm not sure how much help I could be.”

“It's not good enough - having to depend on a necklace is not good enough! I've had everything taken from me. When I find the universe that needs me, I want to stay there, make it permanent.”

“There is no known way to - ”

“I want to change my Constant,” Hermione blurted, before Luna could finish. There was a long pause, a rather startled blink of Luna's strikingly light eyes the only outward sign of a response.

“That isn't possible.”

“I never would have thought I'd hear that come out of your mouth,” Hermione snorted bitterly.

“You could be right. Shall I rephrase? It's highly unlikely and has never been successfully accomplished… in this universe, anyway.” Harry and Susan exchanged somewhat befuddled glances, completely at sea.

“So it's been attempted?” Hermione had a sly expression, as she tried to pin Luna down within the constraints of her wording.

“There was a series of experiments…” Luna drew out slowly. Her hand trembled slightly on her desktop; she was having difficulty getting words out, and her brow crinkled up with strain. “I - “ Harry was out of his seat in the next moment, checking her pulse and her pupils, and casting a subtle Diagnostic spell on her with his wand, even as she tried to wave him away. “It's nothing, Harry… just - ”

“The enchantments are working, aren't they?” he asked grimly. “You're not supposed to be talking about this.”

“One of the hazards of being an Unspeakable. Although it's not quite as bad as drawing a shift with the Sanguinary Lepidopterae.” She took a deep breath, in an effort to recover herself, and then said, “It's usually quite painful… can be torturous even. There is a more than even chance that one's magic can be lost entirely.” At first, Hermione thought Luna was referring to the consequences of Unspeakables broaching confidential topics, but then she realized that the vagueness was intentional, a way to circumvent the restrictions. “Nothing has ever gone beyond creature testing. It was deemed too dangerous.”

“Creature testing?” Hermione wanted to work up some righteous indignation about that, but her idealism was much faded in the face of the struggle for survival.

“Mostly knarls or murtlaps. It had to be a creature with a magical signature, or it - ” Luna stopped again, and drew air in through her teeth to suppress pain. “The signature of a magical beast - the ones we experiment with, at least - is much weaker than the signature of a magical being. The results aren't conclusive, but - the animals were in so much pain that it only stands to reason that - “

“ - it would be worse for witches or wizards,” Hermione finished dully.

“It wasn't ever done successfully.” Luna rushed the words out, and then closed her eyes as she took a deep, steadying breath. Harry was watching her with prodigious concern.

“Perhaps that's because it's only ever been tried on creatures indigenous to this universe…rather than something or someone transient.”

“Conjecture.”

“When has that ever stopped you?”

The ghost of a smile danced across Luna's face. “Touche.”

Hermione pulled out the book and the notes that she and the other Harry had acquired on their covert operation into the Ministry. “I have some information from my universe. There could be something new in there. I tried to alter mine myself, but I couldn't do it. Maybe it was because I remained in my home universe… or maybe I had the magical theory wrong… or - ”

“Wait a minute,” Harry interrupted, leaning forward, one elbow propped on the narrow arm of his chair. “You already tried it? I've seen cases of magical accidents that temporarily nullified one of the lesser runes - it makes your magic go all wonky. I don't think you'd be able to remove a Constant, unless you had another rune ready to replace it - that is, if it could be done at all. It would have to be a - a transplant, really - an almost instantaneous swap.”

Hermione felt her blood run like ice through her veins, and she shivered. Had she been so bent on her course of action that she could have made such a potentially lethal mistake?

“What - what do you think would happen, if you ripped out a Constant?” She asked. Luna was flipping through the leather-bound portfolio, having donned a pair of reading glasses that were blindingly green, lenses and all.

“There is no way to know for sure. But it could be almost anything - removal of the Constant could be the key to completely dismantling one's ability to perform magic. It could kill you. It could transform you into something else altogether.”

There was a moment of dense silence in the little office. Harry was watching her with a measured look, a look that she definitely recognized, even in a different time, a different universe. There was some comfort in the things that did remain the same.

“I want to know how you did it. I want to know everything I can know about the theory of transplanting a Constant. I won't try it until I find a place that I want to stay, but if I only get one chance, I want to be as informed as possible.”

“That should be possible…” Luna allowed. “Before you go, may I make a record of your magical signature? We can catalog your Constant, and map your universe.” Neither woman noticed Harry straighten in his chair, as though he'd just been hit with unexpected inspiration, although Susan shot him a wary glance.

“Be sure you put warning labels on it,” Hermione muttered, not really joking, as she submitted to the spell. “Lucius Malfoy is Minister, and is intent on subjugating anyone who isn't a Pureblood.”

“Naturally,” Luna said absently, Accioing a bit of parchment from a sheaf on her bookshelf and making several notations with the quill that she pulled from from her updo. Hermione wondered if she knew that a segment of her pale hair had been stained with ink.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Less than fifteen minutes later, Luna was escorting them back through the waiting area, pressing Hermione's portfolio back into her hands. It had been duplicated back in Luna's office, and several sheets of parchment had also been added to the original. Hermione tucked it away carefully, pulling her hood back over her curls.

“Thank you for everything,” she told the Unspeakable sincerely. Luna smiled equably in return, as she ushered them into the Entrance.

“What are multiversally alternate equivalents of previously deceased friends for?” A laugh, like a measure of silvery melody, escaped Hermione's lips unbidden. “The Chamber of the Veil,” Luna added, addressing the spinning doors in an authoritative voice. Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but the Ravenclaw forestalled her. “This will give you an open enough area that is sufficiently private to change universes.” A faintly nostalgic smile had drifted across Harry's face as Hermione had laughed, but at Luna's last words, it vanished as though it had been hexed off.

“Exit,” Susan called out abruptly, causing her husband's brow to furrow in concerned query. “I've got to get back to work,” she said, almost apologetically. “And I think you need,” she pressed his hand, “to say good-bye to Hermione without your anxious and slightly jealous wife hovering over your shoulder.” She laughed a bit at herself, but her eyes were soft with genuine emotion and soon mirrored in Harry's.

“Merlin's beard, I love you,” he whispered, as he pressed a kiss into her hair. “I'll head straight to work after this, so I'll see you at home tonight, yeah?” Susan gave his hand a parting squeeze, as she nodded, and then strode out of the second door that had opened, into the black-tiled Ministry corridor.

Luna led them into the vast empty room, the only features the stone stadia seating and the archway, its curtain undulating slightly with unfelt wind. Hermione's thoughts grew troubled as she remembered this place: remembered the purple flare that was one of the last things she'd seen, remembered the feeling of her blood roaring in her ears as they'd dueled Death Eaters, dueled Lucius Malfoy… Harry was gawping at every corner of the vast room in amazement. Luna was evidently trying to give them some privacy; she had moved over to the arch, and was taking a reading with her wand.

“Is that the Veil?” he said, with undisguised incredulity. “I thought it might be one of those outlandish stories you hear. Luna's fancies are fairly tame compared to some of the rumors you hear about this place - I never thought - ” he broke off suddenly at the shadowed look in Hermione's eyes, and grew somber. “You've been here before.”

“Yes. Harry led us here. He'd been… misinformed about something. It was a trap; there was a battle. I was hit by a purple flame curse… nearly died. And Harry lost - ”

“Lost what?” But Hermione shook her head, forcing herself out of her reverie. Stubby Boardman is the Minister for Magic.

“It doesn't matter now. Thank you for everything you've done. I hope I - I haven't made things too awful for you.” She pressed her lips together tightly, willing herself not to cry.

“How could you make things awful, when you light up everything you touch? You always have.” She wanted to point out the absurdity in thinking that anyone as gloomy and damaged as she was could light up anything. But he took her hands in his, turned them palms up, and lifted them to his lips. She closed her eyes to weather the force of the emotion that buffeted her, and when she looked down, she saw that he'd closed his eyes too. Slowly, he pulled on her trapped hands and drew her into an embrace. “I'm glad I got to meet you,” he whispered with careful emphasis into her ear.

“Take care of Jeannie… for - for both of us. And love Susan.” She swallowed the clog of tears in her throat, and slowly backed away from him, holding onto his hands for as long as she could. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. When his arms had fallen back to his sides, she withdrew the chain from under her cloak, and sighed a broken, barely audible, “Adjicio Universum,” as she tapped the crystal with her wand.

She did not break her gaze from his, as the corners of her mouth tipped upward in the faintest of smiles. She started to move one arm, raising her hand in farewell…

…and then she was gone.

The curtain in the archway snapped suddenly, but as quickly as Harry looked up, had resumed its placid billowing. Luna was still in front of it, but was watching him with clear sympathy, and not a little respect.

“You are a good person, Harry Potter.”

“So they tell me,” he said sardonically, unable to keep his shoulders from slumping under the weight of the emotional turmoil and dredged-up grief.

“Do you have a date in mind for your trip?” she asked placidly. He could not keep his gaze from jerking up to meet hers, his surprised guilt clear in his blazing green eyes.

“How do you - ” Instead of finishing his question, he sighed. “Why do I even ask?” She tilted her head to blink calmly at him, causing the feathered end of her quill to dangle haphazardly over one ear. She tapped one foot on the stone chamber floor, the very picture of patient waiting. “I'll go as soon as you have one of those crystals set to her universe. And as soon as you can explain to me the proper procedure…”

“To do what?” There was a gleam in her sky eyes that suggested that she already knew, but wanted to make him say it out loud.

“I want to relieve Minister Lucius Malfoy of his Constant. For her.”

Luna smiled back at him, her demeanor decidedly neither vague nor outlandish.

“I'll Owl you first thing in the morning.”

Document created with wvWare/wvWare version 1.2.7

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12. Twelve

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

For I am finding out that love will kill and save me.

-Trading Yesterday, “The Beauty and the Tragedy”

Chapter Twelve:

Time bled in rushing torrents, blurred like smudged pencil, meandered, raced, marched, danced… Hermione Granger slid from one universe to the next the way a competitive diver knifes into the waiting water. Waiting… there was a lot of that too. She was in the midst of a lengthy stretch where she remained out of phase, thus becoming a spectator in the universe, a watcher unable to participate in any way, or effect any change. She strangled her impatience with desperate hands, and strove to bide her time, jotting any new bits of useful information into the cramped margins of Luna's tattered book.

In one universe, Harry was ensconced in a meteoric rise through the Ministry, while she taught at Hogwarts; they were seemingly content with thrice yearly get-togethers. In another, Harry had been sorted into Slytherin; the two of them had apparently had a stormy relationship across House lines that had ended badly, and they were still trying to get over it. In a third, she had been sorted differently - into Ravenclaw. Harry had never known her as more than a passing acquaintance, and had defeated Voldemort in the Hall of Prophecies at age twenty, with the help of Ron, Neville, and Katie Bell. She was in some universes for only minutes, some for days. The passage of time, as counted by those affected by it, was somewhat harder to pin down, but Hermione was fairly certain that she had not stayed in any one universe longer than a week or so.

In her ninth consecutive out-of-phase universe - if one did not count the lone universe where she had been in phase for the longest thirteen seconds of her life, during what had to be an Ice Age - she soon found herself moving through the Forbidden Forest toward Hogwarts. She had noticed that Godric's Hollow and Hogwarts seemed to be focal points for Harry - places that he had virtually always had contact with or ended up in. The house in Godric's Hollow was a ruin, a skeletal corpse of what had once been a home, its battle scars still quite apparent. She did not linger in that haunted place, instead rematerializing just off school grounds.

As she neared the edge of the forest, she noted a group of people collected on the green, everyone's attention on a central cluster. She could see some of the last straggling leaves that clung to the gnarled branches finally surrender to the wind; she could hear its mournful whistle through the tree tops. But her hair remained unruffled, her skin untouched by the half-hearted light of the weak autumn sun, as she moved forward, unable to escape from her own alienness in this universe that was not her own.

At the spot where the trees gave grudging way to lush green lawn, she stopped, frozen in disbelief once she recognized the configuration of the people, the very aura of a solemn assembly, the faces that made up those gathered. Oh my God.

Professor McGonagall stood authoritatively, facing everyone else, her dress robes immaculate, her face somewhat more lined than the last time Hermione had seen her alive. She could see Ron, Ginny, all the Weasleys, Remus, Tonks, Luna… her parents. She felt her throat closing up, wondered if she could die suffocating on her own unshed tears. For, there, standing before their erstwhile Head of House stood Harry and … and herself.

The mirror version of her face was glowing, simply radiant with incandescent happiness, yet the shine in her eyes was due to more than just joy. She was gowned in an elegant set of ivory dress robes, and her hair was twisted up and crowned with flowers, though the wind had teased out a few wayward strands. And Harry - resplendent in dress robes so dark a shade of green that they were practically black - stood facing her, holding her hands in his, with a look of stunned and rapturous bewilderment on his face, as if he'd just been granted every wish he'd ever had… and could not quite bring himself to believe it. Her mum's hand was tucked into her father's elbow; they were both drinking in the scene as though they'd been through a long dry spell. Ron's grin threatened to split his face; he turned only to press a kiss to the top of Luna's blond head, where she was snuggled securely within his embrace.

“We are gathered here today as witnesses to the union of Harry James Potter and Hermione Jean Granger in marriage, in accordance with the laws of Wizarding Great Britain.” The aging professor's face was stoic, but there was a quiver in her voice that she could not repress, and her eyes were rather softer than was their wont. “Any wedding is a special event, of course. This one would be more special than most, simply because of the nobility and the character of the two parties being wed. Beyond that, however, is the great love of the two people involved: a love that did not wither when most said that hope was gone, a love that may have despaired at times, but never surrendered, a love that persevered in the face of incredible odds, traversed across universes, and ultimately triumphed.” There was a note of proud victory in McGonagall's voice. “And I believe I speak for all here, when I say that we are privileged and honored to be able to witness this moment, to see the years of grief be transformed this way, to see this very spot consecrated again, not by grief and pain and loss, but by hope and unity and joy.”

There was a chorus of sniffles, including the party to be married, as well as one other that nobody heard. Hermione, the spectator, reached up to dash the wetness on her cheeks away with both hands, even as Harry moved to gently swipe tears from beneath the lovely eyes of his bride. There was such a look of ineffable peace on his face, the look of someone who'd been gifted a dream long deferred. At last… his eyes seemed to say. And that was enough.

Hermione's heart had begun to pound slowly and painfully when McGonagall spoke of universes. That coupled with the look on Harry's face, the way that nobody present seemed to be able to stop weeping and smiling simultaneously, the way Hermione's parents looked at her… It all seemed to add up. Hermione did not doubt that this situation could have happened in many universes, perhaps with nearly undetectable differences - her own experience with the brown-eyed Harry had illustrated that much - but, though she could not have rationally explained it, somehow she was convinced - she knew - that this was the Harry she had encountered in her sad little cell in Godric's Hollow, the Harry that had convinced her to attempt this quest, the Harry that had restored hope to her bitter and lonely heart.

And he had found her. He had come to the end of his quest. He had won.

Harry did not retake Hermione's left hand in his right, once he had dabbed at her tears. Instead he cupped her cheek with an open palm, and looked at her with so much naked emotion that the watching Hermione found it hard not to sob aloud

“I still can't believe I found you,” was all he managed before he had to pause and collect himself. “The Headmistress makes it sound very noble and … and very Gryffindor, but - ” He stopped again, and swallowed. “But there was really no choice at all. I love you. I love you so much, and I never stopped, Hermione, not ever. Not even when all conventional wisdom told me the love was impossible. If there was even the smallest chance that I could find you, it would be worth it - it would be worth any price I had to pay.” Hermione turned her head ever so slightly, planting the ghost of a kiss on the palm of his hand. “The multiverse has seen fit to return us to each other.” Blinking, he collected himself to speak more formally, in a manner more consistent with wedding vows. “I do not take that lightly. You will have all of me, my heart, my soul, my love - for as long as I live. I do so swear.”

Hermione took a deep, shuddering breath, and gently lowered his hand, so that they were joined once again by a double clasp.

“You came for me once - long ago, in a girls' bathroom.” A ripple of light laughter drifted through the assembled. Harry's reminiscing smile was misty. “You've saved my life countless times between then and now. Even in the despair and fear that I felt when I watched Hogwarts burn in a foreign universe, I had no doubt that you would come for me again, that if there was a way, you would find it, and you would come for me. And you upheld my faith in you as you always have. I love you. I loved you when I was twelve years old, and I love you now. We have been separated long enough. I want to continue on the rest of our journey together. You have my whole heart, my unswerving devotion, and my steadfast love, for as long as I live. I do so swear.”

Professor McGonagall called for the exchange of the rings. Hermione was too far away to see them properly, but she did see Remus gesture toward their hands as they slid the wedding bands into place, whispering something in Tonks' ear that she obviously found both interesting and touching.

“By the power bequeathed to me as the Headmistress of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and under the authority of the Ministry of Wizarding Great Britain, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” My wife, Harry mouthed, his eyes sparkling like backlit emeralds. “You may kiss your bride, of course.”

He took Hermione's face in both hands, the windblown tendrils of her hair tangling around his fingers, and they just lost themselves in each other's gaze for a long moment.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I know,” she replied with a tremulous smile.

Then, and only then, did their lips come together, in a kiss that was just as much sweet sacrament as the solemn oaths of the preceding ceremony. Ron whistled shrilly, as some of his brothers cheered, and there was much laughter and many rounds of well-wishing.

Hermione watched it all, undetected and undetectable, one hand splayed at the base of her neck, a smile on her face and tears lacquering her cheeks. Part of her heart was rejoicing, remembering the bleak look of sadness, the hunger and longing, in Harry's eyes - knowing how much he loved and missed Hermione, because she too had felt that raw and acid absence, the agony of loss. And now she was able to see him as he was meant to be, the anguish erased from his face, hopeful, happy, whole. The rest of her was occupied with a painful longing to experience what clearly radiated between the newlyweds.

The small group meandered casually up to the castle, Hermione and Harry hand in hand, but still chattering animatedly with those closest to them. The visiting Hermione drifted through the knots of people, as solitary as a drop of water wending its way down a pane of glass. She smiled at Ron and Luna's quietly rambling conversation, cast wistful eyes on her parents' lovingly exchanged glances, and felt her heart threaten to shatter completely with every beat.

School was surely in session, Hermione thought, but the Headmistress must have threatened her students with life and limb, for there had been no sign of anyone on the Hogwarts grounds. Her sharp eyes caught flips of cloaks around corners, heard hints of giggles and whispers carried on the castle drafts, but they were keeping their distance, as the wedding party and guests made their way up to McGonagall's office.

The room guarded by the gargoyle's watchful eyes was rather less cluttered than Hermione remembered it. She was pretty sure it could even be considered austere on any other day, but on this day, this day, it was garlanded with swaths of pale silk and fragrant flowers, with Candlelight Charms flickering at intervals throughout. It was a look of understated elegance, and Hermione found herself thinking for one swooping moment, It's exactly what I would choose, if I - before realizing that she, more or less, had chosen it. Right, she thought, rolling her eyes at herself.

Then, suddenly she froze, feeling absurdly like a student being caught out after hours by a Prefect. The noise of the party had risen to a dull roar, and Hermione felt sure that certain Charms were at work, because while the room was filled pretty close to capacity - one arc in the circle taken up by a crescent-shaped table on which rested a many-tiered cake and a prismatic punch bowl - it did not feel crowded. And in the midst of all the motion and noise… the shade of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington was looking at her.

Not just `in her direction', but at her… she was sure of it.

He drifted in her direction, and the mixture of indignation and curiosity overpowered her instinct to flee. Unintentionally, her eyes sought out Harry, who was talking to Ron and Remus, and was flushed with laughter. Ghosts can see those who are out of phase! Harry had told her that - the memory screeched into her mind abruptly and without finesse. She couldn't help the flash of irritation at herself that surged up within her.

“What manner of sorcery is this?” Sir Nicholas asked her, talking to her out of the side of his mouth. “Are you Apparition? Phantasm? You are certainly like no ghost I've ever seen. Your likeness to the new Mrs. Potter is rather unsettling, to be sure. I would worry that you bore some nefarious plot against the Savior of the Wizarding World, but I doubt you're of any true danger, seeing that you appear to invisible to the living in this room, and you just put your elbow through that Sneakoscope.”

“I'm - I'm not from this universe. I am a version of Hermione Granger from another reality. I - I certainly mean Harry no harm.” She swiped her fingertips through a lapis lazuli globe depicting the positions of the stars in the night sky. “As you can see, I could do him no harm, even if I wanted to.”

Sir Nick followed her gaze across the room. Harry's wife had rejoined him, bringing cups of punch, and he looped his other arm firmly around her waist.

“And why are you here then?”

“I know him. This - this Harry, I mean. I met him once. He - he changed my life. I saw the wedding outside. When I - when I realized that it was him… I just wanted to see. I'm - I'm so glad that he found her.”

“You're the one, then? The Miss Granger who helped him figure out a way to find her?” He cocked his head, rather grotesquely, in the direction of the newlyweds, his smile off-center above his ruff.

“He - he told you about that?” Hermione couldn't help the confusion that crept into her tone. Harry had never been one of those gregarious souls who volunteered a detailed story for a wide audience. But Sir Nick had the grace to look mildly ashamed of himself.

“Ah yes - well… He was telling her, Miss Lovegood, and Mr. Weasley about - well, about you - in the Gryffindor Common Room after they got back. I… I was, er, listening.” He leaned closer to her, reaching out to place a hand on her arm, a touch that would have been icy could she have felt it. “You have done a beautiful thing, Miss Granger. Make no mistake.” The look in his eyes was almost proud. “I have not seen a smile like that on his face for a very long time.”

Hermione looked toward Harry at Sir Nicholas's words, and realized with a start, and a cold chill down her spine, that he was looking in their direction. She tried to imagine what he would be seeing: Nearly Headless Nick conversing animatedly with … no one. She was subsequently quite surprised, when his eyes flickered unerringly on her position, and his eyes blazed with sudden knowledge and intensity. He leaned over to whisper something in the ear of his bride, disengaged himself, and began to walk toward them, dress robes billowing decisively in his wake.

“Sir Nicholas,” he greeted the Gryffindor ghost in a cheery, off-hand way that fooled no one. His gaze was fixed on the empty space adjacent, and it was with difficulty that he tore his eyes away. “And who are we talking to?”

“I'd wager you know precisely with whom I converse.” The shade's voice was overly formal, but his eyes were twinkling with amusement. “Or you would not have come over here.”

Harry lit up, and Hermione's heart clenched with yearning, as though Sir Nick had reached through her breastbone and grasped it in his chilly hand.

“Hermione.”

She beamed and nodded, uncaring that he could not see her. It was enough that he knew she was there.

“How did - how did you know I was here?” She asked, and Nearly Headless Nick relayed the question. Harry told her how he had recovered his Hermione with another Sir Nicholas's aid.

“That - seeing Sir Nick see her, watching him talk to her, even though it looked like there was nobody there. Well, it hasn't been all that long ago, but even if it had… I don't think it's something I'll ever forget. And I just - I looked over here, and it looked like that again. It could have just as easily been someone else, I suppose, but…” he shrugged, grinning sideways. “I just had a feeling. And you're not just any Hermione, are you? You're her, the one who helped me break into the Department of Mysteries, who helped me charm the crystal with my Constant and bring her home.”

“I - I did,” she said, falteringly. Again, Sir Nicholas acted as the intermediary between them.

Harry pressed his lips together tightly, and for a moment, his eyes seem to search the high corners of the Headmistress's office.

“Thank you,” he said, at length, looking at her with enough intensity as though he could actually see her. “I - I was trying to think of - of something eloquent to say, but - ” he shrugged apologetically. “I couldn't have found her without you.” His gaze tripped away again, seeking out and lingering over his radiant bride. “And - and you left,” he noted, suddenly turning his attention back toward her. “I'm glad. I wasn't sure you would.”

“I don't think I would have, maybe not ever, if it weren't for you. You - you showed me that such a thing was even possible. And I thank you for that.”

“So, now you're a wanderer?” His eyes lit up above his crinkled smile, a smile of camaraderie. He has been where I am, she thought suddenly. Maybe that means one day I can be where he is.

“Just passing through…” she quipped, as she saw Harry beckon someone their way with a tilt of his head. She knew without turning that her alternate self was joining them, and she watched raptly as the shining happiness in Harry's eyes took on an almost incandescent glow.

“Hermione's here…” he murmured, his lips barely brushing the shell of his wife's ear. There was a momentary flash of confusion in her dark eyes, before she noted Sir Nick's proximity and put the pieces together.

“The one who helped you… brought you to me?” She didn't wait for Harry's affirmative response, but turned to the empty space with effusive gratitude. “Thank you . So much. Words are so inadequate. I can't ever - there's nothing that can repay - “

“It's Harry. How could I do otherwise?” Sir Nicholas spoke the noiseless words aloud.

“Still, it's meant the world to us both. You've given us… everything.”

And a tiny flicker of something kindled again in Hermione's heart, a drive, a thirst, that had long been squelched by the heavy sense of failure, the loss of friends and family, and the hopelessness of her vengeful quest against her world. Kicking against the goads… she thought of Ginny's words. Part of her was ashamed that it seemed so easy for her to lose sight of who she was, and part of her marveled that it was this Harry - yet again - who continued to be instrumental in redirecting her attention to that.

For the first time, since she had left the lively cottage in Godric's Hollow where Harry and Susan Potter lived, she felt like she had a purpose and a presence, even here and out of phase. She had helped them, when she thought she was long past being of any use to Harry or the Order or the Light.

“You're welcome.” She responded with simplicity and as much sincerity as she could infuse into her voice. “I would do it again without a second thought.” There was a beat of silence, and she allowed herself to study the happy couple one last time. Merlin willing… she thought. “And now I really should be moving on.”

Both of them erupted in protests, but Hermione would not be swayed. She really had no further desire to move around invisibly at her own wedding reception, with a ghost for a translator. And she had felt it, that trigger, like a switch within her that had flipped when she saw the fruits of her labors in the happiness of Harry and his bride -- she could do this. She made sure to especially thank Sir Nicholas for all his help, and with a final unseen wave, more for her benefit than anyone else's, she moved through the heavy stone wall and thick tapestries until she was back on the castle grounds.

For reasons that she could not explain , even to herself, she went back to Godric's Hollow, ambling along the lane until she came to a stone bridge that crossed a rocky, burbling stream and led out of the village. She was careful not to actually stand on the bridge itself, but sat down cross-legged on the bank, and waited. She could always jump-start a shift herself, she supposed, but she worried about how much closer to her home universe that might take her.

She curled up on her side in the grass that was still damp from an earlier rain. It did not soak into her clothes, however, and neither did her skin react to the chill that sharpened as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. Knowing no one would see her, she took out her wand and Luna's book, and began to study, her agile mind trying to fill in those remaining holes in the multiverse theory. She wondered yet again how she was going to adjust her Constant to guard against being torn away from whatever universe she adopted as her own.

And then she felt it. The faintest hint of movement, a barely perceptible flicker on the periphery of her vision. A shift was imminent. She tucked her book and wand away safely, and inhaled a deep breath, steeling herself for the motion to come.

A shriek of panic suddenly ripped its way from her throat, as the ground gave way beneath her. The air whipped audibly past her ears as she plummeted, and then her breath was stolen away entirely, as she plunged into icy cold water. Her feet hit bottom and she ricocheted back toward the surface, but her upward movement was halted abruptly, as the edge of the portfolio strapped beneath her clothing snagged in a tangle of underwater branches. She protested, and a stream of bubbles blew upward in the swift current. Wand still in her pocket, her Bubblehead Charm was sub-par and leaky, but it bought her several precious seconds as she struggled to free her belongings.

She gave the bag one final violent jerk, and it tore loose, one strap completely disconnected, but now clutched tightly in her hands. She kicked her feet to propel herself up, just as her Bubblehead failed entirely and cold water rushed once again around her face. She had barely had time to break the surface and fill her lungs with precious oxygen, and no time at all to dash the river from her eyes, when something quite heavy landed right on top of her, shoving her back under the water. There was a wrenching pain at the junction of her neck and shoulder.

She flailed wildly, seemingly encumbered with entirely too many limbs, and surfaced again, spluttering and choking, barely catching the dangling broken strap of the leather-bound portfolio as it began to float away.

“What the hell?” She rasped, spitting out water, struggling to see, as a dark and clearly human figure floundered next to her. From the sounds of it, the person appeared nearly as half-drowned as she, and she managed to grasp the edge of his or her collar and pull them closer together. Her shoulder muscles protested, and she bit back a moan. “You nearly drowned me.” She reached for her wand, as she treaded water, hoping against hope that it was still secured in her pocket, snorting a soggy sigh of relief when her numb fingers closed around it.

“I heard you scream. I was trying to save you.” It was a man's voice, though blurred by water inhalation and coughing.

“Not that I don't appreciate it, but jumping into a river blind is not the wisest of ideas.

The antique-styled lamp at each end of the bridge seemed very far away, and Hermione marveled that in this universe, the charming little stream that tripped over river stones was a much larger body of water cut much deeper into the earth. Hoping that the proximity of the wizarding village meant that she would not have to Obliviate the person who had so unceremoniously landed on her head, she lit the tip of her wand with a whispered Lumos.

“Sorry,” the person was saying, a somewhat snide tone in his voice insinuating that he was not, in fact, sorry. “That's the only way I can jump into rivers.”

She could not stop the gasp that flew through her parted lips, as a wet and shivering man was illuminated in the blue-white light of her uplifted wand. His dark hair lay lank on his forehead and was dripping into his eyes, which were grayish-white and clouded over. His gaze was just slightly off, directed somewhere over her shoulder, rather than at her. His name was a breathy whisper, escaping before she could stop it.

“Harry…”

TBC - We are on the home stretch, folks. Just another chapter or two to go! Thanks so much to those who have faithfully stuck with this story. You may leave a review on your way out, if you like.

--lorien829

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13. Thirteen

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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Is it safe? Is it safe to land? `Cause I'm not going far on an empty heart.

-Jars of Clay, “Safe to Land”

Chapter Thirteen:

Somehow amid their heavy breathing and the splashes caused by their flailing limbs, he heard her shocked gasp of recognition. His demeanor subtly changed; faster than she could say, he had a wand out and aimed in her general direction. The angle canted slightly, but even as she tried to control her noises, he had adjusted his aim to align perfectly with her. A muttered oath escaped his lips, and he couldn't stop the wand from vibrating with the force of his shaking hand.

“Expelliarmus!” The spell was not chorused entirely in unison; his was a heartbeat ahead of hers, and her wand soared out of her hand. He managed to catch it with an adroitness that recalled summer days astride a broom and glints of fleeting gold.

“Harry, stop! It's me. It's me. Give me my wand.” Her babbling was nonsensical; she knew that, but couldn't keep from spewing words at him. It's me? If I'm here, in phase, then he most likely has no idea who I am. How long have I been gone? Was I ever here?

“I don't know you.” The harshness in his voice was mitigated somewhat by his chattering teeth.

“Someone who would never intend you any harm. If you'll give me my wand, I can get us out of the water.”

“I can get us out of the water.” His words were short, knee-jerk, defensive.

“And land us where?” She strove to keep her voice gentle, yet could still see the tightening of his lips in the weak light of the crescent moon. Without further comment, he thrust her wand back at her, just a bit off, but the way he oriented himself using his other senses was nothing short of remarkable. Mimicking his silence, she modified a Levicorpus to whisk them back onto the bank, and he had cast Drying Charms over both of them before she could even register the biting wind. “Thank you for saving me,” she offered, once the silence had gotten beyond awkward. He snorted derisively.

“I didn't save you.”

“But you have.”

“Who are you?” The frustration was back in his voice, and she realized how hard it probably was to have to doubt the veracity of everything around you.

“My name is Hermione Granger.” She had been deciding that he did not know her, had never known her. His other senses were honed too sharply; if he'd known her, he would have recognized her voice, and he clearly did not.

“Are you from the media?” His voice was so very wary that she wanted to laugh.

“No, I'm not. But I do know you, Harry Potter.”

“That's not so special. Everyone thinks they know me. Thanks for getting me out of the water.” His upper body moved jerkily, rotating back toward the town, as his feet carefully searched for purchase on his next step. He aimed his wand at the ground, casting a spell that she did not know that would act - she assumed - the same way a cane did for a Muggle.

“Wait!” The word tumbled from her mouth before she meant it to, because when he turned back, she realized that she had nothing to say to him. “I've … I've got nowhere to stay in town. Do you - do you know a place?” She could have torn out her own tongue, cringing at the desperately casual tone in her voice. His eyes may have been clouded and inexpressive, but there was a sardonic, knowing tilt to his mouth that irritated her.

“There's a bookshop in town. The witch who runs it lets rooms on the two floors above it.” He offered this information with an air of reluctance.

“That's where you live?” Dammit, dammit, dammit, she chastised herself. She could see the tension evident in every sinew of his body. Too eager, too ingratiating. He does not know you, Granger!

“No.”

Most people might have added a scrap of explanation: but she's a good friend of mine; I live on the outskirts of town; my school chum stayed there once. But apparently, Harry Potter had never been `most people'… in any universe. The silence stretched out, long and exceedingly uncomfortable. Hermione felt the blood heating her cheeks, the fact that he could not see her notwithstanding.

“Just head for the center of town. It's right across from the pub, and next door to the apothecary. You can't miss it.” These words were called back over his shoulder, with an attempt at off-handed friendliness that did not fool her at all.

“So that's it? You're just leaving me here?” She winced again, as he pivoted slowly back towards her on one heel. Her mouth had evidently decided to just completely leave her brain out of the decision making process.

“You are in possession of all of your faculties, aren't you? I don't understand why you would need any help in returning to the village.” His voice was all haughty annoyance. He almost sounds like Malfoy, she thought, with a bit of distaste. And yet, there was something there, hidden in the depths of his clouded eyes, slinking behind the irritated mask - something that she recognized, that called out to her as fundamentally Harry. Somehow she knew that, despite what he wished to publicly project to the contrary, he was still Harry. It was this faint glimmer of something that kept her from using the crystal right then, washing her hands of this alien universe and this sad, angry man.

She straightened herself, mustered her dignity as best she could, and quietly said, “I would like to walk back to town with you, Harry.”

He hesitated, and she could see the slightest bit of relaxation in his posture, a chink in the diamond-hard Protego shield he kept around himself. He also let out the sigh of one much put upon.

“Fine.” He surrendered with ill grace. She put herself near his elbow, hoping to be able to catch him if he stumbled, but tried not to encroach on his personal space. The sound of the river faded behind them, as they ambled along slowly, Harry's wand constantly scanning the ground before him. “So, you say you know me. How is it that I don't know you?” His tone was deceptively casual; he was trying to catch her in her lie.

“That is a very long story.” She tried to laugh, but it came out with a bitter, discordant note. She felt, rather than saw, the curious glance he threw in her general direction.

“I've got time.” His tone sounded just as acrid as hers. Hermione felt a pang of sympathy for him. The Wizarding world was not known for being understanding of its heroes or accepting of their humanity. She wondered what it had done to a handicapped victor.

“Your name is Harry James Potter,” she replied, keeping her voice cool and level. “You started to Hogwarts in 1991. You were in Gryffindor house, and were the youngest Seeker in 100 years. You love treacle tart… your favorite color is green…” She began slowing down, trying to think of things that had the best chance of remaining static, preferences that might have stayed the same no matter the altered circumstances of this universe. But he cut her off.

“You could have seen any of that in any of the articles before or after the War. You could have seen it in any of the news coverage they plaster everywhere, every time another attempt to fix my eyesight fails. They really are profoundly unoriginal. And none of that tells me why I don't know you anyway.”

“My name is Hermione Granger. And in another - in another universe, Ron Weasley and I were your very best friends.”

There was the barest of hitches in his gait to go along with the sardonic twist of his mouth.

“I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my stalker is a nut job. I was the best in my year in Defense,” he added in warning. “And I could still hold my own fairly well, if it came down to that.”

“I'm not crazy. There are multiple universes and multiple versions of ourselves. The Unspeakables have a room in the Department of Mysteries plotting them. I'm from a different one, where we were… friends.” She cleared her throat roughly to remove the tight strained feeling. “I've been… traveling for a while, and I've met several different versions of you, as well.” He cut his eyes toward her reflexively, but seemed to accept her story with relative equanimity. The Multiverse room itself would be easy enough to verify, she supposed.

“Are you an Unspeakable then? Doing research on the Boy Who Lived?” He seemed determined to think the worst of her.

“No!” She wanted to stomp her foot in frustration. “I was your friend - I am your friend. The Harry in my universe was killed, even as he killed Voldemort. And then the world went to hell… so… I left.”

“And you ran away - I assume you're not a Gryffindor?” There was a odd, savage note in his voice. “Why would you run from a fight?”

“I was too in Gryffindor, thank you very much. And I left because I had nothing left to fight for.”

Harry huffed air out through his nose, and shook his head. “Wish I'd known that was an option,” he muttered, half to himself.

“Did you - you said there was a War. You were the Boy Who Lived. That much is at least consistent. Did you defeat him then?”

“I did.” There was no pride or satisfaction in his voice, just the barest confirmation of facts.

“And… Ron?”

“He's been my best mate since that first day on the Hogwarts Express. Still is.” His gaze grew momentarily fond and distant.

“So, it was just… just the two of you, then? At the end?”

The reminiscent expression on his face abruptly changed, becoming stony and closed.

“We were the ones who were left.” His words were cryptic, and Hermione knew there was another layer of meaning that she was missing. The scant amount of camaraderie they had dredged up between them seemed quite gone. The lights of Godric's Hollow were starting to come into view; she could see the dim outlines of the first few houses. Someone else stood with them, she thought, someone who is no longer here.

“So, what changed for you? Why didn't you go to Hogwarts here?” His voice was peremptory, and she got the feeling he was asking without really caring what her answer was.

“I don't know. Maybe I was never born, or I died young, or was a Muggle. If my alternate ever did exist, she's not here now. If she were, you wouldn't know I was here at all. You wouldn't be able to see, hear, or touch me…”

“Two out of three's not bad, right?” He interrupted her, with another humorless laugh, and she realized belatedly what she'd said.

“What happened…” she asked gently. “To your sight, I mean.” She hastily tacked on, “if you don't mind my asking.”

He sighed, indicating that he very much did mind, and shoved his free hand into his pocket. “Voldemort was dead.” He said it with the air of a bored storyteller who had repeated the same tale many times. “One by one, the Death Eaters began to fall, incapacitated by their Dark Marks. As he went down, Dolohov caught me across the face with a curse - something purple, they're not even sure what. Mrs. Weasley says I almost died out there on the green…”

Almost died out there on the green. Hermione saw it again, the bodies strewn across the battlefield, felt the rising surge of euphoria, when she realized Harry had won - and then the horror of seeing Voldemort and Harry, prone, breathing in sync, and somehow knowing without knowing what was going to happen next.

“Aren't you coming?” Impatience threaded through his voice; she had stopped walking, and he had realized it only a step or two beyond.

“I'm sorry,” she sniffed noisily. “The Battle - it's still - it's hard to think about sometimes. Go on.”

“Well, they saved me, but they couldn't save my eyes. And lucky for me, it's a persistent curse too. Affects every restorative potion or charmed implant they try.” He occupied himself with adjusting the spell on his wand, as they entered the village and the terrain underfoot changed into cobbled streets. Night had fallen completely, but the streets were well honeyed by lamps, and people bustled about, finishing up their last orders of business for the day. Hermione caught one or two surreptitious glances their way, whether at her or at Harry, she was unsure, but most people seemed to take his presence in stride.

They had reached one of the main intersections in the heart of town, and Hermione had just spotted the book shop to which Harry had been referring - rows of lighted windows could be seen above it - when she heard a familiar whoop that made her heart soar.

“Oy, Potter! Some of us have lives you know, and can't waste them waiting around on your sorry ar - ” The voice cut off abruptly, and Hermione guessed that she had just come into his view.

“Hallo,” Ron said, cordially enough, although the tone of curious surprise was all too evident. “Harry? You want to introduce me to your friend?”

“She's not my friend,” Harry replied. The immediate and succinct response jabbed painfully at Hermione like a sliver in her thumb, even knowing the irrationality of it. He doesn't know you! “She fell in the river. We helped each other out. Why don't you have a drink with her? I'm knackered. Good night.” The spew of speech had come at them staccato and rapid-fire. Ron was still standing there with his mouth hanging open, when Harry spun on the spot and Disapparated with a rifle-crack.

“I - I - I'm Her - Hermione Granger,” she stammered, only barely remembering to proffer a hand.

“Hallo, Hermione Granger. Ron Weasley,” Ron responded, with a twinkly grin, shaking her hand. He tossed a glance over his shoulder, presumably in the direction Harry lived. There was a kind of baffled amusement in his eyes. “He seems quite taken with you.” The genuine laughter that bubbled suddenly from her lips surprised her.

“You're joking! How does he treat people that he doesn't like??”

“I'm really not. He hardly ever Apparates. Says he doesn't care for the turning and the landing somewhere … er, well - blind. And I think he talked more just now than he normally does in a week.”

“We talked the whole way back from the river. He - he mentioned the Final Battle… and - and you… and what happened to his eyes…” She trailed off, as Ron let out a low whistle, shaking his head and looking impressed.

“That is incredible! We've all tried so hard and - ” His words and smile were still friendly, but a kind of suspicious hopefulness had crept into his blue eyes. “We should talk more over those drinks.”

“And you can try to suss out if I am who I say I am, and how I'm trying to take advantage of Harry, right?” She had astonished him with the accuracy of her statement, and it made her laugh again. “I'm glad he has you. No matter how difficult and moody he gets, he can always count on you, can't he?”

“Do - does he - does he know you from somewhere?” Ron was squinting at her now, utterly befuddled. She hooked her arm in his, and pulled him toward the pub across the way.

“Come on,” she smiled, a gaiety that she had not felt in a very long time infusing her voice. “You're going to need to sit down for this.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“So… you're saying that there are infinite versions of … of us out there in infinite universes - doing Merlin knows what, and the Unspeakables know about it.” Ron looked flabbergasted, gesturing with one hand, while the other curled around the handle of his stein. Several empty mugs dotted the table between them. “Bloody hell.”

“Yes. I had no idea at all, until a Harry from another universe found me. He was looking for his universe's Hermione - she'd been sent off and stranded as some kind of revenge plot by Bellatrix Lestrange - ”

“You mean Malfoy?”

“What?”

“Bellatrix Malfoy. Rotting in Azkaban last time I checked.”

“Where I'm from, Lucius Malfoy married her sister, Narcissa. Bellatrix was married to Rodolphus Lestrange.” She eyed him speculatively over the rim of her tankard, remembering Draco Malfoy at the head of the Aurors come to arrest her - or execute her - and her cabin subsequently engulfed in flames. She couldn't help feeling somewhat satisfied that at least the younger Malfoy had never existed here. “Do they have any children our age?”

“Who? Malfoy and Bellatrix?” He continued at her nod of confirmation. “Yeah… Vega.” He said the name like it was someone she ought to know.

“In my universe, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had a son our age, named Draco,” Hermione informed him patiently, trying to figure out what she wasn't getting.

“You said that Harry told you… told you about the Final Battle. He - he didn't mention Vega at all?” Ron sighed heavily when Hermione shook her head, swearing under his breath and taking a long quaff of his ale.

“He told me that he'd killed Voldemort… and that Dolohov hit him with a curse even as the Death Eaters collapsed, that it almost killed him. It's - it's rather similar to what happened in my universe. Harry had killed him… but Voldemort had - had some kind of spell - a link - between Harry's life force and his own. I still don't know what it was, but when Voldemort died, Harry went with him.” She took two or three shuddering breaths, visibly trying to hold back tears.

Ron watched her in sympathy. After a moment of silence that probably seemed longer than it actually was, during which he apparently came to a decision, he began speaking again.

“Our first year in school, we had this nutter for a Defense professor - actually had Voldemort growing out of the back of his head, if you can believe that,” Ron began.

“Quirrell?”

“Pettigrew.” Ron slanted another sideways glance at her. “Anyway, Vega had been very upset the whole first month of school - she was this shy, pretty little thing… got sorted into Hufflepuff, and apparently, her parents were not very nice about it.”

“A Malfoy was in Hufflepuff?” Hermione's eyebrows soared near her hairline, and Ron snorted.

“That was the reaction everybody had. Vega spent most of her time alone. The Hufflepuffs were scared of her, Slytherin made fun of her, and the other two houses shunned her just because of her parents.” He shook his head, seeming to remember his own actions, using the pause to take another sip of his drink. “On Halloween night, Pettigrew decided to use the feast as a distraction, so he could go and try to steal the Sorcerer's Stone that Dumbledore had hidden in the castle. He could turn into a rat; he was - ”

“ - an Animagus, yes, I know.”

“Anyway, Hagrid had his three-headed dog guarding the trap door, and seeing the rat - well, I guess it got sort of enraged. Vega had been hiding up there nearby, crying, and - well, Pettigrew escaped through a hole when Fluffy went berserk, but the dog smashed the door into pieces - it practically exploded out into the corridor. Vega was pinned. Somehow Harry missed her at dinner, dragged me up there, and - well, we managed to get the door off of Vega and get away…”

“Let me guess: Wingardium Leviosa.” She smiled at Ron's double take, but her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “You and Harry saved me from a troll in the girl's loo that Halloween. Using that very spell. We were best friends from that day onward.”

“'Swhat happened with us and Vega too. We had our spats, of course. Harry kept everything bottled up inside, and I talked too much. And Vega - changing her mind after she'd set on a course of action… well, sooner try to Accio the rock of Gibraltar. She had it hard though. Harry always understood her better than I did, I think. Her entire family were Dark, always had been. Once they'd gotten adjusted to the shock that she was a Badger, they started trying to think of ways to use it to their advantage. And once they heard that she was close friends with us - well, that was just extra sugar on the quill. She was under an incredible amount of pressure at home. Harry was sure that she was being abused.”

“He'd be able to recognize those signs, wouldn't he?” The musing was made quietly to herself, but Ron caught it and nodded.

“Things came to a head sixth year. The tension was unbelievable. Dumbledore had Harry off doing things that he wouldn't talk about. Nobody in the Order trusted Vega, and she knew it. She started muttering things under her breath about how if people were going to believe certain things about her, she might as well make them true.”

Hermione leaned forward in anticipation, thinking of McGonagall's white face, looking decades older, as she paced in the common room, waiting for her students to come down for breakfast. Harry and Ron had exited their dorm only a few minutes later, and had immediately flanked her, knowing from their Head of House's stricken eyes that something was very wrong. She had hooked Harry's elbow when his knees buckled at the news of Dumbledore's death, poisoned by a bottle of mead - a Christmas gift, of all things. The whole plot was later found to have been arranged by the Malfoy scion.

“What did she do?” she whispered almost breathlessly. Ron exhaled a mirthless half-laugh, and finished his ale, clunking it down noisily on the battered table top.

“She fell in love with Harry, that's what. And he fell in love with her.” He almost laughed again, and his eyes were distant and filled with a regretful nostalgia. “Of course, the whole school had been whispering about the three of us for years, wondering who she'd end up with. I never looked at her that way… and I'd thought Harry hadn't either. Looking back, now, I wonder how I didn't see it.” He struggled with what to say next, and finally asked, “Did your Harry play Quidditch?”

“Yeah, he was one of the best Seekers a Hogwarts game had ever seen. He talked about playing professionally one day, when everything was over…”

“True here too. We all played. I was Keeper for Gryffindor, and Vega was a Hufflepuff Beater - shocked the hell out of me and Harry, when she told us! She was good too. Couldn't ever bring herself to aim a Bludger at Harry when we played `em though. Once got a foul called on her for clocking her own teammate, when he did it - Hooch didn't know how to enforce the foul once she'd called it, though! The last game of the season, sixth year, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were playing. We already had the Cup, nothing Hufflepuff could do about that, but… Anyway, Peake hit a Bludger and the other `Puff Beater blocked it. Ricocheted right toward Harry, and he had no idea it was coming. Vega streaked over there - faster than the Snitch, Seamus said - tried to use her bat low to block it, but miscalculated or something. The thing caught her in the upper leg so hard that it snapped her broom in half too, and she was falling…” Ron seemed to be watching the scene play out in his memory as if it were a movie. “It happened so fast. The teachers fired a couple of spells that missed. I had blocked the Quaffle, and only knew something was wrong when nobody cheered - and then Harry… Harry went into a dive that was almost straight down, lost his glasses; the twigs on his broom were smoking. When he caught her, he was so low that he tried to kick off the ground to change their direction, and damn well broke his leg. By the time, we all made it to the ground, they were sort of cradling each other - you could tell they were both in pain - and Harry sort of yelled at her, like he couldn't decide whether to throttle her or not - `You are so stupid!'. And Vega smiled, and said, `Yeah…' And he just grabbed her face and - well, I'm not really sure who kissed who first. In front of the entire school.” He grinned wryly. “Never let it be said that Harry ever did anything by halves. We were just lucky that McGonagall was too busy trying not to cry to take points!”

Hermione sat introspectively for awhile, rotating her mug absently with her fingers, trying to imagine the story the way Ron had told it.

“She died in the Battle… saving him, didn't she?” Her voice was hoarse with unshed tears. Ron nodded and looked away, clearing his throat unevenly. Hermione reminded herself that, in a way, he had lost both of his best friends that day.

“They were engaged. Harry had proposed that Christmas. He couldn't ever really get shut of the weight of the world, but there were times that he looked fairly well besottedly happy. And I was so glad for him, Hermione.” He startled her with the familiar use of her name. “I thought we might pull it off after all.” He tried to take a drink, but realized too late that his tankard was empty. “The Battle was all but over. The Death Eaters knew it. We knew it. Harry's wand locked with Voldemort's. With all his Horcruxes gone, Harry was clearly the more powerful. Almost exactly as he finished him off - Lucius Malfoy was sneaking up on him, intending to AK him in the back. I was dueling Macnair at the time, and didn't see all of it, but people told me. Vega had been injured in a duel and disarmed, but she threw herself in front of the curse. Her own father killed her. It all happened so fast.” He unwittingly echoed his earlier Quidditch story. “Then Voldemort fell, and then Dolohov got Harry, and we nearly lost him too. When we knew - when we knew he wasn't going to die, then I had to tell him what - what had happened to her.” He clasped his hands in front of his chin, and stared unseeingly at the table top. “Worst experience of my life, bar none.”

“I know how you feel,” Hermione sighed, thinking of Harry, collapsing like a marionette with cut strings. She leaned forward slightly to lay her hand atop his. There was a beat of companionable silence. “It's really good to see you again, Ron.”

“So… er, what happened to me? In your universe, I mean.”

“We broke into the Ministry. Ginny had been arrested, and we got her out. There was a broom chase, and Ginny fell. You went after her… I never saw either one of you again. Malfoy had taken it all. The other Harry convinced me to leave… to see if I could find a place I could belong.”

“It must have been hard for you,” he said, surprising her with his perceptiveness, “being left all alone.”

“It was all for nothing. Voldemort was gone, but the wrong side still won. And I lost everything that mattered.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

“I - I don't know. It's all so different - I mean, each universe has been different - in its own way, but - I just - I just don't know if I could do it.”

“How do you mean?”

Hermione fidgeted in her seat, twining and untwining her fingers, before finally deciding to be honest with him.

“He's so… different here. So bitter. And - and - ” she looked almost desperate to make Ron understand. “ - I'm not her.”

“Ah.” Ron's noise was one of comprehension. “Ah. I get it. You were in love with him.” Hermione pressed a fist to her lips and nodded, her gaze looking somewhere far away. “So… you're not just looking for somewhere to belong… but for someone to belong to - a Harry to belong to.” She nodded again, her face aflame. She sounded so pathetic, she thought in a fit of self-loathing. “How will you - how do you do it, anyway? Cross into other universes, I mean.”

“I have a necklace. You can set it to a specific universe, if you know the rune. Or you can leave it unset, and you'll just drift through the universes, like a - like a leaf in the wind, I guess.” She hooked her thumb behind the gold chain around her neck, and used it to pull the necklace out from under her shirt. The pendant swung from the suspended chain, and caught the lamplight, flashing a prism on the opposite wall.

Ron went ashen, looking more as if he'd come face to face with an assassin than a lonely woman with an odd necklace and an odder story. Hermione released the chain, so that the crystal lay against her breastbone, and leaned forward with concerned entreaty.

“Ron, are you all right?”

“Sweet Merlin!” He exclaimed. “You… y - you - you're… We didn't think it was true. She's a right old loon most of the time.”

“What are you talking about?!”

“She who came from an alien world, inundated, wearing a necklace made of starlight. Desolate she, the lioness, and her season desolation, known by the bard, but unknown by the world. A usurper she, claimed and claiming, but flung away. The Chosen One cannot call her back to life.”

Hermione and Ron both looked up in surprise, for neither of them had spoken the verse. There was a disturbance in the air around the bar stool opposite their booth, and Harry appeared, wadding up a bundle of silvery material in his fist.

“Eavesdropping, Harry?” Ron chided him, with a playful wince. He slid over to allow Harry to join them, guiding him with only the barest of touches to his elbow. “That's a little beneath you, isn't it?”

“But eavesdroppers always hear such interesting things.” Harry speared Hermione with a look that was almost piercing enough to make her forget he could not see. She felt a momentary pang of guilt that they had discussed his loss in such graphic detail, that she had called him `different' and `bitter' - like I'm such of ray of sunshine myself.

“What were you saying just then? Were you quoting something? Was it - was it a Prophecy?”

“Yes,” Harry said, forestalling Ron, who had just opened his mouth to answer, and then looked at Harry with unadulterated surprise. “Professor Trelawney made it during our fourth year. There's more to it than that, a lot of other vague mumbo jumbo - I have it written down somewhere…”

“What he's not saying is that's the bit we both memorized because - because - ” Ron was looking at Harry with a mixture of compassion and guilt.

“You thought it was about Vega,” Hermione surmised quietly. Harry's face twisted into a nearly savage mask of pain.

“We - we wondered…” Ron filled in. “Because of her parents and her house, how she didn't seem to fit anywhere. But there were bits we couldn't explain, parts that didn't fit and that we still don't understand. Then after she - after she was … gone, we wondered if maybe Trelawney had meant her after all.”

Hermione reached across and laid her hand atop Ron's once again; then she did the same to Harry, who stiffened, twitching his hand reflexively. She thought he was going to yank his hand away, but after a moment, it stilled, though he seemed to be keeping it there, under her touch, by sheer force of will.

“I know that you have never solved a problem with me before. But I have solved many a problem with the two of you. We can figure this out, I'm sure of it.”

“But it says,” Harry was speaking with a sort of strangled intensity, forcing the words out between teeth that were almost clenched. “It says `The Chosen One cannot call her back to life.' If it means you… that doesn't - you could - ”

“I've got the two of you with me. That's something that I thought might never happen again. I'm not afraid.” Her lifted chin and confident tone were offset by an involuntary gasp that was tacked onto the end of her sentence. Harry had turned his hand over, so that her fingers were clasped securely in his, and she felt his touch all the way up her arm. From the look on his face, his impulsive action had surprised everyone at the table, even himself. She opened her mouth to say something, but emotion closed her throat. Her smile was both tremulous and joyful.

For the first time in five years, Ron felt a spark of hope ignite.

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14. Fourteen

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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*

*

One soul to pour out, one love to catch all. No walls to defend, wars to align. Give me your heart, you already have mine.

-- Jars of Clay, “Heart”

Chapter Fourteen:

Hermione moved silently about her spacious room, folding her clothing and placing it neatly into the wardrobe, empty save for a couple of handmade sachets. Keziah Ashburton, the woman who let the rooms above the bookshop, had given her an extra set of linens, which she had transfigured into a set of pajamas. She was mulling the events of the evening over in her mind, thinking about what her next course of action would entail.

She and Ron had been able to have an amiable conversation as the three of them crossed to the bookshop. But things had been somewhat stilted with Harry, as if he had suddenly realized how far out of his shell he had come, and had just as quickly retreated. Ron had startled her mightily by sweeping her up into a bear hug, after they'd delivered her to Keziah's capable hands, but if he'd been bothered by the tears spilled onto his shirt collar, he said nothing about it. She had turned to Harry, and had become horribly aware that she had confessed herself in love with … well, a version of Harry anyway… and that he had been listening. They had managed a formal, but mostly friendly handshake, with Harry all but promising to see her the next day. Ron had not even troubled to hide his smirk from her.

“Yeah, some of us have to work to pay the bills,” he had snarked. “But some of us say we are Ministry `Consultants' and don't really do anything.”

“I'm working on my memoir.” Harry's distaste for the task had been evident in the way he'd said the last word.

“If that's what you want to call dodging that biographer's Owls,” Ron had quipped in return. But his smile was genuine and warm, as he waved good-bye, and headed a little ways out of the square to Apparate.

Hermione closed the wardrobe door, and moved to turn the bedcovers back. Ron appeared to be able to get away with comments that would have sent Harry into further retreat or even flight, had they come from anyone else. She hoped that she would be able to eventually come to a similar relationship. Her heart ached for how broken and lost he seemed, how his quest had asked everything of him, and he had given it. And now he was left to deal with the fall-out as best he could.

Maybe he reminds me of me, she thought glumly. She reached into her leather satchel for her toothbrush and toothpaste, and moved into the bathroom that would have seemed impossibly large if she hadn't been in a Wizarding establishment. After she completed her evening ablutions, she crawled into the bed, inhaling deeply the fresh scent of the clean sheets. Reflexively, she reached for the satchel, to twine its strap around her arm, and then hesitated. She moved instead to grasp the chain of the crystal around her neck, knowing it was deactivated, but knowing that if it were ever removed or lost, she would lose any synchronicity she had with this universe and be cast out. After a short internal war, she looped the strap around her wrist anyway. Just in case, she told herself.

The words of the Harry's prophecy had startled her more than she would admit, even to herself.

“'Claimed and claiming… flung away',” she mumbled to herself. What else could it mean? She clenched the collar of her pajamas around the necklace. It was her biggest fear, that she would find a place she could call home, but then would be flung away, cast out of a universe, utterly at the mercy of a fallible inanimate object.

The Harry that she'd met first, the one who inspired her to her quest, as well as the Harry married to Susan Bones - they had shown her that there was a way out, a way to take what life gave you and make it into something amazing, to fight for happiness, for love. This Harry had not done that, seemed to doubt that it was even possible. She had called him different, bitter, but she rather suddenly realized that she badly wanted to be that reason for him, something worth fighting for, worth living for.

And he was in love with Vega Malfoy… a Malfoy and a Lestrange… how odd. Lucius Malfoy ruined both our lives. She felt herself beginning to drift, lulled into serenity by the warmth of the bed and the lovely smell of the linens. Her eyes popped back open suddenly with a wayward thought: What happened to this universe's Lucius Malfoy? Ron mentioned Bellatrix being in Azkaban, but what of Lucius? Did he die in the Battle?

If she could find a delicate way to bring it up, she would ask Harry in the morning, she decided, her eyelids refusing to stay open any longer. Still clutching the pendant as if it were her lifeline, she fell into restful slumber.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Keziah Ashburton was a sonsy, pleasant woman who vaguely reminded Hermione of Molly Weasley, although she couldn't have said why. There was not much physical resemblance between the two. She bustled a still-yawning Hermione to the large dining table, asking how she'd found her room, and had an enormous English breakfast in front of her before she could have said, “Wingardium Leviosa.”

“I slept quite well, thanks,” Hermione answered, cupping a steaming mug of tea in her hands and savoring its warmth.

“And what are your plans for this beautiful day?”

“Well, I - I think I should look into getting a job. Do you know of anyone who might be hiring?”

“Meurig over at the apothecary has been saying he'll get an apprentice for months now. Were you at Hogwarts? How were your Potions N.E.W.T.s?”

“I - I didn't go to Hogwarts, actually,” Hermione stammered, an abashed smile quivering on her face as she groped for a believable lie. “I attended school on the Continent. My parents traveled a good bit. But - but my Potions scores were top-notch.” Keziah's look was somewhat more measured, and the ensuing pause had Hermione's palms growing clammy with sweat.

“Well, if Ronald Weasley vouches for your character, I don't reckon I'd be having anything to say against you.”

Hermione gratefully jumped at the chance to change the subject. “So… you know Ron well then?”

“He comes in every Friday for shepherd's pie. Claims I make it better than his own mum. Although I've sworn an oath not to ever tell her that.” She grinned, and Hermione could not stop herself from smiling back. “Now, you look like you need some more - Mr. Potter! Good morning.” Keziah broke off suddenly and straightened, her manner becoming noticeably more formal.

Hermione jerked her gaze upward, her eyes widening in near-alarm, and her hands began fluttering of their own volition around the insanity she sometimes called hair. Keziah's perceptive smirk caused her face to burn, and she couldn't help being grateful that Harry could not see what a fool she was being.

“Good morning, Harry,” she managed to say in a mostly natural way. Keziah extended an offer of breakfast, which Harry accepted with the polite remoteness that seemed his wont. Hermione took the opportunity to cram her mouth with toast and jam, in the hopes that she could recover her equanimity, while not being required to speak. Keziah's attitude towards Harry, she thought, was interesting. The older woman was not overly ingratiating or smotheringly eager to please, but quietly respectful, stemming possibly from an ever-present gratitude. That kind of celebrity recognition, Hermione reflected, was probably a good deal less irritating.

“Hermione…” Harry said tentatively, nodding in her general direction, as he moved his hands over the backs of the chairs, selecting a seat next to her at the adjacent side of the large table. Keziah was efficiently filling his plate and cup, and Hermione watched as Harry's hands skimmed gracefully over the accoutrements, noting their locations in relation to him. “How - how was your night?”

“Very nice, thanks. And thank you for referring me here. The accommodations are wonderful.” She couldn't restrain from rolling her eyes at herself. Saying that his surly mention of rooms to let, simply to get her to leave him alone, was a referral was stretching it just a bit. But he clearly was trying; she recalled how out of character he'd apparently been acting last night. “I didn't expect you to be here so early.”

Harry chose that moment to attempt to conceal his flushed face behind an uptilted cup of tea, but drank too quickly, and had to bend away from the table in a paroxysm of coughing. Hermione had the frenzied thought that perhaps Dolohov's curse had given him other chronic health issues, and leaned toward him with concern.

“Harry, are you all right?” He had stopped coughing, but was still recovering the breath that the coughing had denied him. She laid one hand atop his, and the touch ran up her arm as if it were a live wire. He inhaled a sharp breath through his nostrils, and had an incredibly penetrating look on his face. She felt his hand tremble underneath hers, again as if he were struggling with the instinct to pull it away. With visible effort, mirroring his movements of the night before, he turned his hand over, and encased her fingers in his; his thumb moved jerkily over her knuckles, and she caught her breath.

“I'm - I'm fine, thanks.”

Hermione was afraid to move or even blink, for fear that the beautiful moment between them would burst like a soap bubble. They both startled when Keziah clattered some dishes together noisily, humming under her breath, and spearing Hermione with a knowing look.

“I - um - I brought you something. A - a copy of the prophecy in full. I thought… you might want to have a look at the whole thing.” He fished a slightly crumpled bit of parchment from his pocket, and Hermione could not help but be disappointed when she had to move her hand from his to unfold it.

Tragedy and victory become two sides of the same mirror. Mirrors reflect mirrors into eternity, illuminated by moonlight. The lion in the storm searches for the other side of himself; the whirlwind has swept it away.

The false light takes life, breaks faith, spreads poison. Mirrors reflect mirrors into eternity. Mirrors reflect false light and equilibrium is lost.

She who came from an alien world, inundated, wearing a necklace made of starlight. Desolate she, the lioness, and her season desolation, known by the bard, but unknown by the world. A usurper she, claimed and claiming, but flung away. The Chosen One cannot call her back to life

The first line of the prophecy made Hermione's eyes burn with tears. Tragedy and victory… once again her mind played back the indelible reel of that scene - of Harry and Voldemort dueling, Harry's brief look of disbelieving triumph, a look of promise for her… and then his fall. Everything that mattered won and lost again in the same moment - two sides of the same mirror. She sniffled a bit, and was then surprised to feel Harry's hands in hers again. His expression was a twin of hers; there was no empathy there - he was too wrapped up in his own pain for that - but he did understand. She groped for something innocuous to say.

“There - there's a lot of light imagery involved here,” she said hoarsely. “Moonlight, starlight, false light… mirrors… er, do you mind if I make a copy?” Harry shrugged dismissively, and she Duplicated the parchment.

“Do you want to walk?” Harry interrupted her, his voice abrupt, too brusque. Hermione eyed the remainder of the breakfast that she hadn't quite finished. Her appetite had faded with Harry's producing of the parchment.

“Sure… I - I just need to - er… I'll be right back.” She stood so quickly that her chair clattered backward noisily, and she cringed. “I'll be right back,” she repeated, pressing the original prophecy back into Harry's hand, and hurrying down the corridor to her room.

When she came back to the dining room, dressed and freshened up, with her hair braided tightly down the back of her head, and her leather satchel across her body, there were other occupants eating breakfast, but Harry was gone. On her way from the kitchen with a rack of toast, Keziah caught her look of commingled alarm and disappointment, and said simply,

“He's waiting for you downstairs.” Hermione tried to stifle her relief, but she gathered from Keziah's dancing eyes, that it had leaked through anyway.

The bookshop downstairs still had the “Closed” placard hanging on the door, but was unlocked. Hermione felt her heart flop in relief, as she saw Harry, sitting hunched on the front stoop of the shop, waiting for her. He looked up as the door opened, and the little bells jingled to herald her exit.

“Are you ready?” he asked, without preamble.

“I - yes,” she finished helplessly. She desperately wanted to ask him how he'd known it was her, but she didn't want to seem insensitive.

“It's the way your footsteps sound… and the - the way you smell,” he blurted. “Like… er… vanilla…” He blushed horribly, and Hermione couldn't keep a faint, surprised grin from crossing her face.

“It's the soap I use,” she patted the front of her satchel with an open hand. “And how did you know I was wondering that?”

“People always wonder that.” Harry's words were stiff, and some of his shuttered look was back. “I'm a walking circus sideshow.” He stood up, and jogged easily down the four stone steps, leaving Hermione standing near the door, one hand extended as if to help him up, although she hadn't yet touched him. She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off, raking her with a gaze withering enough to make her wonder if his blindness wasn't some kind of ruse he was perpetrating on the entire Wizarding community. “I can manage myself just fine. If I need your help, I'll ask.”

She was so flabbergasted that she let him get halfway up the block, before her righteous indignation kicked in. His pace was brisk, and she had to very nearly run to catch up with him. It was still rather early, and the damp morning fog had yet to burn away. The streets were almost empty.

“Just where the hell do you get off? You've got no reason to yell at me for wanting to help you. How did - how did you even know I wanted to help you?”

“It - the clasps on your bag clinked together when you moved forward. I - I heard them, and I - besides, I can just tell from your voice…”

“Tell what from my voice?”

“That you're kind. But you don't know what it's like! To have people fawning all over you because you're the Boy-Who-Lived, but then pitying you, treating you like a child, like someone broken… like - ” He stopped to regain his lost control, his wand arm motionless at his side, though his Detection spell remained glowing in the tip.

“Harry, I don't pity you. And everyone's broken… in one way or another.”

They had nearly made it to the outskirts of town, when Harry had stopped, and Hermione realized with a start that she recognized the lane. The rutted road, lined by stone walls, that led to Harry's family's home, the home that seemed to be a constant across many universes.

“Don't pretend you know what I've gone through! I woke up in agony, like someone had poured acid in my eyes. They told me I had done it, I had defeated him… but that I'd never see again. And my first thought… my first thought was `I wonder if Vega will mind.' And then … and then Ron came in, and - and his voice… Part of me knew then, just by the way he said my name…” He blinked several times, pressing his eyelids together tightly, as if to ward off tears. “I didn't see it happen, you know. And still I dream about it. Sometimes I stop it; sometimes I cause it. But every time… I wake up, and she's still gone.”

“Part of me died that day on the battlefield when I saw my Harry fall. I did see it, and it's seared into my mind. I saw Ron fall, I saw Ginny fall. An Imperiused version of my mother tried to kill me,” Hermione said quietly, reverie on her face. “I know how it feels, Harry. I know how much it hurts.”

“So much that you came here - looking for him, for someone to replace him…I'm not him, though! I'm not your Harry. I never will be! You can't expect me to be - you can't - ”

“Harry, I don't.” She realized with some surprise that it was true. She reached out, as if to lay a hand on his arm, but arrested the motion. “I've killed people, Harry. I lured an entire team of Aurors - led by Draco Malfoy, the Minister's son, mind you - into a trap, and then blew up the building. I was a Ministry-wanted terrorist - Undesirable Number One. You aren't the same Harry as the one I lost. But I'm not his Hermione any more either.”

“Draco Malfoy…” Harry shook his head, a disbelieving, almost sardonic smile flitting across his face. “It's hard to believe…”

“What is?”

“That she - that she didn't even exist in your universe… when she made such an impact in mine.” Hermione's face crumpled in sympathy, and she did touch him then, dancing her fingers along the back of his hand.

“It's one thing I've definitely noticed… that sometimes the slightest differences can result in such profound change, and yet … yet sometimes - even with those changes in place - there are fundamental things that stay similar.”

“Yeah, like Lucius Malfoy.” Harry's clouded eyes were hard and distant.

“I don't follow.”

“He got away with it, didn't he? In your universe, he even bloody well became the Minister for Magic. In this one - ”

“I thought he was in Azkaban… I thought he - Ron said - ” She recalled her rather jumbled thoughts from the night before. What had Ron said?

“His wife is in Azkaban. The Aurors never found Lucius. That's practically why Ron became an Auror, but there's never been a trace of him. He - he …killed his child, and left his evil harpy of a wife to rot in Azkaban… and - ” he shrugged, “ - and he got away with it.”

“Victims don't always get justice, Harry,” she reminded him regretfully. He turned toward her then, and then, to her great surprise, lifted his other hand - the one that wasn't entwined with hers - to softly touch the side of her face.

“I don't understand it…” He admitted helplessly, then continued before she could ask him to clarify. “You didn't exist here. I've never met you - I still don't know you. And I still - I feel like - I - ” He floundered to a stop.

“We were best friends in my universe, in other universes. There must be something inherent in both our personalities that gravitate toward each other, that - on some level - attract one another. You must feel that, even though you don't know me… yet.”

“It doesn't seem like a lot to hang your hat on - as a reason to stay, I mean. What if I - if I never - I mean…”

“Sitting around a table with you and Ron again… Harry, it was wonderful! I'm not sure if I truly comprehended how much I missed it. It's not something I'd give up again lightly. Even if friendship is the only return on my investment.” Just the statement hurt a bit; she wasn't sure that was true.

“And what if I do… start to feel the same way… and the - the universe takes you?” He rocked toward her, only the slightest bit of forward motion. Hermione's heart was lurching almost painfully in her chest, half-afraid and half-expectant that he was going to kiss her. “'The Chosen One cannot call her back to life.' That's what the prophecy said. I can't lose someone again.”

“I'm trying to figure out a way to make the stay permanent. But for right now, the crystal is all I've got. I've charmed it with every kind of protective spell I can think of. But - there never are any guarantees, Harry… not really.”

She hoped that the beseeching look that she knew was on her face translated into her voice. But Harry backed away from her, disentangling his hand from hers. He was shaking his head, even as he moved away, something like panic evident in the upturn of his eyebrows, in the tension of his neck and mouth.

“I can't do it again. I can't risk it again. And Vega - she - I - I'm sorry, Hermione.” He looked sorry. “I need - I - I have to go.” He gestured vaguely down the lane with his wand. She could just glimpse the shiny white paint of a picket fence where the path bent out of sight.

And Hermione stood there, not sure whether to feel sympathetic or stupid, as he strode decisively away from her, fleeing the very idea that he could ever feel for someone else what he'd felt for Vega Malfoy.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“… and then he left.” Hermione spread her hands wide, more chagrin than despair in her voice by design. Ron was sitting across from her at the pub, with fish, chips, and butterbeer in front of each of them.

“I can't say that I'm surprised. I know you must be - confused… or frustrated… or both, but you - the truth is, you don't know Harry… er - not this one anyway. But I do. And I'm telling you that this is not like him.” He held up a hand to stave off Hermione's burgeoning protest. “Oh, storming away all moody and refusing to talk is like him. But showing up at breakfast… talking to you. He likes you. A lot. And he knows that he shouldn't be falling this hard and this fast for someone who is a complete stranger to him, and it scares the hell out of him.”

“He showed up at breakfast for a reason. He brought me the prophecy.” Hermione's no-nonsense tone dismissed Ron's theory out of hand.

“As soon as he could. The first chance he got. Do you know how long he's been giving that author the runaround about his biography? He likes you, Hermione.” Ron's grin was cheeky. “I'd lay Galleons on it. And I'm an Auror, so I don't have many of those.”

“Harry told me that you were an Auror,” Hermione said abruptly, seizing at the opportunity to change the subject. “He said it was because of Lucius Malfoy. Because he got away.” The affable look on Ron's face morphed into something deadly serious.

“That's a case that still bothers everyone up in the Department.” He put a bite of fish in his mouth, and gestured at her with his fork. “He was at the Battle. People saw him, witnessed that he cursed Vega. And he disappeared. Rich Wizards often have more than one wand, so the fact that his registered wand was never used again isn't really that damning.” His eyes narrowed. “I just know that he's out there somewhere, free, laughing at us. He couldn't even show any loyalty or love to his wife or daughter - believe me, he is as false as they come. At least that's something that's constant, eh, Hermio - what's wrong?”

All the color had drained from Hermione's face, and she had emitted a squeak of shocked realization. She scrabbled desperately through her satchel for a moment, before she pulled a folded piece of paper free. She opened it, and thrust it under Ron's long nose with a trembling hand.

“This is Harry's prophecy. I don't understand.”

“I Duplicated it this morning. Look at it, Ron, look at it. You just said it.” Ron's eyes roved over the verse at length, before he looked back up at Hermione, shaking his head in a baffled way.

“I said… that it was constant at least… that Malfoy was a liar… I - I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're getting at.”

“You didn't say he was a liar, Ron. You said he was false. False! Look at the prophecy!” Hermione's voice was becoming high-pitched with the possibility of discovery imminent. “'The false light' - do you know what `Lucius' means? It comes from the Latin word, lux, for - ”

“For light,” Ron finished for her, looking as though he'd been Stunned.

“'The false light takes life, breaks faith…' His very surname means `bad faith'. Sweet Merlin, Ron! That part of the prophecy has got to be talking about him.”

“What about the mirrors?”

Hermione looked back over the prophecy again, her lips moving silently as she read, her eyes alight with furious thought.

“Have you ever done that? Held a mirror up to a mirror?”

“Only once,” Ron admitted. “It makes the mirrors really tetchy.”

“Not Wizarding mirrors. Just regular ones. They reflect each other - it looks like there are hundreds of them, that it goes on forever… an infinity of mirrors…” Her voice drifted off, as she stared into the distance.

“Hermione?” Ron finally prodded uncertainly.

“The universes… a new one born from each individual decision we make. The mirrors are the different universes.”

“So the part about the lioness is about you.”

“It certainly would seem so. I came from another universe, an alien world, and I fell into a river, inundated… even known by the bard. The Bard is a common nickname for the famous Muggle playwright - ”

“William Shakespeare,” Ron supplied, and then said, off of Hermione's astonished look, “What? I read. Hermione… A Winter's Tale, right?”

“Where I came from, I'm pretty sure you never read Shakespeare,” she informed him, unable to suppress a wry smile. Ron rolled his eyes.

“Well, I'm not going to say that I think he missed out. You need a bloody Translator Charm to even understand any of it!”

“Now that sounds more like the Ron Weasley I know!” They grinned companionably at each other for a moment, before Ron brought them back to the matter at hand.

“So if part of this is about you…”

“And Harry. The lion in the storm - his scar - that's got to be him.”

“We'd already assumed that much. It's no wonder he's afraid. It certainly sounds like he's going to lose you. The Chosen One cannot call her back to life. And what has Lucius Malfoy got to do with it? He's been missing for five bloody years.”

“What he's got to do with it is… I know where he is. Or, perhaps more precisely, I know where he isn't.”

“I know lots of places where he isn't,” Ron informed her sardonically over the rim of his tankard.

“Mirrors reflect false light… He's not in this universe.”

“Well, I would think that's going to make him somewhat hard to catch.”

“I know how to do it.” Hermione's voice was triumphant. “I helped another Harry find his Hermione… in another universe. The Constant - it's a part of your magical signature that's the same for every wizard in a given universe. Mine is different, because I'm not from here. We can track your Lucius Malfoy using his Constant. All we need is a blank crystal from the Department of Mysteries.”

“And how do you suppose we're going to get that? My clearance is not that high; chances are, nobody's going to believe us anyway; and you technically don't exist.” He ticked his points off methodically on his fingers.

Hermione's smile was radiant in the rich yellow light of the pub. If her companion had known her prior to yesterday, he would have recognized her joy - the thrill of a solution discovered. Her forefinger tapped deliberately on one phrase of the prophecy. Ron peered down to see what it was: illuminated by moonlight.

“Tell me, Ronald Weasley,” she teased. “Do you know Luna Lovegood?”

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15. Fifteen

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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But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me. Oh and I rush to the start.

-Coldplay, “The Scientist”

Hermione had flopped around her room until the walls were making her crazy, had pestered Keziah - not even a shop full of books could adequately corral her scattered attentions - until that beleaguered lady had thrown her out, had walked the perimeter of the town twice, including two trips to the river, where she made failed attempts at contemplation, before she finally gave up and strode as decisively as she knew how down that lane that led to Harry's house. Some of her false bravado faded at the sight of the white picket fence, but she forced herself to continue. Ron was on an errand; their course, when he returned, could change everything.

And even so, all she could think about was Harry.

When Ron got back, they could go talk to Luna. And Hermione could do this for them - could give them the closure they needed - and then… but she could not make herself think of that. Not yet. The gate creaked noisily as she pushed it open, and walked hesitantly up the bricked path.

When she faced the green front door, she steeled herself, lifted her chin, and raised her fist to knock on the door, hopefully with more confidence than she actually possessed. But the door swung smoothly open before she could make contact.

“H - Harry - ” she gasped, startled.

“You didn't seem the type to leave well enough alone,” he responded, and in a strange way, she felt as though he'd complimented her. He gestured for her to enter, and closed the door behind them both.

She preceded him into a room that was something like a front parlor, although the furniture was not very formal, and he paused in the doorway.

“Would you like something to drink?” His voice was stilted, as though he were offering because it was what social mores dictated, not because he was genuinely concerned about her thirst.

“Oh, I can - ” get it, was poised to trip off of her tongue. Somehow he knew it, and his face grew stormily dark. “ - definitely use something, thank you.” She finished lamely, and figured he'd completely seen through her lapse, but was choosing to ignore it. He crossed the room, and disappeared through another door, from whence she heard various sounds of kitchen industry, before he returned with a tray outfitted for a light tea.

She had settled on the leather sofa, and he went to the armchair, setting the tray on the adjacent end table. He proffered her a cup, which she took, grateful that the stilted smile she flashed at him went unseen. The ensuing silence, broken only intermittently by the clinks of china, was not exactly awkward, Hermione thought, but more expectant in nature.

She opened her mouth to speak, as his last words, stammered in panic, tripped through her mind. I can't do this again. I can't risk it again. What he was truly saying was that he would not risk it again, that he recognized the potential that lay between them, and was actively choosing not to engage… or wanted to choose that anyway. What do I say to that? she wondered.

“I - I …” She hesitated, cleared her throat, blushing brilliantly all the while, and started over. “I wanted to talk to you about what you said… the way we left things… before.”

Harry raised one eyebrow, as coolly as Draco Malfoy might have. “Was I unclear?” Her flush deepened; her face felt afire.

“No, you were quite clear. Painfully so.” She allowed herself to be a bit proud of the dry asperity in her voice.

“Then…?” He gestured in a do go on sort of way.

“I don't accept it.” The words seemed to have done an end run around her brain, and tumbled forth without her consent. He blinked at her, no doubt thinking that he had misheard her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I - I - I don't accept your answer.”

“You can't force me to - ” He sputtered with rising indignation, and did not finish his sentence.

“If you don't ever… if you don't ever love me, that's one thing. We can be friends; you were my best friend. But I won't let you run away, hide, not even - not even try…” Hermione blinked ferociously to keep back tears, and was pretty sure that she had a mulish expression on her face. “Besides, we - Ron and I - that is, if this works out…” She stumbled to a stop, not sure of the best way to proceed. He seemed to instinctively know that she was no longer talking about the possibility of a relationship between them.

“If what works out?”

“Ron should be back soon. He was going - well, he didn't exactly inform me as to where he was going. Somewhere to - to get me an identity. He wouldn't say where.”

“The Aurors have someone they go to, I think,” Harry offered lazily. “For deep cover assignments. A bloke down in Knockturn Alley, so the Ministry can still have deniability… You'd better not get him into trouble.” His last statement was a barb, stabbed at her pointedly. Hermione felt defensive, as if she were being accused of bullying Ron into a course of action he did not want to take.

“It was his idea! If I'm going to stay - stay here, then I need to - there need to be records of me. Ron said he could get the whole thing, where I was born, where I went to school, previous employment. He said there's a spell that sends a chain reaction to the magical records… my enrollment and test scores will even be on file at the school.”

“That's really expensive magic.” There was a jaundiced look on his face. “He doesn't know you. Why is he doing all this for you?”

Hermione ignored the tacit insult, and allowed herself to toy with the pleasant notion that he might be jealous. However, when she spoke, it was with contrition and a blunt honesty that took them both off guard. “I don't think he's doing it for me. I think he's doing it for you.”

Seven words. And the atmosphere between them electrified, crackling with an intensity that further overwhelmed them. Harry drew in a ragged breath, and his damaged eyes looked through her, into her, and she thought for a moment that she would suffocate.

“Hermione, I - ”

Before he could say anything more, she found herself down on her knees in front of his chair. He started slightly, when her hands touched his, but he must have heard her motion, known she was moving in his direction… possibly before she even knew herself.

“I know you loved her. I know you still love her. Just like I love the Harry that I lost. But you've been hurt, and I've been hurt. Can't we - can't we help each other heal? You feel it, don't you? Don't tell me that you don't feel it.” Hermione would never have used the words `impassioned', `impetuous', or `pleading' to describe her personality in general, but she found that her impromptu speech had been all three of those, and somewhat incoherent to boot.

“I already told you - ” He began, but his words had no real conviction behind them, and his right hand had stolen behind her to thread into her hair. She wasn't even sure that he was aware he was doing it. Moving again on that same odd impulse, she lifted herself upward on her knees so that they were face to face. His eyes looked worse up close, marbled and opaque, and she found herself mourning the beautiful green shine that was gone. His soul, she thought, did not need the eyes as a vehicle; she could still see that noble, wonderful soul, though beaten down by grief and hardship, making itself known in the lines and planes and expressions of his face. She pressed her forehead to his, allowed herself one breath, one moment, one heartbeat, where they both became fully cognizant of what she was about to do. He could have stopped her. But he did not.

She kissed him.

He responded with an alacrity that sent her heart soaring, thrumming rapidly within the confines of her chest. She coaxed him to deepen the kiss, and he followed her lead so willingly that it made her vaguely wonder where the shuttered off man had gone. He had wrapped his arms around her more thoroughly, but the edge of the chair prevented her from getting any closer to him. She made a noise born of frustration, and slid gracefully up into his lap, without breaking the embrace. She felt him hesitate, for the barest of instants, before he resumed the motion of their lips, his warmth beneath her, around her, cocooning her.

There was refuge, safety in the encirclement of his arms. Hermione felt a rush of homecoming so powerful that tears flooded her eyes and overspilled their bounds before she could register it. Sucking in a noisy gasp to allay the burning in her eyes and nose, she broke the kiss, but remained huddled against him, trying to dash away the streaks of wetness on her cheeks.

“What's wrong?” He asked her, his hands smoothing down the length of her hair. His voice was surprisingly tender. Hermione was half-expecting him to dump her in the floor and flee to a distant part of the house, but he remained.

“I'm - I'm sorry…” She stammered in a watery voice. “I don't - I don't know why I'm crying.”

“It doesn't do much for a man's self esteem,” he ventured in a voice so dry that it took Hermione a moment to realize he was joking. She let out a laugh that was more than half-sob, and apologized again, before continuing.

“I guess - I just realized that I - I… I lied to you, Harry.” She felt the tension return immediately to his body, the muscles in his thighs readying in response to his impulse to leave. But he didn't leave.

“How so?” The phrase was deceptively casual.

“I don't know how I'm going to bear it… if - if you decide you don't want this.” She gestured between the two of them, before arresting what would remain unseen and rolling her eyes at herself. “This between us, I mean. I - I - ” Any further words she might have spoken died in her throat. She moved her fingers through his dark hair, somewhat longer than she was accustomed to seeing, and sighed.

He echoed her sigh, and settled back in the chair; her heart seized with joy when he brought her with him. “This terrifies me,” he finally ventured, with more forthrightness than she had ever seen from any version of Harry she'd met thus far.

“I know.”

“If you… go…”

“I am going to do everything in my power to keep that from happening, Harry. I promise.” She kissed him again, a lingering caress that he leaned into hungrily. But something unspoken in her phraseology stopped him, and he pulled back, his eyes darting curiously in her direction.

“You said `if this works out'. You weren't talking about the identity… what were you talking about?”

“We - Ron and I - we figured out the prophecy. It's talking about you… and me… and Lucius Malfoy.” Harry inhaled a sharp breath through his nose, his lips pressed together in an implacable line. “We - we know where he is.”

“How could - how could you possibly know that? The Aurors have been looking for him for years!”

“He's mentioned in the prophecy… called `false light'. And the mirrors… those are alternate universes - what I've been traveling through all this time. That's where he is. Living, hiding - a fugitive in a completely different world.”

“So, he's lost to us, then.” The bitterness in his voice was palpable.

“Not necessarily. You heard me tell Ron that I helped another Harry. He was looking for his Hermione - she'd been stranded away from her universe by Bellatrix Lestrange. I figured out how to use the necklaces to track her Constant, a part of one's magical signature that is the same across all magical beings in a given universe.”

“So - so we know his Constant - then we - then we -”

“Then we set it into one of these crystals.” She thumbed the chain around her neck. “It should take me straight to him. I would think he'd settle somewhere where there was no other Lucius Malfoy, somewhere he would be in phase. He doesn't even know who I am - so - ”

“It should take you straight to him?”

The emphasis in his voice was unmistakable. Hermione felt suddenly wary, as though her next few steps would take her through an uncharted mine field.

“We're going to talk to Luna - Ron said you knew her from school?” She paused for his nod, noting the faint expression of fondness that flickered across his face. “She's an Unspeakable. She might be able to get us into the Multiverse Room. That's where they chart different universes and tag the necklaces. She can help us. We need to get the Constant, and set a necklace… like I did for Harry… it seems like a lifetime ago now.”

“You know how to set the necklace… to take you to another instance of this Constant?”

“Yes… I did it for him, and later - later I crossed through his universe. He - he'd found her; they were getting married. They looked - they looked so happy.” She looked up at him with a sentimental smile, expecting him to be enjoying the story… or perhaps mentally applying its success to their future endeavors. But he was frowning.

“We - we need to have an unimprinted crystal. A blank. We can only get one if we can get into that Multiverse Room. I'd rather do it with permission, if possible. I'm already an outlaw in one universe.”

“Why do you have to go? He's - he's dangerous. An Auror team should go. It couldn't take that much training… it's just different incarnations of the same place.”

“I need to do this.” For you, she did not say. For Vega. For everything Lucius Malfoy got away with in my universe. She did not tell him the second phase of the plan, guilt and justification pinwheeling around on each other. We don't even know whether or not it will work.

“But you could be flung away.” His word choice would sound odd to anyone else, she knew, but he was quoting the prophecy. “'The Chosen One cannot call her back to life.'”

“That doesn't mean I'm going to die. Ron and I talked about it. It might just mean that there's nothing you can do about whether or not it happens. It's out of your hands.”

“That's not much comfort! I told you I couldn't do this! I told you I - ” His voice sounded angry, but Hermione could hear the fear underneath. She could hear the walls going up as surely as though there were mortar and stone in front of her.

“No.” He had shifted like he was on the point of rising, but she shoved his shoulders back into the leather upholstery of the chair. “No. You are not going to run from me, from this. I am going to apprehend Malfoy. I'm going to bring him back in custody. And then - ” She paused, rethinking what she was going to say next. “I've been in battle. I know him, but he doesn't know me. That gives me the advantage.” She pressed her forehead back to his again. “I'll be fine.”

“The night before the battle, I couldn't sleep. I knew I needed to, but my mind just wouldn't quiet down. I came down to the Gryffindor common room, and Vega was sitting by the fire, staring into it like it held the answers to all the secrets of the universe. I remember first thinking how beautiful she was, and secondly, wondering how the hell she'd gotten in. `Only one thing left to do,' she said, when she saw me. She held up her left hand - ” Harry demonstrated with his. “ - so I could see the ring, my ring, that I'd only put on her finger six months before, and said, `then we can get started on forever.'

She seemed so sure, so confident. She didn't have even a hint of fear in her eyes, and I wondered why she hadn't ended up in Gryffindor.”

“It wasn't her bravery that overcame her fear,” Hermione interjected. “It was her love, her loyalty… to you.”

“Much good it did her,” Harry scowled. “Perhaps if she'd showed love and loyalty to someone without a target on his back, she'd still be here. Perhaps I'm not meant to have forever… You should get out while you still can,” he intoned darkly, only half-joking.

“From what I've read of the theory,” Hermione continued, overly loud and precise in her enunciation, so as to communicate the implied I'm not listening to you. “The Multiverse has a certain motion to it. If I leave this universe, I'll head in a certain direction, away from this universe, so that the nearest matching Constant - in the correct direction - will be Malfoy's. Then I just circle back… h - home.” She stumbled over the last word. Her chin wobbled, as she forced out light words in a voice clogged with tears: “Simple as that.”

This time, Harry kissed her, cupping the nape of her neck with one hand, angling up to meet her mouth, where she sat on his lap. The unadulterated joy that gripped her felt all the more powerful due to its unfamiliarity; the euphoria was heady and surreal.

“Aren't you two just adorable?” came a cheeky voice from the doorway, and Hermione and Harry's lips detached from each other with a smack that was audible, causing their blushes to deepen further. Ron was standing there, satchel in hand, dressed in shabby black - Hermione assumed - for his trip to Knockturn Alley. “You move quickly.” This was aimed at Hermione, in a tone of much admiration, and she wondered if one's face could actually ignite from embarrassment.

“Sod off, Ron,” Harry mumbled. Hermione twitched in his lap, uncertain whether she ought to rise and move, or if maximum damage had already been done. Harry seemed to sense her insecurity, and curled his arm around her waist, holding her firmly in place. He had a bashful, boyish half-smile on his face, and his head was angled the way a sighted person's would be, if he were looking up at her through his lashes. Her stomach cartwheeled.

“Did you have any trouble?” She asked, in what she hoped was a normal voice. With a parting caress of her fingertips down Harry's wrist and hand, she did rise, pulling at the neckline of her blouse with her other hand, trying to generate a breeze that would cool her heated face.

“Not a bit of it!” Ron was somewhat more jovial than his successful errand would require, Hermione thought dourly. “Kept you Hermione Granger… my contact found a couple in Oxfordshire with the same names as your parents, but we changed those, made them deceased - better safe than sorry, you know.”

Hermione blinked a bit. She did know; it still stung.

“You are now a proud alumna of L'Academie de Magie.” Ron's French was passable. Hermione wondered idly if Bill was married to Fleur here. “That's the one in - ”

“ - in Luxembourg, yes.”

“I used your N.E.W.T. scores, just as you gave them to me - except - except I - ” He cast a somewhat nervous look at her, and rushed the rest of the words out. “I lowered the numerical values a bit, just so you were in the top of the class, but not first. You would have been first in everything except Defense, but that's - that's too good. It would draw attention. People might really wonder just why it was that they didn't remember you at all.”

Hermione's eyes flashed indignation at first, but she let her shoulders sag at the end of Ron's explanation, knowing his reasoning was sound.

“Anyway…” Ron drew out, unzipping his satchel, and handing her an ID card, a birth certificate, a passport, and some educational certification. “You're all set, and your wand's been properly registered. You should be able to visit the Ministry without raising any eyebrows. Are you ready to go?”

She darted a look at Harry, still seated in the leather armchair, tension evident in every line and sinew of his body. She reached out to take his hand, lift him to his feet.

“Yes, let's go.”

*****************

Luna was waiting for them at the reception desk in the Department of Mysteries. Hermione was already off-balance; she had been a little nervous of her fake ID, but it had passed through the security check without scrutiny. Indeed, most of the attention they'd garnered in the corridors had been due to Harry's presence. The rotating doors guarding the entrance to the department in which they now stood were different as well, having been painted a disconcerting shade of green. She stood, trying to surreptitiously wipe her sweaty palms on the sides of her jeans, and she knew she was staring at Luna. The Ravenclaw was wearing a black pencil skirt and matching blazer, with a crisp white shirt underneath. She had on black pumps, and her blond hair was combed back into a rather severe bun. Her earrings were silver hoops.

“I know I must look odd,” Luna acknowledged her dumbfounded look in her typical effervescent voice, and added, in a stage whisper, “I'm in disguise today. I'm Luna Lovegood.”

“Yes, I know,” Hermione replied, feeling an old camaraderie resurface. “I'm Hermione Granger.” The two women shook hands. “We knew each other… somewhere else.”

“Ah, I see.” Luna shot her a perceptive glance. “I wondered who you might be, when Ronald asked about the Room.”

“Can you get me a blank? I've copied someone's Constant before, imbedded it in the crystal, so that they could find… someone. It worked too.” Luna gestured for them to follow her down a planked corridor, dodging gouts of odorous smoke along the way.

“I would have been happy to supply Ronald with a blank crystal on the strength of his Keeping skills alone,” Luna said, matter-of-factly. A memory of a roaring lion hat flashed suddenly through Hermione's mind. “You need me for something. What is it?”

Hermione darted her eyes sideways to exchange looks with Ron. Harry had been standing impassively next to his best friend, but his stance shifted with the rising tension in the room. Here goes nothing… Hermione thought.

“I am bringing Lucius Malfoy back from where he's hiding, so that he faces justice for his war crimes, and for the murder of his daughter, Vega.” This came out in one long breathless utterance. Luna's eyes crinkled at the corners, and Hermione had the uncomfortable impression that the Ravenclaw knew exactly why she'd come, but was going to make her say it aloud.

“And?”

“There's a reward for his apprehension, isn't there?”

“100,000 Galleons,” Ron supplied the information neatly.

“I'd like to decline the reward. There's something else I want instead. Ron - Ron tells me Malfoy was already tried for war crimes, in absentia?” Hermione tried to make her voice casual, but she was sure she heard a nervous squeak anyway.

Luna was nodding, as Ron also responded, “Upon his apprehension, the Aurors have been directed to transport him directly to the Veil, so that his sentence may be carried out.”

“Then there should be no objection, should there?” Hermione met Luna's gaze evenly.

“It's extremely unorthodox and highly risky. There have been no known successful trials.”

“There will be now.”

“You can't know that.”

“I need this to work. It will work. But I'm going to need your help, Luna.”

“There are things… there's no way I can guarantee - ” Luna's blue eyes were as forlorn as Hermione had ever seen them, and she was watching Harry. This could hurt him, she seemed to be saying, and I don't want to hurt him anymore.

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Harry finally burst out, frustration all but strangling his voice.

“Hermione Granger wishes to undergo a Constant transplant,” Luna said calmly. Hermione fought down a bizarre urge to giggle at the Muggle-sounding term. “By forcibly removing the Constant from Lucius Malfoy's magical signature, and transplanting it into her own, she hopes to make her stay here permanent, without requiring the aid of a crystal.”

“But…” Harry prompted.

“It has never been successfully completed on a wizard. The Magical Beasts who have been experimented on were in extreme pain before everything that made them magical was rent asunder. They died in agony.”

“For Merlin's sake, Luna!” Ron exclaimed. Not in front of Harry! He might as well have added in a fierce whisper.

“I - I think - ” Hermione ventured, trying to infuse her voice with certainty that she did not feel. “I think if we - if we're both in a null magic field… I think it will work. Do - do you have other Unspeakables who have tried it? The transfer would have to be - “

“ - simultaneous, I know,” Luna completed her sentence smoothly. “I can find the right people. How long do you think it will take?”

“To get to the correct universe should take almost no time at all. To - to find him and bring him back… that could take longer.”

“Have you thought about what you'll do if you are out of phase in that universe?”

Hermione exhaled an exasperated puff of air from between her lips. Luna sounds like a bloody prosecutor!

“It shouldn't matter. The necklaces aren't affected by phase. I should just be able to wait for him to be asleep, and then activate it while he is within its circle.”

“And if you happen to be somewhere remote, isolated… when you return to this universe?”

Hermione thought of Lucius Malfoy, thought of his thin-lipped patrician sneer, thought of his manipulations, of his relentless pursuit of her, thought of Harry, thought of Ron and Ginny, thought of a shy, pretty Beater whom she'd never known… Her dark eyes flashed with righteous fire.

“I can handle Lucius Malfoy.”

Luna skewered Hermione with a long, measuring glance, moving into the Gryffindor's personal space, her heels making an echoing plok, plok, plok on the tiled floor. Her hands fluttered spasmodically around Hermione's face and hair - picking Nargles out of my aura or some such, Hermione was sure - and then went still at her sides.

“I believe you.” The blonde responded coolly, but Hermione had the sneaking suspicion that it was to some thought or declaration that shehad not actually voiced.

Hermione's eyes flew to Ron. One corner of the redhead's mouth was turned up, even as he endeavored to look appropriately solemn. There were twin glimmers of admiration and understanding in his eyes. She did not want to look at Harry, afraid of what she might see on his face, but his choked gasp of her name demanded her attention. She pivoted swiftly toward him, bracketing his cheeks in both hands, uncaring of any audience they had.

“I have to do this. I have to. For him, for her. I know you understand.” There was dampness beneath her thumbs, and she moved them restlessly, swiping at the tears that she knew matched her own.

“I do understand.” His voice was impassioned, vibrating with deeply held emotion. “I know the risks you're taking because I have taken those risks. You're doing exactly what I would do… if - if I could… and - ” He leaned his forehead into hers. “And that's what makes it so hard. I'm afraid for you to go… I'm afraid of what might happen, I want you to stay - and I know I can't ask that of you.”

“I am going to come back. I have not come this far and fought this hard to fail now.” Her voice was as fierce as she could make it. Her heart was trip-hammering against her breastbone. “I love you.”

The air was suddenly charged, as unseeing eyes flew to hers. Hermione felt herself crimson. The words had tumbled out of her mouth, bypassing her brain. He seemed to have that effect on her.

“I -” Harry began. She could see the muscle in his jaw tremble, and she traced it with one finger, bringing the digit up at his chin to rest lightly on his lips.

“Don't say anything,” she whispered.

“You have to come back. To me. Please.” His voice was an uneven rasp. She jerked her chin downward twice, in an ungainly and abrupt nod. He surged forward, just as hastily, and kissed her, a soft and lingering meeting of the lips. Hermione unsuccessfully tried to swallow a sob as they parted. Claimed and claiming, but flung away…

Luna already had Ron's magical signature hovering in the air, in runes of glowing gold. Hermione watched as she deftly copied the Constant and embedded it in the crystal, then took the chain with numb fingers, and looped it around her neck. She felt Harry's fingers entwine desperately in hers. Backing away from him, taking slow measured steps until their hands could no longer bridge the distance between them, was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do.

She knew he couldn't see her, but she fixed her eyes on his face, memorizing him, loving him, and hoping that somehow he knew. Ron had moved to stand beside him, one hand clapped on his best friend's shoulder.

I'll come back. I have to come back.

The Chosen One cannot call her back to life.

In a clear voice, she intoned, “Adjicio Universum.”

Document created with wvWare/wvWare version 1.2.7

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16. Sixteen

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

If I could find the years that went away, destroying all the cruelty of fate, I must believe that love will find a way, tonight.

-Trading Yesterday, “One Day”

Hermione felt like she was in the eye of a hurricane, immobile, but with endless, unstoppable motion surrounding her: streaks of light, snippets of sound, flickers of people gone so quickly that it made her head hurt as her brain struggled vainly to make some kind of sensible picture out of it all. She remained in the Department of Mysteries, but Unspeakables were in and out, the room's layout was rearranged - it grew and shrank and changed in shape - and it was as if she were watching all of it in high-speed fast-forward.

And then it stopped, as abruptly as though a great cosmic finger had descended and forced the spinning to desist. She wobbled on her feet, pinwheeling her arms, and trying desperately not to fall, as her inner ear fought to reestablish her balance. A couple of cloaked Unspeakables eyed her curiously before going on about their business, and she hoped that the tea she had shared with Harry wasn't going to end up all over the stone floor beneath her feet.

“You must be the right one,” came an airy voice from over her shoulder. Hermione whirled on one heel, whereupon her equilibrium gave up, and she tumbled gracelessly to the ground. Luna's cowl fell forward, almost covering her eyes, as she reached down and helped the embarrassed traveler to her feet, as if she did it every day. “There have been others flickering through, but none of them stopped.”

“O - o - others?” Hermione stammered. Her throat had clenched up, and she rather coughed out the word.

“Others of you,” Luna clarified. “Or at least, I think they were you. They certainly appeared to be. There's not much mistaking that hair. I've been waiting for you.”

“How could - how could you possibly know - ?”

“Know that you were coming? Oh, I didn't. But every so often, something happens - a `turning point', if you will - and we get movement. Other versions of you in other universes have made the same move you have, and they are on their way to … their particular destination, wherever that may be. Calpurnia figured that one of you would end up here eventually. Only in a blue jumper this time, apparently.”

Hermione darted a distracted look at her jumper, but pursued the more important subject at hand. “If nobody's stopped before, then you - then you don't know why I'm here.” Her voice was shaky and hesitant; she felt clammy and guilty, though she had as yet done nothing wrong. Why don't you just announce that you're here to commit a terrorist act or assassinate the Minister, or something?

“Oh, that's not my jurisdiction. If you wouldn't mind coming with me, we'd like to check your constant, document it if we don't already have it.”

“You mean, you honestly don't care that I'm here. What if I - ?”

“What if you're here to kill the Minister?” Luna's laugh was high and musical, like a child's. Hermione figured that her own pole-axed expression probably spoke volumes. “You have a necklace, and you switched from the Ministry. The odds are that you were authorized to do so by an Unspeakable.” She shrugged her shoulders, and her radish earrings danced from side to side. “Besides, if you really wanted to kill a Minister, wouldn't it be easier to just murder the one you already have?”

Hermione blinked at this bizarre path of logic, but supposed that it made a twisted kind of sense.

“I've - I've just got to find someone. A criminal who… who fled here, who doesn't belong here. That's - that's all.” She wasn't sure why she felt compelled to justify her actions, as if she were going to be chastised by McGonagall or something. Maybe it was due to Lucius Malfoy's inherent oily elusiveness. He could somehow squirm out of this too, make it look like I'm the one in the wrong. Luna could not have looked less concerned, however.

“Name?” She asked in a business-like way, following a detached “hmm” in response to Hermione's stammered excuses. She reached for a polished door handle, yanked it, and the heavy door swung open noiselessly.

“Hermione Gr - Gran…ger…” Hermione's voice trailed off into silence, as she unabashedly gaped at the room in front of her. It was the size of the Atrium, at least, in one of those Wizarding impossibilities that made the inside of a place so much larger than the outside. Luna's footfalls echoed cavernously across the black tile floor, as she wove expertly through a maze of - were they transparent panels? some kind of charmed forcefield? Whatever they were, there were myriads of them, situated vertically like chalkboards, humming with a soft backlit glow, and covered in a profusion of colored lines, intertwining, then running parallel, then branching out at different angles to cover the room. Other Unspeakables moved about in the same erratic pattern that Luna did, occasionally manipulating the displays on the panels with precise flicks of their wands. Hermione was astounded; she had always seen the Wizarding world to be hopelessly behind the Muggle world in technological advancement, but this - this - was cutting edge, almost out of science fiction.

“What - what is this place?” She managed, still agog. She had never seen this room. She had never heard this room mentioned by any incarnation of Harry or Luna before.

“This is the Nexus.” Luna's voice was cool and serene. Hermione was possessed of the sudden ridiculous urge to poke her, and make sure she was a flesh and blood human being, and not some artificial intelligence. “We map universes here, observe timelines -” Luna gestured toward the branching lines for added emphasis. “ - congruencies… important people…” She met Hermione's stunned gaze with a look full of implication. “Scruto!”

She had directed her wand at Hermione, but the blue beam came from the nearest panel, issuing horizontally, widening at the end like light from a projector. It ran over Hermione from head to toe, though she felt nothing, and a new readout popped up on the panel.

Granger, Hermione J. Version 3.4.2, born 19 September 1979. Indigenous Universe: 4Q-122543-WL56Y. (Mapped: 28 February 2000.)

There were several pie charts beneath. Hermione squinted at the tiny font. The best she could tell, the charts explored some of the recurring statistical probabilities in her life, and the segments blinking in gold were the ones that applied to her personally.

“You seem rather inextricably intertwined with Harry Potter,” Luna observed mildly, discerning some meaning that she could not fathom from the knotted strands of color careening through the panels around them. “In 72% of the universes we've mapped where both of you exist and have Magical abilities, you end up allying with him.”

Harry… something exquisitely painful squeezed in the region of her chest. “How - how many times do I - do I lose him?” She rasped, trying and failing to sound natural. Something like sympathy flashed in Luna's winter sky eyes.

“These timelines are for correlative purposes only. I could tell you nothing that would indicate any causation on your part.” She cleared her throat at Hermione's continued gaze. “You lose him during 19% of those alliances. The number increases to 35%, when either you or he is Dark.”

“Am I - I mean, will I - ?”

“It is not advisable that these analyses be used for predictive purposes.”

“Then what the bloody hell are they for?” Luna's clinical detachment was beginning to grate on Hermione's already jangled nerves. The Unspeakable flicked a glance at her…amusement. Hermione wasn't sure if that flash of liveliness made her more or less annoying.

“Strictly for the sake of knowledge… observation of patterns… possibly leading to conclusions about the fabric and nature of the multiverse.”

“Conclusions about the fabric and nature…” Hermione echoed in a trailing mutter, tacking on a sarcastic, “Of course.”

Luna stabbed her wand at the air in an intricate series of swirls and thrusts. A couple of the lines zoomed to the forefront, as they rotated and perspective changed. New pie charts blinked into existence on the bottom half of the panel.

“Is Lucius Malfoy the object of your search?” She asked abruptly. Hermione goggled at her, and she was pretty sure her mouth gaped open like a fish's for much longer than it should have.

“Why - how did - how could you possibly - ?” Inwardly she cringed. Well, if they were going to stop me, I certainly have done a bang-up job of misdirection about my plans!

“In universes where both parties exist and have magic, you directly oppose the Malfoys 81% of the time,” Luna informed her blandly. “Even you and Voldemort are only enemies 74% of the time. It is a logical conclusion.”

“Even if the percentages aren't to be used for predictive purposes?”

Luna arched one brow at her with a touche look.

“Yes,” Hermione heaved a reluctant sigh. “I'm here for Lucius. He is from … our… universe - ” She hesitated over the technically inaccurate pronoun. “He is wanted for murder, and fled here several years ago. I'm here to retrieve him, and bring him back for justice. Do you know where I can find him? I - I've noticed that - that Harry and I seem to have certain places that we… er, crop up. Do you catalog those? What about places like that for Malfoy?”

“Yes, those are focal points.” More flourishing from Luna's wand. Hermione was struck by the ethereal grace inherent in her movements. “Lucius Malfoy has four places that recur a statistically significant number of times. Here you are.” She prodded a symbol at the bottom left-hand corner of the panel, and a miniature scroll - tied closed with a jaunty bow - popped out of a slot immediately above. When Hermione remained still, as if hit with a Petrificus, Luna retrieved the scroll herself, and placed it in the other woman's palm, going so far as to curl Hermione's fingers around it. “I'd try his manor house first. Supposedly, his movement is restricted to the house and grounds. You are free to proceed.”

“That's it? No cautions against taking the wrong Malfoy, possibly unjustly detaining a fellow Multiverse traveler…nothing?”

Something not altogether wholesome glinted in the dreamy blue gaze of the Unspeakable. “In this universe, our maps showed that Lucius Malfoy was missing, presumed dead, immediately following the Final Battle, in which Harry Potter and Seamus Finnegan defeated Lord Voldemort. Six months later, he resurfaced with a story that, unfortunately, kept him out of Azkaban. Lucius Malfoy is an honorable, upstanding member of the Wizarding community less than 8% of the time. I cannot see why anyone would want to go find an extra one, were they blessed enough to lose their own Malfoy.” Her smile was tight and a little merciless, and Hermione suddenly found herself dying to ask what history Luna had with that particular Pureblooded family.

“But if you know that this Lucius Malfoy has arrived here from some other universe, why haven't you - ?”

“It is not our jurisdiction. You are free to proceed.” Luna echoed her earlier comment, and turned back to the panel, wiping it of Hermione's information, with a few quick slashes of her wand. Hermione had clearly been dismissed.

“Er… thanks…?” Hermione mumbled, carefully pocketing the scroll and moving back toward the heavy door, through which they'd first entered. She made her way through the revolving doors, and entered the nearest lift, her spirits rising with it, as she made her way to the Atrium. Am I really this unused to things going right? she pondered. I have my wand, some money, a list of places to check out, and I'm authorized to be here. This is going to be a piece of -

She landed hard on her rear end, after colliding with someone as she exited the lift. Her face flushed red, as she staggered to her feet, and turned to her toppled victim.

“I'm so sorry. I wasn't watching where I was going, and - oh my God, I haven't hurt you - either of you, have I?” She had extended her hand to help the other person to her feet, and noticed immediately, even with the voluminous cream-colored robes, the woman she had knocked over was very noticeably pregnant. There had been some annoyance on her face, but it melted away with Hermione's flustered, obviously sincerely upset, apologies.

“Oh, we're made of tougher stuff than that, aren't we?” Masses of blond curls obscured the woman's face briefly, as she patted her rounded belly fondly. She then looked squarely at Hermione, with a friendly smile. “Please, don't think anything else of it. I'm quite all right, and so is Lily. And you look like you've already got quite a lot on your mind.”

Lily, Hermione's mind seized on this name, and then began to spin tractionlessly. The other witch stuck out her hand, amiably, and said, “I'm Vega Potter. I'm the Muggle Liaison attached to the MLE. I'd be glad to try and help you, if I can.”

“I'm … I'm Hermione Granger,” Hermione rasped, after entirely too long of a pause. Yes, you can help me. I'm after your father. Only he's not really your father; he's from an alternate universe. You aren't on good terms with him or anything, are you? Would you mind if I took him with me so we can rip out his Constant and shove him through the Veil?

“Are - are you all right? You took quite a fall yourself, you know.” Vega peered more closely into Hermione's face. “And pardon my saying so, but you look like you've seen a ghost.”

“You have no idea,” Hermione rejoined with a weak laugh. “I'm sorry. I've quite lost my manners, and you are going to think I'm absolutely mad. I've just come from the Department of Mysteries, and I've got a mission to complete. But I think I do know who you are. How is your father?”

Vega's soft expression of concern hardened, and she began to twiddle with her wedding ring, fluttering her fingers reflexively to turn the diamond around and around. One hand went to her abdomen, and she moved away from Hermione, as if suddenly remembering that the woman before her was a stranger.

“My mission involves him,” Hermione admitted. “I assume he's not on good terms with you - or your… husband? I assure you he's no friend of mine.”

“Would you like to come to my office?” Vega finally said, after a long, assessing look. “I've some time before my next appointment, and I'm guessing you have questions.”

“I do have questions, and I would love to speak with you.” Hermione's voice was prim, as she strove not to fall all over herself with gratitude. Of all people that she could run into - literally - outside of a lift!

“When are you due?” Hermione finally asked, after trotting silently in Vega's wake for a few moments.

“Six more weeks.” There was something hopeful and yearning in Vega's voice. “Harry has already been after me to stay home, and - sure, walking around makes my back ache and all I want to do is eat - but I can still function. Why shouldn't I work for as long as I can? And Harry's so busy out in the field on cases - it's not like he'd even be there to hover, although trust me, he does enough of that when we aren't at work.”

“That sounds like Harry,” Hermione blurted, lulled into carelessness by Vega's friendly chatter.

“How do you know Harry?” Vega's voice was light, casual, but Hermione caught the undertone. She concluded that Vega was too trusting by nature, but she had been coached by someone - three guesses who, she thought wryly - that she needed to be more wary. Although, Hermione conceded, for the wife of Harry Potter, and the mother of his child, that was probably not an unsafe course of action.

“We were friends… a very long time ago,” Hermione sighed.

Vega used her wand on a brass panel beside a heavy oaken door. The latch clicked and it opened of its own accord, where they were greeted with the sea of noise and motion that was the Auror bullpen. Several wizards and witches greeted Vega by name, and the rule-follower long dormant in Hermione began to worry that she had no Visitor's badge, nor any kind of written authorization to be there. Vega threaded her way through several desks, which appeared to be laid out in no kind of discernible pattern, until she arrived at another door, with a frosted glass half-panel inset into the wooden frame. Vega's name was inscribed onto another brass plate alongside it. Potter… Hermione wondered if that name would ever stop causing her to act like a patient with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Now,” Vega said, as she gestured to the empty chair at one end of her desk, and closed the door. “You're clearly magical, but Harry has never mentioned you, and I don't recognize you from Hogwarts. So, how do you know my husband?”

“Have you ever heard of the Multiverse Room?”

“I know a bit about it. The Department of Mysteries has a fondness for secrets, but The Nexus was hailed as one of Minister Lupin's greatest achievements. They couldn't keep it completely under wraps. Are you - ?”

“I'm from another universe. One where Harry and I - where we were close. And I lost him. So I've been traveling through universes since then.”

“But - but you said you were on a mission.”

“I am. I've found a new universe where I'd like to make my home. In that universe, Harry is alive, but has also lost someone - you. The Lucius Malfoy who belongs to that universe escaped here, and I have come to bring him back.”

“So, my father killed me.” Vega said the words woodenly, as though she could not really make herself believe them. Her right hand stole down to her abdomen again.

“I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to. He tried to, here - I know that was his goal. We found ourselves face-to-face in an empty corridor. He missed, and I Stunned him. I probably - I probably should have done more… But then he just disappeared. I was - I thought maybe he'd died, and I was glad…” She looked shamefaced as she made the admission. “I don't think he ever forgave me for being a girl. Then for not being Sorted into Slytherin, for choosing the opposite side during the War. And - and he always hated Harry.”

“What about after he turned up again?” Hermione asked her gently.

“He was put on trial, but his testimony was all disjointed. Most people thought he'd gone mad. Even under Veritaserum, there were things he claimed he couldn't remember. The spell record found in his wand didn't match the ones witnesses claimed he'd cast. The case fell apart. He had to pay reparations, and he's been sort of exiled from society. We don't speak.”

“So… so, if I take him back…” Hermione was afraid to voice what she'd begun to fear most, as soon as she realized whom she'd knocked over in the hallway, that Vega would have repaired her relationship with her father, that there would be some kind of fight to save him.

“If he needs to atone for his crimes, be my guest.” Vega's words were decisive, though with little heat behind them. “My father may never pay for what he did in the service of Voldemort. Apparently, we still don't know what happened to him. But if you can bring some other Vega justice…”

“Do you have time for lunch before you - hello.” Harry had stuck his head in the door, and begun speaking to Vega, breaking off as he noticed that she was not alone. A wariness crept into his green eyes; no doubt he's wondering if I'm going to fangirl all over him, Hermione thought. “Sorry, I - ”

“I've just been chatting with Hermione Granger,” Vega interrupted, a look of long-suffering good-humor on her face. “Hermione Granger, this is my husband, Harry Potter, who is appears to be incapable of knocking on a door.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Hermione offered cordially, standing and extending her hand for him to shake. His hair was cropped much shorter than she'd normally seen him keep it; he was without his glasses, and was wearing unfastened Auror robes, tie somewhat askew. She could see the edges of a leather wand holster peeking from the end of his sleeve.

“Likewise.” The look in his eyes suddenly struck her. There were the shadows that she'd always noticed: the ones accumulated over the years of neglect and upheaval and heavy burdens, but when he looked at her, she saw only mild friendly curiosity. This was a Harry who had not ever lost her, had not ever longed for her, was completely happy without her. It was interesting, she mused. “Erm… you're welcome to join us for lunch, if you'd like. I've just got to collect something from my desk.”

“Oh no, I couldn't intrude -” Hermione protested.

“Do come with us, Hermione,” Vega interposed, then addressed her husband. “It turns out that Hermione has some goals which coincide with some of ours.”

“Sounds good, then,” Harry threw the words casually over his shoulder, as he moved out of the doorway, ostensibly heading to his own office.

“A background check on her isn't going to do you any good, darling,” Vega called out good-naturedly, suppressed amusement glinting in her eyes. Harry darted such a supremely guilty look at Hermione that she laughed.

“I wasn't - ” The denial was feeble at best.

“This is about the Nexus,” Vega rejoined in a lower voice. “And I'm absolutely certain Miss Granger means us no harm.” Harry opened his mouth, but his wife raised one finger to forestall whatever he'd been about to say. “No snide comments about my naivete, please.” The glitter of amusement was back. “Trust me on this one.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“What the hell, Vega?” Harry kept his voice at a conversational level, but he was clearly irate. “Have you absolutely lost your mind?”

“I thought it might be the easiest way!” Vega's voice was almost apologetic, as if she'd known what his reaction would be, and was already sorry she'd said anything. Hermione absently twirled her fork around in her pasta, eyes fixed on her plate, as she tried to pretend she didn't have a front-row seat to an argument she'd caused. “I could get you through the wards. It wouldn't even be illegal!”

“You aren't setting one foot within 20 miles of that manor!” Harry's blazing eyes shot over to Hermione, where she met them guiltily. “Tell her! You've brought this all up now, so you tell her how it is unnecessary and dangerous!”

“She doesn't have to come,” Hermione began slowly. “It might be the easiest way to get on the grounds though. She could stay at the gate.”

“I could stay at the gate!” Vega echoed triumphantly. Harry's eyes flared viridian at this further betrayal.

“I'm already going with you. Lucius has been under house arrest in that manor for how long now? I think I can handle him. And you… you're pretty good with a wand, aren't you?”

Pretty good with a wand. Hermione couldn't stop a smirk.

“In my universe, Malfoy is the Minister, and I was Undesirable Number One. What does that tell you?” Her stony gaze crossed Harry's and clashed.

“If either of you hack through those wards using your wand like a battleaxe, he's going to know. It is going to take a little more finesse, and I know how those wards work! Do you want to risk that he somehow eludes you? It will alert the Ministry too; they'll know. And while the Unspeakables have more or less sanctioned your mission - as much as they ever sanction anything, anyway - do you really want all the extra hassle and paperwork?” Vega was speaking quickly and professionally, now, and Hermione could see how she was so good at her job as liaison. “I can get you in. I'll stay in the lane. Seamus can stay with me.” Her words were meant to placate, but Harry hardly looked mollified. He looked as if he'd been cornered by two unpredictable creatures, and as though he wholly blamed Hermione for instigating this situation.

“What if - what if you aren't allowed through the wards anymore?” Hermione ventured, trying one last time to prevent Vega from going, to remove that belligerent look from Harry's face.

“Blood dies hard,” Vega answered, with a tight smile. “I'll still be allowed in.”

Harry threw a few Galleons on the table to cover their lunch, and Hermione let it pass without comment. She realized that he was furious at her, and part of her could understand that. But most of her, the part of her that had become twisted and lonely following Harry's death, figured that the risk to Vega was minimal, and it would be the simplest way to accomplish her mission. You haven't always been this selfish, a tiny voice said. What if something happens to the child?

“Let me get Seamus,” Harry finally said heavily, tension working in the muscles of his jaw and neck. When they reached the pavement outside the restaurant, he turned and faced them both, though he was zeroed in on his wife. “You will not step one foot on Malfoy land. You will not leave Seamus' side. For any reason. Promise me.”

Hermione might have taken umbrage with Harry's tone, if she'd been Vega, but then she remembered that Vega had been sorted into Hufflepuff, where loyalty was paramount. There was trepidation in both of their faces, and Hermione belatedly realized that Harry was accompanying her so Vega would not, and that Harry was perhaps risking more than Vega was.

Blood dies hard.

He always hated Harry.

Lucius Malfoy was supposedly unarmed, his wand confiscated by the Ministry following his trial, but Hermione would wager the contents of Gringotts that he had alternate methods of attack and defense in that manor.

“And you,” Harry directed at her, managing to keep most of his contempt from being blatantly obvious. “If anything happens to Vega, because we went to that manor, I - ”

“Harry, stop.” Vega put a flat palm on his chest, and he instantly lifted his hand to cup her fingers in his. “I'll be fine. Lily will be fine. When have you ever backed down from a fight?”

“This is not our fight!” Harry's voice was stricken, haunted.

“Any fight for what's right is our fight. And there is a man who is not my father, living in my family home.” The corners of her eyes crinkled in fondness, and the look of love there almost made Hermione breathless in awe. “We've done things like this before, and come out victorious. We can do it again.”

“You weren't pregnant before.”

Vega lowered their clasped hands to her abdomen, and Hermione felt awkwardly as if she were intruding on a very private moment.

“This is his bloodline, after all… I mean, sort of. Besides, he's not even going to know I'm there. And even if he did, I don't think he'd hurt me. Or her.” Her hand moved softly over her stomach.

“Until he remembers that she's my blood too,” Harry muttered, dark humor sparking in his eyes.

“Listen,” Hermione finally spoke in a calm voice, trying to keep the plaintive note out of it. “In my universe - my adopted one, that is - Harry lost Vega. This man killed her. The very Lucius Malfoy - not just a version of him - who sits in that manor. I am going to bring him back. I will do it with or without your help. I certainly do not want to put anyone in danger, but - ” here she paused, and took a deep breath. “It would certainly be easier with help.”

Harry's eyes flitted back and forth between the two women, and Hermione could see the moment that he reluctantly made his decision.

“Let me get Seamus,” he repeated dully. “I can't fight you both.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Hermione moved stealthily through the corridor, her feet making no sound on the heavy nap of the expensive rug. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness within, only occasionally broken up by moonlit windows; they had opted to go at night, in the hopes that they would catch Lucius unawares, already sleeping, and they dared not risk a light. She was about to round the corner, when something snagged at her arm, and she bit back a shriek.

Harry had wrapped his fingers around her wrist and stopped her from proceeding. She whirled to fix him with an angry, silent glare. He shook his head, gestured further down the hallway, and nodded toward the Auror-issued tracking device he held in his hand. Moving sideways, his back to the wall, he covered her, while she moved past the branching corridor, and continued straight. When they reached the next turn, Harry nodded, and held up three fingers. Third door. They were almost there.

Half the length of the corridor later, they reached the door, all but dripping with peeling and faded scrolled woodwork, with a heavy ornate door handle - at one time polished daily, Hermione was sure - as its proud adornment. She and Harry took mere seconds to cast Disillusionment charms on each other, as well as a Silencio on the door. It swung open noiselessly after one flick of Harry's wand.

An enormous bed took up a lot of space in the center of the very large room. Moonlight shone in through three floor-length windows. A curled body could be seen beneath the tousled bedclothes. Hermione felt her heart begin to pound with jackhammer quickness, and she forced herself to exhale a slow, silent breath. One spell, one quick trip, and this is over. Suddenly she wanted Harry, wanted to be in his arms, to feel his fingers ghosting over her face, to feel him kiss her again, to remove the angry grief from his ruined eyes.

Harry moved around to the far side of the bed, and let her know he was situated with a quick flick of his nearly invisible head. In nearly perfect tandem, they lunged and flung a non-verbal Stunning spell.

Red lights struck the form in the bed, and Hermione ripped back the coverlet, as something buzzed almost inaudibly in Harry's pocket.

“He's not here,” Hermione hissed in alarm, looking down at the inanimate golem wearing Lucius Malfoy's dressing gown. Panic raced through her veins like quicksilver, as she met Harry's frenzied gaze.

“HARRY!” Seamus' voice crackled over the two-way connection. “HARRY, I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE GOT A WAND, BUT YOU'D BETTER GET DOWN HERE NOW!”

Harry let a string of blistering curses escape his lips, before he flung himself from the bedroom, running as if a furious Lethifold were after him, Hermione right on his heels.

Ahead of her, Harry was still cursing. From the few words she could catch, Hermione figured that his target was the Anti-Apparation wards installed by the Ministry. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and she found herself pleading inwardly for nothing to happen to Vega.

Harry hit the front door, still at a dead run, and took a flying leap to skip all five steps leading up to the sprawling front entrance, and landed on the bricked walkway, skidding into stride. Hermione all but stumbled down them herself, and then thought about the hole Vega had opened in the wards. Seamus was shouting over Harry's transmitter again, but she couldn't make out the words.

If I Splinch myself, I'll surely deserve it. And if I don't, and Vega's hurt, Harry will surely kill me anyway, she thought. Concentrating as hard as she could, willing herself through the surgical gap that Vega had opened, she Apparated. Even as she disappeared, she heard the booming sound of her displacement echo off of the surrounding hills.

When she rematerialized, the first thing she was cognizant of was fiery pain racing up her right arm, like she'd been burned with acid. She instinctively cupped her tricep, and her hand came away coated in blood. Splinched. She blinked away the spots dancing before her eyes, and forced herself to focus on the situation in front of her.

Seamus had taken cover behind a broken down wall just on the opposite side of the lane from the manor gates. He was periodically casting spells, but his wand was misfiring badly. Hermione wondered vaguely what had happened to it. He was working his way down the wall - toward where Vega was concealed, Hermione deduced. Malfoy had apparently come to the same conclusion, because his spells were hitting ahead of Seamus, although close enough to keep the Auror honest. A blast had boiled from the tip of Malfoy's wand, almost at the moment Hermione appeared, and chunks of rock flew from a section of the wall like shrapnel. Hermione barely heard a wordless cry of pain beneath the rattle of stone. Vega! She could hear Harry approaching, his frantic feet noisy on the lane leading to the gate.

Lucius became aware of her presence almost immediately, and whirled on her. Her instincts came roaring back to the forefront of her mind, and her spell left her wand at the same time as his. Malfoy dropped like a stone. She moved toward him cautiously, slinking on careful feet, and Summoned his wand.

“It's okay,” she called. “He's down. He's down! Seamus, can you come restrain him, please?”

Seamus leapt over the wall, using one hand as a fulcrum, and did as she asked, giving her the same bewildered look Harry had when she talked too familiarly to him. He was ashen from dust of the exploded rocks of the partially destroyed wall, and blood was dripping from a laceration near his ear.

“Good thing you got here when you did. First shot the bastard got off did a number on my wand.”

“Where is she? Where's Vega?” Harry yelled, sprinting through the gate at full tilt.

“I'm - I'm here.” Vega stood from her hiding place behind the wall. She was disheveled and dirty, but otherwise looked unhurt. Hermione smiled wearily, wondering if that would be enough to save her from Harry's wrath. “I'm fine.”

“How the hell did he know we were here?” Harry's voice ran the gamut from angry to distraught, as he carefully helped his wife over the low wall, running his hands over her hair, the sides of her face, her arms, her abdomen, as if making sure she was still intact.

“I don't think he did,” Seamus answered. “He knew the wards had opened, and took the opportunity to try to get out. I don't think he gave a damn why they'd opened. He looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.” There was chagrin in his Irish lilt. “He reacted faster than I did, damn him to hell.”

“He's had help from inside the Ministry,” Harry noted grimly. “There's no way he gets a wand and installs ward detection spells without Auror knowledge, unless someone helped him.”

Wincing, Seamus daubed the blood away with his sleeve, and then used a spell to dissolve the resulting stain. “I'll open a file when I get back to Headquarters.”

Hermione stood motionless in the middle of the lane, as Seamus prepared the insensate Malfoy for transport back to the Ministry. The terror and adrenaline were slowly leaching out of her, and her limbs suddenly felt like they had lead weights attached. Something warm and wet was soaking the side and sleeve of her jumper.

“Oh, sweet Merlin, Harry! Hermione!!” Vega's voice sounded frantic and terribly far away. Hermione lifted blurry eyes toward her. Was there another assailant? “She's wounded!”

Wounded? Hermione thought distantly. Oh, that's right. I was Splinched.

Then she heard Harry's voice, quite close.

“Did he get off a spell? Hermione! Did he get off a spell?!” He gently shook her shoulders when she did not respond as she should have. Her brain felt fuzzy and slow. Her knees began to buckle.

The three voices swam together, indistinguishable, as her world tilted. She felt arms catch her, and lower her gently to the packed earth of the lane. Someone was using magic. There was stinging pain down the length of her arm. A sudden rush of wind, accompanied by brilliant light behind her eyelids. Someone had sent a Patronus. That's Sectumsempra, Seamus' voice. Hermione, hold on! Then Vega, anguish clear in her words. Her jumper tore; she forced her eyes open to look at Harry, his forehead creased with urgency, as he ripped her sleeve off. She scrabbled at him with one hand; her limbs were not obeying her as they ought.

“I'm… I'm … “ she struggled to say. I'm sorry.

Her world went black.

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17. Seventeen

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

“And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.” -Mumford and Sons, “After the Storm”

Consciousness crashed over Hermione like the crest of a wave, and when she surfaced, she sucked in a noisy breath, eyes flying open and arms flailing wildly. She let out an almost surprised grunt of pain when her movements sent a sharp flare up her rib cage into her shoulder.

“Easy there…” soothed a voice in a lilting Irish brogue. She squinted against the reflection of the overhead light against the stark whiteness of the hospital room.

“Seamus? Where - where are Vega and Harry? Is she okay? Where's Malfoy?”

“Slow down; slow down there, Time Traveler. Vega's fine. Baby's fine. Harry's with her; she's getting checked out by a Healer - just precautionary. Malfoy's in custody waiting on you. Believe me, he's not going anywhere.”

“I'm not a Time Traveler,” Hermione replied petulantly, narrowing her eyes at his easy grin and subsequent whatever shrug. “What happened to me?”

“Well, aside from your harebrained idea to Apparate yourself through a hole in a ward - you're lucky you didn't lose your entire arm, by the way! - looks like Malfoy grazed you with Sectumsempra.” Hermione's hand drifted across her torso to touch the thick pad of bandages that ran the full length of her side. She couldn't feel her other arm at all. “That was touch-and-go. The Blood Replenishing potions had trouble keeping up. The Splinching took out some of your muscle, nearly to the bone at the deeper end. The Repair work was complicated. It's - it's going to be a while before you're able to use your arm properly again.” Seamus crimped his lips together sympathetically, a look of apology in his eyes.

“Is Harry mad?” Hermione asked in a low voice.

“Vega'll talk him down,” was Seamus' answer: a confirmation without outright saying so.

“Why are you in here? Shouldn't you be guarding Malfoy?”

“There are two Aurors on him, two of our best. You'll know Neville Longbottom and Ron Weasley?”

“Of course!” Hermione uttered automatically.

“'Of course,' she says,” Seamus echoed in a sarcastic way. “Well, no worries on that front, anyway. You know,” he added, with a satisfied smirk, “The Prophet calls the four of us Aurors, the ones who were in the first Auror class out of the War - they've called us the - ”

There was a perfunctory knock that didn't wait for an answer, and suddenly Harry was in her room. His cloak was still torn and dirty from the altercation, and his hair was on end.

“You call that a knock?” flew from Hermione's mouth before she could stop herself, and then she winced at her inopportune timing, as Harry rounded on her.

“You. You're going to scold me for barging in a room, after - after what you did?”

Hermione felt defensive, even as she understood why Harry was feeling somewhat unhinged.

“What I recall is that I was the one incapacitating Lucius Malfoy, instead of the two Aurors on site.” Harry's eyes narrowed dangerously.

“I told Vega not to go. I knew it was a bad idea. She wouldn't have gone if you hadn't - if you hadn't planted the bloody idea in her head in the first place!”

Hermione wilted as quickly as she'd bristled to fight. “I'm sorry,” she said softly. “I'm sure you were terrified for her, and I had no intention of putting either of you in that position… and she's - they're both okay, right?”

“Vega and Lily are fine,” Harry admitted, appearing almost reluctant to voice the fact that he was upset over what might have happened, rather than what had actually occurred. Hermione let a real smile waft across her face, and she met his gaze squarely.

“I'm glad. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if anything had happened.” She swung her legs toward the side of the bed, pushing the sheet out of the way, and struggling to rise using only her good arm. “Now, when can I take my prisoner, and be on my way? I'm sure you'll be thrilled to see the last of me.”

“Easy there, Time Traveler,” Seamus interjected, even as the nausea and pain began to surge over her. “You're not going anywhere today.”

“I'm not waiting until tomorrow!” Hermione was incensed at the delay, even while spots were dancing in her vision.

“Splinching and Dark Curse wounds aren't so easily Healed as all that. You're going to have to be a little more patient.”

“Somehow, I don't think that's an inherent quality she possesses,” Harry snorted, but he came to her bedside, and gently repositioned both her and the bedsheet. “Malfoy is going to be guarded by either myself or someone I trust implicitly. You don't have to worry.”

“I'm not worried,” Hermione lied unconvincingly. “I just want to get this done.” Harry arched an eyebrow of patent disbelief at her, and she flushed, amazed that he could read her as easily as he had, with no history of closeness or friendship between them. Then again, she supposed her desperate need to finish this once and for all had made her somewhat more transparent than was usual for her.

“You're not going anywhere, until the Healer has evaluated you in the morning.” Harry's voice had a concerned undertone, but his eyes were implacable. “I'll station someone outside your door, if I need to.”

“You always were high-handed,” Hermione muttered, sinking back into the pillows, knowing he meant what he said. Her arm was starting to throb, a dull, steady thrum , and her side felt like it had been laid open and then bathed in acid. Something flickered in Harry's gaze, a bemused wonderment that she knew him, but he could not return the favor.

“Something tells me you're routinely this stubborn, as well.” She shot a baleful look at him, but appeared to concede his point.

“I just want to go home,” she finally said, emotion and fatigue and pain clouding her dark eyes. She let the euphoria of that single word wash over her: soothing and comfortable, yet breath-taking with newness. She had somewhere to go, a place to belong. She missed Harry and Ron. She had Harry and Ron, and it had been so long since she could say that with any grain of truth. She thought of him, of his clouded eyes that still saw her, still recognized a kindred spirit; she thought of his arms around her, his mouth yearning and eager on hers. She wanted…

“This is so weird.” Harry's voice broke into her thoughts, and he arched an eyebrow at her, looking for all the world like he had front row Legilimency for everything she'd just been thinking. She felt a flush begin to creep into her face. How the hell could he read her so accurately? He didn't even know her. “I wouldn't have thought - I mean, the fact that another me knows another you… in another life. It shouldn't affect us, here and now. And yet…” He cocked his head at her, squinting as though he dimly recognized her from somewhere. “I wonder if there`s a universe where I finally gave in and just throttled you…”

A laugh leapt from Hermione's mouth unbidden. Harry slanted a reprovingly amused look back at her, not exactly smiling, though something had lightened in his eyes.

“Is Vega… I mean, will she…? I'd go to her, but - ”

“She wanted to see you, before you left. I'll make sure she comes by.”

“Harry, I - I never meant to - ”

He rolled his eyes at her, a gesture that so reminded her of one she might have made herself, that it was startling. “I know,” he admitted, albeit reluctantly. One hand lifted, as though he might have stroked it over her matted curls. Instead, he ran it through his already disheveled hair, and sighed, a deeply tired sound that raised and dropped both shoulders. “Get some rest. Leave Malfoy to us.”

She relaxed against her flat hospital-issue pillow, and watched Harry cross in front of her bed to speak with Seamus, murmuring in a voice to low for her to distinguish individual words. The slicing pain in her arm had dwindled back down to a dull, steady throb. She was asleep before Harry had even exited the room.

***

There were fell voices in her dreams. Fierce winds lashed at her clothing and her hair; she had to squint her eyes against the force of it. Hands grabbed at her; Harry's voice called for her; she couldn't hold on. Was that her mother's sob? It was all ripped away in a maelstrom of fury, as if the multiverse itself had turned against her. And above it all, she could hear Malfoy's patrician laugh.

She woke with a start, not realizing the murmur of voices had followed her into consciousness, until her eyes opened and a stab of pain in her arm and side arrested further movement. Vega, Seamus, and Harry stood near the door, quietly conversing. The Irish Auror looked rumpled, as though he'd slept in his uniform, but Vega and Harry were in different clothes.

Hermione's throat was dry; she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Even so, something must have snagged Vega's attention, for she looked suddenly in Hermione's direction. Her mouth moved. She's awake.

Hermione reached for the glass of water on her bedside table, pushing herself into more of a sitting position despite the pain that made her see stars. Vega, moving surprisingly quickly for her cumbersome size, handed her the water with a chiding, “Hermione…”

“I'm taking him today,” Hermione croaked, after a couple of swallows.

“You need to let the Healer determine that,” Harry pointed out gruffly, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

“I'm taking him today,” she repeated stolidly.

“You can barely move!”

“I'll take a potion.”

“Then you'll be impaired.”

“One that just takes the edge off then!” Hostility crackled between them. “I rested. Just as you asked.” Sarcasm heavily laced the last word. “I'm taking the prisoner and we're going back. Today.”

“Then I'm going through with you.”

“Like hell you are!”

“Those are my terms.”

“This isn't a negotiation!” Her voice was blistering. Vega and Seamus were watching the back-and-forth as if it were a Quidditch match with particularly adept Chasers.

“Shall I just call a Mediwitch in here then? You seem agitated. Some Dreamless Sleep might do you good.”

“You unmitigated arse!” Hermione felt such a strong desire to do him bodily harm that her fingers actually curled into claws, tangling in her sheets. If he'd just step a little closer, she might be able to manage a kick… in an unfortunate place, too.

“Harry, for Merlin's sake, stop antagonizing her. I've never known anyone but Percy Weasley to make you this… irritable,” his wife remonstrated gently. Harry's smirk became an open grin, when he noticed Hermione's flare of annoyance at being compared to Percy. “Hermione, let him go with you. This type of thing is his job anyway. The Nexus is perfectly safe; he'll be back here in thirty minutes. You get to take… the prisoner… today, and Harry gets to satisfy himself that you'll be all right.” Hermione cut her eyes over at Harry, as if she very much doubted that Harry cared at all whether she was all right, but Vega continued brightly, “You both win.”

“Hmph,” Harry grunted, his eyes glinting with fondness. “Somehow, I think you win, O Wife of Mine and Daughter of Slytherins.” He spoke the last part in a teasing mockery of a royal address. Vega's only response was a complacent smile that bespoke her agreement with her husband's assessment.

“Vega,” Hermione rasped, reaching out her good arm to lightly touch Vega's. “I'm so sorry… for putting you in that situation. In your condition. I had no right…”

“All's well that ends well, right?” Vega said lightly, shrugging. Harry opened his mouth to speak, but she shot him a quelling look. “I'd make the same decision again. I'm glad we could help you, and I'm fine. The baby's fine. And you've extricated a criminal and an impostor from our lives. And now, you can go home to your Harry.” Her eyes were misty as she and her husband exchange a glance of such tenderness that it made Hermione's heart ache.

My Harry, she thought wistfully. They helped her sit up, as a Mediwitch bustled in, clucking her tongue over Hermione's decision to leave.

“We can't unbind the arm, dear,” she said, in a Molly Weasley way. “It's been specially charmed. And if you get hit with any spellfire…” The implications were clearly dire, though unspoken.

“She'll be with me. I won't let anything happen to her,” Harry assured the nurse.

“Just - just immobilize the whole thing,” Hermione said. “Strap it to me or something. Sometimes, it can be a rather rough ride.” As the Mediwitch handed her two different potions to take, Harry gave her instructions.

“You'll be holding my wand as well. Keep only one of them out. Stay out of arm's reach of Malfoy. He'll be Stunned, but stranger things have happened.” His wife neatly transfigured Hermione's hospital garb into a shirt and jeans, and Summoned a knapsack that contained - Hermione assumed - her other things. Her panicked hand flew to her breastbone, but the multiverse crystal was there, had been there all along. She had grown so accustomed to its presence that she didn't even notice it anymore. “I'll go through with you, see him safely into the Veil, and return home.”

“Sounds easy…” she said, smiling tremulously at them. Some kind of material leapt through the air and began wrapping itself around her midsection, binding her arm against her torso in the last position it had been in, with her palm near her sternum. She groped for the railing of the bed, as a wave of dizziness washed over her. Her arm and side were agony.

“Give those potions about five more minutes, and you shouldn't be hurting as much,” the Mediwitch instructed gently.

Hermione thanked her, and gingerly clambered down from the bed. She nodded to Seamus, and allowed Vega to wrap her in a careful hug.

“I'm so pleased to have met you!” She whispered in such a warm way that Hermione's eyes filled with tears.

“See you round, Time Traveler,” Seamus winked. Harry pressed a kiss to his wife's temple and murmured something in her ear. Love you. Be back in a bit.

“Thank you both… so much.” It seemed woefully inadequate, but it was all Hermione could manage, as she followed Harry out of the room.

****

The Nexus was the same cool cavern humming with activity and glowing with soft, almost electronic light. She and Harry had made their way down from some kind of Special Priority Auror Entrance, with Lucius Malfoy bobbing along behind them, and had only just stuck their heads in the door, when Luna approached, seemingly having sensed their entrance.

“Oh,” Luna said, in a thoroughly unsurprised tone. “You got him.” Her eyes flicked to Hermione's useless arm, the white wrappings glowing against the green shirt Vega had produced. “But not before he got you, apparently. Good Morning, Harry.”

“H'lo, Luna,” he responded with casual affection. “I'm going to take her through, if you don't mind.”

“That is not our jurisdiction. She arrived in the Room of Judgment. We can go there now, and you may leave whenever you wish.” She made a motion as if to follow them through the door, but arrested it abruptly. “Half a moment.” She glided away, her heavy cloak billowing behind her, as she melted into the shadows.

Mere seconds later, she was back, and as they crossed the corridor to the room with the veil, she pressed something - two small vials of something - into Hermione's hand, the long draping sleeve of her cloak concealing the movement. Hermione darted a questioning look at her, but Luna's expression was serene and unchanged.

“You wouldn't have had a chance before. You'll know when you need them.”

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, her eyebrows dark angles over confused eyes, but Luna gestured toward Harry. “It's time for you to go.” Harry had swiveled the elder Malfoy so that he was hovering in a more vertical direction, and Hermione could not help the ripple of unease that washed over her as she approached them. She pulled the chain out from under her shirt, Extending it as she went, and handed it to Harry, who ducked beneath it and then flung it over Lucius' head.

Hermione said the incantation, and the rushing wind rose from a hiss to a roar. The injured side of her body was pulsing with a dull ache. Almost there.

“Be right back, Luna!” Harry called above the noise. A wisp of a smile flitted daintily across the Unspeakable's face.

“You always are.”

****

The trip was once again rougher, as it seemed to be when there was a specific destination as the target, turning their movement into the hurtling of a bullet, rather than a lazier meandering as through slow-moving water. Hermione staggered , as the whirling stopped, colliding sideways into Harry, and unable to stop the cry of pain that came with the contact. Harry kept her from falling, though he didn't have enough warning to be gentle, and watched her with a concerned face.

“You all right?”

“I'm fine,” she lied, trying not to gasp. She took a brief moment to steady herself against him before moving away. Lucius Malfoy still hovered serenely in their small circle, and she felt ill at ease in his shadow.

“You're back,” Luna's smooth voice was matter of fact. “I'll let Harry and Ron know. They've been camping out in the antechamber since you left. I offered them a tent. I don't know why they wouldn't take it. Camping is ever so much more comfortable, if one has a tent.” She glided toward the door noiselessly from her position beyond them, and Hermione noticed that she was in traditional Chinese dress, complete with silk slippers and ornamental chopsticks in her hair.

“Are you in disguise again?” Hermione couldn't help but ask.

“Oh no, not today. I'm never in disguise on Thursday,” was Luna's departing comment as she exited the room.

Harry and Ron were in the doorway just moments later. Harry's face was alive with both expectation and apprehension, and Ron's arm was cupped discreetly around Harry's elbow.

“Hermione?”

“I'm - I'm here,” she managed, relief at the sight of him all but choking her. Even that small admission was enough for him to gauge her position, and he made a move as if he would have plunged across the room toward her. But Ron's hand tightened around his arm, and he murmured something that sounded like,

“Easy, mate. She's hurt.”

Fear flooded Harry's face. “How badly? She's standing up. Is someone holding her up?”

“I'm standing. It's -it's not so bad, really. Got myself a bit Splinched is all.”

The Harry who had accompanied her snorted. “A bit Splinched! Is that what you call - ?” He froze at the fire in Hermione's eyes. Harry and Ron had stilled as well, both of them clearly recognizing the voice, as Ron noticed his presence in the room for the first time.

“There's another… me… in here?”

Ron's low, disbelieving, “Bloody hell,” was apparently convincing. Harry's sightless eyes darted from where he'd heard his own voice to where he'd heard Hermione's.

Hermione had started toward Harry, moving as carefully as she could. The stiff way she was walking was starting to send a dull ache up her back and the side of her neck.

“We got him, Harry. We got Lucius Malfoy, and we're ready to send him through the Veil.” Her voice was uneven; she was out of breath from crossing the room, and he frowned.

“You - you got Splinched?” Harry refused to be sidetracked, even by such momentous news as that.

“Splinched half the muscle out of her upper arm going through a ward. Then got hit with Sectumsempra on top of that,” the other Harry supplied helpfully. The atmosphere in the room grew grim. No one had to ask who had hit Hermione with the Dark spell.

“Would you shut up… please?” Hermione all but shrieked at him.

“Why?” he answered back hotly. “Were you going to do him a disservice by keeping it a secret and hoping he wouldn't notice that you were hurt?”

“I was going to try to keep him from worrying unnecessarily about me.”

“Well, that's the foundation to a healthy relationship.”

“Oh… go back to your own universe!” Hermione snapped. Ron snorted.

“Good luck with this one, mate,” Harry addressed his counterpart, still standing stunned at Hermione's side. “She's going to make you gray before you're forty.” He sketched a smirking bow back in her direction. “If it's all the same to you, I'll believe I'll wait until Malfoy's been… dispatched. The more Aurors the better, in this situation, wouldn't you say?” He nodded at Ron in a comradely fashion. Hermione stewed. So damn cocky.

The silken material of Luna's clothing made a sinuous noise that heralded her arrival back into the room, accompanied by another hooded Unspeakable, one several inches taller than she and positively drowning in swaths of material.

“This is Caledfryn,” she introduced, with a floaty hand gesture. “He's helping with the transfer attempt today. If you're sure you want to try it,” she tacked on, looking inquiringly at Hermione.

Harry had not yet touched her, and she realized belatedly that he did not know on what side she was injured. She reached out and gripped his hand tightly, rejoicing to feel the answering squeeze of his fingers.

“I'm sure.” The pad of Harry's thumb brushed across the uneven surface of her knuckles. “This is going to work,” she whispered, as an aside to him.

“Please… please don't - don't not tell me things.” He spoke clumsily, but with a beseeching note in his voice. Just a day or two ago, he would have gone storming from the room, she thought. Doing him a disservice is exactly right. A wave of shame washed over her.

“You're right,” she replied softly. “I'm sorry.” Using their joined hands, he gingerly pulled her closer to him, and kissed her, carefully and reverently.

“I'll be waiting right here,” he said, and the bravado in his voice was almost believable.

“Caledfryn, if you'll generate the null magic field here,” Luna's voice managed to be ethereal and businesslike at the same time. “Harry, Levitate Malfoy over here as soon as he's done.” Hermione had already disentangled her hand from Harry's, and moved in their direction.

A tight ball of translucent light, glowing a shiny orange, expanded outward from the tip of Caledfryn's wand as he raised it above his head. Hermione felt the pressure in the room change, as if her ears needed to pop, yet couldn't. She swallowed ineffectually. The field grew until it looked like it could encompass two or three people, remaining open on one side, where Caledfryn still held his wand.

“Ms. Granger, if you will,” he said, in a surprisingly resonant voice, gesturing with his free hand for her to enter the field. “Oh, not with your wands,” he added. She looked stupidly toward her pocket; she'd forgotten she was even carrying her wand… and Harry's. That Auror stepped up quickly, and relieved her of both wands; a smile flitted across his face, but his eyes were serious.

She stepped into the field, and immediately felt assailed by curious sensations. Her senses were muffled; her movements seemed slower and less sure. She felt like she wouldn't be able to take a full breath if she tried, so she did not try. She didn't want to start panicking.

“What you're feeling is normal,” Luna told her, apparently able to recognize the frantic look on her face. “Breathe as normally as you can. Try to remain very still.” Across the room, Ron was whispering in Harry's ear. She guessed that he was giving his friend a play-by-play.

At Caledfryn's nod, the other Harry lofted Lucius Malfoy through the opening, and the Unspeakable closed the field, snapping his wand toward the floor and jerking it backwards, as if severing a connection. The smothering feeling increased. Luna and Caledfryn were both incanting now, wands aimed at the bubble enclosing her and Malfoy, but she could not hear them. The air inside the field felt heavy and dead.

Breathe normally, breathe normally, breathe normally.

Lucius' eyes opened, pupils dilated to blackness. Their eyes met.

Harry! She shrieked inwardly, trying to gasp in a capacity that she no longer possessed. Malfoy must have tried to breathe too, and was panicking. He dropped to his knees, mouth open; he might have been screaming, but she could not hear it.

He's not suffocating, she realized suddenly. Something gracefully and brightly rendered was emerging in the air in front of him. A rune. His Constant. My Constant. She felt a smile begin to curl her lips. She wished Harry could see her. It's going to work.

The satisfaction was ripped from her, almost before she could feel it.

It was replaced with pain.

It fired in her head, whining into a frequency that somehow was coming from inside of her. It was like every nerve ending being on fire, carved from her body. It was worse than Cruciatus, infinitely, almost unfathomably worse. She wanted to curl in on herself, perhaps smash her head into blessed unconsciousness.

Try to remain very still.

Time lost meaning. The English language lost all meaning. She was no longer aware of the null field around her, the Chamber of the Veil, the smooth hard floor beneath her feet, nothing but how much she hurt.

I am going to die.

She thought that she was sorry about that. Even though she couldn't quite remember why.

Hermione! Hermione, listen to me!! It was Harry's voice. The Harry she'd known long ago; the Harry who'd warned her mother, who'd saved her life. Your pocket! It's in your pocket!

You wouldn't have had a chance before. You'll know when you need them.

You'll know when you need them.

Hermione, now!! It was Harry's voice again, desperate, blisteringly pleading.

Her ears were roaring; her vision had grayed out. And yet she groped toward where her pocket should be with nerveless fingers. Were there vials in her hand? She flipped off corks by muscle memory alone, one, two… She should have heard the crisp pop of seals breaking, but there was nothing. She lifted her arm - at least, her brain was telling her arm to lift - and knocked back the vials that the other Luna had given her.

You'll know when you need them.

It shouldn't have worked. How could Luna have possibly known?

Yet, it did work. She felt cool relief slowly flooding her system, as sensation was restored. The pain ebbed, swirling and dwindling, as if down a drain. She could breathe again; her vision begin to fade back in. She swallowed; her throat was sore. Sound returned, and with it, a lot of yelling and general clamor, topped off by a persistent, tinny ringing in her ears. Reflexively, as if she'd been startled, she dropped the empty potions containers, and they shattered on the floor.

Pain washed over her again, and she realized that someone was touching her, holding on to her, gripping her, as if she were his lifeline. The person apparently cottoned on to the fact that he was hurting her, at about the same time that she realized it. She blinked, and Harry's frantic face came into focus. He released his hold on her right arm.

“Oh, God, I've hurt you. I'm so sorry, Hermione, I forgot, I couldn't bear - I thought you - the way - you were screaming - I thought I'd - ” lost you. She took in the utter terror on his face. He had thought he was going to go through this again. He had lost Vega, and then her, only days after she had convinced him to open his heart. She felt her face crumple with the force of how much she loved him.

“I'm sorry, Harry. It was - it was bad, worse than I thought it would be. But I'm here now. And we're going to be okay.” She lifted her good hand to caress his damp cheek, and he leaned his forehead into hers.

“I love you,” he whispered, so softly that it barely registered.

“I'm sorry, what was that?” she teased.

“You heard me.” There was casual arrogance in his voice, but that was belied by the smile playing at the corners of his mouth. She tilted her head up to kiss him, but just as his mouth welcomed hers, Luna interrupted them.

“It's been several days since I've interrupted anyone's tete-a-tete, but Hermione, we'd like to get a look at your magical signature now, so we can make sure everything is as it should be.” There was a tone in Luna's voice that made Hermione spear her with a piercing look, but the Unspeakable's face was as bland and unreadable as ever.

You wouldn't have had a chance before. You'll know when you need them.

How much did Luna know? This Luna? All Lunas?

Hermione shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “Sure, Luna,” she said. “I'd like to know for sure myself.” Luna extracted the runes of Hermione's signature, and they wrote themselves in the air before them, glowing brightly. Luna pulled out Caledfryn's as well, for comparison, and Hermione felt a brilliant, beaming smile break out across her face when her Constant was a perfect match.

“It worked!” she breathed, ecstatic.

“We're ready over here!” Ron called, snagging everyone's attention.

The null field was gone. Ron and the other Harry were flanking the Veil, as they moved Lucius Malfoy in front of it. Someone who looked like a bureaucrat from the MLE department was documenting the proceedings with quill and scroll. Luna and Caledfryn had moved a little ways apart, looking over a long furl of parchment together.

“Proceed,” the MLE official ordered. Her quill moved of its own volition across the scroll.

There was no pomp or circumstance, or anything other than a grim attendance to duty. Harry turned toward the Veil, the set of his shoulders and spine rigid. Hermione laced her fingers through his. Ron and the other Harry directed him into the Veil; there was a flutter of the curtains, a whistling of distant wind, and then it was over. Ron looked over at them, and nodded once.

“It's done,” she whispered.

“For Vega.” Harry looked as if he were a million miles away. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and echoed,

“For Vega.”

Document created with wvWare/wvWare version 1.2.7

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18. Eighteen

Shadow Walker

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

-Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

*

*

*

You have suffered enough, and warred with yourself. It's time that you won.

-Glen Hansard, “Falling Slowly”

For a moment, no one in the chamber moved. There was nothing but the flutter and rustle of the Veil in its embrasure of stone. Hermione thought that she might be able to stand there forever, nestled in the crook of Harry's shoulder, her fingers laced through his, but the discomfort in her arm was ratcheting upward in intensity rapidly enough to make that impossible.

Ron was signing something off on the bureaucrat's roll of parchment, and the other Harry was interestedly looking over his shoulder. Ron, for his part, was striving valiantly not to recoil away from this Harry-that-was-not-Harry, but kept looking at him askance as he wrote.

The other Harry! Hermione jolted upright suddenly enough to startle her companion.

“What's wrong?” he asked, but she was unheeding.

“The other Harry, the other Harry!” she muttered under her breath, striding towards the one in question, until she stopped directly in front of him, and blurted, “How are you even here?”

“I beg your pardon?” Harry's eyebrows arched into his hair. “I got here the same way you got here.” He was talking to her like she was six years old. She really hated that. She snatched her wand from where it was protruding from his pocket, and poked him in the chest with it.

“Why are you here? Visible? He is here!” She flung her arm in a wide arc toward her Harry, causing the one being castigated to flinch. “You should be out of phase. Who are you really?”

“Ow!” he said petulantly, rubbing at his chest, where she'd poked him. “Look. I know that from what you know, two of the same people being in phase at the same time is impossible. But… you saw the Nexus, right? Would you be willing to concede perhaps, even it's to me, that maybe we're a little more advanced in Multiverse Theory?”

Willing to concede might not be precisely how she'd put it, but Hermione recognized the inherent logic in his words, and subsided a bit, the look in her narrowed eyes clearly saying, Explain.

Harry thumbed a chain out from under his collar to show her. A surprisingly intricate network of silver filigree dangled from the end.

“What the hell is that?” She asked, in a tone, not of annoyance, but of awe. Harry smirked at her, and she realized a moment too late that she'd lost her irritation. She cast him a baleful scowl, and he laughed outright.

“Hermione, I guarantee you that if you had existed in my universe, we would have been great friends! Apparently, you can't stay mad at me even when you want to.”

“Hmf,” she grunted. “It's obvious you've gotten far too high an opinion of yourself without me around to rein you in! Now, answer my question.” Her eyes focused intently, as she tried to make the design into some kind of cohesive picture or statement.

“It's my magical signature. Charmed to… well, charmed to within an inch of my life, probably. They don't just hand these out like Chocolate Frogs.” The tone of the last sentence was cocky enough to make Hermione's eyes roll skyward. “They keep you… I don't know, sort of insulated from a foreign universe. I don't ever have to worry about being out of phase, when I'm… transporting someone… or something.”

Hermione remembered his and Luna's words as they'd departed his universe.

Be right back, Luna.

You always are.

“How often do you do this?”

Harry shrugged. “'Spart of my job. Although, this has to be one of my more memorable transports. Seeing as how you almost killed my wife and all.”

He was mostly not serious; Hermione could tell that easily enough by the smirk that twisted his lips, but she had plenty of residual guilt over endangering Vega, and the thought that he was exploiting that for fun annoyed her. She took a deep breath, and aimed her index finger in his direction.

“I'll have you know - ” she began, but he cut her off with a delighted chuckle.

“Don't ever change, Hermione-Granger.” He said her full name quickly, like it was one moniker.

Don't ever change. The simple sentence, said jokingly, resonated with her more than he probably meant. She was so different from the brilliant little girl going to Hogwarts for the first time, thrilled to the tips of her toes that maybe - finally - she had found the place in which she belonged. And then that world had chewed her up and spit her out. What remained was almost unrecognizable.

Her eyes flickered over to Harry - her Harry - and even thinking that gave her an odd sort of pang. But he was hers now, and she was his. They had gone through immeasurable loss, and somehow emerged cracked and brittle, but intact. Perhaps their function in life, their purpose, the reason they had both been stripped of everything, was to shore up the other, to strengthen, to reinforce… to endure and to help someone else do the same.

Harry followed her gaze, and there was something understanding in his eyes, when she looked back at him.

“He's very lucky.”

“Somehow, I'd have thought you'd feel sorry for him,” she replied, the empathy in her face taking any sting out of her words. Harry roared with laughter, and chucked her chin, causing her to huff with indignation. His eyes twinkling, he sketched a jaunty bow, which was irritating and all too indicative of his character.

“It has been a privilege,” he grinned, but somehow she knew he meant it. He checked a couple of the chains around his neck, and made sure his wand was secured. “See you around the multiverse, Hermione-Granger!”

And just like that, he was gone.

Hermione let out a breath that she didn't even know she'd been holding, and the gusty sound caught Harry's attention. Unerringly, he moved to her side, and she marveled once again how adept he seemed to be at working around his deficit. Ron was finishing up with the Ministry grunt, and handed over the scroll after rolling it up. He Banished the quill and ink to some place or other, and turned toward them, clapping his hands together as if to dust them off.

“We should get you over to St. Mungo's. Harry - the - he - Merlin, that's weird! Anyway, he said you more or less left against the healer's advice… over - over there, I mean.” Ron's voice was almost cracking under the strain to sound jovial and normal.

It was on the tip of Hermione's tongue to reject the suggestion out of hand, but she suddenly found that it was rather nice to have people taking care of her for a change.

“I'm not much for following rules, generally,” she conceded, reflecting briefly on the fact that had this Ron and Harry known her from before, they would have found this statement erroneous at face value, while conceding that perhaps they had had something to do with her fall into rebellion and mischief.

“You're going,” Harry said, in a tone that brooked no opposition, threading his fingers through hers. “You're breathing funny. It sounds strained… like something hurts.”

“That's going to take some getting used to - the way you seem to know everything about me, even without seeing me.”

“Oh, I have a feeling I've just barely scratched the surface of you, Hermione Granger.” Her name, the same six syllables teasingly lilted by the other Harry, sounded very different when all but whispered by the man holding her hand. She felt a flush creep up her neck, and when he touched her - the fingers of his free hand tracing her jaw line, the point of her cheek bone, the slope of her nose - her heartbeat jumped into triple time. She leaned up toward him as he lowered his head...

… and they were jarred apart by the graceless and noisy sound of Ron Weasley clearing his throat.

“Not that I'm not thrilled by these, ahem, unexpected circumstances, you understand - because I am - but - I really don't need front-row seats for this kind of thing.”

“Sorry, Ron,” they both said at the same time, their voices blending into an unexpected chorus, followed by a laugh. Ron's subsequent eye-roll was nothing less than theatrical.

“Bloody hell,” he said, almost inaudibly.

And Hermione Granger smiled.

***

It was very late when they finally made their way home from St. Mungo's. They had Apparated in at the bridge, Ron having made his goodbyes at the hospital, and meandered through the sleeping village. Her arm newly wrapped and Immobilized, Hermione had been given a satchel full of potions vials, now thrown over Harry's shoulder, and strict instructions on when and how to take them. The containers clinked together as they walked, fingers twined together tightly. Harry let out an expansive sigh.

“It's a beautiful night,” Hermione remarked softly, unable to keep the fatigue out of her voice completely. “Very clear, crescent moon… loads of stars.”

“It feels clear,” Harry responded. “The air is different when it's clear… brisker, maybe. Not so thick.” There was a brief pause, before he added, “She feels close tonight.”

Hermione didn't have to ask who he meant. “Yes, she does,” she conceded, then continued off Harry's look of confusion. “I did get to meet her, you know - a version of her, anyway.” She hesitated for only a brief moment, unsure whether the disclosure would make things better or worse. “She was married to the Harry who came with me. They were - they were expecting a baby in about six weeks… Lily.”

He took an uneven breath, and she watched a tear catch the starlight as it pearled up from his bottom lid.

“It helped me,” she said, uncertainly. “It helped to know that there were places where we had happy endings. Places where we - where we fought for each other, and won. I don't - I didn't know if - ”

“It does help. It - it helps,” he managed roughly, squeezing her hand, then using his other one to swipe at the escaping tears.

“He feels close too,” she said, after a few moments of silence. They were at the edge of town now, making their way down the little lane to Harry's house. He hadn't even paused at Keziah's place when they'd passed it. “I heard him, you know. His voice - the Harry from my universe. Once before… when I left there … it was like he was standing right next to me. It was so clear! And then today, when I was in the null field… I thought I was going to die. I was going to die,” she amended honestly. “But I heard him.” Her voice took on a tone of wonder. “I heard him, and he reminded me about the vials the other Luna had given me. They saved me. He saved me. Again.”

She belatedly realized that she might have sounded rather dreamy and besotted, and opened her mouth to further clarify, but his thumb brushed softly up and down the length of hers, as he somehow read her mind yet again.

“It's like he gave you back to me,” he said. The Hermione Granger from long ago might have taken him to task over his supposition that she was anyone's possession, she thought with fond amusement. But she knew what he meant. She thought of Vega and Harry and their baby. Everything had felt off for so long, and now it was as if things were coming full circle, slipping back into balance. Equilibrium. One of the Lunas - she couldn't remember which, she realized wryly - had said something about that. Harry tilted his head back, as if taking in a panoramic view of the stars he could not see. Hermione smiled up at those stars, wavering through a tear-filled vision. The universe seemed full of possibility.

They were at the gate now, but instead of opening it, Harry steered her toward the large post against which it was latched. He was pressing up against her, thoroughly in her space, though still mindful of her injury, and she welcomed it.

“You belong to this universe,” he muttered, low under his breath.

“Yes.”

“We belong to each other.” His face was so close to hers. His fingers snarled in the ends of her hair.

“Yes.” Her voice was tremulous, breathy, full of promise.

“And you'll… stay… with me?” The other sentences had come out sounding like declarations, but he seemed unable to keep the last one from being a question. His lips brushed against hers, very softly, barely touching.

“I'll stay.”

He kissed her then, slanting his mouth over hers decisively, as her good arm wound its way around his neck, and her fingers threaded into his hair. She felt dizzy, breathless, exhilarated - as if she had been whirled around and set down, finding her footing, something long lost finally finding its place.

He leaned his forehead against hers, letting their breathing slow, and he nearly laughed, reaching behind him to unlatch the gate.

“Let's go home, then.”

The End… Almost!

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Epilogue(s)

Shadow Walks - AU #1 (Chapter 13)

The Dark Lord Harry Potter held on to the reins of power in Wizarding Britain for almost four years: years of terror, oppression, and misery, leading to decimation of the Muggle-Born population. An underground organization spear-headed by Bill and Fleur Weasley, along with his twin brothers, with international help from both continental Europe and the United States, was finally able to topple him in a violent coup. Experts and insiders claimed that Potter was mere weeks away from figuring out the final steps necessary to create Horcruxes, which would have rendered him essentially immortal. He was executed for his crimes, along with his trusted lieutenant, Ronald Weasley, on 5 May 2007. He was twenty-six years old.

Bill Weasley became the next Minister for Magic, in a special election. The contest was tightly fought, mostly because of his brother's association with Potter. However, he and his other brothers were both instrumental and tireless in rebuilding what had been so horrifically destroyed, including Hogwarts, which was reopened one year into his second term. He also maintained a special relationship with the St. Mungo's Long-Term care ward, due to his sister's residence there. Minister Weasley often said that he did not want the stories of those broken and discarded by the war to be forgotten.

Hermione Granger, a Muggle daughter of dentists, quietly finished her education at Oxford with a doctorate and most of the highest accolades possible to achieve. She never realized so much turmoil was going on so nearby. At twenty-five, she married a fellow graduate student, and they went on to live very happy lives in academia.

***

Shadow Walks - AU #2 (Chapters 14-15)

Harry and Hermione Potter lived in the little house at Godric's Hollow for the duration of their marriage. They had three children, and adopted a fourth child due to a rather improbable set of circumstances after their youngest had started at Hogwarts.

Kate Potter married Ron Weasley two years after Harry's own wedding, and later had twin girls. Upon Hermione's retirement from the Department of Mysteries after eighteen years, she and Kate started a magical day school together, a revolutionary idea for its time. Hermione was later able to start a very quiet exchange program, in which Magical families could partner with Muggle families (usually ones that had a magical member) to take greater part in one another's worlds, opening up visits to Hogwarts or Diagon Alley for Muggle children, and even enabling young witches and wizards to experience Muggle schools or Muggle travel.

***

Shadow Walks - AU #3 (Chapter 19)

Harry Potter had been assassinated by a Death Eater six months after defeating Voldemort. Ron and Hermione Weasley were grief-stricken, although they were able to comfort each other, and married three years after the Final Battle.

Harry had willed Godric's Hollow to them, and they lived there quite happily, though always feeling the loss of Harry keenly. They were unable to have children, and the dearth of fertility options in the Wizarding world bent Hermione's innate activism in that direction. They finally adopted a baby boy, found abandoned in a utility closet of a general store in Hogsmeade.

They named him Harry.

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Shadow Walker - AU #1 (Chapter 9)

Harry Potter met and married a French quarter-Veela , in a whirlwind romance six years out of Hogwarts, much to the disapproval of his widowed father, James. The marriage was contentious and stormy, ending in divorce less than four years later, and leaving Harry to raise their toddler, a girl named Juliette.

After returning home, he finally kindled a relationship with long-time close friend, Esmeralda Snape, marrying her after only eight months. There was no small amount of animosity between Harry and his father-in-law, but this was ameliorated over time. Severus and Lily Snape came to love Juliette no less than the two grandsons that followed.

Shadow Walker - AU #2 (Chapters 10-11)

Harry and Susan Potter never forgot their amazing encounter with a version of Hermione Granger, more than two years after her untimely death. It gave Harry the closure he needed, and he ended up being very happy with his second wife. Harry eventually rose to become one of the chief Healers at St. Mungo's, and Susan took her aunt's old position heading up the department of Magical Law Enforcement. They became parents to another little girl, naming her Amelie.

Jeannie Potter grew up into the very image of her mother. She seemed to have the best of both parents combined, and was sorted into Gryffindor. She received ten O.W.L.s, all Outstanding save an EE in Potions, which she hated, and turned down a chance to try out for an open Chaser position at Holyhead. Instead, she entered Auror training.

Harry did end up taking a mysterious leave of absence from St. Mungo's shortly after they met Hermione. His wife said he was out of the country, but remained very vague as to where. He returned less than three weeks later, unscathed save for three broken ribs.

Shadow Walks - Prime Universe (Chapters 1-12, 20-22)/Shadow Walker - AU#3 (Chapter 12)

Harry and Hermione Potter spent the first few years of their marriage at Hogwarts. Harry worked as the DADA teacher, while Hermione first pursued her mastery in Charms, and then became an adjunct faculty member, also working at a think tank in Magical Innovation in London. They were blissfully happy.

Ron and Luna Weasley married a year after Hermione was returned to them. Ron quit drinking, and though unable to restart his Quidditch career, did take the job as flight instructor at Hogwarts. Luna remained in the Department of Mysteries, becoming quite notable for her discoveries and achievements.

Shadow Walker - Prime Universe (Chapters 1-8)

Life in Wizarding Great Britain had deteriorated slowly and steadily under the governance of Lucius Malfoy. Much hope was lost when it was reported that Luna Lovegood was dead, murdered by Hermione Granger, who subsequently vanished without a trace. The few people left who'd known them knew the story had to be false.

Several months after she disappeared, Lucius Malfoy was found dead inside his office, nothing on his desk but paperwork requiring signatures and an empty cup of tea. This might not have been suspicious, were it not for the Stunned and Obliviated security guard outside his office. There was speculation about poison, but nothing was detected. Rumors floated around that Hermione Granger had managed to sneak into the Ministry again and had killed him. One wild article in a fringe paper suggested that they had an eyewitness who said Harry Potter had done it from beyond the grave.

In the end, Malfoy was not much mourned. His followers made a bid for power, but were too fragmented to consolidate their hold. Wizards and witches holding more moderate positions began to slowly bring their world back to its feet.

Shadow Walker - AU #4 (Chapters13-18)

Harry and Hermione came to be much-loved fixtures around Godric's Hollow. Hermione worked to maneuver Harry out of his self-imposed exile, and, while there were good days and bad days for both of them, the villagers certainly began to see more of their best-known resident than they ever had before. Hermione helped Keziah with the bookshop, eventually expanding it and adding a tearoom. She also consulted with the Department of Mysteries on various cases and issues concerning the Multiverse Room.

Harry's memoir was an unadulterated success, and after not hating the book tour quite as much as he thought he would, he ended up working with the author again on other pieces. He also taught several special classes on Defense and on the War, although the Final Battle always remained difficult for him to talk about. He did not become a member of Hogwarts' staff, as it was also difficult for him to return there. He never regained his eyesight, but Hermione did help develop a pair of bespelled glasses to help him navigate with even more accuracy.

Hermione married Harry only six months after she arrived in the village, and their union was a long and happy one. They eventually had two daughters and one son.

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AN: Oh my GOSH, this story is finally done! I am proud that I finished it, and simultaneously ashamed that it took such a ridiculous amount of time to do so. It was a much bigger undertaking than I thought, with the first half of the story having to mesh with what had already been described in “Shadow Walks” and then figuring out a way to tie it all back up. Plus, I have kids, and they have to go to school and eat and stuff… but I could list excuses all day long.

The bottom line is I finished it and here it is!! I will finish “The Catalyst” as well. It probably only has one more chapter to go.

Thanks for sticking with me. I know I hardly ever reply to reviews, but they have meant the world to me, truly! I thought I was done, but I've got a couple of ideas… one of them being a short-ish sequel to “Senses”, and the other containing a non-canon, non-PK relationship. That one will be up at FFnet, where I have the same username.

Please, leave a review on your way out, if you like!

As ever,

lorien

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