The Catalyst
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Chapter Four: Enigma Disclosed
Hermione scrubbed her damp palms down the sides of her Muggle blue jeans. I didn't even get to change into my Resident's robes, she realized detachedly, recalling the abrupt summons from Auror Dunwiddie - which seemed to have utterly upended her life.
"I - "
Any friendly playfulness that had remained had been leeched from Harry's face. His straight, dark brows had lowered in concern. He'd always been able to easily read her, and her agitation was making itself more than apparent.
"When I … when I got to work, there were - there were Aurors there, and they - they said they n-needed to speak to me, so - " She knew she was forestalling the inevitable by giving him the pointless backstory. Her hands were fluttering at her sides like caught Snitches. Why am I so afraid to tell him? It isn't my fault; it isn't his fault. It was just an invasion - a violation - without consent, and a mad scientist of some sort has created our daughter. He'll be shocked, I'm sure, but he'll - then he'll - Rather suddenly, Hermione realized what made her so anxious. She thought that Harry would act with his usual innate sense of nobility, but she wasn't sure. And if he reacted in the manner that… Ron would, for instance, she didn't think she could handle it. Please, Harry, please - justify my faith in you.
She felt a gentle touch, as her fingers were encased in his calloused ones, stilling them. Her eyes flew open - when had she closed them? She looked across into his beseeching eyes, begging for her confidence, as his thumb skidded across her knuckles. When she smiled at him, trying to be reassuring, her lips trembled.
"They - they told me that they'd raided a laboratory, a place where they had been mixing Muggle science and magic, doing genetic experiments on… people." Harry almost flinched in repulsion, but did not otherwise remark, waiting for her to finish. "They must have known the squad was coming - the place had been emptied and abandoned. But - but there was a little girl locked in a cell there, about four or five years old - they freed her, and - and she was - she is …mine."
She couldn't have explained to anyone why she reverted to the singular there at the end. Ours had been poised to drop from her tongue, and something in her brain had seized up and refused it egress.
Harry's thumb had stilled. His fingers twitched reflexively, as though he had nearly dropped her hand, but they did not lose contact.
"Yours?" The word was quietly spoken, deceptively casual, yet it had been dropped into the silence like a two-ton weight.
"Yes."
"H - how - I mean…I - I know how…normally, but - " His cheeks turned a dull red, and in any other situation, she might have laughed at his discomfiture. "I mean, I - I like to think I would have noticed… that… and what about - "
"Those people… they took an egg from me and - Merlin only knows why. The Aurors think that it was while we were in the hospital after the Final Battle." The `we' in her sentence had been unintentional, and could have just as easily been innocuous, but his eyes had raced up to meet hers when she spoke it, and they seemed to burn with knowing.
"That isn't all they took, is it?"
She wanted to cry with relief. He did understand. She shook her head.
"And the child - the girl - it's not just that she's yours, is it? She's mine - that's what you came to tell me." This time, she nodded, still not trusting herself to speak. There was a long silence, broken only by the softest rush of the wind in the grass. Harry had taken her hand between both of his, and was chafing it back and forth with a distinct air of distraction. She watched the war behind his eyes.
I have a daughter. I have a daughter with Hermione. It was as if he'd shouted the words. His journey mirrored hers; she could track it clearly: bewilderment - a child, my child - the glint of panic - Ginny…Ron - anger - what gave them the right - and then… compassion. He was seeing a child shut in a cupboard under the stairs, forced to stay with people who did not love her, did not want her, saw her as a means to an end, a tool to be used and manipulated, manufactured in a lab for some sort of purpose as yet unknown. He had been there, could perhaps understand what she'd gone through as nobody else they knew.
"Why would someone do this? What would be the point of it? We were never together. And - and I don't see why it would make - "
"Harry, they don't even know who it was. The lab had been stripped of most of the relevant information, and was leased to some dummy corporation. They managed to detain a few lower-level people, but so far, they aren't talking. Until we know who, we'll never know why."
Barely banked frustration simmered in the depths of Harry's eyes. She could see a thousand other questions jockeying for utterance, but he bit them all back. His hold on her hand gentled.
"They told you. Why didn't anyone come to tell me?"
"They were going to. I asked them if I could be the one to tell you." She took a moment to smile slightly at the wordless gratitude that flashed in Harry's eyes. "They wanted to check with me first - they thought I - " She colored slightly, and averted her eyes, her gaze going haphazardly across the windswept field. "They thought that we had - " She cleared her throat awkwardly. "- and that I had never told you about the baby, that I had concealed it from everyone."
"As if you would ever - " Harry almost spluttered, offended on her behalf.
"Harry, it's not like in vitro fertilization and genetic manipulation are exactly Wizarding household words. They don't know us - not really." She scrunched up her shoulders, let them drop, and sighed. "They went after the most likely explanation."
"And that's what everyone else will do as well," Harry realized suddenly, and met Hermione's knowing eyes, seeing that he was still struggling to catch up to her level of awareness. She knew that he wasn't really talking about the Wizarding World as a whole, but rather about two specific redheaded individuals.
"Most likely - at least, at first." The silence straggled out between them, as potential Weasley shouting matches played out in their heads. "But of course, they'll believe us - they'll have to - " Hermione sounded as if she were trying to convince herself, rather than Harry.
"What are we going to do?" There was that Harry-abruptness that she loved so well. While she fretted and worried and paced, weighed options, listed pros and cons, Harry was interested in the bottom line and the next course of action. It soothed her; he wasn't one for hand-wringing and moaning about insurmountable problems… just what are we going to do to fix it. She loved that about him.
"Well, I certainly don't think it's something we should keep from - from Ron and Ginny, but I don't see why anyone else needs to know about it. It's rather horrifying… but - but we were victims. We didn't ask for this. We didn't do anything wrong. And there are probably plenty of Wizarding couples out there who would love to - "
"You mean, you want to give her up?" His words tumbled out quickly over then end of her sentence. There was an odd note in Harry's voice, and he was looking at her as though he had mistaken her for someone else. It made her flush and feel defensive.
"I resent your tone, Harry." Her voice had grown frigid and her posture stiff.
"I just meant that - that we're not the only victims here." He sank down to the grass, hunching over bent knees, reliving some memory that Hermione had no part of. She knelt down next to him, so he wouldn't have to squint up at her, and put her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck.
"I know that." She had softened her tone, without actually conceding any ground. "But this isn't your fault. You didn't cause this. You don't have to - "
" - save her? Is that what you were going to say?" There was something impersonal, almost coldly sardonic, in his eyes as he looked at her. It was something that she didn't often see, something he reserved for people when he saw through their attempts to manipulate him - like members of the Wizarding Media.
"Yes, it was. There are people out there who can't have children - married, established couples who want children, who are ready for them now. Nobody would have to know who her parents were. Can you imagine the spectacle the Prophet would make? She'd never have any peace, if they knew. Wouldn't it be better this way?"
"But... a family, Hermione." The pent up longing in his voice surprised her. He and Ginny seemed to be in no great hurry to formalize their relationship, and while she knew he'd always wanted to be properly part of a family, she'd not suspected this level of vehemence.
"Not this family, Harry! Not like this! You should know better than anyone that sharing DNA with someone does not make them family. Some twisted, faceless scientist grew her in a lab!" She flinched at the look on his face, but plowed ahead anyway, determined to make him see reason. "I know she is a victim too, but even that fact does not put you under obligation to her. You can't keep shouldering burdens for the entire world!"
Harry was silent for a very long time, and Hermione worried that she had been too harsh. She hadn't thought there were any bounds for her with Harry, but she wondered if she'd stepped out of them. She had moved her hand out of his hair, and instead played with the strands of cropped grass, feeling the breeze tousle her curls and watching him pensively.
"She's not the entire world. But she's my daughter. She's my daughter, and they put her in a cupboard." He paused for a moment, struggling to contain himself. "Don't you think she needs someone who understands that?"
"There are counselors, people who've been trained to - " Hermione tried again, but he was through letting her speak. She could tell by the determined flash in his green eyes that she had lost the battle.
"I - I know your way makes sense, Hermione. It's logical and rational and reasonable, and perfectly justifiable. But I don't think I could live with myself, if I - if I abandoned -"
"You've known about this for a quarter of an hour! Don't you think you should take a bit… and process this - this new development?"
"God, Hermione!" Harry hid his face in one hand and almost laughed. "How can you always sound so bloody clinical? And you haven't thought about it at all either - don't try and tell me you have. You've squashed it all into a corner of your mind, so you can - can poke it with a stick and take notes on it like some third party observer. You're going to keep doing that about important things, and one day you're just going to explode."
It rankled her that he knew her so well, but she did not deny the truth in what he said.
"I have to be this `bloody clinical'. Someone needs to be, because you're all the time going about leaping off of precipices! This is crazy! What are you going to do? Just sign her out? Take her home? Your flat isn't even set up to take care of a child! Do you know what kind of adjustment this means? Do you realize what you'll be giving up?"
"If there are things I'm giving up, I'm sure there are also things I'd be gaining." He raked his hands through his recalcitrant hair, and sighed. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, Hermione." His voice was gentle and utterly without accusation. "But I've made my decision. I'm going to go see her. Is she at St. Mungo's?"
Hermione nodded weakly, and then added a feeble, "Shouldn't you discuss this with Ginny?"
"Ginny loves me. She'll understand why I'm doing this." There was a confident knowledge in his voice, but something flickered in his eyes that Hermione almost thought she'd imagined. Just the tiniest unspoken word of uncertainty: if Ginny loves me… Hermione felt, rather than heard, his sigh, his gaze growing distant, as he pondered hypotheticals; all of them, judging from his expression, melancholy.
Finally, his green eyes cleared, and he nodded at her, a nod of determination, of decision - and apparently, of farewell, because he suddenly started for the edge of the field at a prodigious pace, aiming for the spot Morty where had vanished what seemed like eons ago. Hermione stood on the empty testing field, staring after Harry, who showed pure purpose in every stride. She'd never been able to make him see sense, not once he was really fixated on a course of action. It was insane, absurd; the Weasleys were going to hit the proverbial ceiling. And yet, she found herself jogging at an increasing pace after him, managing to break through the copse of trees and hook her arm around his elbow, just as he Apparated away.
Their twin Apparation made a noise like a rifle crack at the employee's entrance of St. Mungo's.
"You shouldn't do that," Harry said casually, as if they had not just been fighting about whether or not he should keep their daughter. "One of these days, I'll end up splinching you."
"You'd never splinch me." Hermione looked around at the banks of lockers where she had first seen Auror Dunwiddie - it seemed like ages ago already. "But while we're being critical, you're not supposed to be back here anyway."
"I always come back here," Harry protested. "Bronwyn doesn't mind. She'd have said so otherwise." Hermione rolled her eyes theatrically.
"Oh, please! She can barely gather up the nerve to string two words together around you! I think Ginny rather loathes her." She shook her head at the thought of the shy, pretty witch in charge of St. Mungo's Wizards Resource Department. "And you shouldn't use your fame like that. It makes you terribly unattractive."
Harry's grin was pure cheek. "Sweet Merlin, he has unauthorized access to the St. Mungo's Personnel Department! Harry Potter's corruption is complete!" Hermione couldn't stop the laugh that escaped, even as she tried to purse her lips into a dour expression. Why was it so hard to stay angry with him?
As they were crossing the threshold into the hospital proper, she pulled backward on the crook of his arm to stop his forward motion.
"Harry, are you sure about this?"
"Do you know where they have her?" His ignoring of her question served as his answer. She pressed her lips together, and looked at him with pleading eyes, casting about for any further delay.
"Auror Falworth did say that they wanted to talk to you." She tossed that newly remembered piece of information at him, hoping that they would be able to discuss this with some other people, other level-headed, rational people who might be able to dissuade him from this course of action. She felt inadequate to stand alone before the inexorable force of Harry's determination.
"I'll be happy to talk with them later. Hermione, I'd like to see her. Do you know where she is?" She looked at him one more time, as he simply watched her, waiting. She reflected that where Ron might be an incendiary device that one could either weather or dismantle, fighting with Harry was more like railing against the sheer granite face of a mountain. He would continue to do exactly what he thought was right, and wait for a concession of defeat.
"She's in a private room up in the Children's Ward. Fifth floor."
There was something nostalgic and faintly adoring in Harry's smile at her, as he graciously accepted her surrender with a kiss to her temple.
"Are you coming with me?"
She rolled her eyes, unable to remain irritated with him, even while she fretted over his lack of common sense and forethought.
"Why on earth would I stop now?"
Together, they headed in the direction of the lifts.
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