The Elder Wand
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe and all the characters in it belong to J.K. Rowling. This story is a work of imagination and is directed solely at readers of this website. No infringement of any rights is intended and no criticism of J.K. Rowling or her work should be considered to be stated or implied.
Author's note: an alternative reality story, taking all of the books into account.
Part 5. A change of plan
As soon as he had managed to gather his thoughts, Harry decided to put the concerns about Ginny, raised by his conversations with Narcissa Malfoy and Professor Slughorn, to the test straight away. He therefore somewhat hesitantly, almost fearfully, made his way back towards the Great Hall, worrying about what he should say and what he might discover.
Harry's footsteps resonated on the stone floor as he crossed the threshold of the hall. An eerie silence surrounded him, making him suddenly aware of the vastness of the space, the ceiling a blur far above his head - a very dark blue with innumerable tiny sparks of bright white light at this time of the night. The Great Hall appeared to be deserted, apart from one lone figure. A girl was seated near the centre of a table in the middle of the Gryffindor row. She was leaning forward with her head cradled on arms that were crossed in front of her. Long, wavy brown hair fanned out across the polished, wooden surface of the table top and she appeared to be asleep. Harry recognised almost instantly that it was Hermione.
Harry crept closer, trying to make as little noise as possible. He got as far as the end of the table, looking for signs of movement from the apparently slumbering form but as Hermione didn't stir he turned, intending to retreat and leave her in peace. Unfortunately, Harry's foot snagged on a leg of the nearest chair, dragging it across the stone behind him with a high pitched screech. Hermione immediately sat upright, staring in the direction of the noise. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were bloodshot. It was easy for Harry to discern that she had been crying. Although he could only guess at the reason, he wasn't at all surprised or worried; it had been an emotional night for everyone.
"Harry, where have you been?" she mumbled.
"Nowhere in particular," Harry answered evasively, disentangling his leg as nonchalantly as possible and moving quickly along to where Hermione was seated. "Where is everyone?" he asked as he sat down next to her, pointedly looking around the empty room to give added emphasis to his question.
"Oh, most of the parents have taken their children home. I suppose that the few that are left have gone up to the dormitories." Hermione suppressed a yawn.
"Where's Ron and the rest of the Weasleys?"
"They've taken Fred's body back to the Burrow."
"Why didn't you go with them?"
"I thought that I should wait… to see if you needed any help. What are you planning to do now anyway?"
Harry hesitated. He had only really been thinking about the need to confront Ginny.
"Well, first, I am going to put the Elder Wand safely back in Dumbledore's tomb," he quickly improvised, "and then I suppose I'll make my way to the Burrow. I need to see Ginny."
"Hmm..." Hermione looked away, suddenly appearing to take a great interest in the colourful house banners that adorned the wall above the teachers' table at the far end of the hall. The bold scarlet of Gryffindor, the tranquil blue of Ravenclaw, the bright yellow of Huffelpuff and the deep green of Slytherin; the latter the only colour that would have remained if Voldemort had prevailed and completed his plans for the school. As she dwelt on Harry's words and their implication, Hermione's vision glazed and the strong colours of the banners and the grey stone of the intervening wall merged to form a single, blurry striped mural as she miserably thought, "He needs Ginny. He doesn't need me anymore. I can't stay here like this. I really have to get away as soon as things are sorted."
"Why don't you come with me? Ron could probably do with your support at the moment." Harry's voice suddenly penetrated Hermione's consciousness.
"I don't think so. I'm probably the last person that Ron wants to see right now," she blurted out, without thinking.
"Oh Hermione, you and Ron haven't been rowing again, have you?" Harry sighed in exasperation but he was ashamed to realise that, as he posed the question, he felt just a small tinge of hope rising in his chest. It was becoming more and more obvious to him that he disliked the idea of losing Hermione.
Hermione shook her head looking even more distraught, if possible.
"I don't think that Ron and I are ever going to agree on anything important. He thinks that you are wrong not to use the Elder Wand."
"But, what about you?" Harry asked quickly, a slight note of panic in his voice. "You still agree with me, don't you?"
"Well Harry, I've been thinking…" Hermione began tentatively.
"Oh, I don't believe it," Harry interrupted, his voice rising dangerously. "Not you as well! Surely, you can see how stupid it would be to use the Elder Wand. Dumbledore agrees. You saw him nodding."
"If you would just let me finish," Hermione said crossly. "I'm not saying that you should use the wand, I'm just not sure that hiding it away in the hope that you meet a natural death is a particularly good idea. Let's face it, there will always be dark wizards about and you will always be Harry Potter, the man who defeated Voldemort. Whether you like it or not, you are a marked man Harry and so I don't think that relying on you meeting a natural death is the wisest choice to make. If - and obviously I hope that nothing will ever happen - but if anything was to happen to you, the Elder Wand could fall into the wrong hands and Merlin knows what we might be faced with then. No, we need to find some other way of putting an end to its power; and incidentally, for your information, Dumbledore agrees with me about the danger of letting the wand lie dormant. I spoke to him about it after you had left the Headmaster's study."
Harry glared at Hermione for a few moments, before his gaze softened and he sighed, looking down at his hands, resting on the table in front of him.
"Thanks for that," he said with heavy irony. "I'm glad that you and Dumbledore have such high hopes for my survival."
"It's not like that Harry. You know that I would do anything to keep you alive, but we have to be realistic. The stakes are just too high for anything else," Hermione pleaded.
Harry shook his head, sighing even more deeply, and his shoulders slumped in defeat.
"I suppose that you're right but what do we do then; destroy the wand?"
"I'm not sure that will even be possible," Hermione confessed.
"What? You don't believe that the Hallows really were presented to the Peverell brothers by Death, do you?" Harry asked incredulously. "Dumbledore thought that the brothers probably created them themselves. He told me so."
"Of course I don't, but they are very strange and unique objects. Who knows what magic resides in them? Look at how the Elder Wand was able to repair your broken wand when nothing else could. It might be that the Elder Wand is linked to its owner in ways that we can't begin to imagine. Trying to destroy it might hurt you in some way; perhaps even kill you."
They settled into a gloomy silence, both trying to think of something reassuring to say.
"So what are we going to do?" Harry eventually repeated.
"I don't know. We have to find some acceptable way of destroying or deactivating the wand," Hermione was at her most thoughtful. "I've never really had the time to research the Deathly Hallows much. I suppose that if you're going off to the Burrow tomorrow, I could spend some time in the library here to see if I can dig up any clues."
Harry considered this proposition moodily for a few moments, before suddenly brightening as an idea occurred to him.
"Look Hermione, you've got to come to the Burrow with me, regardless of what is going on between you and Ron. We don't know when Fred's funeral will be and you can't miss it. In any event, who did we go to the last time that we had a question about the Deathly Hallows?"
Hermione frowned. "You mean Xenophilius Lovegood? But we don't even know whether he survived that brush with the Death Eaters."
"Well, the Lovegood's old place was really close to the Burrow, so we can go over there and find out, can't we? If Xenophilius is there, it will be as good a place to start as any."
Hermione looked doubtful. Her frown deepened and she reached up casually to twirl a strand of her hair around one index finger, while Harry watched her with an air of eager anticipation.
"I suppose that we could," Hermione eventually admitted. "Although, I doubt that it will do much good. The Lovegoods have such extreme views about everything that I can't imagine that Xenophilius will come up with anything worthwhile, even if we can find him."
"Well, what harm can it do?" Harry replied brightly. "At the most, we'll lose a couple of days and hopefully I can survive for that long, even if I keep the Elder Wand with me."
Hermione couldn't help smiling at his enthusiasm and the thought of spending a bit more time with Harry wasn't something that she found in the least bit displeasing.
Having determined on a course of action, they both decided that they needed to get some rest before they could set off for the Burrow. Hermione summoned one of the Hogwarts' post owls - they had mostly remained in the Owlery, safe from the fighting - and Harry sent a message to Ron telling him that they would arrive the next day. With that bit of business taken care of, the two of them agreed that there should be plenty of room to sleep in the Gryffindor dormitories and left the Great Hall together in a much more hopeful mood.
The castle was completely silent and their footsteps echoed off stone and wood as they made their way along corridors and up flights of stairs, their fused shadows, cast by the myriad of burning torches that lined the walls, drifting ahead of them. They continued their conversation making plans for the next day and wondering, as Harry had wondered earlier, whether the Fat Lady would have fled leaving the entrance to the Gryffindor common room unguarded.
Unfortunately, when they reached the portrait hole, the Fat Lady was in residence, her clothes slightly rumpled and her hair untidy but otherwise looking as haughty and disinterested as ever.
"Password," she demanded, her nose in the air, not even glancing in their direction.
"Sorry, we don't know it," Hermione replied sheepishly.
The Fat Lady glanced down at them dismissively. "Well, in that case you can't come in. How do I know that you are true Gryffindors?"
"Oh, don't be so ridiculous," Harry responded irritably. "You know both of us very well. This is Hermione Granger and I'm Harry Potter and considering that we have just been disposing of Voldemort - a fact that you are obviously well aware of - I don't think that there can be any doubt that we are true Gryffindors. Do you?"
The Fat Lady pursed her lips and raised one index finger to her plump cheek in a gesture that suggested that she was carefully considering extremely important and complex matters.
"Oh, I suppose that you had better come in then, but don't think that you can make a habit of it," she eventually said, conveying as much reluctance as she could muster. The portrait swung to one side and Harry and Hermione tumbled into the Gryffindor common room, giggling together.
The common room was deserted, any students who still remained having long since headed up to the dormitories. Harry and Hermione were pleased to see that not much had changed over the previous year. The round room was just as welcoming with its assortment of squashy armchairs dotted about and a roaring log fire casting dancing shadows on the curved walls. Hermione conjured up two steaming mugs of hot chocolate and they sat on opposite sides of the fireplace sipping the warm, sweet liquid while they reminisced about happier times that they had spent at the school. Although they made no conscious agreement, they both avoided the topic of relationships and neither Ron nor Ginny was mentioned. They chuckled as they talked about the way that Hermione had set fire to Professor Snape's robes when she mistakenly believed that he was threatening Harry during the Quidditch match against Slytherin in their first year and recalled how they had both been put in detention after aiding the escape of Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback dragon, which Hagrid had foolishly tried to keep as a pet. They laughed at the memory of their first attempt to use Polyjuice Potion and Harry became so animated that he blew chocolate down his nose when he tried to describe Hermione peering from the toilet cubicle in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom with the black fur and yellow eyes of Millicent Bulstrode's cat. They smiled at the thought of Hagrid's unconventional teaching methods when instructing them in the Care of Magical Creatures, remembering how difficult it had been to handle the biting Monster Book of Monsters. This reminiscence brought them inevitably onto the topic of Buckbeak and their night ride to rescue Sirius. The memory was a particular favourite of Hermione's and she was able to recall even the tiniest detail with great relish. As she talked, Harry was surprised to find that the recollection of Hermione's arms clasped tightly around his waist, while the soft curls of her hair tickled his neck, caused feelings to stir within him that were definitely far from brotherly and he gazed dreamily into the fire, imagining that its heat was the warmth of her body pressing against him. Only when they got onto the subject of their fourth year at Hogwarts did they fall silent. The memories were too recent and too painful.
As Harry slurped the last mouthful of his drink, he yawned loudly.
"If I don't get to bed soon, I'm going to fall asleep here."
"Well, we should head up to the dormitories. There will be plenty of empty beds. Probably your old bed will be free," Hermione replied almost as sleepily.
In unison, they pushed themselves out of the cosy embrace of their armchairs and made their way towards the point where the stairways to the girl's and boy's dormitories diverged. They stopped briefly and hugged in a drowsy, friendly fashion.
"Good night Hermione," Harry mumbled.
"Good night Harry. Sleep well," Hermione whispered in Harry's ear, before loosening her embrace.
Harry turned and started to make his way slowly up the boy's staircase, while Hermione busied herself using her wand, out of habit, to tidy up any remaining signs of their presence. After a few steps, Harry turned and looked down affectionately at her.
"Thanks," he said.
Hermione, who was just in the process of removing a chocolate stain that she had just noticed on the carpet next to Harry's armchair, looked up in surprise.
"What? What for?"
"Oh, for everything really," Harry replied, smiling. "I don't know how I would have managed without you."
He blew Hermione a kiss and then turned and continued up the stairs, leaving her standing dazed at the bottom, her eyes glistening, wondering why she always seemed to be so tearful lately.