Acquired Thought
By: Domino Nermandi
Prologue: In Which Things Begin
***
June 12, 1996
She opens her eyes and squints. The light is so harsh compared to the depth of blackness she has acquainted herself with lately. With no reference point other than the gentle lumos spell that has been her constant companion the past three days, the natural light spilling through the windows in Dumbledore's office is practically incapacitating. She resists the urge to fling her hand up against it, to bar it access from her face. Imagining it branding her face, peeling her skin off like layers, she winces and hunches her shoulders. With her straggly hair, face caked with dirt and streaked with blood, she knows she must look like an obscenely large garden gnome, but she is beyond caring.
A gentle voice addresses her. "Hermione?" Her eyes narrow just a bit more, trying desperately to filter out the brightness. The voice is familiar and blends into this place like it belongs.
She gives up on trying to see him. "Did we win, Headmaster?" she asks as she cradles her broken arm to her chest.
"Yes," he answers, and she hears his unspoken "for now" without having to listen too hard. "In just a few moments, you can rest." She nods, then just lets her head sink down as she expels a sigh that threatens to turn itself into a sob. She lets her pulse pound in her ears, rides the wave of pain that crests with every heartbeat, ignores the spike that embeds itself behind her ear with every hitched breath. Her lungs are burning with inhaled detritus, her eyes still haven't adjusted, and over and over in her head, all she can see is Ron hurling himself at Voldemort, putting Ron between Harry and herself, and certain death. All she can hear is his scream: first primal, threatening; and soon high pitched, frightened-in agony; then whimpering, panting sobs, gasping breath as he struggles to inhale.
"Ron..." Hermione doesn't want to know the answer, she honestly doesn't want to know, because what she assumes is beyond her comprehension right about now, but she asks anyway, "Did he...?"
"Yes," Dumbledore says, and for a moment Hermione truly thinks that she is about to loose her mind, "He made it."
This unhinges her, and all she can do is lay her head on her knees and weep. A few minutes later, Madame Pomfrey approaches with a draught of something, and everything slowly fades into white noise and darkness.
***
August 4, 1996
The cold is leeching into him, stealing any warmth he may have had away. He can feel the temperature drop by steady increments as he yanks the bedcovers up higher, first up to his shoulders, then his chin, until finally he is cocooned entirely in the blanket, curled into a ball and shuddering, trembling like a child.
The cold steals his breath and turns it into mist, steals his heartbeat and replaces it with emptiness, steals his warmth and fills him with ice water so frigid it feels like blades. The cold wraps him around until he is killing himself with his own bones-everything is doubled back time and time again, drowned in the ice water over and over until everything that he was is glass, stabbing inwards, ripping him apart. Finally, with a sound like the shredding of fabric, he is rendered into a thousand useless pieces. He dissolves into himself, drifts apart outwards, until there is nothing left resembling him. For a period of time that could be a decade as easily as it could be an instant, there is nothing he has to be; he is formless. He is nowhere.
Then it ends, and he is in a familiar hallway. He is in the basement, stepping down the winding stairway that leads to the dungeons. Every step brings a new kind of pain, but he doesn't think about that. His eyes are wide, taking in the grime on the stone walls that wasn't there before, gazing at the brackish liquid oozing from cracks in the ceiling that have appeared overnight. The flames don't light anything so much as they cast shadow and he cannot remember this stairwell ever being so stifling, so cold, so deeply steeped in black.
He is going forward without ever moving his feet and suddenly he is at the base of all things or at least the steps. Somehow it is colder still, somehow there is still less air to breathe, somehow he can see in the dark but it's only the impression of things, a vague idea of what goes where that is dictated by both memory and fear. He tells himself that the taste of copper on his tongue is just the bitter aftertaste from not brushing his teeth long enough that night, but he knows, he knows it is something else and he cannot decide what adrenaline blood fear could be dancing over his tongue like it suddenly belongs there. Tells himself that the shadow laughing in the corner doesn't also exist in the daylight hours, and for a moment he almost succeeds in convincing himself that this is only a creation conjured out of his exhausted mind. But no, this is taken from reality. He stands in the shadow there because there is no light to speak of, and no warmth to bask in. So he stands in the shadow and wonders whether he dares put another foot forward into this place that used to be so familiar. He remembers it as a playground for rainy days in his youth, remembers it as an unused relic of another age when his family was more literal in their idea of punishment.
Somehow this thought creates itself, and slowly the creature in the corner cannot be heard anymore, and daylight trickles faintly down from the barred windows. There is time here once again, and his foot slides forward without any thought. Like molasses oozing, he insinuates himself into this space, makes it his once more, and that is even better than the light. He rules this place once again, staring into the beautifully empty cells, left to preside over the stone being warmed slowly by that trickle of light and the bars over the windows. He could be smiling, but he cannot remember quite what that is supposed to feel like here, so he does his best to approximate it and almost does it well before he approaches the last cell.
In another world this cell was also empty, but here there is a mancreatureboything that is beautiful and won't stay the same. He stares at it, watching the gold highlights in the hair turn into blue accents buried in deepest black into threads of chestnut into blazing copper into silvery strands that are just a bit too white to be his own. This beautiful, this delicious, this wonderful man-thing that he knows he has invented but has no control over, it's...
"Beautiful," she thinks, rolling over, pulling her sheets with her, "My God, he's beautiful."
...the most incredible thing he's ever not seen. He watches, still fascinated and horrified because as he watches he can feel himself getting warmer. Even though this place is as cold as it's ever been it is giving something back for once and he lifts one hand...
Her hand slides over the sheets, up her pillow, her knuckles graze the headboard and she parts her lips and takes a deep breath.
...he doesn't know why. To reach out to this miracle to straighten his hair to slide it down under his robes oh merlin oh dad oh any god who feels like listening...
Across the hall, her mother grunts loudly in her sleep--
...why am I so wrong?
--and Hermione wakes up with a start.
Eyes fixating on the crack above her bed, she draws in one sharp, unsteady breath before she realizes where she is and groans, rolling over to check the alarm clock.
It's two forty-three in the morning.
Hermione rolls onto her back again and expels her breath in a sigh, willing it up to the ceiling. She feels like a piece of candy left out too long on a windowsill; she is sticky from her sweat and melting all over the bed- sheets and for the fifteenth time she groggily wonders when her parents are going to get the air conditioner fixed. The room slowly comes into vague focus, she can make out the areas of lighter gray.
Realizing that she will not be going back to sleep tonight, she grabs a glass from off the dresser and takes a few unsteady steps over to the bathroom. It takes her three times to find the light switch. Finally, she squints at an unfamiliar face in the mirror for long minutes until she recognizes herself in the glass.
That was incredibly odd... She thinks to herself, wondering about the nightmare, which has been one out of a series she's been having lately. This one was different, though, there was a quality to the light and the dark, some indefinable shift that she would have been able to notice, had she been awake. But as it is, the memories of the dream are slipping through her mind, full sections of it escaping like eels to disappear.
She fills the glass with water and heads back to bed, feet shuffling, the distance multiplied by three times what it is in daylight. Her hand strains in front of her until she turns back into the bedroom and sees the bars on moonlight stretching towards her on the floor. Debating whether or not to turn the light on, she shifts from foot to foot, wondering how long she will be able to fool herself into thinking that she'll fall asleep again before she gives up and just stays awake, like she has all the other nights.
She flicks the light switch on.
Sitting in bed, the water cools her throat but makes her stomach churn, and she can't decide if the trade-off was worth it. Unconsciously, she grabs a twist of parchment from where it's been lying on her night stand, and she places the glass where it used to be. From the corner of her eye she spots:
Dear Hermione,
I hope that this letter finds you... Well? In good health? Happy? I guess I just hope this letter finds you, period.
She picks it up and puts it in her lap, arms folding around her legs, looking on at the letter fondly, like it's an old friend. Which it is, in a way.
I'm glad to hear that your summer is going so well. If we travel at all this summer, I'll be sure to visit you. That traveling exhibit you were talking about sounded like loads of fun. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. But I'm a bit more worried about these nightmares than you seem to be. You know that the Headmaster said that our experiences at the end of term may have unusual consequences. It could be important. Have you owled him about it? It may be a good idea.
To answer your question: Not well. I can't often get out of the house-my parents are being very stringent in their interpretation of their orders for me. It'll be okay when Bill gets here, he can always make things interesting, even if he is supposed to be a real adult now. But right now the house is very, very quiet with only Ginny and I around.
To answer your other question: I'm adjusting. It's weird to begin to notice these things that are so obvious to you now, but it's only the first time they've been there. My father came in the other day, and his cloak smelled like floo powder and charred metal. He smelled like fear. I never would have noticed before, Hermione. He comes in and... He's drained. He's not himself. He's pale, and quiet, and there are circles under his eyes that... My mother looks at him like she's worried he's just going to disappear, and I don't blame her, and she's starting to smell like him. Ginny babbles at mealtime, just to make up for the quiet. And they all look at me different. I just...
I miss you.
I miss you and Harry, and it doesn't help that there aren't going to be any trips for you two over to my house this year.
Sorry, I know I'm going on about me... how are you doing? Are the nightmares getting any better? I really hope so. Even for someone who needs as little sleep as you insist you do, it's a little worrying.
Anyway, I've got to help Mum with dinner. I hope you're doing better.
Cheers, Ron
She stares at the letter after she's done reading it, lets the words blur into each other, breathes in the scent of the paper and imagines that he's there, solid and comforting and familiar.
She pictures his face while she selects a piece of parchment. As she picks up her quill, she imagines that he is sitting across from her. As she begins to write, she tries to think of what his response would be as she begins to speak.
***
August 5, 1996
The Burrow is blissfully quiet today. Sunlight soaks through the kitchen in the last few minutes of full daylight, and the golden light turns Ron Weasley's hair into a riot of fine-spun gold and copper wire. For reasons unknown to him, he has decided to do the dishes for his mother, even though it has now occurred to him that he really hasn't the faintest idea as to whether he's doing it correctly or not. He plows on, though, because that's the way he is, and besides, he has nothing better to do.
He enjoys the tiny sounds amplified, and right now is the best time for it, late in the afternoon when the air is clear and the house is without any distractions. Somewhere upstairs a floorboard creaks as Ginny shifts her weight in her chair and sighs, out in the den, his mother turns a page in a magazine, outside a small animal rustles a few leaves as it makes it's way back home. Somewhere outside, there is a quiet breeze beginning, the air gets just a bit heavier, and there is the whisper of wings flapping. For a moment, Ron begins to wonder if there's something wrong, because the sound is getting closer. He hopes that it will only pass overhead as he tries to figure out where he put his wand. One soap-covered hand grips the plate he's holding a little tighter, and with his other hand he searches cautiously for a knife.
The owl flutters through the window and alights on his shoulder, having barely touched down before it's pecking at his ear in a familiar fashion.
"All right! All right!" he exclaims, shoulders twitching, hands releasing their improvised weapons. "You're as bad as Pigwidgeon!" He wipes his sweaty nose with one bicep. "Set it down over there-"
"I'll get it, Ron."
He looks over his shoulder and smiles, "Thanks, Mum," and continues working on the dishes.
While the non-descript mail owl waters itself in a bowl on the window sill, Ron begins the long, unfamiliar process of drying the dishes with a towel, and he wonders idly how long the Burrow will have to be under magical blackout conditions; wishes for a moment that they could have more than two magically-cloaked mail-owls at their disposal.
"This letter's from Hermione," Molly Weasley states, with an admirable lack of curiosity in her tone.
"Really?" He tries and fails to sound disinterested. Taking the opportunity of having her son's back to her, Mrs. Weasley smiles as she places the roll of parchment on the kitchen table.
Changing the subject, she says, "Why are you washing the dishes? I thought I said I was going to do that."
Ronald shrugged. "I was bored. I figured that it was one more thing you wouldn't have to do. Besides, you've got so much to do lately, anyway..." He knew this wasn't true, knew that his mother was going crazy for lack of anything to do, but her obsessive non-magical cleaning of the house was getting entirely too strange for him. It was almost as if he wanted to show her as often as he could how a person was supposed to approach housecleaning-as a necessary evil, not as some kind of demented lifeline.
His mother approaches him, and wordlessly helps him dry the dishes, the mirth suddenly gone from her. Lips pressed in a thin line, she offers one empty hand to him and he hands her a plate. There is nothing to say for a while, the dishes have been piled up from dinner with Fred and George the night before, and there are plenty of dirty eating implements to go around. But every so often, he can't help himself and turns to stare at the clock, relieved when none of the hands have changed position. For a second, he thinks the hand marked "Arthur" has trembled a bit, and he stops entirely, body gone rigid, inhaling the smell of his own sweat and his mother's dry green scent, and he just watches.
He has lost track of time, and when his mother's hand comes to rest on his shoulder, it's a shock to his raw senses. He couldn't have been more startled than if she'd smacked him.
Brown eyes stare gravely at him, they regard him for a moment before he hears his mother's words, which are detached from these pain-filled eyes, "Your father can take care of himself, Ron."
Somehow, this statement doesn't make him defensive, and his only response is a quiet, "I know..." that sounds deafening and resounds in his ears with all the power of a lie. "Is Bill still coming this afternoon?"
"Yes, he and your father will come back for dinner, and then..."
Neither of them speaks. Dust motes disturbed by Mrs. Weasley's earlier dusting fall through the sunlight in the room like glitter snowing from the ceiling. Somewhere outside, a garden gnome begins to burrow furiously-Ron can hear it muttering and cursing to itself. A thunderstorm is approaching from the north-west, and he tastes copper on his tongue. For a moment, he thinks that he will still be standing there, side by side with his weary mother, when the storm gets there. But Ginny gets there first.
"Ron!" She slams a book down on the table, and the plate he's holding slides back into the sink. He forces his hands to stay at his sides as his mind convulses with shock.
"Ginny-could you please not--?"
"Oh!" Her hands fly to her mouth, and she looks honestly ashamed. "I forgot... I'm so sorry--it's just this stupid summer work... And, well... I don't understand Arithmancy. I never have, I never will, and on top of that, Fred and George made me hate it!"
Mrs. Weasley smiles, eyes still carefully focused on the dishes she's drying. "And of course, that's all their fault?"
"Obviously," Ron replies, unable to completely repress a smile of his own, despite his ringing ears. "I'm assuming that this is going to lead to a request for help at some point...?"
Smiling brightly, Ginny asks him, "Do you mind? I'm completely clueless."
"I'll finish up." Mrs. Weasley shoos her son away from the dishes. "I dare say I'll do a better job of it, anyway."
Ron takes a seat next to his sister at the table, and he is still sitting there with her, the sun dying in a bloody mass outside the window, when there is a whirring from the clock by the fireplace, and there are heavy footfalls in the front hallway.
"Molly! Molly!" Arthur Weasley enters his kitchen, eyes wild and searching the room far too long. "Oh, thank..." He seems to remember his children, and he smiles absently at them, his state of almost-hysteria either forgotten or convincingly plastered over. "Doing some work, I see?" His children are silent, and can only stare at him, frozen in fear. They all have known this was coming. Ron only listens to Ginny's heart beat like a triphammer and tries not to react.
Ginny smiles weakly, "Trying to, anyway."
Arthur nods, his shocked countenance seeping back into place, "Molly--?"
Molly Weasley turns, and the last light of the sun catches her hair, and bathes her face, transforms her into a creature of fire and blood and flowers in full bloom. Her soapy hands catch the faint rays and glimmer like some kind of otherworldly mirage; her eyes are the only things that remain unlit, two gaping caverns dark in her rose-tinted face. Slowly, the rose granite figure that used to be Ron's mother shuffles over to Mr. Weasley. The light slips off of her, and she is herself once more as she takes her husband's hand and silently walks with him into the front hall.
The world stops as they converse in the hallway. Ginny is silent, and Ron tries his damndest not to hear his parents, but that will never again be an option for him.
"It's time, Molly."
"Oh... no... No, Arthur. Now? So soon?" Her voice is too quiet, Ron thinks to himself.
"...I'm sorry, honey. I am so sorry..." His voice is weary, heartsick.
"How long will you be...?"
"...We can't know. No one is allowed to know."
Molly Weasley's breath catches, and Ron can almost smell the single tear she allows to escape poisoning the air. "I love you," she whispers, and Ron can barely hear her, and it almost breaks him.
"I know-- I know. I love you, too." There is the sound of a cloak rustling, of lips meeting for a few brief moments, but parting again too fast.
Far too soon, Arthur Weasley appears in the doorway to the kitchen, and his children once again stare at him, both appalled and fascinated.
Ron hears his mother's knees hit the floor in the front hall and the wail she chokes at the back of her throat.
"I-I'm going to be gone for a while," he says, and stares at his children like the miracles they are. There is a moment of silence, of stillness, before everyone moves. Ginny and Ron haul themselves out of their chairs as their father rushes towards them, wrapping their arms around each other, trying to capture this feeling of solidity, of reality. Their father plants a kiss on each of their foreheads.
"I love you both," he murmurs, voice breaking, and Ginny begins to sob.
"I love you, Dad," Ron manages to say, and for a moment, he's not sure if his father heard him. But then Arthur Weasley turns to his son and smiles gently.
"Thank-you," he whispers. And then suddenly Ginny is latching onto Ron's shoulder and sobbing on him because Ron's father is gone as if he were never there.
Still in the front hall, alone and hopeless, Molly Weasley wails, and it hurts.
***
August 7, 1996
It is still dark.
Five blazing torches, two illumination spells, and a flashlight and it still seems impossibly dark to Harry. Shapes seem indistinct for minutes at a time, and will abruptly jump into focus, startling him with their sudden clarity. The twilight of these caves seems eternal---so had it always been, so it would always be. The very silence itself seems to be permanent and impenetrable. The silence muffles his ears, seems to dampen his senses and makes everything melt into something else, like his entire world has turned into taffy.
Until, of course, his eyes adjust again, and everything snaps into focus. For a few minutes, he sees everything as angles and corners and precise areas of light and dark. The limestone walls are nonexistent in these moments, and everything around is clear, as far as he can throw his mind. All he has to do is think a slight push in any direction, and everything is beautiful and defined and exact.
Then the darkness closes in again, and the silence seems to choke him and he considers begging for another torch. Considers it, but doesn't. Because, after all, he is now, has always been, and will always be no one else except Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived. And Boys Who Lived are too brave to admit to being afraid of the dark.
So he sits, and waits, searching for a quill to use on his stack of parchments, and it seems to him that this is what he has always done, and this is what he always will do. Because down here, in the darkness of these limestone caverns, there is no Voldemort. There is no Ron hurling himself out of the darkness and into the light and almost killing himself for the love of his two best friends. There is no induction ceremony into the Order of the Phoenix. There is no special ability hanging above his head, like there is above ground. Down here, he can pretend that he doesn't see through walls. Down here...
Dammit, where did he put that quill?
The silence looms beyond the scratching of his fingers and the rustling of parchment as he searches for a quill. He can practically feel the limestone pressing down above his head. It had always been there, is there, will always be there, pressing, pressing. Something in his awareness widens, flexes to fill the space he has. Looking up from his hunt, he spots a figure cloaked in darkness two rooms over, appearing from out of a stairwell. He pauses, hand buried under a stack of paper, and peers through the limestone but is still unable to penetrate the darkness.
He waits. He has always waited, will always wait still as a statue, trying to decipher the black and gray.
She is walking down the corridor now and the shadow slips off of her as she passes under a patch of light. Harry breathes a sigh of relief and flexes his cramped hand before he removes it from under the mountain of parchment- the cloaked woman is Arabella Figg, and she's holding a bundle of quills in one hand and a pot of ink in another.
"Hallo, Mrs. Figg-brought me a present, have you?" he calls, and feels a stab of pleasure at her shocked start and slow smile.
She waits until she enters the room to respond, "Perhaps," She smiles at him kindly, and puts down the quills within easy reach. "I see you've been practicing."
"I'm not sure that you would call it that, but I have been sitting around staring, if that's what you mean."
She rests a hand on his shoulder, and it feels like a butterfly's wing, ready to take off at any moment. "The Headmaster says that you should be ready to move back upstairs in about a week or so, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were sooner. As we speak, the house elves are clearing some space in your dormitory so you won't feel quite so... overwhelmed."
"Has the Headmaster mentioned anything about my cloak?" Harry asks, wanting to avoid the thought of going aboveground. The move will be so final and he is not ready, but he wants away from the dark; this fact is coming up so soon even while it remains agonizingly far away.
"Nothing since he took it. I can't imagine what he means to do with it." Mrs. Figg sets down the pot of ink in front of him and takes a seat, lowering herself carefully into her chair. At eighty years old she is rather young for a witch, but eighty years is still eighty years and every once in a while, especially down here, she is reminded of it.
"Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Figg?" He is concerned, he always is about her after last year. After all, how else was he to react? She had been assigned to him as a protector since before he was born, had her wizard powers negated to almost nothing upon her Induction into the Order almost twenty-five years ago, and had spent all of his life since his parents had died isolated from the Wizard world and living as a Muggle, simply to protect him. And all that time, he'd simply thought of her as a crazy old lady who liked her cats perhaps a bit more than was healthy. Last year she had stayed with him all that summer, whether he was aware or not, and this year she was doing the same. All of this, so much of her life, just to protect him. Perhaps it was because Harry had never really had family, but Harry had quickly learned to love her, value her, fear for her.
"Fine, fine. Don't worry yourself over me, young man, you have other troubles," she tells him, the light extinguished from her eyes. "This came for you yesterday by owl. Like the rest of your mail, we had to scan it..."
"What is it?" He would fear, except that he is Harry Potter and has never been allowed to fear, will never be allowed to fear. Instead, he allows his palms to sweat, allows the tremor in his fingers, allows a chill to run the length of his spine. But he can't admit to fear.
"An owl from your friend Ron Weasley. I'm afraid he has... News." From underneath her cloak, she procures a single sheet of parchment and wordlessly hands it to him.
As he reads, he doesn't fear. His eyes widen, and his jaw tightens, and the tears well up in his eyes. His head tilts forward, but he doesn't cry, he can't cry, he is the Boy Who Lived and so says nothing, even when Mrs. Figg rests a hand on top of his, even when his breath becomes labored, even when he feels like screaming.
"When?"
"This was two days ago." Her thumb strokes his hand, and that's all that he can feel. "Your friend doesn't know what is going on, and the Headmaster says that the lack of information is as it was intended. Albus also said that you shouldn't worry, everything is under control."
"He's sure?"
"He's positive. Dumbledore was very explicit that Mr. Weasley can take care of himself."
They are silent for a moment, because there is nothing more to say. He has waited for hours for human contact, and once she is here, he has nothing left in him that he wants shared.
He is suddenly dreaming of a garden drenched in sunlight with not enough people lounging around in it. The only black head in a sea of copper. A single daisy being stalked by a lazy bee. Laughter rebounding off of every available surface. A Quidditch game where the only contest is how often you can smile...
And then the twilight comes. It encroaches bit by bit. First Percy leaves, then Fred, then George. The steps on the stairs are heavier. The night comes sooner. Laughter stops flowing like water.
And then the shadow falls over them, too, because that is what happens in these times. That is all that happens in these times.
He picks up a piece of parchment, and tries to think of what to write, but comes up short, unable to formulate a thought worthy of giving his best friend. All Harry owns is the darkness inside him that is steadily growing, and that is something he is not willing to share.
***
Prologue: In Which Things Begin
***
June 12, 1996
She opens her eyes and squints. The light is so harsh compared to the depth of blackness she has acquainted herself with lately. With no reference point other than the gentle lumos spell that has been her constant companion the past three days, the natural light spilling through the windows in Dumbledore's office is practically incapacitating. She resists the urge to fling her hand up against it, to bar it access from her face. Imagining it branding her face, peeling her skin off like layers, she winces and hunches her shoulders. With her straggly hair, face caked with dirt and streaked with blood, she knows she must look like an obscenely large garden gnome, but she is beyond caring.
A gentle voice addresses her. "Hermione?" Her eyes narrow just a bit more, trying desperately to filter out the brightness. The voice is familiar and blends into this place like it belongs.
She gives up on trying to see him. "Did we win, Headmaster?" she asks as she cradles her broken arm to her chest.
"Yes," he answers, and she hears his unspoken "for now" without having to listen too hard. "In just a few moments, you can rest." She nods, then just lets her head sink down as she expels a sigh that threatens to turn itself into a sob. She lets her pulse pound in her ears, rides the wave of pain that crests with every heartbeat, ignores the spike that embeds itself behind her ear with every hitched breath. Her lungs are burning with inhaled detritus, her eyes still haven't adjusted, and over and over in her head, all she can see is Ron hurling himself at Voldemort, putting Ron between Harry and herself, and certain death. All she can hear is his scream: first primal, threatening; and soon high pitched, frightened-in agony; then whimpering, panting sobs, gasping breath as he struggles to inhale.
"Ron..." Hermione doesn't want to know the answer, she honestly doesn't want to know, because what she assumes is beyond her comprehension right about now, but she asks anyway, "Did he...?"
"Yes," Dumbledore says, and for a moment Hermione truly thinks that she is about to loose her mind, "He made it."
This unhinges her, and all she can do is lay her head on her knees and weep. A few minutes later, Madame Pomfrey approaches with a draught of something, and everything slowly fades into white noise and darkness.
***
August 4, 1996
The cold is leeching into him, stealing any warmth he may have had away. He can feel the temperature drop by steady increments as he yanks the bedcovers up higher, first up to his shoulders, then his chin, until finally he is cocooned entirely in the blanket, curled into a ball and shuddering, trembling like a child.
The cold steals his breath and turns it into mist, steals his heartbeat and replaces it with emptiness, steals his warmth and fills him with ice water so frigid it feels like blades. The cold wraps him around until he is killing himself with his own bones-everything is doubled back time and time again, drowned in the ice water over and over until everything that he was is glass, stabbing inwards, ripping him apart. Finally, with a sound like the shredding of fabric, he is rendered into a thousand useless pieces. He dissolves into himself, drifts apart outwards, until there is nothing left resembling him. For a period of time that could be a decade as easily as it could be an instant, there is nothing he has to be; he is formless. He is nowhere.
Then it ends, and he is in a familiar hallway. He is in the basement, stepping down the winding stairway that leads to the dungeons. Every step brings a new kind of pain, but he doesn't think about that. His eyes are wide, taking in the grime on the stone walls that wasn't there before, gazing at the brackish liquid oozing from cracks in the ceiling that have appeared overnight. The flames don't light anything so much as they cast shadow and he cannot remember this stairwell ever being so stifling, so cold, so deeply steeped in black.
He is going forward without ever moving his feet and suddenly he is at the base of all things or at least the steps. Somehow it is colder still, somehow there is still less air to breathe, somehow he can see in the dark but it's only the impression of things, a vague idea of what goes where that is dictated by both memory and fear. He tells himself that the taste of copper on his tongue is just the bitter aftertaste from not brushing his teeth long enough that night, but he knows, he knows it is something else and he cannot decide what adrenaline blood fear could be dancing over his tongue like it suddenly belongs there. Tells himself that the shadow laughing in the corner doesn't also exist in the daylight hours, and for a moment he almost succeeds in convincing himself that this is only a creation conjured out of his exhausted mind. But no, this is taken from reality. He stands in the shadow there because there is no light to speak of, and no warmth to bask in. So he stands in the shadow and wonders whether he dares put another foot forward into this place that used to be so familiar. He remembers it as a playground for rainy days in his youth, remembers it as an unused relic of another age when his family was more literal in their idea of punishment.
Somehow this thought creates itself, and slowly the creature in the corner cannot be heard anymore, and daylight trickles faintly down from the barred windows. There is time here once again, and his foot slides forward without any thought. Like molasses oozing, he insinuates himself into this space, makes it his once more, and that is even better than the light. He rules this place once again, staring into the beautifully empty cells, left to preside over the stone being warmed slowly by that trickle of light and the bars over the windows. He could be smiling, but he cannot remember quite what that is supposed to feel like here, so he does his best to approximate it and almost does it well before he approaches the last cell.
In another world this cell was also empty, but here there is a mancreatureboything that is beautiful and won't stay the same. He stares at it, watching the gold highlights in the hair turn into blue accents buried in deepest black into threads of chestnut into blazing copper into silvery strands that are just a bit too white to be his own. This beautiful, this delicious, this wonderful man-thing that he knows he has invented but has no control over, it's...
"Beautiful," she thinks, rolling over, pulling her sheets with her, "My God, he's beautiful."
...the most incredible thing he's ever not seen. He watches, still fascinated and horrified because as he watches he can feel himself getting warmer. Even though this place is as cold as it's ever been it is giving something back for once and he lifts one hand...
Her hand slides over the sheets, up her pillow, her knuckles graze the headboard and she parts her lips and takes a deep breath.
...he doesn't know why. To reach out to this miracle to straighten his hair to slide it down under his robes oh merlin oh dad oh any god who feels like listening...
Across the hall, her mother grunts loudly in her sleep--
...why am I so wrong?
--and Hermione wakes up with a start.
Eyes fixating on the crack above her bed, she draws in one sharp, unsteady breath before she realizes where she is and groans, rolling over to check the alarm clock.
It's two forty-three in the morning.
Hermione rolls onto her back again and expels her breath in a sigh, willing it up to the ceiling. She feels like a piece of candy left out too long on a windowsill; she is sticky from her sweat and melting all over the bed- sheets and for the fifteenth time she groggily wonders when her parents are going to get the air conditioner fixed. The room slowly comes into vague focus, she can make out the areas of lighter gray.
Realizing that she will not be going back to sleep tonight, she grabs a glass from off the dresser and takes a few unsteady steps over to the bathroom. It takes her three times to find the light switch. Finally, she squints at an unfamiliar face in the mirror for long minutes until she recognizes herself in the glass.
That was incredibly odd... She thinks to herself, wondering about the nightmare, which has been one out of a series she's been having lately. This one was different, though, there was a quality to the light and the dark, some indefinable shift that she would have been able to notice, had she been awake. But as it is, the memories of the dream are slipping through her mind, full sections of it escaping like eels to disappear.
She fills the glass with water and heads back to bed, feet shuffling, the distance multiplied by three times what it is in daylight. Her hand strains in front of her until she turns back into the bedroom and sees the bars on moonlight stretching towards her on the floor. Debating whether or not to turn the light on, she shifts from foot to foot, wondering how long she will be able to fool herself into thinking that she'll fall asleep again before she gives up and just stays awake, like she has all the other nights.
She flicks the light switch on.
Sitting in bed, the water cools her throat but makes her stomach churn, and she can't decide if the trade-off was worth it. Unconsciously, she grabs a twist of parchment from where it's been lying on her night stand, and she places the glass where it used to be. From the corner of her eye she spots:
Dear Hermione,
I hope that this letter finds you... Well? In good health? Happy? I guess I just hope this letter finds you, period.
She picks it up and puts it in her lap, arms folding around her legs, looking on at the letter fondly, like it's an old friend. Which it is, in a way.
I'm glad to hear that your summer is going so well. If we travel at all this summer, I'll be sure to visit you. That traveling exhibit you were talking about sounded like loads of fun. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. But I'm a bit more worried about these nightmares than you seem to be. You know that the Headmaster said that our experiences at the end of term may have unusual consequences. It could be important. Have you owled him about it? It may be a good idea.
To answer your question: Not well. I can't often get out of the house-my parents are being very stringent in their interpretation of their orders for me. It'll be okay when Bill gets here, he can always make things interesting, even if he is supposed to be a real adult now. But right now the house is very, very quiet with only Ginny and I around.
To answer your other question: I'm adjusting. It's weird to begin to notice these things that are so obvious to you now, but it's only the first time they've been there. My father came in the other day, and his cloak smelled like floo powder and charred metal. He smelled like fear. I never would have noticed before, Hermione. He comes in and... He's drained. He's not himself. He's pale, and quiet, and there are circles under his eyes that... My mother looks at him like she's worried he's just going to disappear, and I don't blame her, and she's starting to smell like him. Ginny babbles at mealtime, just to make up for the quiet. And they all look at me different. I just...
I miss you.
I miss you and Harry, and it doesn't help that there aren't going to be any trips for you two over to my house this year.
Sorry, I know I'm going on about me... how are you doing? Are the nightmares getting any better? I really hope so. Even for someone who needs as little sleep as you insist you do, it's a little worrying.
Anyway, I've got to help Mum with dinner. I hope you're doing better.
Cheers, Ron
She stares at the letter after she's done reading it, lets the words blur into each other, breathes in the scent of the paper and imagines that he's there, solid and comforting and familiar.
She pictures his face while she selects a piece of parchment. As she picks up her quill, she imagines that he is sitting across from her. As she begins to write, she tries to think of what his response would be as she begins to speak.
***
August 5, 1996
The Burrow is blissfully quiet today. Sunlight soaks through the kitchen in the last few minutes of full daylight, and the golden light turns Ron Weasley's hair into a riot of fine-spun gold and copper wire. For reasons unknown to him, he has decided to do the dishes for his mother, even though it has now occurred to him that he really hasn't the faintest idea as to whether he's doing it correctly or not. He plows on, though, because that's the way he is, and besides, he has nothing better to do.
He enjoys the tiny sounds amplified, and right now is the best time for it, late in the afternoon when the air is clear and the house is without any distractions. Somewhere upstairs a floorboard creaks as Ginny shifts her weight in her chair and sighs, out in the den, his mother turns a page in a magazine, outside a small animal rustles a few leaves as it makes it's way back home. Somewhere outside, there is a quiet breeze beginning, the air gets just a bit heavier, and there is the whisper of wings flapping. For a moment, Ron begins to wonder if there's something wrong, because the sound is getting closer. He hopes that it will only pass overhead as he tries to figure out where he put his wand. One soap-covered hand grips the plate he's holding a little tighter, and with his other hand he searches cautiously for a knife.
The owl flutters through the window and alights on his shoulder, having barely touched down before it's pecking at his ear in a familiar fashion.
"All right! All right!" he exclaims, shoulders twitching, hands releasing their improvised weapons. "You're as bad as Pigwidgeon!" He wipes his sweaty nose with one bicep. "Set it down over there-"
"I'll get it, Ron."
He looks over his shoulder and smiles, "Thanks, Mum," and continues working on the dishes.
While the non-descript mail owl waters itself in a bowl on the window sill, Ron begins the long, unfamiliar process of drying the dishes with a towel, and he wonders idly how long the Burrow will have to be under magical blackout conditions; wishes for a moment that they could have more than two magically-cloaked mail-owls at their disposal.
"This letter's from Hermione," Molly Weasley states, with an admirable lack of curiosity in her tone.
"Really?" He tries and fails to sound disinterested. Taking the opportunity of having her son's back to her, Mrs. Weasley smiles as she places the roll of parchment on the kitchen table.
Changing the subject, she says, "Why are you washing the dishes? I thought I said I was going to do that."
Ronald shrugged. "I was bored. I figured that it was one more thing you wouldn't have to do. Besides, you've got so much to do lately, anyway..." He knew this wasn't true, knew that his mother was going crazy for lack of anything to do, but her obsessive non-magical cleaning of the house was getting entirely too strange for him. It was almost as if he wanted to show her as often as he could how a person was supposed to approach housecleaning-as a necessary evil, not as some kind of demented lifeline.
His mother approaches him, and wordlessly helps him dry the dishes, the mirth suddenly gone from her. Lips pressed in a thin line, she offers one empty hand to him and he hands her a plate. There is nothing to say for a while, the dishes have been piled up from dinner with Fred and George the night before, and there are plenty of dirty eating implements to go around. But every so often, he can't help himself and turns to stare at the clock, relieved when none of the hands have changed position. For a second, he thinks the hand marked "Arthur" has trembled a bit, and he stops entirely, body gone rigid, inhaling the smell of his own sweat and his mother's dry green scent, and he just watches.
He has lost track of time, and when his mother's hand comes to rest on his shoulder, it's a shock to his raw senses. He couldn't have been more startled than if she'd smacked him.
Brown eyes stare gravely at him, they regard him for a moment before he hears his mother's words, which are detached from these pain-filled eyes, "Your father can take care of himself, Ron."
Somehow, this statement doesn't make him defensive, and his only response is a quiet, "I know..." that sounds deafening and resounds in his ears with all the power of a lie. "Is Bill still coming this afternoon?"
"Yes, he and your father will come back for dinner, and then..."
Neither of them speaks. Dust motes disturbed by Mrs. Weasley's earlier dusting fall through the sunlight in the room like glitter snowing from the ceiling. Somewhere outside, a garden gnome begins to burrow furiously-Ron can hear it muttering and cursing to itself. A thunderstorm is approaching from the north-west, and he tastes copper on his tongue. For a moment, he thinks that he will still be standing there, side by side with his weary mother, when the storm gets there. But Ginny gets there first.
"Ron!" She slams a book down on the table, and the plate he's holding slides back into the sink. He forces his hands to stay at his sides as his mind convulses with shock.
"Ginny-could you please not--?"
"Oh!" Her hands fly to her mouth, and she looks honestly ashamed. "I forgot... I'm so sorry--it's just this stupid summer work... And, well... I don't understand Arithmancy. I never have, I never will, and on top of that, Fred and George made me hate it!"
Mrs. Weasley smiles, eyes still carefully focused on the dishes she's drying. "And of course, that's all their fault?"
"Obviously," Ron replies, unable to completely repress a smile of his own, despite his ringing ears. "I'm assuming that this is going to lead to a request for help at some point...?"
Smiling brightly, Ginny asks him, "Do you mind? I'm completely clueless."
"I'll finish up." Mrs. Weasley shoos her son away from the dishes. "I dare say I'll do a better job of it, anyway."
Ron takes a seat next to his sister at the table, and he is still sitting there with her, the sun dying in a bloody mass outside the window, when there is a whirring from the clock by the fireplace, and there are heavy footfalls in the front hallway.
"Molly! Molly!" Arthur Weasley enters his kitchen, eyes wild and searching the room far too long. "Oh, thank..." He seems to remember his children, and he smiles absently at them, his state of almost-hysteria either forgotten or convincingly plastered over. "Doing some work, I see?" His children are silent, and can only stare at him, frozen in fear. They all have known this was coming. Ron only listens to Ginny's heart beat like a triphammer and tries not to react.
Ginny smiles weakly, "Trying to, anyway."
Arthur nods, his shocked countenance seeping back into place, "Molly--?"
Molly Weasley turns, and the last light of the sun catches her hair, and bathes her face, transforms her into a creature of fire and blood and flowers in full bloom. Her soapy hands catch the faint rays and glimmer like some kind of otherworldly mirage; her eyes are the only things that remain unlit, two gaping caverns dark in her rose-tinted face. Slowly, the rose granite figure that used to be Ron's mother shuffles over to Mr. Weasley. The light slips off of her, and she is herself once more as she takes her husband's hand and silently walks with him into the front hall.
The world stops as they converse in the hallway. Ginny is silent, and Ron tries his damndest not to hear his parents, but that will never again be an option for him.
"It's time, Molly."
"Oh... no... No, Arthur. Now? So soon?" Her voice is too quiet, Ron thinks to himself.
"...I'm sorry, honey. I am so sorry..." His voice is weary, heartsick.
"How long will you be...?"
"...We can't know. No one is allowed to know."
Molly Weasley's breath catches, and Ron can almost smell the single tear she allows to escape poisoning the air. "I love you," she whispers, and Ron can barely hear her, and it almost breaks him.
"I know-- I know. I love you, too." There is the sound of a cloak rustling, of lips meeting for a few brief moments, but parting again too fast.
Far too soon, Arthur Weasley appears in the doorway to the kitchen, and his children once again stare at him, both appalled and fascinated.
Ron hears his mother's knees hit the floor in the front hall and the wail she chokes at the back of her throat.
"I-I'm going to be gone for a while," he says, and stares at his children like the miracles they are. There is a moment of silence, of stillness, before everyone moves. Ginny and Ron haul themselves out of their chairs as their father rushes towards them, wrapping their arms around each other, trying to capture this feeling of solidity, of reality. Their father plants a kiss on each of their foreheads.
"I love you both," he murmurs, voice breaking, and Ginny begins to sob.
"I love you, Dad," Ron manages to say, and for a moment, he's not sure if his father heard him. But then Arthur Weasley turns to his son and smiles gently.
"Thank-you," he whispers. And then suddenly Ginny is latching onto Ron's shoulder and sobbing on him because Ron's father is gone as if he were never there.
Still in the front hall, alone and hopeless, Molly Weasley wails, and it hurts.
***
August 7, 1996
It is still dark.
Five blazing torches, two illumination spells, and a flashlight and it still seems impossibly dark to Harry. Shapes seem indistinct for minutes at a time, and will abruptly jump into focus, startling him with their sudden clarity. The twilight of these caves seems eternal---so had it always been, so it would always be. The very silence itself seems to be permanent and impenetrable. The silence muffles his ears, seems to dampen his senses and makes everything melt into something else, like his entire world has turned into taffy.
Until, of course, his eyes adjust again, and everything snaps into focus. For a few minutes, he sees everything as angles and corners and precise areas of light and dark. The limestone walls are nonexistent in these moments, and everything around is clear, as far as he can throw his mind. All he has to do is think a slight push in any direction, and everything is beautiful and defined and exact.
Then the darkness closes in again, and the silence seems to choke him and he considers begging for another torch. Considers it, but doesn't. Because, after all, he is now, has always been, and will always be no one else except Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived. And Boys Who Lived are too brave to admit to being afraid of the dark.
So he sits, and waits, searching for a quill to use on his stack of parchments, and it seems to him that this is what he has always done, and this is what he always will do. Because down here, in the darkness of these limestone caverns, there is no Voldemort. There is no Ron hurling himself out of the darkness and into the light and almost killing himself for the love of his two best friends. There is no induction ceremony into the Order of the Phoenix. There is no special ability hanging above his head, like there is above ground. Down here, he can pretend that he doesn't see through walls. Down here...
Dammit, where did he put that quill?
The silence looms beyond the scratching of his fingers and the rustling of parchment as he searches for a quill. He can practically feel the limestone pressing down above his head. It had always been there, is there, will always be there, pressing, pressing. Something in his awareness widens, flexes to fill the space he has. Looking up from his hunt, he spots a figure cloaked in darkness two rooms over, appearing from out of a stairwell. He pauses, hand buried under a stack of paper, and peers through the limestone but is still unable to penetrate the darkness.
He waits. He has always waited, will always wait still as a statue, trying to decipher the black and gray.
She is walking down the corridor now and the shadow slips off of her as she passes under a patch of light. Harry breathes a sigh of relief and flexes his cramped hand before he removes it from under the mountain of parchment- the cloaked woman is Arabella Figg, and she's holding a bundle of quills in one hand and a pot of ink in another.
"Hallo, Mrs. Figg-brought me a present, have you?" he calls, and feels a stab of pleasure at her shocked start and slow smile.
She waits until she enters the room to respond, "Perhaps," She smiles at him kindly, and puts down the quills within easy reach. "I see you've been practicing."
"I'm not sure that you would call it that, but I have been sitting around staring, if that's what you mean."
She rests a hand on his shoulder, and it feels like a butterfly's wing, ready to take off at any moment. "The Headmaster says that you should be ready to move back upstairs in about a week or so, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were sooner. As we speak, the house elves are clearing some space in your dormitory so you won't feel quite so... overwhelmed."
"Has the Headmaster mentioned anything about my cloak?" Harry asks, wanting to avoid the thought of going aboveground. The move will be so final and he is not ready, but he wants away from the dark; this fact is coming up so soon even while it remains agonizingly far away.
"Nothing since he took it. I can't imagine what he means to do with it." Mrs. Figg sets down the pot of ink in front of him and takes a seat, lowering herself carefully into her chair. At eighty years old she is rather young for a witch, but eighty years is still eighty years and every once in a while, especially down here, she is reminded of it.
"Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Figg?" He is concerned, he always is about her after last year. After all, how else was he to react? She had been assigned to him as a protector since before he was born, had her wizard powers negated to almost nothing upon her Induction into the Order almost twenty-five years ago, and had spent all of his life since his parents had died isolated from the Wizard world and living as a Muggle, simply to protect him. And all that time, he'd simply thought of her as a crazy old lady who liked her cats perhaps a bit more than was healthy. Last year she had stayed with him all that summer, whether he was aware or not, and this year she was doing the same. All of this, so much of her life, just to protect him. Perhaps it was because Harry had never really had family, but Harry had quickly learned to love her, value her, fear for her.
"Fine, fine. Don't worry yourself over me, young man, you have other troubles," she tells him, the light extinguished from her eyes. "This came for you yesterday by owl. Like the rest of your mail, we had to scan it..."
"What is it?" He would fear, except that he is Harry Potter and has never been allowed to fear, will never be allowed to fear. Instead, he allows his palms to sweat, allows the tremor in his fingers, allows a chill to run the length of his spine. But he can't admit to fear.
"An owl from your friend Ron Weasley. I'm afraid he has... News." From underneath her cloak, she procures a single sheet of parchment and wordlessly hands it to him.
As he reads, he doesn't fear. His eyes widen, and his jaw tightens, and the tears well up in his eyes. His head tilts forward, but he doesn't cry, he can't cry, he is the Boy Who Lived and so says nothing, even when Mrs. Figg rests a hand on top of his, even when his breath becomes labored, even when he feels like screaming.
"When?"
"This was two days ago." Her thumb strokes his hand, and that's all that he can feel. "Your friend doesn't know what is going on, and the Headmaster says that the lack of information is as it was intended. Albus also said that you shouldn't worry, everything is under control."
"He's sure?"
"He's positive. Dumbledore was very explicit that Mr. Weasley can take care of himself."
They are silent for a moment, because there is nothing more to say. He has waited for hours for human contact, and once she is here, he has nothing left in him that he wants shared.
He is suddenly dreaming of a garden drenched in sunlight with not enough people lounging around in it. The only black head in a sea of copper. A single daisy being stalked by a lazy bee. Laughter rebounding off of every available surface. A Quidditch game where the only contest is how often you can smile...
And then the twilight comes. It encroaches bit by bit. First Percy leaves, then Fred, then George. The steps on the stairs are heavier. The night comes sooner. Laughter stops flowing like water.
And then the shadow falls over them, too, because that is what happens in these times. That is all that happens in these times.
He picks up a piece of parchment, and tries to think of what to write, but comes up short, unable to formulate a thought worthy of giving his best friend. All Harry owns is the darkness inside him that is steadily growing, and that is something he is not willing to share.
***