Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: This is set after book five, and disregards six and seven. Post-Hogwarts, in the midst of the war.
What To Say
"Looking at Harry like this stilled the words in her throat."
She could practically smell the magic in the air.
That thick, heavy, pungent feel was all around him.
Hermione had climbed up the wooden steps to the attic, knowing she would find Harry there. Downstairs, she had heard Molly Weasley's inquiries as to where he had gone. Ron had been looking for him as well. But after the first few minutes of searching Grimmauld Place they realized that if he wanted to be found he would let them find him. The search had ended then, and every one was content to let Harry have his peace. He had so little of it these days anyway.
Hermione never said she knew where he would go on days like these, when the training drilled so hard and so deeply into him began to wear away his very body.
Magic didn't come without repercussions. There was stress. There was pressure. And yes, there still were the laws of physics, though not as accurately applied as in muggle life. When you transfigure something, though it's appearance changes, the actual molecules and matter of the object stays consistent. When you mix a potion to prolong death it will most certainly have side effects you never could have imagined. When you apparate you always run the risk of one of your atoms rearranging out of order, something that could throw your whole system off, render your body useless for life. When you call upon something to appear it has to materialize from some actual plane of existence where it was before.
Hermione was still working on a theory about that, split reality, but she hardly thought that was relevant to the situation.
The point was, when you cast strong enough and dark enough spells, and when you train in it for four years, trying to master the only power you know can challenge the Dark Lord, it begins to show.
Hermione can't even remember well how Harry looked before the training began. All she knows is that his eyes have been permanently dulled. And his frame has lost its suppleness, becoming edgier, sharper over time, a quality she never would have associated with Harry before. The way he carried himself now was almost unnatural in its ghostly smoothness, the way he slinked through shadows you never knew could hold a person.
There was something definitively 'Harry' that was lost on him now, gone and fled from his body as the magic invaded its place. Had been that way for a while now.
It was only seven years after their Hogwarts days but Hermione was sure it had seemed longer to everyone, Harry especially. And in those seven years they had neither lost nor gained ground in the war against Voldemort. It was weighing on all of them.
The first time Hermione had seen Harry sneak up the stairs to the abandoned attic was the night they lost Moody. No one had thought to look for him, not when they were all wallowing in their own grief. That was also the first night Molly had ever forgotten to make dinner, instead she was away in her and Arthur's spare room crying about lost chances and dear friends. Hermione had been so dazed that night. She barely registered Remus slumped silently in the armchair at the fire, a full glass of whiskey hanging limply in his grip, not touched all night. Fred and George and Ron and Ginny and all other Weasleys still left alive had been in Ginny's room, around the bed and on the floor and any place that had let them still feel alive, just talking to fill the space the air had left.
She was in the hallway at the time. Just standing there, at the end of all the rooms. She hadn't moved from the spot she was standing at when Ron first came up the landing in somber duty to tell her what had happened at the ambush. After a few minutes of consolation, Ron had left to be with his family. She still had not moved.
And suddenly, barely, she saw a small movement down the tiny crawl way to her right, veering off the main hallway. She almost didn't catch it if it weren't for the light of the retreating sun filtering in through the partially opened shutters around the hall. She turned her head slightly, squinted in the direction and caught sight of dark hair and the glint of what she surmised to be glasses as a figure slinked skillfully through the shadows of the stairway entrance and up into the attic.
She was surprised for a moment, and almost fearful of the deadly stealth she suddenly realized Harry possessed. It was that moment that she saw how Harry really changed. She almost ran from the hall with fright, ready to empty out her stomach in the privacy of her room where she would quietly wonder how it all got so screwed up.
But she didn't move. She just stood there watching the dim light of dusk stream it's way in thin slants across the hallway floor, and wondering how long Harry had been carrying this alone. And even though she felt this ache in her chest that told her he desperately needed someone, she felt that she wasn't the right person to be that. So she turned away and left the hallway, crossing over to the landing and back downstairs where she could busy herself with making dinner for them all, and not think about Moody.
She told herself that Harry needed his peace, and that it wasn't her place to interrupt that.
That was what she told herself every time she noticed him slip away. She would follow him through the hallway, unaware of whether he knew she was there or not, but trying her hardest to stay undetected. She would watch him creep through the crawl space and up the rotting steps to the attic above. But she never got past the first step of the stairs herself.
Today was different though. Today she forced herself up here, not caring if he wanted her there or not, because she knew he would self-implode if something wasn't done, and she didn't have the heart to tell the others of his sanctuary. She figured he wanted it kept as much a secret as he could.
So she made her way slowly up the stairs, taking in long slow breaths with every step, smoothing out her features as to not look completely struck with helplessness in the face of Harry.
When she opens the door she is assaulted with the pure, unadulterated power sifting through the room. It was like opening a door to Death Valley, where the heat was so strong you felt it literally push you to the floor. That's what Harry's magic felt like. Like Death Valley.
It made her shudder, the connotations of that analogy.
She squinted her eyes to make out the room bathed in dim orange and grey light, as the heat from the cramped space began to settle on her bones, making the room so unbearably stifling and thick she was surprised Harry could survive up here, let alone run here for refuge.
The low ceiling slanted down to her right and beams were erected to support the roof to the floor below. It was slanted so sharply she had to duck under the threshold and drop to her hands and knees to crawl through the small space. She was surprised she had not found Harry immediately in the confining room, but when she caught the sight of a shoe she started suddenly and realized Harry was sitting with his back resting against the wall farther away to her left.
It was uncanny, his ability to morph with his surroundings, melt into the shadows as if he were never there, make you think you were alone. It was starting to scare Hermione how easily he seemed to do it.
"Harry?"
He didn't answer, so she took the moment to look at him, with his knees propped up and his arms resting on them, dangling before him as his head lay against the wall, turned to his left a bit so he could face the light coming in from the slits in the shutters. The streams of orange were sharp against his dark features, one crossing over where his wand hand dangled before him, another beaming across where his heart should be, and all the others insignificant to Hermione.
She swallowed and began to crawl slowly and carefully over to sit in front of him. She set herself down across from him and crossed her legs underneath her, her hands clasping together before her. "Harry? Are you alright?" She could almost hit herself for that one.
She doesn't think he can see her, at least not truly see her. He probably knows she's there, sees some figure sitting in front of him, but his eyes don't recognize the present situation. He's looking off to some place Hermione can't see, he wasn't even in the room anymore. He was off somewhere between second and third year where his voice began to crack and he couldn't wait to grow up.
Hermione nibbled on her bottom lip a moment, worrying that he would not come out of this one, but not wanting to push him too hard. She knew today was horrible for all of them. A raid gone bad, so terribly, unbelievably bad. Dumbledore was captured, which for him was worse than death, and for all the rest of them, a sign that the tide was changing, though not in the direction they were all banking on for so long.
The enemy had ways far worse than Veritaserum to make captives spill more than guts. She knew. She had seen it first hand. But this wasn't about her right now. If Dumbledore cracks, and Hermione isn't so sure anymore that he won't, they were all in far greater danger than any one of them could handle.
It was easy for Hermione to see how Harry was taking this. He was so worn away lately he had nothing left to hide his emotions behind, and they simply laid there bare before him for every one to see. Hermione could understand that Harry would take this the way he did, because now, there was so much importance on his succeeding, and so much more disappointment he was afraid of causing. Hermione could have snorted with disgust at the way people threw themselves at him, asking to be saved, delivered, as if he wasn't trying to make that happen for every single person in the world, perfect strangers who never even heard his name.
The whole unfairness of the situation causes the slight prickle of tears to appear behind Hermione's lids. But she knows that this is no time for Harry to see her crying, so she wipes a hand across her eyes once and the wetness has disappeared, replaced by a hardness she usually uses when wand to wand with Deatheaters.
"Harry." This time it is not a question, but a demand.
She was surprised to find that he turned to look at her, and when his eyes met hers she was suddenly lost as to what to say. Just sitting there, in that thick-aired, cramped attic space, staring at Harry Potter as he sat with a heaviness to his shoulders that spoke of things far worse than death, Hermione was unable to process any form of cohesive thought. All she could do was stare at him, and take in the green of his eyes that she used to love when they flashed bright at her. She had never felt so wretched before in her entire life, because who was she to say cheer up, brush it off, keep going? She couldn't possibly imagine that kind of burden.
And she was suddenly faced with the thought that she was the completely wrong person to be up here. She felt that if Ron had been here instead of her, he would give Harry a manly slap on the back, nudge him a couple of times and heartily tell him to stop being a "bloody wanker." But all in that friendly-subtle-guy-way that said Ron completely understood why Harry needed to be a bloody wanker right now and that it was fine by him if it helped.
She thought that if it had been Sirius up here, he would make some sort of light-hearted joke and delve into stories about him and the Marauders and Harry would feel like he was far away from this place, somewhere where all this didn't have to weigh on him so much, and he could pretend to be someone without responsibilities.
She thought that if it had been Ginny, she would have immediately flung her arms around Harry and squeezed until there was no more strength in her arms. She would force him to hug her back with that endearing stubbornness that said she never gave up on you. She may even give him a kiss upon the cheek, let him nuzzle into her arms, whisper sweet assurances of everything being alright, maybe even drop a few of her own tears upon his head, just to let him know that she was there with him.
But Hermione didn't have any of that. She didn't have any back-slaps or stories or cuddling skills. All Hermione had were facts, simple, cold, unmovable facts.
Hermione could tell you the four types of magical plants that grew in Antarctica and the best times to harvest all of them. She could tell you the reasons behind Hogwarts' complex structural design. She could tell you the advantages of casting summoning spells on the Winter Equinox. She could tell you the antidote to any potion you may ever encounter in your life.
But Hermione had no idea what to say to Harry when she finally met his eyes.
There were long moments in which they just sat there staring at each other, breathing in quiet hesitation.
And before Hermione could even register the change, Harry's eyes were shut tight with the effort of preventing the tears.
Hermione stared at him in breathless anticipation, and for a moment she thought she was asleep upon her bed, dreaming this whole moment in her head and she was fearful of waking from this. But it was only there for a moment before she felt the very real pressure of Harry's head falling to her lap and his hands wrapping around her frame, gripping her shirt so tight she thought he would put holes right through it with his fingers.
Just before that first sob, just before that first shaky exhale of tears upon his breath, Hermione felt the magic in the room shift and wrap itself around her, melting with her fingertips to flow through her arms and into her chest where she felt a sudden unnatural pound of her heart against her chest. She felt Harry's magic wrap its fingers around her heart and hold on as if it had no heart left of its own to cling to.
Suddenly, before she could exhale that sucked in breath at the invasion, there was a wail so cracked and bleeding from Harry it near broke her restraint of her tears with its first utterance. And then she was painfully aware of Harry's head in her lap, tears wetting her skirt, arms gripping her to him tightly, and such inhumanly wounded sounds ripping from his throat. She didn't notice her own hands wrapped in his hair and around his back as she ducked herself down to clasp him tightly to her, unwilling to let go for fear she may never feel this agonizingly alive for the rest of her life. Wrapped up in Harry there, leaking tears of her own upon his huddled form, feeling the last of the warm orange beams spread across their figures, Hermione had never felt so completely and utterly devastated, nor had she ever felt so irrevocably linked to him.
She could still feel Harry's magic tugging at her heart, something she thought she would never lose, and she was reluctant to part from him again. So she just held him, and let him wail and sob and clutch her to him with a strength she thought Harry had lost long ago.
It was a moment she realized she still had something to fight for, if only for this.
A moment she understood the true being that was Harry Potter. A moment she didn't mind getting sweat and tears and worse all over her if it meant she could hold Harry here just like this and be his release of everything they forced him to hold onto.
It was a long while before she realized he had slowly grown silent, and now just rested upon her lap as she slowly stroked his hair, watching his face at it slowly drifted toward the edge of slumber.
"Hermione."
She was surprised at the calm beneath that voice, and her hand stilled against his temple. He opened his eyes to look up at her and she could have sworn she didn't see so much dull over the green.
"Yes, Harry?" She was proud her voice had not cracked with the threat of more tears.
He almost smiled, but she couldn't be sure, because she hadn't seen what Harry's smile looked like for such a long time.
"I'm glad it was you." He shut his eyes and raised his hand to connect with hers, holding it in his warm palm.
Hermione would always remember that at that instant, she had no regrets that it was her up there with a trembling, vulnerable Harry, and she was forever relieved that she had not found the words at the time to express what she could not have shown in any other way but to hold him to her chest, and feel the beat of his magic fuse with the rhythm of her heart.