Unofficial Portkey Archive

Chapter Seven: Battle Lines Drawn

It seemed that Hermione could feel the impact of the sidewalk against the soles of her trainers jarring all the way up her back, as she pelted after Ron, nearly stumbling down the steps in her haste. She was just beginning to become seriously winded, when she caught sight of him. He was walking quickly, but smoothly, long, ground-eating strides, his head tucked down between two awkwardly hunched shoulders. He curved round to enter an alley, from which he could Apparate more privately, and she saw the exact moment that he noticed her pursuit: he stiffened briefly, as though he'd had a bolt of lightning jolt down his spine. Still, the check in his gait was all but infinitesimal.

She pressed herself harder, wishing she had tried harder to stay fit, ignoring the stabbing pain in her side, ignoring the startled glances of the people she was dodging. "Ron!" she called out between gasps, as she ducked into the alley. Her voice sounded as hopeless as her heart felt. "Ron! Wait!"

She was almost within arm's reach. If she lunged just a bit, she could catch him at the crook of his arm, she could… but something held her back. She couldn't do that to him, unsure of his ability to Apparate with an unexpected someone suddenly dangling off of him. And just that quickly, he was gone. She stood in the alley, chest heaving, arms akimbo, the warm and moist odor of refuse wafting around her.

Her mind clicked through a list of options in rapid succession, and she Apparated back to her own flat with hardly more noise than the crisp snapping of a twig. Using her own Floo as a base of operations, she checked his flat, the Burrow, his workplace, and George's shop, even as she discarded all of those places for being rather too obvious. She even made herself go to the pub and the Quidditch supply store, before telling herself sternly that she was grasping at straws.

In less than thirty minutes, she was sitting back in her little lounge, staring glumly at the merrily dancing flames. I wonder how Harry's doing with Ginny? she mused. At least, she stayed to hear him out. At the same time though, even while she despaired of Ron's reaction, she couldn't dredge up much shock. I knew this would happen. I know him better than almost anyone, and I knew…

And then inspiration struck her like a bolt from the blue. With the air of one fortifying herself, she dabbed two fingers at the dampness beneath her eyes, dusted off her Floo-stained shoulders, and made one cursory attempt to smooth her wild hair. She inhaled one deep steadying breath, before Apparating to St. Mungo's.

She strode gracefully out of the employee's locker room for what felt like the millionth time that day, and methodically moved through the various common areas of the hospital, surveying them in an efficient pattern. A pang of relief shot through her body like a spear thrust when she saw the splash of red hair at a corner table for two in the cafeteria. His very posture bespoke glumness; he was slumped over the cracked Formica as if he could divine secrets from it. He had his feet in the chair across from him, but removed them as she approached, without even really looking at her.

"Figures you'd find me," he grunted, glancing at her briefly, and just as quickly dropping his gaze again.

"You really should've known I would," she rejoined companionably. "Ron, I - "

"Merlin knows why I came here. I wanted to see - I thought - but I should've known that anything involving Harry would be way above my pay grade." There was the barest hint of a sneer when he said Harry's name that mightily discomfited Hermione. She pressed her lips together tightly, as she inhaled through her nose, trying to grasp onto some semblance of control, trying to remind herself that Ron had had a shock, that he was reacting as he always had when faced with something he did not wish to face.

"Ron, there is no need for this to change anything, not between you and me, not between you and Harry."

"Are you daft, Hermione? This changes everything!"

"Why?" Her dark eyes entreated him; her voice so pleading that it cracked, dividing the short word into two syllables. "Harry and I are friends. Nothing more. The one who is changing things here is you. You didn't even let us explain."

"What is there to explain?" Ron's voice was sullenly cruel. "I suppose I brought it on myself, didn't I? Ran off and left my best mate and the girl I loved when they needed me most. Abandoned them like the lowest kind of Slytherin coward, and deserved whatever I got in return, yeah? How long did you wait after I left?"

Hermione's nostrils flared with dismayed offense, as she visibly recoiled away from him. She felt color climb so high into her face that she thought she might combust right there in the cafeteria. If they hadn't been in so public a setting, she might have hit him.

"How dare you!?" she hissed. "How could you think that about me? About Harry? He's the - he's the single most - he - he loves you, Ron! You were his first friend, his brother. Even if he wanted to, and I've never seen the slightest indication of that - he - he wouldn't - and - and I wouldn't - " She seemed to collect herself before she tumbled over the edge of sputtering incoherence, and resumed in a sadder tone: "It hurts, Ron, that you would think that of us. It did hurt when you left us, but I thought - I thought we'd moved past all that. Don't twist your guilt over that back onto Harry and me. We have never betrayed you. You always - whenever there's - " She threw up both hands in utter exasperation. In a low, flat voice, she succinctly summarized the situation with Eleanor as she knew it to that point.

"There's a lot they don't know yet." Some of the storm-cloudiness had faded from Ron's face as she spoke, but it was tinted with shame. "They must have done it while we recovered here after the battle. The Aurors have no idea who did it - or why."

"Then why do you have to be involved at all? There's nothing really tying you to - you didn't even know about her! What would - ?"

"It's Harry," Hermione cut him off with a shrug. "She's part of him, carries his blood… he's already claimed her as his - he did it when he'd only known about her for half an hour, just as simply as that. The people who did this chose Harry - chose me - for a reason. But I'll bet they aren't prepared to deal with a Harry who has decided to fully embrace the fatherhood that they forced on him."

"What about you?"

"What about me?" She echoed, trying to sound natural, but feeling the heat rise in her cheeks.

"Harry has decided to do this. What about you? You're her - her mother…" Ron looked as if he were narrowly avoiding choking on the final word.

"I - I would've been inclined to approve adoption, but Harry was just - he was so sure… right away. I should've known what his reaction would be to the possibility of family. He's chosen this, and I … told him he'd have my support."

"Support? What does that mean? What does it mean for us?" Some of Ron's ire, mixed with fear and not a little jealousy, had started to ooze back into his voice. She looked at him for a long time, and Ron would have given anything to have been able to read what was going on behind her eyes, the way - although he was loath to admit it - Harry always seemed able to.

"It means … it means that you need to come to terms with the fact that I have a child with another man. However that came to pass. Eleanor is our daughter, mine and Harry's, and we - what is your problem, Ron?" Ron had visibly flinched over Hermione's description of the child.

"This! You! You and Harry - all this `our' and `we' - and - I'm your - I'm your bloody fiancé, and it's like I'm this outsider looking in. You and Harry have always had this exclusive little circle, and now - and now this is just another thing I have no part in."

"Of all the -- This is not about you! It's not even about Harry or me - not really. This is about a little girl who has been engineered into existence, who has been tested and tortured, but never been loved. Can you possibly get your head out of your arse long enough to ascertain that?! It's going to be a monumental change - that's certain enough. I was pretty bewildered at first. But Harry - he just decided - right then - that she was his and he wanted her. I thought - I thought maybe you'd love her too… just because she was mine." Tears flooded her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to keep them at bay, trying to stifle a noisy sniff.

"Hermione…" Ron choked out in a rough voice. He reached across to take her hand, but she jerked it off the table, beyond his reach.

"Can't you - can't you just once… process something, think through all the aspects of something, before flying off your broom handle?"

"Of course! Because I'm sure, in all the time we've known him, Harry has never had a knee-jerk reaction to unpleasant news!"

"I've never once claimed that Harry was not impetuous - but he generally acts out of love, not out of jealousy or fear - You immediately assume the worst about people - about people you supposedly love."

"I cannot tell you how bleeding tired I am of being compared to Harry!" Ron's voice started out at a low rumble, but crescendoed enough to begin drawing attention from neighboring tables.

"You started it!"

"The hell I did! That's all I've bloody well heard since I first met you! Harry doesn't think that - … Harry wouldn't -… if Harry were here, he'd - "

"That's not true," she whispered, horribly stung at his bitter words, part of her wondering if it was true. "I - I don't do that. We both know that Harry has issues like anyone else."

"Yes, but when Harry has problems, it's because he had a stunted childhood, or has abandonment issues, or lived with the threat of death for too long. When I've got a problem, it's because I'm a jealous, suspicious prick, who - "

"If the shoe fits…" Hermione trailed off with airy nastiness.

"You are the single most infuriating bird I have ever had the misfortune to meet!"

"And yet, you want to marry me?" She cocked her head to one side, in mock befuddlement. "That doesn't make very much sense, Ronald." She took a moment of fiendish pleasure to appreciate the way the angry color drained from his face.

"Hermione, I - "

"I can't even look at you right now! I don't know why I keep hoping that you'll behave differently. Owl me when you're ready to be a rational adult." She stood, with as much dignity as she could muster, and exited the cafeteria, trying her hardest to ignore the ripple of murmurs that arose in her wake. She did not look back.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The silence in her flat was dense and total. Hermione had curled into the smallest ball possible on the far end of her slouchy sofa, holding a book in which she had not turned a page for the last half hour. She had cried so much that her eyes felt dry and tight, and a headache throbbed a steady drumbeat in her temples.

The bad times are kind of tiresome, she recalled her words to Harry from earlier. Tiresome, she thought sardonically. After the kind of day she'd had, that seemed like a colossal understatement. Her mother had always told her that there were some things worth fighting for, that things dearly bought, with difficulty and perseverance, were the things worth the most. She had thought she believed those things, her time in the war seemed to prove it. But perhaps she was wrong in categorizing her relationship with Ron as one of those things. Is Ron worth fighting for? It seems that I'm always fighting with him, not for him. And do I really appreciate my hard-won…misery? She twisted her engagement ring around her finger, watching the stone sparkle in the puddle of lamplight that spilled on the end table.

When the Floo roared to life, it startled her badly. She bit back a yelp, watching as her book tumbled end over end off of her lap and across the floor, landing with a thwack near the low stone hearth. Harry flopped out of the fireplace in his usual ungainly fashion, and narrowly missed tripping over the fallen tome, before picking it up and handing it back to her.

"I didn't mean to scare you." His hair was a tousled mess over brows crinkled in apology, as he surveyed his best friend, flattened against her sofa cushions, trying to regulate her breathing.

"Believe me, Harry," Hermione said hoarsely, in an attempt at a wry tone. "Nothing you could do to me could make this evening worse."

"Went badly, did it?"

"You could say that." There was a beat of silence, and Harry sat down next to her on the sofa, slinging his arm along the back of it. "Where's Ginny?"

"Dunno." His casual shrug did not fool Hermione in the slightest. "She Flooed out maybe an hour and a half ago. She might have gone to see her mum. She stayed… and listened, and seemed to understand… but she was - I don't know - in shock, I reckon. Said she needed to sort it out… but I'm not sure why she couldn't sort it out with me."

"At least she listened to you…believed you. Ron was convinced that we've been carrying on a torrid affair since the Forest of Dean."

"How did he find out?" Harry said in mock horror. His hand moved over the ridge of her shoulder, back and forth, comforting.

"That's not funny, Harry," Hermione said, nonetheless snorting out a mirthless, tired laugh.

"I know… time and place, right?" There was a fatigued silence. Harry was absently winding the tip of his index finger into the cuff of Hermione's sleeve, while she stared glassily into middle distance. "Listen… Hermione I - I may have decided to bring Eleanor home, but it was never my intent to force my decision on you. If it's going to cause problems… you know I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world, right?"

Hermione felt tears suffuse her eyes and burn her nose.

"You aren't hurting me, Harry. And I think this is the right thing to do. Ron and Ginny can make their own choices. They can either accept her … or …not." She saw Harry shoot a concerned glance down toward her left hand.

"You and Ron - you didn't - ?"

"Not yet," she prophesied glumly, and let her eyes drift shut. "God, I have such a headache. I hate crying."

Harry pulled her closer to him, and kissed the top of her head.

"Why don't you go get into bed? I'll fix you some tea and a pain reliever." She must have looked ready to protest, for Harry added, "Tomorrow's probably not going to be any less stressful."

"You're probably right. Shut up, Harry," she tacked on, when he teased her by looking around like he had just received favor from heaven.

"You know I love you, right?"

"Yeah," she half-grinned at him tiredly, as she shuffled toward her bedroom. "I know."

AN - I have no worthy excuses for the unconscionable delay, and am utterly ashamed of myself. But here this is, and chapter 10 of "Shadow Walker" is close to completion. I abjectly petition you for your forgiveness…

--lorien829

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