[Author Note: This is the last of the prewritten parts. Updates will be slower from now on I'm afraid.]
The Third Day - Part 4
Recalled to Life
It was nearly dawn by the time Harry returned to the infirmary. Madam Pomfrey's chair was empty, though she had not gone far: he heard the clatter of pots and pans from the infirmary kitchen. Hermione was alone. The pale light of the setting moon reflected off her white skin and sky blue nightdress. Crookshanks was curled up on the foot of the bed, awake and purring steadily. His ears pricked up as Harry approached. He stood, jumped off the bed, and began circling Harry's legs. Harry reached down to pick him up, but Crookshanks eluded his grasp and scampered down the row of beds and out the door.
Harry sat down beside the bed and took one of Hermione's hands in his. It was as cold as ice, though her fingers were still soft and flexible. She was breathing lightly but she did not respond to his touch.
He noticed a large book with an ancient red cover lying on the table beside the bed, next to Neville's cutting from the ancient oak. A wave of affection swept through Harry: it was so like Hermione to turn to a book to solve a mystery. He placed her hand gently back on the coverlet and picked up the book. Stamped in gold on the cover was a title that stirred memories of his first year at Hogwarts: The Philosopher's Stone. Perhaps it would have a picture of the stone he had secured from the Mirror of Erised all those years ago. As he leafed through the book he saw that it was a collection of richly detailed pictures of mythical lands and creatures-a dragon swallowing his tail, a wolf battling a dog, a salamander burning in a fire and never consumed. Then came images of animals and their mates: a lion and a lioness, two fish in a calm sea, two huge birds.
And suddenly he saw it. In the glade of a thick forest was a stag, standing proudly with its head erect to display the twelve points of its antlers. It was the image of his own Patronus, but with flesh and muscle. It was the stag of his dream.
Facing the stag and walking toward it was a perfectly formed unicorn, the paper twin of the one Hermione had sent across the lake two nights before.
What did it mean? Harry could make nothing out of the short Latin inscription below the engraving. But long ago a Hogwarts student had scribbled two words on the picture. In faded ink Harry could make out the word "soul" on the stag and "spirit" on the unicorn. Spirit and soul. He remembered little from History of Magic but this much he knew: Thousands of years ago a great wizard had taught that to become whole, a person's spirit and soul had to come together.
But then there was a change. What was it? Harry closed his eyes tightly to capture the images and words that flitted through his mind. Flamel. Yes, Flamel. Nicolas and Perenelle, the only wizards ever to create a Philosopher's Stone. Spirit? Soul? Yes, that was it. Flamel had said that man was soul and that he could not survive alone. He had to find his spirit, his partner, the one who would complete him. Harry gasped.
The stag and the unicorn. Male and female. Meant to be together.
Harry opened his eyes and looked back at Hermione. All the doubts of the past two days dissolved. She didn't love Ron-or Viktor Krum. She didn't love some mysterious unknown wizard with a unicorn Patronus. Hermione loved him. She loved him. Harry could scarcely believe it. A host of questions jostled in his mind competing for answers: "How long?" "How could he have not seen"?" "Did Ron know?" And finally, "Did she realize how much he loved her?"
Though he knew she couldn't see or hear him or feel his touch, he surrendered to instinct and bent over her to press his lips gently against hers. They were cold and pale. How he wished he could breathe his own life into her. He drew back and gazed at her face, letting his fingers graze her check and play with her hair. Her lovely face, so familiar and dear to him. She was his spirit. How long had she also claimed his heart?
He bent over again and started to cover her face with kisses, her forehead, her eyebrows, all the features of her face that he knew so well. Her nose, her cheeks, the soft places of her ear, her lips again.
She was cold. Cold as a pane of glass after a hard frost. The Hermione he knew was brown and healthy and glowing; but now her skin was pale and white, almost translucent. The blue of her veins was visible on her closed eyelids.
She must come back. She had to come back-to him. Was it selfish of him to ask for this one life, the life more precious to him than any other?
Panic welled up inside him and clawed at his chest. He pressed his lips against hers again, much harder this time, willing her to awaken and accept his love. For a moment Harry thought he saw her eyelashes flicker. But he was mistaken. Hermione was still, cold, unmoving, in thrall to Bellatrix' poison of Hate.
Harry forced himself to look at Hermione's neck, where the wound from the knife was covered by a large square bandage. In fury and despair, in obedience to an impulse he could never explain, Harry ripped off the cloth and stared at the place where Hermione's life was ebbing away. The pricks of the knife had combined to create a single wound forming a rough semicircle at Hermione's throat. This was a wound unlike any Harry had ever seen. It was not bleeding at all. It was open, but it was oozing a thick silvery-white substance. Cruelly, Harry realized that he had seen something similar once before: the life-sustaining unicorn blood that Voldemort had taken from a creature he had slain in the Forbidden Forest. But this time the silvery-white blood meant death.
Harry knew what he had to do, whatever it might cost him. Without hesitating, he bent over Hermione again and began to suck the poison out of her wound. The silvery blood tasted metallic and was terribly cold. Almost immediately Harry felt sharp pains go down his throat. In the next moments icy fire stabbed like a thousand knives down his arms and legs and tore at his stomach, ripping him apart from within. This was a pain unlike any other, a pain worse than death.
But Harry knew that Voldemort's instruments of death could no longer hurt him, and he would bear any pain if it would save Hermione. His heart was on fire with love for the person who was his truest friend and companion, his real family, his partner and yes, his spirit. Harry felt a powerful warmth rising from his body, coursing through his veins, overwhelming the icy pain, as he drew the last of the silvery blood from Hermione's wound.
Exhausted with the effort, Harry fell across Hermione's chest, pressing himself against her as if he could revive her with the heat from his body. He turned his face and looked at her neck. He gasped in shock: the wound was closed and completely healed. A red sickle-shaped scar was all that remained of Bellatrix's curse.
A slight flush crossed Hermone's face and Harry noticed small movements in her fingers. Her eyelashes flickered, then her eyes blinked, once, twice, three times. The first pale glint of dawn burnished her hair in its golden light. Her eyes were fully open now, and she was looking at him.
"Harry," Hermione whispered.
"Hermione." Harry's heart was so full he had no words. He grabbed her hand in both of his and kissed it over and over in joy and relief.
[Author's Note: So this is what I've been aiming for all along. Let me know if it's satisfactory-what you were expecting. There's a lot of alchemy in this part-I'll explain the main things on the thread at the Forum.]
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