Copyright: What elements of this story that I own, and are not the property of anyone else, are licensed
CC-BY-NC-SA. That means that you can take anything in this story, up to and including the whole thing, and use it
however you like, as long as you promise me three things:
1. You will link back to me (preferably to my author page)
2. You will not make money off whatever you do
3. You will share your work under these same conditions
This is going to be a long note, so let's dive in.
First, I'm sorry to those who enjoyed this story that it's taken me so long to update. This was a very difficult chapter for me, very emotionally charged and very hard for me to get onto paper. But I did, and here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.
Second, you'll notice that I changed the name of this story. I've done a lot of thinking about it as I wrote this chapter, and I came to realization that this story isn't so much about the consequence of choice (although that's certainly an important theme) as it is about pain, so the new title better reflects that. The title comes from the book "Paper Towns," by John Green (since this book was recently rated one of the top 25 Young Adult novels by NPR, statistically most of you have probably heard of it). John introduces the metaphor of broken strings as a way to explain a suicide, that "all the strings inside him broke." John spends the rest of the book arguing against this metaphor, because it imagines a world where we can be irreparably broken, that once the string breaks you can't tie it up again. I disagree. I think you can tie the strings back up, but it's a very difficult thing to do, expecially with no one to help you. I thought that was appropriate, for reasons that may become clear in this chapter.
Third, on a related note, I'm still really fascinated by the idea of choice, so I'm starting a new project that I'd like some input on. Check out my author page for details.
Lastly, I need to take a break. This was an incredibly difficult chapter for me, and I need to recover from it a bit. I have chapter 5 already written, but not typed, so I'll try and get that up by Monday and then take about a two-week break. It's a fair spot, as it's right in the middle of the story.
On that note, I hope you enjoy the show.
Chapter 4: Healings
"Fuck." Harry Potter cursed as he knelt in the flower bed behind his small cottage. He liked the small house, liked it a whole hell of a lot better than the mausoleum he had lived in with his late wife, but he still wasn't happy. Hadn't been for a while, in fact. It wasn't boredom that he disliked, he was used to that; retiring from unemployment was a distinction without much of a difference. It was age. Harry Potter had grown to hate a lot of things as his years advanced, but the thing he hated above all others was getting old. He hated the effect time had on him, hated how his joints protested every action until even gardening, an activity he usually enjoyed very much when it was for his benefit and not Aunt Petunia's, was a new lesson in pain. "Shit." He cursed again as his hand cramped around the trowel he was gripping as loosely as he was able. He hated getting old.
"Did you ignore everything I told you about language, Harry James?" The female voice behind him caught him off-guard, but he turned as quickly as his back would allow.
"Hermione." He greeted, truly happy for the first time in a long while, as he slowly rose to his feet. Not slowly enough, as it turned out as his foot turned on a rock and sparked burning, stabbing, shooting, horrible pain in his bad knee. He let out a terrible cry as he fell to the ground, and then another as his bad knee hit the ground.
"HARRY!" She cried out, and was by his side in a split second. "Are you alright, what happened?"
No, Harry Potter was not 'alright.' Ten thousand tiny instruments of torture were stabbing him in the knee, his head was spinning, all the world exploding with pain. "Knee." He managed to grunt, sweat trickling down his brow from the effort of keeping his composure.
Hermione understood instantly. When hadn't she? And if anyone would understand this pain, it would be her; he remembered vividly being there when she had thrown her first hip, and how not even her strength had been able to keep her from screaming. But she was here now, under his arm, taking the weight off his bad leg as they stumped along towards the house. It would be difficult to describe how difficult he found this simple action: it's awfully hard to walk in a straight line when the world is a macabre merry-go-round, just spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and…
He was dimly aware of a voice, soft and muffled as though it came from miles away. "Where are your drugs?" It seemed to ask. He opened his mouth to answer, but felt the bile rise in his throat and quickly shut it again. "Bollocks." He heard the voice say, and he felt an inscrutable force patting at his pockets even as his brain gave up the struggle and he slipped into blessed unconsciousness.
He was in bed when he awoke, the pain in his leg reduced to a dull throb and the familiarly bitter taste of pain potions on his tongue. He spat viciously; he hated that taste. He heard someone enter the room, possibly attracted by the sounds of his waking, but he could see nothing but a great dark blur. "Harry?" Hermione's voice. "Are you alright?"
"Never better." He replied with a less-than-subtle edge of sarcasm. "Where are my glasses?" On cue, the blur set something on his face and vision returned. And what a vision it was before his eyes, so heavenly and beautiful that he almost - almost - forgot the taste of potion, and felt faint stirrings in places that he hadn't felt stir in a long, long time: Hermione Granger in his bedroom, dressed in one of his shirts and, as far as his eyes could tell, nothing else. "Er-my-knee," He grunted, suddenly becoming reacquainted with the foulness of his medication. "Not that I'm complaining, but what happened to your clothes?"
She flushed, adorably, aand drew the collar close about her neck, with the unintended side effect of tightening the fabric in other places. Oh yes, there was definitely stirring going on. "You threw up on them you prat."
"Ah." He said. Good on me, he thought.
"Aren't you going to apologize?"
"Nope."
She rolled her eyes in the old familiar way and swatted him, lightly. "Men: doesn't matter how old you get, you're all the same." She sat herself on the bed beside him and places a hot water bottle on his wounded knee. Harry sighed, the feeling simultaneously heavenly and Earthly. "You don't have to flatter me, you know." She said quietly. "I know I'm old."
"So am I," Harry answered. "As you're so fond of pointing out. But you've still got better legs than I do."
Hermione giggled and extended her leg to compare, revealing tantalizing glimpses of milky thigh. Her legs were unquestionably better. Oh they were old, no doubt about it; with prominent and numerous wrinkles, liver spots, and varicose veins they would never be mistaken for the legs of a young lady, but to him they were still wonderful, and powerful, and healthy. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, indeed. "Okay," She admitted grudgingly. "You win. But you're no spring chicken yourself."
:Kettle, meet pot."
"I used to be quite the head-turner, I'll have you know."
"Turned my head."
"Really?"
"Mhm."
"I wish you'd had the opportunity to fully appreciate it, then."
Harry was silent. They had been bantering playfully, flirtatiously, but that comment had struck a nerve. How many nights had he lain in bed with his wife, dreaming of brown hair and honey eyes? How many nights after Ginny had moved to a separate room, trying to hide her increasingly shrunken frame from his judgment, had he wished he had married a woman he knew would eat a full meal and hold onto it? How many times had he thought over what he could have done differently? How many times - he felt his throat tighten as he recalled the last conversation he'd had with his daughter, at Ginny's funeral six months prior - had he cursed the red-headed witch for her poisonous influence over his beloved children, and wished he'd given them a better role model than a shallow, posturing society woman?
"Harry?" She asked, tentatively, no doubt seeing the tears that threatened to break through." Are you sure you're okay?" He shook his dead. "What's wrong?"
"Look at me!" He shouted in a cracked voice, flinging the blanket from his body. She had undressed him - he'd probably thrown up on his own clothes as well as hers - leaving him in boxer shorts and an undershirt that looked comically oversized on his frame, worn as it was by Time. He hadn't aged well, he knew. He was fit enough, in the heart, but the parts that had once been muscle hung limply and tauntingly from his bones, his skin stretching and sagging. He still had most of his hair, but that was going fast and every morning the shower took more of it away, though his eyes were going so quickly that he soon wouldn't even notice.
"What the hell happened to us, Hermione?" He asked, biting back angry tears. "We were going to change the world: locking up the bad guys and fixing society's mistakes." He looked at his hands, spotty and wrinkled, and tried to make a fist. His arthritis disapproved. "Look at me now: spent my whole bloody life trying to raise three good kids, and playing in my fucking garden. Now my joints are so shot I can barely get to the ground. My daughter hates me, my sons don't talk to me, my best mate turned into a drunkard, none of my old friends come by anymore." He turned to her, the tortured expression betraying his pain and anger more than words ever could. "What a bloody waste of a life."
Hermione's face glistened, but she spoke with iron in hr voice, the old conviction that he hadn't heard since they were kids. "Don't say that. You have so much to show for your life." He snorted, and she wrapped her arms around his body. "It's true. A lot of people wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you."
"A lot of people wouldn't have been in danger if it wasn't for me." He noted drily.
"You've saved my life a dozen times." She reminded him. "And even you couldn't have caused all of them. You couldn't have." She interrupted, seeing his disbelieving look. "And what about your kids? They wouldn't be where they are if it wasn't for you."
"My kids hate me." He reminded her sullenly. It was a difficult thing to bear. The image of them persisted in his mind, younger faces shining with love and affection. That didn't happen so much anymore.
"James doesn't. And they're still great kids. James is practically a living legend."
Harry couldn't deny that. His eldest had joined the Auror academy, just like his old man, but he'd stuck to it. Within a few years the Potter name was back in the headlines, cementing the young man's place in history with a series of high-profile arrests. His frank and honest manner was a hit with the public, and he was often assigned to public events, probably just so he'd get more face time. He'd been offered the Head Auror position - indeed he was offered it almost annually - but he always turned it down. He wanted to stay where he'd do the most good, he said, and that wasn't going to be as part of the bureaucracy. That had only improved his standing amongst the public.
"Albert has more courage than anyone I've ever known," Hermione continued. "Ginny didn't do that, you did."
He also couldn't argue with that. There had been an uproar at the Burrow when Al had brought his first date to a Weasley Family Gathering - and it had been a boy. Harry had been the only one not surprised, having learned his middle son's secret a little over a month prior, and he had also been the only one to defend the boys against Molly's tirade. He knew the rest of the family didn't mind quite so much, or as vocally, but they were all too afraid of the Weasley matriarch: the sons still remembered the lessons of childhood, and the wives were too easily cowed by her loud and single-minded manner. Harry alone had shouted back, though it hadn't made him popular with his wife, and he was proud to say that his son, though no longer seeing that young man, had been in a public, committed relationship for a long time.
"And I head that Lily's turned out to be an excellent teacher, just like you were."
Lily had excelled in Potions at Hogwarts, prompting Slughorn to remark at every opportunity how much she took after her father and grandmother. When the old bastard had finally retired, there was no question as to who would take his place. She proved fantastic, as McGonagall (and later Neville) delighted in telling him on the rare occasions he saw the Head. She had a way, it was said to him, of speaking neither too far above the slower students nor too far below the brighter ones, and her tutelage produced generation after generation of the best potioneers anyone could remember. Neville had confided in Harry, during one of their increasingly infrequent happenstance meetings, that he could think of no better person to take over when he retired.
"You might as well face it, Harry." Hermione concluded. "You raised great kids."
Perhaps it would be hard to believe, but Harry was comforted by that. He wasn't by any means proud of his life; he'd done too many stupid things for that, and a constant reminder of his worst mistake was currently perched mostly-naked on his bed. No, he'd made mistakes, but he'd weathered his punishment, had weathered his poisonous wife and his solitude and his own conscience for many, many years. And at the end of it all, he did have something to show for it: his children had turned out mostly free of their mother's darker tendencies and, though nearly as imperfect as he was, he was proud of them.
He looked up at Hermione, tears in his eyes once again - though tears of happiness, now sorrow. "Thank you."
She smiled gently. "What are friends for?"
"Just friends?" He asked, with a pointed look at her still-exposed thigh.
She flushed and tugged the hem of his shirt nervously, but countered: "How's your knee?"
"Better, but still a bit sore."
She kissed his forehead. "Then yes, just friends."
He laughed. It felt good. "And when I get better?"
"Then we'll have to see if you can keep up with me, old man."
"Oi, that was a cheap shot."
"Are you going to punish me?"
"I might just…"
***
There was nowhere in the world quite like muggle London. The ebb and flow of the crowds, the symphony of the traffic, the peculiar rhythm of the heartbeat of the city; this was one of the few things Harry Potter enjoyed about unemployment, one of only a handful of things he would miss if he ever got a real job. He knew he wouldn't, of course, his resume had gone a bit sparse since 2002 when he had suddenly taken a new job, going from "Auror-in-training" to "Stay-at-home Dad." Ginny had made a strong case against him working once James had been born: he had been fighting dark wizards all his life, she said; he deserved a break, she said; when the kids were grown up he could go back to it, she said.
But, of course, that last one had been a lie. He knew he was unemployable now, at least for any job of substance. Not now, after twenty years, when his particular set of skills had dulled into nothingness. But he had let himself be talked into it. He certainly didn't have to work, not with the fabulous wealth that paid for his enormous house, but he didn't like being idle. Idleness was when the tingling came back.
He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. He couldn't make Ginny understand that, couldn't explain to her how visions of the War haunted him like a waking nightmare. She hadn't seen what he had seen, heard what he had heard. Done what he had done. Felt what he had felt. She was still innocent, in a certain way, Whole in a way that he would never be again. Was that why he had married her? Harry didn't know anymore, but he had once drawn comfort from her Wholeness, trying to convince himself that there was a way to repair the strings that had broken loose inside his soul. But she could never understand. Not really. He was Other, now; part of a horrible club of pople who knew what is was to Hurt in ways that Healers couldn't touch. It was something he shared with few; only one who was still unhealed.
He winced at the thought of Her. Hermione had disappeared a month ago, with no warning given, and little asked for. Harry alone knew what she had suffered through - he alone knew and cared - and whatever Auror's instinct he had left told him there was a connection between that pain and her abrupt disappearance. He had wondered, once, whether Ron was to blame, whether he had finally drunk one too many, finally pushed her too hard, finally crossed the narrow line that separated abuser from murderer.
The papers, at least, didn't wonder. Ron had released a statement saying that she had been prone to leaving and returning at odd hours, conveniently leaving out the self-incriminating portions of his tale, and the Prophet had run with it. Chief among false witnesses, they had fabricated an elaborate fantasy, unquestioned by any, in which Hermione pursued wealthy wizard after wealthy wizard, all while raising the children of her fellow War Hero, her blinded-by-devotion husband, the long-suffering Ron Weasley.
Bullshit.
Harry knew it, as would anyone who truly knew Hermione Granger. But the last of those who would were now gone, off to begin their Next Great Adventure. He was reminded of his fifth year, when lies had been printed about him, and how he had been all but cast out of society because of it. It made him angry. Things had broken. Expensive things.
But Ginny had convinced him not to retaliate. She had made sense at the time: who would believe a rebuttal, even from the Great Harry Potter? And who would print it, given the Prophet's known tendency to suppress conflicting viewpoints? At best, nothing would change. At worst, he would be discredited, and unable to be any good to her. No, the best way to help Hermione was from behind the scenes. So said Ginny, and Harry had believed her. But it's hard to help someone who can't be found.
Part of him was upset that she hadn't come to him, hadn't trusted him to keep her last secret, or to help her. But another part of him knew that he didn't deserve her trust. He could have done more, should have done more to protect her. Fear had kept him from doing what was necessary, and now she was gone. For good, as it seemed. It gnawed at him, the guilt feasting on his soul, not knowing where she was but knowing that whatever she was suffering was his fault.
"Spare some change, sir?" The voice made Harry turn. It was familiar, someone he knew well, but different, just different enough that he couldn't place it. His eyes scanned the crowd with practiced precision, for the first time cursing the vastness of the mob. "Spare some change, sir?" Female voice. He narrowed his sweep, now he could tell the general direction. "Spare some change, sir?" There, he'd found her: a small figure, bundled in ragged cloth, huddled over a Tube grille for warmth, a filth-encrusted hand outstretched in search for some meager shred of human decency, face obscured by matted brown hair.
Brown hair.
The blood froze in his veins. The symphony of London fell away, and all there was in the world was him and the Woman. How could he have mistaken her? How many times had he observed the slouch of her shoulders, the line her bones made against her skin, the magnificent architecture of her hands? He knew immediately who he was looking at, and the realization churned his stomach until he thought he would be sick right there. "Hermione?" He asked in a low, strangled voice, so quiet that not even the people nearest him turned their heads.
But she did. He saw her look up, saw her honey eyes take him in, and saw Fear in her. Fear of him, Fear that he had seen what she had become, what she had been reduced her. He moved to her; he could not accurately perceive the motion as walking, it was rather like floating, and he knelt before her. Her eyes never left him. The Fear never left her eyes. He saw his hand rise up and brush a strand of hair out of her face, saw how it clung to his finger and hand limply when he pulled it away. "Where's your wand?" He heard himself ask, stupidly.
"I sold it." She answered quietly, liquid Shame welling in her eyes. Harry felt himself break, an ancient and visceral feeling deep inside of him. He felt Oblivion wash over him, the horrible emptiness of the world, personified by the miserable, broken creature before him. He no longer thought, he merely acted, standing her up and vanishing with an ear-splitting crack that would later be attributed to a structural fault, investigated, and then forgotten.
The pair rematerialized outside of a modest cottage, nestled deep in the woodlands. Harry knew the history of the house, though he did not at that moment much care: it had been in his family for a long time, the Goblins said, a hunting lodge from the days when wealthy families still had hunting lodges. He didn't know why he had maintained it, at first, but he had done so and felt it important that Ginny not find out about it. Sometimes he would wonder what it would have been like to live there, instead of the mausoleum that was Potter Manor. He found that he enjoyed the thought very much, though he knew Ginny would not approve of such rusticness, so it had turned into his refuge, his Safe Place. So it was to the Cottage that he brought her, setting her on a chair in the kitchen and starting a can of soup boiling.
His actions were mechanical, unthinking. He merely Did, and what he Did after starting the soup was dampen a towel and begin cleaning her face, wiping away the grime and the tears and the shame. But he could not wipe away the Eyes, her eyes, eyes of despair and pain and soul-numbing emptiness. He knew those eyes, for they were the eyes that had peered out of mirrors at him in the days when Hope died in him. He recognized the eyes, but he did not recognize her, or hardly. He could not fathom Hermione in defeat, and yet here she was, broken. Or maybe it was the Mask that had broken, the Hermione the Brave and Brilliant Hero washed away by suffering until all that remained was Hermione, neither a hero nor brave nor brilliant, but a girl.
Her face clean, he retreated to the bedroom and returned with some of his clothes, all he had that he thought she could wear: a pair of jeans and a simple t-shirt. She began to change, neither of them caring that the other was there. What was modesty, now, when the doors to the Soul had been laid open for them both to see?
The soup boiled, and he attended it while she stripped the skin of her life-that-could-have-been and redressed in the memory of his.
Finally, as she ate the soup with the same mechanical motions that he had used in preparing it, he had to ask: "What happened?"
"Nobody would give me a job." She replied after a long, soupy pause. "Not since I left Ron."
"You left Ron?" He almost shouted, kicking himself when she winced.
"Over a month ago. I came to your house." Her voice cracked. "September first. You weren't there."
And then Harry understood. "Ginny sent me on a vacation; I was gone for a week." She had been insistent about it; said he had suffered too much over the summer. It had been difficult, to be sure: James had found his first girlfriend, and was only interested in being locked in his room with an owl and sufficient parchment for his designed; Albus had hit puberty, reaching that curious age when he was young enough to know everything and old enough to refuse to be told any different; Lily had been over the moon after her first year, forcing Harry to spend what time he had left either monitoring her to make sure she wasn't using magic or listening to her incessant, mile-a-minute recanting of every single second she spent in the Castel. He had been frazzled, to say the last, but nothing he hadn't survived before, but Ginny had all but packed his bag for him. He was taking that vacation, whether he wanted to or not. And now he knew why.
She had known. He didn't know how that was possible, how his wife could have predicted Hermione so perfectly, but he knew that was how it must have been. But to what end? He didn't know. He knew only that the woman he had married, who would once have risked her life to defend her friends, was gone; she had been replace by a mockery, devoted to Image and Appearance. And she had brought him down with her.
"Harry," Hermione began in a small voice, barely disturbing the air between them. "Why weren't you there?"
"I made a mistake." He answered weakly, but the simple admission of that galvanized him. He had made a mistake, he had made the wrong choice. But he had been given a chance, She had been given a chance, to begin to repair the damage he had caused. "Stay here, for as long as you need." She opened her mouth to protest. "No arguments. It's my fault you were out there. You'll stay here. I'll come back with food and better clothes. I'll…"
"Stay with me." She interrupted, finally breaking in with what she had meant to say.
"I'm not going anywhere." He answered gently, taking her hand in his. "Supplied can wait until tomorrow."
She shook her head. "Not just today; not ever."
He paused. It wasn't so bad of an idea. Nobody else knew about this place, except the goblins and they weren't very talkative. No one would find them. Visions of green-eyed children with bushy brown hair danced in front of his eyes, and for a split second he smiled. But then brown shifted into red, and the smile died. He could be happy with her, he knew, but the guilt would destroy him. He could not leave his family; she had made the choice, but he could not. He had made his life and, for better or for worse, he had to lie in it.
She must have seen the answer in his face because she nodded, neither satisfied nor disappointed, and the two of them sat together in the oppressive silence, trying and failing to take comfort each other in what time they had left.