The Antiquity
(sequel to Thunderstorm)
New summary: Ron gets back from Romania with a couple surprises; Harry and Hermione struggle to understand their relationship; the students at Hogwarts have had a serious makeover, and I do not mean physically. All in all, the upcoming year at Hogwarts--and in the wizarding world at large--requires everyone to work together, but new events arising may make that feat much more difficult than anyone has bargained.
Don't forget! If you haven't read the NEWEST version of Thunderstorm (either on FanFiction or on my website), you MUST read it otherwise you will be COMPLETELY lost. Thanks for reading!!
WHATEVER YOU'VE HEARD, THIS IS A H/Hr FANFIC. I'M GOING FOR A BIT OF REALISM HERE, SO PREPARE YOURSELF FOR SOME ANGST AND RELATIONSHIP TURBULANCE. I'M SICK OF A LOT OF THE WISHY WASHY, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, WE'RE-IN-LOVE-FOREVER STUFF I'VE BEEN READING AND REALIZED IT'S TIME FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT. I KNOW I DO IT TOO. HOLLA AT ME WITH ANY COMMENTS.
"You would think they would have something better to write about by now," Harry growled, turning the front page of the Daily Prophet where a huge picture of his face beamed up him emblazoned with the caption The Chosen One. "I think I have been on the cover every day this past month!"
Hermione sighed, a quiet exasperation she'd learned to repress. Harry's relentless attitude towards the wizarding world's inevitable interest in the prophecy Voldemort had revealed to hundreds of people only weeks ago had become wearing, even though it was no less than she could have expected.
Nevertheless, she nudged him playfully with her toe. She was sprawled out on a blanket in the grass, while Harry leaned against a nearby tree. They had found the shade of the tall sycamore most enjoyable and most effective when attempting to escape the impenetrable heat of the mid afternoon sun. There was a small plate of fruit between them, courtesy of Hermione's dentist parents, and each clutched a sweating cup of sugarless lemonade, which tasted distinctly different, but tasty nonetheless.
In a huff of exaggerated fury, Harry slammed the copy of the newspaper down on the grass next to him and folded his arms. Hermione, who had been lying on her stomach reading out of her Ancient Runes textbook, rolled over to look at him.
"Oh, Harry," said Hermione, half irritated, half amused, "you can't get worked up about this. I mean, it's obvious they're going to print something about you to keep morale up."
Harry picked up the copy and held his face for Hermione to see. "I think this picture will give more people nightmares than high spirits, don't you? I don't know when they got this picture of me. I bet it's forged."
Deciding to veer Harry away from this dangerous and relentless subject, Hermione chose not to answer his rhetorical question. "Have you heard from Sirius yet? Has he moved into his new place?"
Harry's face brightened and he smiled, the picture of himself and the Prophet altogether vanishing from his mind. "Oh, yeah! He wrote last night. Hedwig arrived just after you'd gone to bed. He said it's really a beautiful area and not too many neighbors," chuckled Harry, "you'd think he's hoping to be able to fly around on broomsticks the way he talks about it."
Hermione grinned, for a moment, before her face turned solemn. "Did he say he's going to come get you tomorrow?"
Harry looked at her briefly then chose to look at a rabbit nibbling away at something in Mrs. Granger's garden. "No, actually, he said Dumbledore is coming. I need to go back to my aunt and uncle's house to get all my things."
A sad silence drifted between them. Harry had been staying with the Granger's for nearly three weeks while Sirius bought a new house and prepared it for Harry to move in. The original plan was to have Harry stay at Hermione's until mid July with a special assignment of aurors keeping guard around the area in shifts. But two days ago Hermione's grandfather died from a massive heart attack in his Belgium home. Now she and her parents were going to stay with her aunt in uncle for the funeral, which was the day after next. Hermione and Harry decided together it would be more awkward than they could handle to have him come along, so Harry wrote to Sirius about it and although Sirius wasn't completely ready, he said he would love nothing more than for Harry to move in.
"When you get back," said Harry, softly, reaching out to grasp her ankle, "you will have to come stay with Sirius and me. I bet Ron will be back by then."
Hermione nodded, her gaze drifting elsewhere as memories flooded her eyes in the form of tears again. One trickled down her cheek, surprising her somewhat, and she wiped it away seeming to come to her senses again.
"Over the last couple days I've felt really foolish for being so sad to lose a grandfather I really never knew while Ron is dealing with his loss," said Hermione, sniffing back another tear.
Harry shook his head. "Ron knows what it's like to lose someone now, he would tell you not to be stupid and to go ahead and cry until you feel better. Remember how he was the days after Mrs. Weasley died? If he can be that way, so can you."
"But it was his mother! This was a man I met once, and that was before I even knew I was a witch," Hermione protested.
"Come on, Hermione, it's a member of your family! Don't be ridiculous," Harry said, giving her a look of pure exasperation. "It's not like you think any less of Ron's suffering."
Hermione considered him for a moment, looking as if she actually agreed with him. Before she could answer, however, there was a shout from the back door of the house and they both started in surprise.
"Dinner's ready, kids!" Mr. Granger hollered, giving them a wave.
"Alright, dad, be right there," Hermione called back, shifting herself into a seated position. She looked at Harry. "It's so sad this is our last evening together."
He gave her a knowing smile. "I know. I can't believe I've already been here three weeks, it's flown by so fast! Who knew there was a Muggle family I could actually tolerate?" Hermione giggled.
Allymaar Road was not unlike Privet Drive in its identical houses and lush green lawns, but its homeowners were much friendlier than those on Privet Drive. By the end of Harry's first week of stay at the Granger's, he'd met over six of Hermione's neighbors, all so pleased that she had found "someone special at boarding school." Without Aunt Petunia's persistent nose pressing up against the windows hoping to catch her own neighbors doing something illegal or fishy—most likely to distract herself from the reality that they might be suspicious of her own family—it occurred to Harry how normal life could be living with and around Muggles.
Hermione was embarrassed that her parents insisted on introducing Harry to all of their neighbors, but Harry couldn't have been more pleased. He tried not to let on or reveal too much of his pleasure, but it felt wonderful to be treated as a normal boy around people who could tolerate his kind. Not once had he heard the familiar utterances of Uncle Vernon by Mr. or Mrs. Granger. They did not refer to her as a pronoun, tell her that being a witch was an abnormality, or constantly avoid mentioning aloud that she and Harry were apart of the witches and wizards of England—though it would be quite tactless to reveal what they are. Uncle Vernon, when needed, stuck to phrases like "your thing" for Harry's wand, "your lot" when referring to wizards in any way, or "funny stuff" for the weird things that happened around Harry regardless of using magic.
What was more, none of the Muggle neighbors did the familiar sketch of recognition upon hearing his name. A member of the wizarding community would shake his hand while unflatteringly stare at his scar, then mention how much he looked like his father but had his mother's eyes. Instead, he told the Muggle neighbors the story that his aunt and uncle had told him for eleven years: that it was a brand of the night his parents died in a car crash. The sympathy he received was lavishing and he soaked it up, to Hermione's amusement.
Even though he tried not to let on about how much he enjoyed being around her Muggle parents and Muggle neighborhood, because he mainly did not want to become attached to such a nonwizarding world, he had a shrewd suspicion that Hermione knew he was loving his time at her house. Of course, Harry frequently exclaimed how relieved he was not to be stuck in Privet Drive for an entire summer, impatiently waiting an Owl from Ron or Sirius to be summoned elsewhere.
At the end of last term, Ron had accepted a job in Romania working with Charlie, importing a new breed of dragons for a month. Harry and Hermione had only received one Owl apiece from Ron, who said they were so busy that he barely had time to sleep. He also said that he would be home the first week of July and wanted to come stay with Sirius, too. His father, however, insisted he come home for a week first, then he would be permitted to spend the remainder of the summer holiday with Harry and Sirius.
The amount of time he'd spent at Hermione's home was, in his opinion, finally approaching its close. It was wonderful to be away from the Dursley's and to be with his girlfriend, but they had both come very close to ripping out each other's throats after some time. It would of course take them a couple hours to sit down together and apologize, which Harry found to be himself apologizing more and more recently from sudden outbreaks of frustration with the Prophet or when he went into spits of outrage that no one else could possibly understand the predicament Voldemort had put him in.
The prophecy Voldemort had smashed and revealed to everyone battling in Hogwarts at the beginning of June was, to Harry's dismay, something that would forever brand him a marked man. The more the Prophet wrote about 'Harry Potter: The Chosen One' the more he grew frustrated by how little everyone understood what it actually had meant. Dumbledore had explained it to him the night after the battle had ended. Voldemort had made it impossible for Harry to live a normal life. From the time he was a year old, Voldemort had chosen to mark Harry as his equal, but having no idea the disastrous consequences that lie ahead. After going into exile for ten years, Voldemort had reemerged into the wizarding world with a new body, a new soul, and a fresh desire for Harry's blood, which he'd fought for at a significant price to himself. Now, having escaped Lord Voldemort yet again, Harry finally new that it was because of a prophecy that he was to battle the dark lord until either he died at Voldemort's hand, or Voldemort at his.
"Dumbledore will prepare you for whatever you need to meet Voldemort in the end, Harry," Hermione insisted, after Harry had carelessly admitting his feelings on the subject. "He told you that this next school year would be spent in learning how to defeat him! Why are you so worried?"
Harry realized that he wasn't worried so much as annoyed. Dumbledore had been right on another account: even if Harry hadn't heard the prophecy, he would have wanted vengeance for his parents in any case, and for all those Voldemort murdered while trying to kill him. But no one, even Dumbledore, could know what it feels like to have the most vicious, blood thirsty wizard want you dead and know that your own death clung only to time, how ever long it took for that prophecy to be fulfilled.
After some time, Harry's given up voicing his fears because Hermione's insistence that Dumbledore would prepare him did nothing to ease his mind. At times he even felt indignant at how tactless Hermione was acting towards the whole topic, which was usually when he lashed out in anger and stormed off into the garden where he would circle it in huffs of mingled frustration and fear.
He'd even begun practicing occlumency again, trying to hide these feelings from Hermione, and, sometimes, from himself. At night he slipped the book out of his pillow case, after Hermione had gone to bed and he was left alone in his guest room, and refresh his memory on how to properly affect occlumency as a weapon. He felt guilty at times because he knew deep down that Hermione was just trying to help and with very little explanation he could, in fact, make her understand why his frustration leaked out so often. But it had become easier to just close everything out and try not to focus on it altogether.
Hermione had noticed him doing this several times. They would be sitting outside under the oak tree and he would come across with a blank, unknowing face, and she would look so worried that she wouldn't say anything for hours on end. Instead she would cast furtive looks at him and purse her lips, almost looking offended that he'd rather sulk in his own misery than confide in her. But still she would not say anything.
Occlumency had proven to be useful, however. Over the past week, Harry noticed a significant downswing in his moods and outbreaks. He hadn't been irritated by any of Hermione's comments and they got along better than they had all summer. They'd been laughing again, making jokes, and more civilized. Something had definitely happened in their relationship, though, and it was neither something they would admit or attempt to uncover because it was too easy going along as they were. Occlumency had become second nature to Harry, but there were times he still could not ignore nagging feelings in the back of his mind.
The apprehensions he felt about his relationship with Hermione were nothing compared to those he had about his survival against Voldemort, but they still wore on him heavily, like an extra burden he'd been forced to bear. Never would he mention this to her, though. Not once throughout all of their fights or his doubts had he stopped loving her. She was an inexpressible comfort. But for some reason, he thought that their love had changed, become somewhat childish and distant in the wake of the prophecy and the duty he was enslaved into. There were times when he couldn't tell if it was Hermione that he was unsure of or himself. He did love her, but what kind of love was it? How could he tell what true love was? He had never been in love before, and he reckoned neither had she.
"Harry? Where'd you go?" asked Hermione, who had stood up and was now looking down at him with a strange expression.
Harry coughed. "No where, just…you know," he grinned and held up a hand. She helped him to his feet and they walked into the house together.
The basement of Number 9 Allymaar Road was spacious and cozy. A cold fireplace stood magnificently against the wall facing the backyard, and was surrounded by tastefully patterned furniture that gave it its dormant homey quality. He loved sitting on the sofa late into the night, reading or watching Hermione read, or simply doing nothing.
They'd grown accustomed to watching the news at night with her parents, a dramatic change from sneaking around the Dursley's last summer trying to catch snippets of what Voldemort might be up to. Now neither his motives for watching the news nor Voldemort's attacks were a secret. As Voldemort, who's forces were severely disabled since last spring, snuck around Great Britain and surrounding areas murdering and cursing a path that led straight back to him, Harry sat helplessly in front of the TV next to Hermione feeling extremely edgy and frustrated that he was still an under-aged wizard, incapable of doing anything of significance.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger seemed to have an inkling that the events on the news were related to wizards, either from what Hermione had told them about the reemergence of Lord Voldemort or simply because of how irritated Harry would get after watching the news. After the first week of Harry's stay, they began suggesting other evening events and began taking Harry and Hermione out for dinner to nice restaurants, to movie theaters, and even bowling. Even though Harry grew up in a strictly non magical world, the Muggle customs were still obtrusively strange, since the Dursley's never took him anywhere.
On Harry's last night with them, however, Mrs. Granger wanted to cook something special. The basement was filled with the smell of potatoes, French onion soup, and steak grilling out on the patio. He inhaled deeply and smiled, food could relieve him of all his unwanted thoughts, even forget he was angry, or that his death clock was ticking away precious moments of his life.
He felt a hand on his chest and looked down. Hermione had stopped walking towards the stairs and was looking up at him, grinning slightly.
"What?" asked Harry, feeling a smile quiver at the corner of his mouth.
"Do you realize you've grown nearly five inches since you've been here?" she asked, tugging playfully on his shirt. A smug look over took his face, and his heart leapt in that familiar whooshing sensation. Hermione glanced towards the stairs, then back at him. "Before we go up…" she stood on the tips of her toes and planted a kiss on his lips, brief, but allowed her mouth to linger around his for several seconds before pulling away. "I've really enjoyed having you stay here, Harry."
He smiled mesmerized, licking his lips. "Believe me, I have enjoyed staying." She giggled and tugged him towards the stairs.
In the kitchen, Mrs. Granger was dishing potatoes into a beautiful piece of china that had birds painted on the outside. She smiled as they walked in. The first moment Harry met her, he could tell where many of Hermione's mannerisms came from, as well as her bushy brown hair. Mrs. Granger was a very pretty woman, her eyes were big and brown and her hair hung in soft curls to her shoulders. She was only a couple inches taller than Hermione, making Harry a good foot taller than her.
"You kids can have a seat, your father is just taking up the steaks," said Mrs. Granger, washing her hands in the kitchen sink and indicating with a nod that they should seat themselves at the table. Harry slid into a chair across from Hermione, grinning at the prospect of so much food. "I remember you saying that steak and potatoes are your favorite, Harry."
"They are, Mrs. Granger, they definitely are. That French onion soup smells wonderful, too," he said, looking over at her.
"You are too kind," she sighed, stopping to pause and look at them. "We certainly have loved having you here. It gave Hermione something to do besides read all summer."
Harry looked back at Hermione, who was blushing. The first week of his stay had necessitated the cause to overcome any initial, though inevitable, embarrassment of her parents fawning over her first real boyfriend. Harry had a feeling she hadn't mentioned Viktor Krum to them, much to his liking.
"Steaks all around!" Mr. Granger said loudly, coming in from the patio with a large tray, sending steam towards the ceiling and a strong, captivating smell enveloping the room. "Hope you are hungry because these steaks won't eat themselves."
Dinner at the Grangers was always pleasant. He was constantly bombarded with questions about the Dursley's and his childhood, they wanted to know about why he ended up with them and were so understanding when they'd heard his parents were murdered when he was a baby. They did, of course, know that he was the one to have thwarted Voldemort twice, and now thrice, though their actual understanding of everything in particular was a bit understated. They did their best.
Their last evening was no different. They laughed at the times they'd spent together, eating around the dinner table, going to various places around Britain, and talking about what Harry and Hermione's sixth year at Hogwarts would bring. Mr. Granger had been really interested in Quidditch and was constantly bombarding Harry with questions about the game and asking him to commentate what an actual game was like. Hermione was able to jump in from time to time with her own version of Harry's outstanding feats, including his first year when he managed to stay on his bucking broom until she had time to ignite the robes of teacher whom they thought was cursing his broom.
Supper ended with a large bowl of ice cream piled high with chocolate syrup, strawberries, and nuts. Mrs. Granger cleared the table with the help of her husband, insisting once again that it was not necessary for Harry, the guest, to help. Thus, Harry and Hermione retreated to the sitting room adjacent to the kitchen.
The sun was beginning to set, clearly visible between the houses across the street and through the trees. The sky was now a haze of purple and red smoke, and sunlight streamed through the large windows along the sitting room's longest side.
Harry sprawled out on the floor, feeling contentedly full, but nonetheless ached with how much he had just eaten. Hermione giggled and took up in an arm chair close to his feet. She stared out the window, attempting to leave a smile on her face, but it didn't seem to want to stay. Harry sat up and stared at her.
"What's wrong?" he asked, holding himself up by wrapping his arms around his knees. It also seemed to relieve the pain inside his stomach.
She didn't look at him. "I just don't want you to leave," said Hermione, her voice so quiet he barely heard her.
"Oh, Hermione," said Harry, a smile spreading across his lips, "we'll only be apart for, what, a week or two? You're coming to stay with me and Sirius after the funeral, aren't you?"
Now she looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears. "Yes, I would love to, but these few weeks have been so…special. Uninterrupted by normal, every day life. We've been in our own world. Going to stay with you and Sirius will mean that school is coming…and then everything will be different again."
Harry looked confused. "What are you talking about? School makes everything normal, besides whomever we have to fight out of Hogwarts at the end of the year. Quirrell…Voldemort…a giant basilisk…Voldemort…death eaters…Voldemort." Hermione seemed to smile in spite of herself. "I think everything will be better once we get back to school, which is not to say that our time together here hasn't been amazing."
"Hey, you two," Mr. Granger called from the top of the staircase, "we're heading downstairs for a nightcap. Harry, did you say Professor Dumbledore is coming at seven tomorrow morning?"
"Yes, sir," replied Harry.
"Alright, then," Mr. Granger smiled. "We'll see you in the morning. Sleep well." Hermione's parents disappeared down the stairs. Harry glanced at his watch. It was already eight o'clock.
Harry looked back over at Hermione, who had resumed looking out the window in a catatonic state, not really looking at anything, but determinedly not looking at Harry.
"Come on, Hermione, what's really wrong? You don't honestly want to spend our last night together like this?" said Harry, releasing his arms and crawling over to the foot of her chair. He pulled himself up so he was kneeling and looking only slightly upwards into her face.
Hermione shook her head and put on a smile. "Nothing. You're right. of course, we don't want to waste our last night, do we." They stared at each other a moment. Harry thought that Hermione, perhaps, was thinking like him: his parting might in fact be better for their relationship, put less strain on each other at a very trying and difficult time. But they gazed into each other's eyes without saying anything, and the doubts and fears clouding their mind were once again expelled by the unwillingness to begin an uncomfortable subject.