The Catalyst
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Chapter Six: Life Rearranged
Harry slid out of Eleanor's hospital room some hours later, moving even as the door shut with a decisive click. He had promised the little girl that he would be back later that night, would make sure he was present when she awakened the next morning. She had the wide-eyed, stoic look of someone who wanted desperately to cry, but either didn't know how to go about it, or feared that there would negative consequences if she did.
Once the door shut, Harry let a muffled curse escape his lips, as he ran both hands through his hair, shoulders slumping with fatigue. Hermione had preceded him into the hallway, and stood quietly consulting with Healer Desai over Eleanor's chart.
"Can - can someone stay with her - until I get back, I mean?" Harry blurted suddenly, catching the full attention of both women. The question was directed to Desai, and Hermione stood silently, seeming, as she had done thus far, content to let Harry take the lead. "I - I just hate to think of her shut in that room by herself. I - I can feel how much she hates it, and how terrified she really is, and how she's been… conditioned to - to show nothing of what she's feeling on the inside, and I - " He was thinking of the cupboard under the stairs, and the mute compliance, and the desperate need to please, and the fear that he would do something wrong without even realizing it. He voiced none of that in front of the Healer, but he could tell that Hermione had deduced all of it, and then some, by the look on her face.
"We can certainly have an Intercessor sit with her, Mr. Potter, if you'd like." Healer Desai's words were carefully measured. Harry wondered if he was being humored, and then found that he really didn't care. He began to feel that monumental decisions were pressing in on him, that people were watching, judging, that he was going to fail them all… He wasn't sure he'd felt that kind of alarm since the conclusion of the Final Battle.
"Thank you. I'd really appreciate it." His voice proceeded calmly from his mouth, but his eyes had already telegraphed his impending panic. Hermione had crossed the tiled corridor, and looped her arm through his in one smooth motion.
"Let's go, Harry." He realized with faint annoyance that she was using her Healer's voice on him. "We'll go back to your flat, make sure things are set up properly, floo Ron and Ginny, and order in pizza." Her voice was a little too bright; it sounded brittle, like spider-webbed glass, as if her entire facade would crumble into a thousand pieces if overly jostled.
"I'm not one of your patients, Hermione," he sniped at her, as they made their way back toward the lifts at the far end of the ward.
"Imagine my gratitude," she replied blandly, drawing another accusing glare from him. She waited until the lift doors closed around them, before pouncing. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
Silence. He hated Hermione's knowing stares… the ones that were calm and unruffled and regarded you with a kind of superior placidity. I've got all day, they generally seemed to say, I know what's going on, and I can wait as long as it takes until you talk to me about it.
"Well, Hermione," he finally ventured, sarcasm so heavy in his voice that it cracked. "I can't imagine what would bloody well be wrong! We've got to go explain a completely bizarre situation to our significant others, and then I'm going to have a daughter that I didn't even know about prior to today come and live with me, and I have no idea what in the hell I'm even supposed to do! I mean - taking Teddy to the zoo every now and then or letting him have doughnuts for dinner while we watch Disney movies in the living room is not exactly like being a real parent, is it? Not to mention the possibility that there is some nutter out there engineering people, and I'm not convinced that the fact that they chose us in particular is irrelevant." He darted a glance at her, arching his dark brows, clearly waiting for her to say something like I told you so.
"Thank you, Harry," she breathed softly and unexpectedly, sliding a little closer to him, and leaning her cheek against his shoulder. He snorted in self-deprecating amusement.
"Whatever for?"
"For being human." At his questioning look, she continued, "for not being St. Harry, the guardian of those in need of rescue… at least not all the time. Besides, don't all new fathers go through something like this? Do you remember how nervous Bill was the day Victoire was born?" He made a dissenting noise that seemed to indicate that that situation was not quite the same. She leaned into him once more, nudging him with her cheek and shoulder and arm. "I may not always be sure about your reasoning, but I've always been sure about your heart. Eleanor is a very lucky little girl to have you as a father. And it - it might be hard, but…you know I'm with you, right?"
He bussed the top of her head, as the lift disgorged them out into the lower hallway.
"You always are… and it occurs to me that I probably don't thank you enough for it."
"Probably?" She drawled sarcastically, and he poked her in the side, making her yelp and dance sideways away from him. He waited just inside the Employee's entrance, while she retrieved her bag, thinking about how much everything had changed since she arrived at the testing field to drop this bombshell on him.
"I should Floo Brig," he said suddenly. "I mean, I guess I could bring Eleanor to Clampshaven with me, but I'm probably going to need a couple of days off anyway."
"Harry, don't - " Hermione started, but Harry had already gone around the corner to the alcove where she knew Bronwyn's office was tucked away. She heard Harry's voice, chummy and overly jovial.
"Afternoon, Bronwyn. I hate to ask you this, but I am in desperate need of your fireplace. Work emergency - would you mind terribly?" Hermione could not make out Bronwyn's reply, but the timbre of her voice was high-pitched and fluttery. A moment later, the department Head came out into the common area where Hermione waited. Harry's best friend stifled a smirk and shook her head, feeling a interesting mixture of awe and disgust that Harry could barge in, kick someone out of her own office, and make her happy to do so.
"Hello, Bronwyn,"
"Harry needed to use my Floo," Bronwyn informed her, in lieu of a greeting. Her face and neck were crimson in contrast with her cream-colored Administrative robes.
"So I hear."
Harry rounded the corner scant minutes later, and Hermione didn't think he'd disclosed much information to Brig, not over an unsecured Floo connection, but some of his earlier agitation seemed to have left him, and his eyes were calmer.
"Thanks ever so, Bronwyn," he said, smiling briefly at her before linking his arm with Hermione's and Apparating away with a small snap.
"She'll talk about that for weeks," Hermione said in her best Lavender Brown imitation, her brown eyes glinting with teasing, as they appeared in the living room of Harry's flat. Harry's responding look was dour at best.
"So," Harry tucked both hands into his back pockets, and his eyes flew over the contents of the room with the air of an experienced surveyor. "What do we do first?"
"If I were you, I'd start by unearthing that junk heap you call a spare bedroom. It's going to be hard for Eleanor to stay there, if you can't even find it."
He cut her a mock glare of offense, and then theatrically performed a Point Me spell and trotted off in the direction that his wand had spun. The burble of her laughter that followed him like a forest brook tripping over smooth stones was heartening. He paused momentarily at the threshold, attempting to determine where he should begin. The room was not as unclean as it was cluttered. Harry generally used it as a depository for anything that did not otherwise have a place to go, figuring he'd "get to it later" - which he usually didn't.
"Shall I Floo Ron and Ginny?" Hermione's voice drifted down the hall, and the light memory of laughter was still within it. But Harry caught the deeper undercurrent as well, one of trepidation. He couldn't help but selfishly reflect that if she Flooed, then he wouldn't have to.
"Ginny finished up at the shop an hour ago, but Ron's class runs another two, doesn't it?" he called back, as he conjured up a Banishing Bin charmed for Waste Obliteration, and began sending stacks of fan mail that he'd never got around to opening into its gaping maw. He sorted out loose photographs, old ones from Colin and newer ones that Ginny had taken, storing them in a shoebox in the top of the closet. He shrank the Muggle treadmill that Seamus and Dean had bought him, mostly as a joke, and stored it on the top shelf as well.
"You're right." He heard her sigh. "I'll go ahead and Floo Ginny, and then leave a message for Ron at the training desk that we're eating dinner here tonight." He could hear the whoosh of green flames, and two feminine voices in conversation, as he hefted his drafting table, lodged conveniently in the most accessible corner, into the hallway, and then Levitated it into his bedroom. By the time, Hermione had accomplished her tasks, he had cleared out most of the floor space, and emptied out most of the closet.
He used magic to shift the furniture around, and then hit the entire room with a couple of particularly deft Carpet Cleaning and Dust Banishing charms. He was surveying the results with some measure of satisfaction, when Hermione ducked under his arm to look as well.
"Used the pair of them, did you?" She was grinning saucily at him.
"Why does that make you so happy? Because I actually do use them on occasion, or because you were the one who managed to get them to stick in my thick head?"
"I'm not sure who started that particular myth - if it's something you believe because you were told so as a child, or if you just act like it sometimes - I don't know, to make Ron feel better or something…" She chuckled lightly over her last words. "But, you, Harry Potter, do not have a `thick head'." As she said the last phrase, she poked him in the side of the head, twice, just behind his ear. He would've have winced playfully away from her and said an insincere, "Ow!" Or grabbed her around the waist, and started tickling her…
But the pads of her fingers yielded and slid silkily through the strands of his hair instead, and the playful touch turned into an almost-caress. He hesitated, his brow furrowing, as he watched her with something like bemusement. She had a look on her face, the one she got when she was puzzling out a particularly tricky potions combination, as if she were trying to figure out where she'd seen him before.
"I think you should paint," she announced abruptly, swirling away from him and breaking the contact. "A Color-Change charm would work, although it wouldn't last as long as actual paint. But by then, you could ask Eleanor what she wants." The furniture included a bed, dresser, and night table, and the pieces were part of a mismatched set handed down from Bill and Fleur. Having as little interest in home decor as one might imagine, and yet still having a vague sense of obligation that a room ought to have furniture in it, Harry had been well pleased with the ease of the donation and its subsequent arrangement.
Hermione's wand was flashing rapidly now, as she worked on the rather battered wooden furnishings, tightening and polishing hardware and smoothing out nicks and cracks. In another instant, she had changed the walls to a soothing pale purple, and then set all the furniture neatly into place, finally using a switching spell to change the bedding.
"She'll need clothes… perhaps a comforter for the bed… some toys and books, of course…"
"Oh, of course," Harry mocked the off-hand tone when she referenced books.
"We should be able to do that tomorrow, but it'll have to wait until I finish my shift… would that work for you?"
"Erm…I guess," Harry floundered slightly. The looming sensation was beginning to crest again. He had not thought so far ahead. Hermione noticed immediately; her eyes flickered with guilt.
"Harry, I'm sorry. I'm running roughshod over whatever you might have planned or want to do, aren't I? Ron is always fussing at me for taking charge, without so much as a by-your-leave." Something shadowy flitted across her face - the same something that had worried him so during their lunchtime jaunt to the ice cream parlor.
"Hermione, I'm not afraid of admitting that I'm pants at details. And I know - I know - " He wrapped his hands around her upper arms, and peered intently into her face. " - that when you take charge, it is because you care about the person involved. I'm glad you care enough about me - and about Eleanor - to worry about the details. Ron should feel that way too."
There was a veiled and unintentional slight toward Ron enclosed in the way he spoke the last sentence. He heard it, as it exited his mouth. She heard it, and hastened to clarify to him that that was not at all what she meant. But her explanatory words were cut off by the flare of the Floo, and Harry knew Ginny had just arrived.
He let go of Hermione, kneading the muscles of her upper arms lightly as he released them, and moved toward the door, his stomach pushing its way up into his throat. She caught his hand between her fingers in a quick squeeze. It's going to be okay, she mouthed, but he could see the uncertainty banked in the depths of her dark eyes.
Ginny expressed surprise in the redecoration of the spare room, and was somewhat dubious over the color choice. Harry implied without actually saying so that Hermione couldn't stand even knowing the spare room was there in such a state, and had bullied him into doing something with it. They sent for the pizza, and Hermione and Ginny Apparated down to a nearby wizarding market for drinks and dessert.
All too soon, Ron's lanky form materialized in the fireplace, and they were seated on the floor around the low coffee table, two large pizza boxes open in the center. Harry looked at his slice with distaste, unsure whether or not he'd even be able to swallow. The silence stretched out for so long that awkwardness began to seep in the cracks.
"All right, what gives?" Ginny finally asked, washing down a bite with a swig of butterbeer. "Hermione looks as tense as bird in a bludger shop." Harry jerked his gaze up to look at Hermione with surprise, having thought she looked quite calm and collected. She offered him a faint reassuring smile, and patted his hand under the table.
"Hermione came to the Clampshaven field today," Harry started slowly, scratching absently at the back of his neck, as he cast about for the right words to use. "Seems there were Aurors at St. Mungo's, and they needed to find me. You see, there - there was a raid at a … at kind of an illegal research facility - "
"I heard about that raid," Ron interrupted, genuine interest obvious in his voice. "Falworth ran it - a good bloke, he is - must have been a big deal. Usually, they go over all the ongoing cases during the daily briefing… but they've been playing this one really close to their robes."
"Well, they - they found a little girl, about 5 years old, left behind in a cell at that facility, and - and she'd been experimented on; they'd pumped her full of potions and seen what magic she evidenced." There were exclamations of shock and horror from the Weasley siblings.
"But why were they looking for you, Harry?" Ginny put in, leaning toward him with entreating eyes. "You got out of the Auror game quite a while ago."
"I'm not sure you could say I was ever truly in it." Harry had gotten into the training class with Ron, and about six weeks in, had discovered that he genuinely had no desire to continue those kinds of battles for the rest of his life. He'd run into Brig's son at Quality Quidditch Supplies the next day… and the rest was history. Hermione nudged him in the shin with the toe of her trainer, and snapped him from his reverie. "The Aurors were looking for me because the… " One more deep breath. One more glance at Hermione. "Because the little girl belongs to me."
The silence in Harry's flat was complete. Ginny and Ron both stared at him, as if waiting for him to give them the punch line.
"Be - belongs to you?" Ginny said in a voice without comprehension, faint anger lacing the edges. "That's crazy. They know who you are - surely it isn't that far-fetched that someone would claim - "
"They did an Origination Spell at St. Mungo's, Ginny," Hermione broke in softly. "Harry's pattern is on file there. I reviewed it myself."
"How - how did that - how could you - " Ginny almost gasped the words, as if her lungs could not get enough air to voice them properly. Her eyes were filling with tears, but her face was reddening. Harry figured it was anybody's guess as to whether sadness or anger would win out.
"You need to listen to the whole story, Gin - " Harry's eyes were beseeching. He tried to take hold of her hand; she jerked away from his touch, as if he would burn her. "It's not what you're thinking…"
"Well… explain it to me then, by all means!" The clog of tears was evident in her voice. "Was it my sixth year, then? When you were supposed to be in school, but were gallivanting all over Merlin-knows-where? Who - " Ginny's face was suffusing Weasley-red, but she was fighting for a semblance of control. "Who's her mother?"
Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance of dread. It suddenly seemed that they had gone about this all wrong; suddenly they were faced with the million-galleon question, before they had been able to share the unusual Muggle science behind the odd situation.
"I - I - I am." Hermione tried a couple of times before her voice actually came out properly. "But it didn't happen like that. You both have to listen." She had been watching Ginny, who still looked like she was having difficulty breathing.
Heavy footfalls and the sound of Harry's door slamming decisively startled the other three out of their horrified trance, the tense and mangled emotions like a pea-soup fog around them. Harry jumped as if he'd been hit with a Stinging Hex.
Ron was gone.
Hermione was on her feet in the next instant, and out the door in the instant after that. Harry's door slammed again.
She did not return.
That surprised Harry, and when the feelings of hurt began to creep in, he tried to dismiss them. Of course she went after him - this is not like during the Horcrux Hunt. She'll be back later. He needs to hear the truth; she'll tell him, and then she'll be back. Besides, she said she's with me on this, and she has never broken a promise to me. Then why did it chafe him so that she'd gone after her fiance? But he couldn't think about that at present; there were more pressing issues pending. He looked back at his angry, confused, and shell-shocked girlfriend. He took her hand, and this time she did not resist.
"Please don't leave, Ginny. You've got to hear what really happened. I swear I am telling you the unvarnished truth…"
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