The hospital wing was quieter than Hermione had seen it since the battle. This suited her fine: she knew in her head that Ron was going to be back to normal before she knew it, that he only needed to sleep off the after-effects of the curse, but this didn't stop her fidgeting as she sat by his bedside. Harry sat opposite, staring into the middle distance and not speaking. Neither of them had anything left to say, at least not until Ron woke. A quick glance at her watch told her they'd been there nearly two hours; in the old days Madam Pomfrey would have hustled them out of the hospital wing long ago, but school rules no longer seemed important. Not even to Hermione. She had nowhere else to be this morning, after all.
Ron stirred slightly on the bed, rousing Hermione from her contemplation, and mumbled something unintelligible. As if realising where he was and what had happened, he shot upright. "Hermione!" he shouted. A few people on nearby beds started and looked around at them. "Are you okay? Are we..."
"It's fine," she said in a low voice, conscious of the inquisitive stares. At least I hope it is... She stared into his eyes, and let out a relieved sigh when she saw no sign of that awful glazed expression. "Don't worry."
Ron shrugged and flopped back down on the mattress. He looked around then back up at her, and asked, "What happened, anyway?"
Two hours ago
Hogwarts castle looked much as it probably did to any curious Muggle who stumbled upon it. The rebuilding had already begun, and the school's ancient enchantments were helping, but there was still a great deal to do. Though Hermione doubted she was the only person who was having trouble sleeping right now, she hadn't met anyone on the way outside. She wasn't even sure that the place she'd found had been accessible when the castle was intact: she had to scramble through a hole in the wall and over a pile of fallen rubble to find herself on a ledge overlooking the lake. The sun cast a hazy orange glow as it rose over the mountains on the far side. It was a sight even Hermione wasn't used to being up in time to see, at least not at this time of year, and was just what she needed to take her mind off the visions of death and darkness that had kept her awake that night. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there, gazing into the distance and clearing her head, when a thud from behind interrupted her meditation.
"Hermione?" It was Ron, crawling through the hole up onto the ledge. She wondered for a moment how he'd found her, but then spotted the square of old parchment in his hand.
"Hello," she said, standing but keeping her distance. Not that she wasn't happy to see Ron, but she had come up here to be on her own. The nightmares were back, but now they were mixed with dreadful visions of what could have happened for Ron to come looking for her at this hour. She gave an involuntary shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. "Nothing's happened, has it?"
"Nothing at all." Even so, his tone did nothing to reassure her. He moved closer and placed an arm around her.
Hermione shook her head. "Not now," she said, moving to push him away. This wasn't the time. This wasn't anywhere near the time. What's got into him?
"What's the matter?" asked Ron, his face strangely impassive as he tightened his grip.
What's the matter is this isn't you. She pulled herself free and looked into his eyes, and almost knew what she was going to see before she saw it: the blank expression she'd first seen in "Moody's" class in her fourth year, and far too many times since. Her wand was in her hand before she could even consciously think about it.
"Stupefy!"
The jet of scarlet light struck Ron in the chest, and he collapsed backwards onto the ledge. Ron was by no means a sub-par duellist, for all Draco Malfoy had liked to claim that he couldn't even hex a Muggle from behind, but there was a reason that the few times he'd bested her in practice had stuck so firmly in his memory. He'd have been the first to admit this in his right mind, and Hermione could have sworn that she'd seen a flicker of acknowledgement cross his face in the instant before he succumbed to the Stunning Spell. Whoever had put the Imperius curse on him clearly hadn't known any of that.
Hermione's mind raced more than usual as she climbed back through the hole in the wall, carefully levitating Ron alongside her. That someone could have put the Imperius curse on him so long after the battle suggested that the surviving Death Eaters still weren't far away. Why they'd done it was a question for another time; all that mattered now was staying safe. Hermione had no idea how many Death Eaters, sympathisers and people under the Imperius curse were still at large around Hogwarts. The Marauder's Map told her that her route up to the hospital wing was clear, at least, but she knew better than to let down her guard. The walk with the unconscious Ron floating next to her seemed to take forever, as she paused every few seconds to point her wand at any especially suspicious-looking shadows. It proved, however, just as quiet as the corridors had been earlier. She let out a huge sigh as she finally pushed open the double doors to the hospital wing.
"Granger, Weasley, I might have known," said Madam Pomfrey, striding over as soon as she entered and directing Ron towards the nearest empty bed. Hermione realised that she must look almost as bad as he did, with her eyes bleary from lack of sleep and her robes and hair dishevelled and full of dust. "A bit early for duelling, isn't it?"
"Imperius curse," Hermione said. Madam Pomfrey gasped and her wand clattered to the floor. Hermione only barely managed to save Ron from joining it, and laid him onto the bed with her own wand. "I don't know who or why," she added, anticipating the next question, "but I've got to tell Harry, and Professor McGonagall, and-"
Madam Pomfrey regained her composure almost instantly. "You're going nowhere, young lady, until you've had this," she said, thrusting a small vial of lilac potion at Hermione.
Hermione took the Invigoration Draught gratefully, and chugged it in a single gulp. It tasted faintly of mint and burned the back of her throat, but immediately lived up to its name: she felt more awake than she had since the final battle, and part of her regretted not having found some sooner. As soon as Madam Pomfrey had her back turned to examine Ron, Hermione slipped away quickly and quietly. She had a fresh spring in her step from the potion that very much belied the situation. Pull yourself together, she chided herself. She knew that she could have stayed in the hospital wing, but she really needed to find Harry now. The chaos of the aftermath wasn't suited to messages getting where they should, and besides, she wouldn't have blamed him if he'd gone to sleep somewhere under the cover of the Invisibility Cloak. She pulled the Marauder's Map back out, said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and scanned it for the dot labelled "Harry Potter". The map seemed a lot smaller, which she realised was because so much of the castle now lay in ruins. Harry's dot was in the Gryffindor common room, alone. Ron had intended to go back to the Burrow today, to join the rest of the Weasleys to prepare for Fred's funeral. If he'd gone with Ginny yesterday, came the treacherous voice at the back of Hermione's mind. She dismissed it with an angry shake of her head: no point now dwelling on what-ifs.
Hermione was almost running when she reached the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. The portrait hole hung ajar at an odd angle, and the Fat Lady herself was nowhere to be seen. The common room was a forlorn sight, stripped of all signs of habitation and lit only by the sunlight filtering in from a hole somewhere in the tower wall. The squashy armchairs still stood by the empty fireplace, now covered in a thick layer of dust. Sure enough, one of them was exactly where the Marauder's Map told Hermione that Harry was.
"Harry!" she shouted, her voice echoing around the room. There was a flicker of something moving in the nearest armchair, and the Invisibility Cloak fell to the floor at Harry's now very much visible feet. He was still in his day robes and looked as though he'd had no more sleep than she had.
"Hermione, it's six o'clock, what the-" Harry stopped when Hermione caught his gaze, his face turning pale in the half-light. "What's up?"
"It's Ron. He, we, outside the castle, he..." Her voice trailed off; she couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. Harry seemed to understand, though. He sat back down in the chair, eyes wide, his parted lips seeming to try and fail to form words.
"You okay?" he finally managed. Hermione nodded.
"I Stupefied him before anything happened," she said. "He's down in the hospital wing sleeping it off."
"And the Imperius curse? Any idea who...?"
"I never said anything about Imperius," said Hermione, raising an eyebrow.
"Come on," said Harry, in a voice so forceful he reminded Hermione of herself. "Like Ron would ever do anything like that." Had she any lingering doubts, Harry's conviction would have banished them. Despite everything, she cracked a weak smile. He could be slow on the uptake sometimes, but other times Harry knew her and Ron almost too well. A lot better than whoever did the Imperius, that's for sure. A stray thought that had been nagging away at the back of her mind for a while rose to the surface, now she had someone to share it with.
"What if they thought they could bring Voldemort back?"
Harry frowned. "He's not coming back. I saw, after... and all the Horcruxes are gone."
One day she'd have to ask Harry what he actually had seen during the time he'd spent dead or almost so. For now, though, she pressed on.
"The Death Eaters don't know about the Horcruxes. They just saw us, you know, the three of us, and everything about, well, love being Voldemort's weakness..."
"... so if we turned against each other..." Harry said, nodding.
"... they'd be able to bring Voldemort back. Or, I don't know, take over the Ministry again if we're not around to stop them. Complete nonsense, of course." Hermione thought of Kingsley and the other Aurors; the surviving Death Eaters would have no chance to regain their lost power without Voldemort to lead them. They were still a threat, as whoever had cursed Ron had proven, but there'd be no repeat of the previous year for some time to come. Hermione climbed out of the portrait hole with Harry following close behind, heading back to Ron in the hospital wing.
Two hours later
"That's sick," said Ron as Hermione finished telling him what had happened. "So Harry was meant to find you, then, I don't know, kill me... I'd have deserved it..."
"Don't talk like that," Hermione said, though she still felt nauseated at the thought of what could have happened had she not been so quick with her wand. "We all know what the Imperius curse does."
Ron nodded slowly, but didn't quite meet her eye. "Rubbish, anyway," he said. "What, we're meant to fight and that'll undo everything we've done? Shouldn't there be a bit in the middle or something?"
"I had a dream like that," said Harry, so quietly it was almost to himself.
"I always had the one where you had to kill me. All the time when, you know, the locket..."
"This wasn't anything to do with Horcruxes or Voldemort," Hermione said, fixing both Harry and Ron with the kind of glare that challenged them to take issue if they dared, "was it, Harry? It was a perfectly ordinary nightmare, wasn't it, Harry?"
Harry nodded, as Hermione knew he would. "At least I wasn't Lord Potter this time. That was a weird one."
Hermione raised her eyebrows so high that she thought they must have vanished into her hair. "Lord Potter?" she asked, not even trying to keep the amusement out of her voice as she pictured Harry prancing around in an ermine robe barking orders at all and sundry. "What, of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter?"
Ron snorted, his gloom clearly forgotten for now.
"Save that poppycock for the Death Eaters," Hermione went on. "Pure-blood supremacy with a fancy name. Load of..."
"... bollocks?" Ron suggested.
"Not quite how I'd have put it. Still, nothing tops running through the castle naked. In a dream," she added quickly, noting Harry and Ron's rather startled expressions.
"Dare you to ask Trelawney what that means."
"Now then, what's all this racket?" asked Madam Pomfrey, bustling over. "Weasley, you're awake." It wasn't a question, and she didn't wait for a response before grabbing him by the chin and staring into his eyes, much as Hermione had done. "It's gone," she said and released him; he swung his head back into the pillow, rubbing his face theatrically.
Gone. All over. It wasn't really; they were no closer to finding whoever had cursed Ron, but on the other hand, all the fugitive Death Eaters would sooner or later be caught or killed. She had no doubt about that, at least. The world would never be back to normal as she'd known it, but this was the next best thing for now.
Ron jumped off the bed, looking for all the world as though he'd downed a shot of Invigoration Draught. "Isn't it time for breakfast?" he asked, looking around expectantly at Hermione and Harry. They exchanged a knowing glance, and Hermione found herself fighting back a sudden fit of the giggles for the first time in longer than she cared to remember.
"Come on," she said, "or there'll be none left." Some things never change, she thought as she strode out of the hospital wing, arm in arm with her best friends, into a new day.
A/N: This is the first proper fic I started this decade (WHMLP beat it to being finished) but the idea has been gnawing away at me for quite some time. Long enough that it's a relief to get it finished. "Ron gets Imperiused to betray the others" was the original plot seed (those of you who follow me elsewhere will know why) and it saw many iterations before becoming what I posted today.