Hermione had a bandage around her head as she sat in a private waiting room at St. Mungo's. The room was reserved for officials from the Ministry, and with Draco Malfoy, the disgraced wizard turned missing person, in tow behind her she thought it best to stay out of view. It had turned out to be a wise choice. He told her about his relationship with Harry, about his time in captivity in some dungeon of the Brotherhood's, and reluctantly, and with a lot of pauses to compose himself, he told her about Agnes Agnew. When he was done he fell silent. He leaned against the back wall and waited to see how she would react to everything that had been said.
"Wow." She uttered.
"I know."
"You'll understand that it's a little hard to believe."
"I do."
"So give me one good reason I should believe you, at all."
"I don't really know what to say."
Hermione stood up and pushed out the flimsy chair she had been sitting on. It slid across the polished tile floor and collided violently with the wall next to Draco. She rushed forward while he was off guard, grabbed him by his collar and yanked him to his feet. His knees bent so that their eyes evened out she stared at him with a cold kind of menace.
"You better think really fucking quick about what to say, Malfoy. You show up out of nowhere right in the middle of Harry being attacked by some crazy little kid every time he draws a deep breath, with your thin story, your unacceptable history of bigotry, and an unexplainable desire to come face to face with Harry."
"I understand why you would be upset, he's an important person." Draco tried to explain.
"You understand nothing!" She shook him violently, "I love him! I love him way more than I care about whether or not you live or die, do you understand me? Make me believe what you're saying or I'll kill you here and now, and not think twice about it later."
"Granger... Hermione." His eyes softened, "That's wonderful news. He's been crazy about you forever. We used to talk about it, me and him. He said that you were perfect. That you made him feel like he had a purpose."
Hermione tightened her grip, "You're lying. You were always such a good liar, Malfoy."
"I'm not! I told him, I said that he needed to tell you that he felt this way. He just shook his head and said he wasn't the type that caught lightening in a bottle."
Hermione's eyes went wide, she released Draco and he crashed to the floor. He was upset until he saw her hit her knees in front of him, shocked beyond any reason that she should be. Draco inched backward toward the wall, he didn't know why, but something about how she had reacted, the hate in her eyes. It scared him. She scared him.
* * *
One year ago Harry stood with her, in the pouring rain. Ron was asleep upstairs, sleeping off the buzz he had worked up over the course of Liberation day. Harry glanced up at the window she knew was her bedroom window. He asked her to come with him, to get away from the house. She didn't know he wanted to be out of Ron's earshot, away from prying eyes. She didn't know anything. He had showed up at her flat just after Ron had passed out, she was putting away the food Molly had brought over for the party she hadn't wanted to have, the party that Harry couldn't be bothered to show up at. When all of a sudden the doorbell rang. Harry stood soaking wet at her door, a dumb, hopeless smile on his face.
She had invited him in, but he refused. "Come out into the rain with me." He had told her. He insisted it was beautiful, that she would love it. She put on a rain parka and followed him out. He looked up into the sky, drops of rain running down his glasses, his face, his clothing. He smiled his sad, world weary smile. The smile she had grown to hate in the last few years. The smile that meant he was resigned to his own hopelessness. Her heart ached a little for him. Still, she didn't know what was going on. She knew that he hated Liberation day, but he had never done anything like this, he seemed excited, joyous and utterly sad and pathetic all at once.
"Are you sure you want to talk out here? You'll catch cold." She bit her lip.
"You're right." He eyed the window, "There's this little café. Let's go there."
"Okay. Sure."
She followed him as he walked, at first quickly but the farther from the flat they got the more he slowed down. Finally they arrived at a little building squeezed between two much larger ones. It was closed, but it had a kind of outdoor patio with tables and chairs, the large sun umbrellas on every other table. He sat down beneath one and invited her to do the same.
"This must be a nice place when it's open." She commented.
"It's okay." He said flatly, "I'm not into designer coffee so much."
"So... what's all this about?"
"I don't know how else to say this, I don't know how much longer I can keep it all from bursting out. I wish I was the kind of guy that could write clever little poems, but I'm not."
"What is it, Harry?" She put her hand on his.
He played with her fingers gently, smiling at the contact. She began to feel uncomfortable, but he didn't seem to notice, "I'm in love with you, Hermione."
"What?" She pulled her hand away.
"I know. It's stupid. I know that."
"You're not in love with me, Harry. You're confused."
"No." He shook his head and smiled his sad little smile, "I'm not."
"What is this?"
"This is me telling you how I feel."
"And what exactly am I supposed to do with that information?"
"I don't know."
"I have a life, Harry. A life with Ron. Am I supposed to just abandon that because you suddenly decide to be in love with me?"
"No. I'm not asking you to do that. I just had to tell you."
"No, you didn't. No one ever tells anyone they love them, because they have to. They want something."
"I don't. And I didn't just decide to love you. I couldn't help it. It's how I feel. I didn't wake up this morning and say to myself, 'Harry?' Yes self? 'Go do something to ruin your life today' Okay, self. You got it."
"Then why?"
"Because I can't just look at you and think you're just some girl anymore. I can't sit next to you and be okay with just that. I can't. It's killing me."
"You need to stop." She pushed her chair back, "You need to stop playing whatever game this is, just knock it off."
"It isn't a game."
"You're being selfish."
"I'm being honest."
"I can't believe you would do this! I'm with Ron! He's your best friend! Why would you do this!"
"I can't stand you not knowing!"
"Try harder!"
"What do you want me to do? Deny it?"
"I don't know, Harry. I don't. But whatever it is, do it."
"I didn't come here to win you over. I didn't come here to catch lightening in a bottle. I'm not that guy, I can't do that."
"What?"
"You're my storm, Hermione. You wash away all the muck that's built up, you make me clean and clear. But you have lightening, like any storm. It's dangerous to love you. I don't want to capture you."
"Then what do you want?"
"You to know that you've captured me."
Hermione recoiled. He had been so genuine, so honest, so painfully honest. She could see the pain behind his eyes, the pleading. She hated him then, for making her feel this way, for putting this terrible truth out there.
"You're being selfish."
"It's how I feel."
"Go away, Harry. I can't stand to be around you right now."
"Fine."
He got up to go, but something in her, and she didn't know what, felt like she hadn't said enough, "The world doesn't revolve around you, you know. Nothing comes crashing down because you feel a certain way."
He turned back and gave her his tired, sad smile once more, "I've been saying that for years."
"Goddamn you, Harry." She stood up, not completely in control of her own volume, "You son of a bitch! How dare you say these things to me! How dare you! What gives you the right!"
"I don't know. I really don't. I just had to say it."
"Go to hell! You self absorbed, selfish bastard! Go to hell! You can't just show up and put this on me! I have other things in my life beside your pathetic little break down!"
"I know."
"Go. Get out of my sight before I do something I'll regret."
Harry slumped into himself. Glanced at the raging storm around him, put his hand out and waited for the lightening to rip across the sky. When it did he closed his fingers around it, turned his hand to Hermione and opened it, showing her that it was empty. His eyes looked far away and he vanished.
She sat alone, feeling betrayed, hurt, angry, and sad. Sad for him, for feeling the things he was feeling. Sad for herself because of the feelings inside her that had never gone away. Sad that the rain would stop soon, and her tears would be visible. She hung her head.
"You're such and idiot." She said, but she didn't know who she meant, she still didn't.
* * *
Harry was sitting in Head Mistress McGonagall'a office, feeling very much like he had when he had sat in her little office during his school years. She stared down at him in the same way, as if composing the perfect series of sentences to express how disappointed she was with his behavior. He couldn't help but let a slight grin blossom on his face, despite the dire circumstances.
"You want me to close the school, what? Indefinitely? Based on a hunch that some of my students have been murdering muggles in London? That could cause a panic, not to mention incur the ire of many parents."
"When you say it like that, it sounds unreasonable."
"Wipe that smirk off your face, young man."
"You got it."
"It is unreasonable, Harry. I can't deny these children an education based on a very flimsy feeling you have."
"There is evidence. I explained a lot of it."
"It all sounds like he said she said sort of nonsense to me."
"These kids are dangerous." His eyes narrowed, "They've killed before, and now that they have do think they're likely to stop?"
"Mr. Potter." She went wide eyed, "They're children."
"Don't say that. Not you." He put his hands on her desk, "You were attending Hogwarts the first time the Chamber of Secrets opened, tell me you thought it was all a big nothing because you were all just kids."
"I understand your point, Harry." Her voice softened, the unpleasant memory swirling around in her brain, "But that was a different time."
"History has a nasty habit of repeating." He said gravely.
"Harry, there is a time for caution, but do you really think it will take you a month to solve this case?"
"I don't know." He confessed, angry at himself and angry at her, "This hasn't been the world's most open and shut case. Every time we get a little bit ahead, even a little bit, it seems like we only discover how little we actually know."
"I have faith in you Harry. You were always a fine detective."
"Now I'm a fine detective with a dead line."
"We all have a dead line, Mr. Potter."
* * *
Hermione just sat on the floor, staring off into space. Draco was alarmed, and pleased, and also still a little afraid of her. He wanted to try and shake her out of her daze, but didn't know how she would respond. Luckily for him she snapped back. Her eyes refocused, her jawline set, and her head found it's way back to his face. She was beautiful, in a frightening way, like a tiger, nothing but fluid, deadly grace and ruthless, intelligent eyes.
"Tell me everything you know about the Brotherhood."
"I don't know much." Draco confessed, "And most of what I do know they've already done."
"How many are children?"
"Oh wow. You guys are hot on this one." He smiled, "More than I thought before this morning."
"How do you mean?"
"When they grabbed me it was mostly people our age, a few much older, but virtually no one was younger. I kind of knew their voices, but I couldn't always remember their faces. Then this morning I got attacked by some teenagers in Diagon Alley."
"Why couldn't you remember their faces?"
"Best I can figure is memory charms. Every time I tried to escape I would wake up in the dungeon and be unable to remember huge chunks of time."
"Not a bad plan, on their part. They would only have to keep thwarting the same escape over and over."
"Some of it stopped taking." He said.
"What?"
"After awhile I would start to remember certain things, like they had erased it so often that it was impossible to keep doing it. I could remember parts of my escape, only in bits and pieces."
"Any faces?" She looked at him hopefully.
"Just one, but I don't know who he is. After that, they started wearing masks." He shifted nervously, "Death Eater masks, actually. I think they think it's funny."
"Could be a mislead. They could actually be former Death Eaters."
"Or they could be new people, posing as former Death Eaters to throw me off."
"Damn."
"I know that they have at least one person inside the Ministry, maybe more."
"Harry figured the same."
"Smart as a whip, our Harry." He smiled, "Almost saved me before all this went down."
"He did?"
"Yeah. He came to my house, to check up on me. He knew something was wrong the minute he sat down. Nothing concrete though."
"Why are they after him?"
"I don't really know. In Diagon Alley the girl said that he was dangerous to them, They've been talking about getting rid of him for awhile now. I don't really know why."
"Guess."
"They're scared of him. They believe him to be the most powerful living wizard. They think he's capable of magic that most of us only dream of."
"Harry?"
"I know."
"He's a wonderful wizard, but aside from some vague instances of wandless magic, I mean, being a powerful wizard was never really on his to do list."
"I suppose not. Earthy kind of guy."
"We have to find him."
She moved to get up but Draco held her arm gently. He looked into her eyes, "What did Harry do to that boy?"
"Something horrible."
"Is he alright?"
"The healers say..." She dropped the pretense when Draco shook his head, and answered the question honestly, "He's shaken up a little. I don't think he was aware that he was capable of that kind of violence."
"Violence has been such a huge part of his life." Draco said sadly, "He has always hated it. He used to tell me that... but he's inconsistent."
"I know." She smiled at him, "He loves to hate it. He has this scar on his chest. It's terrible. When he showed it to me I wanted to cry for him. But I think there's a part of him that's proud of it."
"You really do love him."
"I really do." She shook her head, "Don't tell anyone."
"So where do we go from here?"
"We find Harry. We save the day."
"And vengeance. For Agnes."
"And vengeance." She nodded, "For so many reasons."
* * *
Ron was passed out on the floor of the small room he called his own in the safe house. His dreams were uneasy, haunted by images of smiling women and fire. Especially fire. His eyes snapped open, his face was pressed up against one of his shoes. He had discarded it when he entered the room. He could feel it's mate on his foot. His mouth felt like cotton, his eyes burned, and his hands felt oddly weak. He moved his hands to push himself from the floor. On the second try he managed it.
He walked to his bathroom and began to brush his teeth. The dream all but forgotten, just a lingering felling of inadequacy. From the bathroom window he could see that it was still dark out, but that was irrelevant. It could be early morning or late at night, neither was going to rid the incessant buzzing from his eardrums. He staggered to his toilet and relived his bladder before he shuffled into his bedroom once more. On his floor he could see the remnants of his botched attempt to shallow away his growing fears.
There was vomit in the corner of his room, that he hoped dearly was his own. There was a body slowly breathing under the covers on his bed. The outline suggested male. It was likely the poor sod he had met the night before. The man's family had left him, bitter divorce. They had lamented their woes together, and later on stumbled off into the night, suddenly very good friends. Ron was pleased that even in a drunken stupor he was host enough to give the man the bed. Ron crept from the room and indeed from the house altogether.
He found himself sitting on a park bench several minutes later. Staring at the rising sun, recounting his last few days of failure.
"Shit." He said quietly, so no one would hear it.
* * *
Harry had not slept. He had bags under his eyes, a bad taste in his mouth, and he felt like he had to pee every few half hour. His body was up in arms at the treatment, but he didn't have time to stop for a nap. He was a driven man. He had waded through defeat and half truth every step of the way on this case, and he was fed up with it. He was on his way to Saint Mungo's, his cane tapping out a harried beat in his wake. School aged children were running around the streets, eking out the last few weeks of summer break.
Harry turned down an empty street corner, leaned against the wall and made a quick mental note of everything he had learned up to that point. As preposterous as it seemed, the Brotherhood was apparently made up of teenagers. He didn't find that completely likely, but the evidence was leading him that way. It stuck in his gut. It seemed too obvious. Too easily figured out. There were too many vague hints that the Brotherhood had adult members running the show. One of which was Tennant, his boss's boss. Slanton perhaps, either one really.
He shook his head and forced his tired feet to Saint Mungo's. He passed the receptionist on his way to the ward he knew they would have put the boy in. The ward that he would find Hermione waiting for him. He threw open the door to the private waiting room. His eyes bulged. He wiped the sleep from them, the crumbs of crap that gathered there regardless of his lack of sleep. He couldn't really believe what he was seeing.
Sitting on the floor, conspiring between each other was Hermione and Draco Malfoy. Impossibly Draco Malfoy. He shook his head, sat down hard and fast on a chair and let out a huge breath of air. Draco turned his head, his face lit up and he jumped to his feet.
"Harry!" He shouted.
"Harry." Hermione smiled, "How did it go?"
"I... Draco?"
Draco put his arms at his sides nervously, looked at the floor and smiled, "Yeah. Long time."
Harry let his head fall back against the cold stone wall. He didn't know that it had happened at first, not until he was sitting alone in a classroom which was also both his bedroom and a high ceiling cathedral with impossible looking stained glass windows. He knew then that he had fallen asleep. He fought against it. Tried to wake up. Sent commands to his body to stir, but he didn't. He just sat in his lonely three part room.
He also snored. In the private waiting room of Saint Mungo's as Hermione and Draco looked on with curious faces, Harry Potter snored.
* * *
In Andrew's dreams there were moments, fleeting but there, wherein he was accepted by his father, where his mother was not dead but right there loving him with all her heart, where he was being honored with awards and fancy dress ceremonies for his achievements. Mostly though it was just darkness. Not the empty darkness of a dreamless sleep, but instead a darkness of another kind. The absolute kind. He would try to find a way out, but couldn't see himself, couldn't see the room, couldn't see the goal. He was aware of himself in that place. He knew when he moved his feet or waved his arm, he knew when he screamed for help, or just sobbed over his inability to navigate his confines. But he couldn't see it, and he could barely hear himself. He was miles away from his own voice, and that pained him in a way he would never be able to articulate.
* * *
Ron was staring at a bagel. He didn't intend to buy the thing, he didn't care for how chewy they were, but he was staring at it. He wasn't totally sure why, he didn't find it charming or soothing, he didn't gather any unfathomable insight about his world or his isolation from it. It was round, it was plain and it smelled, like all bagels do, mostly like a shoe just before it has been broken in, but after the new smell has worn off. Staring at that bagel was a wonderful distraction.
Soon enough he had to leave the coffee shop and head into work. When he arrived, a little on the late side because he had to convince his new drinking buddy that it was time to vacate the safe house, he noticed that Harry's desk was empty. He found that odd, in part because he knew how important this case was to Harry, and in part because Hermione would drag a man kicking and screaming to a place if there were appointments to be kept. Being late to work was out of the question as long as she was his appointed guardian.
Maybe it was because he was hung over and his thoughts were sluggish, and maybe he was a good detective in spite of that, but for whatever reason Ron paused to consider something. He stood, halfway between his own desk and Harry's and was struggling to remember when Hermione had been appointed to Harry, and who had done it. He knew that some people in the ministry had had to buddy up on the safe houses after the panic caused by the letter fiasco, he wondered if that was why they were together so often. Had they just been paired up at the same safe house?
He felt that it was something richer and far more complex than that, he suspected that they may be richer and more complex than that. Ron blinked twice, trying to wrap his poor afflicted mind around that probability. He looked around. His eyes searching out every crevice, every desk, every person sitting patiently working, every paper airplane circling the office floor, every corner of every cubical. It was all the same. Every detail exactly as it had always been.
He was sure that the world should have cracked open, or burst into flame. Instead it was the same. He looked at his hands. They too had remained the same despite the dawning revelation swelling up inside of him. He wasn't totally sure how he felt about that. He knew that he should be upset. That he should be hurt. That at the very least he ought to feel a little numb. But he didn't. He just felt like himself, a hungover iteration of himself, but himself nonetheless.
As he sat down and began to pour over the notes he had made the day prior he was also trying to decide if his response to the idea that his best friend and his ex-girlfriend becoming item was a sign that he had grown, or that he had just changed irreversibly. He was also trying to decide which he would prefer.
* * *
The sun was cresting through the window of the private waiting room of Saint Mungo's when Harry began to stir. When he looked over and saw Hermione and Draco speaking in conspiratorial tones he assumed that he was still asleep. It was the dull throbbing from his injured back that reminded him that he couldn't be dreaming. His droopy eyelids sprang open, his neck snapped up and his hand itched for his wand/cane.
"Draco!" He sputtered, his mouth still half dried out from sleeping with his mouth open.
Hermione jumped from her chair and raced to his side, planting kisses along his forehead and cheek, "I was so worried about you!"
"Draco?"
Draco nodded slowly, the ghost of a smile lingering on his face, his pale, taut skin wrinkled at his glassy eyes, "I'm really here, Harry."
Harry's mind raced. So many questions to ask, so many responses that could be made, "You've looked better." He finally said.
"You too." Draco walked over and extended his hand.
Harry looked at the hand for a beat, confused about what to do, and how to feel. Eventually he smiled, grabbed Draco's hand and shook it vigorously.
"I've missed you, Harry."
"And I you."
"Draco has a pretty amazing story to tell." Hermione announced.
"I suppose he does." Harry nodded.
"I suppose I do."
Draco sat down next to Harry, next to the lifeline he had so hoped to grab onto to, and began, in slow measured tones, to tell his story.