"So I saw him the other day."
Ginny has this habit of beginning a story from the middle like she is resuming a conversation that was held two hours before and everyone thought was over. No one will understand what in the world Ginny is talking about until someone is brave enough to interrupt her and ask her to please clarify herself.
"Saw whom, Ginny?" Hermione asks patiently, wiping a streak of cream cheese from her chin with her sleeve. Ginny's lack of story-telling skill bothers her to no end, but she's never brought it up. Ginny can be quite the defensive little harridan when criticized. She will bring up something about Hermione, something past yet still thoroughly embarrassing. And Hermione can be just as defensive. Then there will be yelling, turning up noses, slamming doors... In the end, it really isn't worth the argument.
"Snape," Ginny shrugs.
This is another problem; Ginny has to be prompted to continue her story. Normally, Hermione would just leave it at that. She sets her toast back down on the plate carefully balanced in her lap.
"Professor Snape. So, you saw him...?"
"Yeah, he was in here, in the library. It was rather strange. Mum told me to go turn off the lights and gather the empty glasses up here, you know, just trying to get rid of me while the grown-ups were talking." Ginny says this with such concentrated malice that she doesn't realize the piece of toast crumbling into bits in her clenched fist.
"Ginny, your toast."
"Oh, yeah, thanks."
"So... What happened?" Hermione tries not to sound too eager.
"Nothing. He was just sitting in an armchair—the one you're sitting in right now, in fact—just staring at the wall. I mean, that's the strangest part. I thought he would yell at me to get my arse out of here and stop being such a Weasley, or take house points, but he didn't even notice me until I was already in the room."
"Oh." Hermione tries very hard not to imagine her professor's bum touching the same spot her bum is now nestled snugly in. It's just… Weird.
"It was—I suppose you had to be there to understand what I'm saying. Like, you know how a bloke who's trying to chat you up always talks in a lower voice than normal, trying to look all sophisticated and whatever, and you walk in on him and his lads talking about tits and such and getting all excited, and their voices crack like little twelve-year-olds'? And then you realize, all those times he was dropping his crap in front of you, he was just trying to get you to bend over, so you look back and try to count the times you've done that unknowingly?"
"Er..." No. Hermione doesn't know.
Ginny tries a different route.
"Or how you realize for the first time in your life that your parents are fully capable of lying, and that they've probably done it loads of times? It sort of felt like that with Snape. He was always this character, this greasy old git that would be better off dead—"
"Ginny!"
"—no, no, sorry, I didn't mean that, but, well you know what I meant."
Ginny falls silent for a moment, pushing her tongue against the inside of her cheek.
"It was like... like, bam! You know? Like, pow! There it is, all of a sudden. We're in a war, and there are these people on one side and those people on the other, and… and we're all just people, you know? I mean, Snape's a person too. He eats food like we do and he needs to go to the loo sometimes, and other times he can get lost in thought just like any one of us. But he's supposed to be a bad guy, but he's also a person, and I guess what I'm trying to say is that you never really know. "
Suddenly the atmosphere is quite uncomfortable and Hermione looks down at her book, pretending to be only partly listening. Ginny continues talking.
"It was this... revelation. An epiphany, if you will. He was just sitting there, staring. I don't know what made me think of it, actually. Maybe it's because Mum and Dad have always pushed those sorts of things aside and acted like nothing out of the ordinary's going on anywhere in the world. I think I always knew, and I was just waiting for some proof of it."
Ginny takes a bite of her toast, getting blackberry clot all over her teeth. Hermione feels as if they have touched on something foreign, and for a moment they are mired in a thoughtful silence. Ginny shrugs and smiles dismissively, backtracking.
"I was probably reading too much into it, it all lasted just one second. If it were anyone else, it wouldn't have struck me that way. He did tell me to get out, eventually. Then he probably remembered that he had to leave, so he just up and left. It was just strange."
She didn't get to catch up with her parents, after all. She wrote them, promising (I swear, Mum!) to catch the Knight Bus so she could spend at least part of the holidays with them. They cancelled the skiing trip, but they could still spend a weekend together. But the holidays come and go and before she knows it, she is on the Hogwarts Express once again, nose pressed up to the window, trying to squeeze in her final goodbyes to the Weasleys as the train rounds the bend. It was surprisingly cheerful in Grimmauld Place, and she finds herself a little sorry to leave it. She bites her lip, guilty at the thought that she enjoyed Christmas without her mum and dad.
It isn't something she likes to talk about. Not because it was particularly tragic or life-changing or anything. More like it was part of a different time, a different world, and it seems so trivial all these years later. It was all harmless anyway. A whispered comment here and there, just loud enough for her to hear, just low enough for her to convince herself that she heard them wrong. It was usually about her hair or her teeth. The more creative ones would go for the way her rucksack bulged because of all the library books she stuffed in them, or for her foreign, prissy name that had too many syllables for the average seven-year-old. Sometimes they would all join up in a prank, like that one week where every single child in Year Five and a few in Year Six pretended not to hear a word she said and she thought she'd gone mental.
She wasn't their only target, and it wasn't like it scarred her or anything. Her parents were very supportive of her... precociousness, and made sure to let her know that reading textbooks for fun isn't something to be ashamed of. She knew how to deal with most of it. She likes to think that she had been the bigger person, walking away and ignoring their sniggering and quiet taunting.
Oh, she cried a few times, she supposes. Maybe three, perhaps four times, when some of the older ones got bored and vicious. But mostly she was just left alone. There were intervals, months, even, of relative peace.
Harry looks up and scowls as Malfoy says something clearly meant to carry over to the Gryffindor side of things, and his cronies put on a show of laughing hysterically. Ron mutters darkly and makes stabbing motions with his fork.
She pitied her childhood tormentors, those back in primary school, with all of her pre-adolescent heart. She knew that laughing at someone for liking books and knowledge, for answering all of the teacher's questions was just silly, because they could only go so far before realizing that they were behind her in everything.
So when Malfoy first called her a Mudblood, she was hurt, but she got over it. She was always sort of introverted, and her scholarly pursuits kept her apart from the usual crowd. Some might even call her snotty and aloof. So what was another distinction, another label? And when Parkinson laughed at her teeth, or the animal that made a nest on top of her head, it wasn't something she'd never heard before.
But now…. Now she feels as if they have stepped into this margin. This dangerous grey area where there are no clearly defined rules, and they don't really know what they're doing, or why they're doing it, but they do it all the same.
They still have their parts to play. There's Harry in the lead and Malfoy the bully and Ron the aggressive one and Hermione the girl who tries to be the mature and Crabbe and Goyle the cronies.
But sometimes, these parts just aren't enough anymore, and things are different.
Sometimes they say things that they mean with every fiber of their being, and she and Harry and Ron retort with words that are too barbed to be meant in jest. Sometimes, when a group of Slytherin girls cringe and shudder so very sincerely as she walks past and she feels something cold settle in her chest.
These are the times when she can't feel that childish pity, and the line between them, between Malfoy and Harry, between the Slytherins and the rest of the school, becomes a little clearer.
When it started, she used to think that they had to say those things, that they had to pick up on the trail of bigotry and prejudice that their parents have left behind. But it isn't enough anymore, not now. They can't make those excuses because primary school has long gone. And they may still be children, but fifteen or sixteen isn't too young to be able to discern right from wrong.
So, this time, when Malfoy catches her eye and mouths the words filthy fucking Mudblood at her from across the room, when he slashes his thumb heinously across his throat and grins at her, she remembers. She burns the image into her brain, because the time will come when the line will be blacker and the hate will be suffocating, and she needs to know whose faces she will see across the void.
"How did it go?"* she whispers, glancing shiftily around and listening for the telltale squeak of Madam Pince's shoes against the floor. They have chosen a particularly secluded corner in the back of the stacks, but no corner can be completely secure from the vigilant librarian.
Harry looks dreadful. His skin has adopted a clammy pallor. His scar is stark and ugly on his forehead. His eyes are too wide, too bright.
"Harry?" He doesn't respond. She exchanges a worried glance with Ron.
"Are you alright, Harry?"* she asks, her voice a little louder this time. She hears a vehemently pinched Shush!from behind the bookshelves.
"Yeah... fine... I dunno,"* he mutters impatiently. He cringes and tilts his head back, placing a palm on his forehead. He remains like this for a few moments. Hermione edges her seat a little closer.
He straightens in an abrupt folding in of slim limbs and sharp joints and places his elbows on his knees. This is how he moves, she thinks. All fleet, and nimble, and hard-edged. When he opens his mouth to speak, it is with a slow hesitation. Almost like he is puzzling something out for himself, like the sound of the words leaving his mouth is a curiously novel concept.
"Listen... I've just realized something..."*
"Is it to do with your connection to Voldemort?" she blurts out. Ron gives her a dirty look.
"Will you let him talk?"
"Sorry, sorry. Carry on, Harry."
"You know those dreams I've been telling you about? With the windowless corridor and the locked door? The one I've been having for months?"
"Yeah, go on."
"Yeah. Well, when I was in Occlumency with Snape—"
"Professor Snape."
"Hermione!"
"Oh, shut up, Ronald."
Harry sighs.
"Look, are you two done? Because I'm knackered. I'm gonna head off to bed if you don't want to hear it."
She gives him a conciliatory smile.
"Harry, I won't say another word, I promise."
He gives her that look. The one that she always gets from him when she is being disagreeable and he knows she knows it. But he continues talking anyway.
"Right, well. Snape did Legilimency on me so I could practice Occlumency. It's sort of like... like he was reading my mind. He said that it wasn't that, exactly, that it's more subtle than just opening someone's head up and reading your thoughts like words in a book, but that's what it felt like. Like turning pages. And as he was doing it, I saw... memories. My memories..." He trails off. The moonlight is pure and hard. A cold glint of scalpel silver reflected in lucid green.
"Your memories, Harry?" Ron prompts him gently.
"Er, yeah. There was stuff from before, from before Hogwarts. Unimportant stuff. Then I saw the memory of my hearing at the Ministry. Your dad and I were running because they changed the time and place. It was supposed to be held... somewhere, but they moved it to Courtroom Ten, down by the Department of Mysteries. And I realized when I saw it, the corridor I've been dreaming about looks exactly like the one leading to the Department of Mysteries. An-and your dad, when he was attacked. When... when I dreamt of his attack..."
Harry looks down into his hands. She places a hand on his wrist.
"Was Mr. Weasley in that corridor, Harry?" she asks him. He nods.
"So... so, are you saying..."* Ron whispers, then stills as Madam Pince prowls past them, looking each of them in the eye with squinting accusation, "that the weapon—the thing You-Know-Who's after—is in the Ministry of Magic?"*
Things click into place in her head. Is that what they meant whenever they said someone was on duty? That they guard the door to the Ministry of Magic in shifts? She lets out a breath of air.
"Of course,"* she says, sitting up in her chair.
"Of course what?"* Ron snaps at her. She resists the urge to roll her eyes, not wanting another row.
"Ron, think about it... Sturgis Podmore was trying to get through a door at the Ministry of Magic... It must have been that one, it's too much of a coincidence!"*
"How come Sturgis was trying to break in when he's on our side?"*
She looks at Harry. He is silent, his eyes retaining that glazed sheen, his mouth slack.
"Well, I don't know," she mumbles distractedly. "That is a bit odd..."
There is a bit of skin sticking out from the cuticle of her left thumb. She pulls on it unconsciously. Maybe Sturgis Podmore was bribed by someone? But she doesn't like to think that the members of the Order of the Phoenix are susceptible to such base behavior, so she dismisses the thought almost as soon as it forms in her head.
Blackmail is more likely. Threats of injury, or loss of a beloved, or death. Then there are other ways still, more convenient ways of bending someone to your will. Of replacing someone's intent with magical compulsion...
She gasps. She pulled too hard, and her thumb is bleeding.
"—weird place to have a weapon."* Ron's voice penetrates her thoughts. She bunches her left hand in the fabric of her skirt.
"It's not weird at all, it makes perfect sense,"* she says. "It will be something top secret that the Ministry has been developing, I expect."*
She looks up at Harry as his glasses fall to the floor with a click. He is hunched over, the heels of his hands shoved into his eye sockets, his fingers kneading his forehead. He doesn't seem to have noticed his glasses. She frowns, then bends over to pick them up.
"Harry..." She touches his shoulder, feeling wired tension under her fingers.
"Harry," she says, more firmly. "Are you sure you're alright?"*
"Yeah... fine..."* he says, looking surprised as she hands him his glasses. He takes them with trembling fingers. "I just feel a bit... I don't like Occlumency much..."*
She adjusts her scarf around her neck, sniffing miserably. The tips of her fingers are ice, and the tip of her nose is colder still.
She and Ron have been assigned to patrol the ground floor this month, specifically the main classrooms' hallway and the Entrance Hall. She always preferred the upper floors, where the ceilings don't soar so high and her footsteps don't echo so disconsolately. But she supposes she ought to be grateful. The older prefects and the Head Boy and Girl are usually assigned to the open courtyards and the dripping dungeons.
She is almost done with this shift. The familiar tap-tap-tapping of her shoes is absent. She borrowed Ginny's thick, rubber-soled dragonhide boots for the night because her two layers of socks wouldn't fit into her regular school shoes. The boots feel strange and clunky on her feet, and they produce a low squeak every time they come into contact with the stone floor. Despite her fondness for patrol duties, she is eager to burrow under her covers.
She wonders how many hours of sleep she will get tonight. Six, maybe seven? Quite a decent amount, really. Maybe she can even squeeze in an extra hour of knitting before turning in.
Her thoughts stray to Harry. He is lately shifty like someone with a secret burning in his gut. He probably won't be getting more than three or four hours of sleep. She is glad she remembered to tell Ron to check on him before going to bed.
Sometimes she forgets that Harry is touchy and doesn't like to be coddled. She would see him at certain moments, and she would feel this certainty, this unequivocal conviction, that they are all going to crash and burn and crumple inward on themselves like so much polystyrene. At these times she would have to remind herself to breathe, breathe slowly, Hermione, that Harry is not as fragile as he looks.
But this happens only sometimes, when she isn't so sure about things. Sometimes, when Harry gets that coldness in his eye and that hitch in his breath, and all she can do is coddle him and hope he doesn't mind.
So, Occlumency is good. Occlumency is another step forward. Occlumency reminds her that there are things that can be done.
She expected something like this. She tries to remember everything she had read about it. A yellowing page in a book swims before her mind's eye, and the facts slip easily into grasp. 'Occulto,' meaning to hide, conceal. To cover. 'Mens,' meaning mind. Occlumency is a great deal more simple than its counterpart, Legilimency, as it only requires the clearing of thoughts and emotions from the conscious mind, whereas Legilimency concerns the active extraction of another's thoughts and emotions. Higher level Occlumens are capable of selectively suppressing certain memories, and are even capable of counteracting the Imperius curse to some degree.
She can see why Harry is having difficulty with learning Occlumency. He is far too volatile these days, and sometimes he is just like one big, raw, walking and talking nerve ending. But if Harry really is in danger of having his mind and his emotions exposed to Voldemort (Vol. De. Mort.), then Occlumency is clearly the best solution. Obviously, the fact that it is Professor Snape teaching him doesn't make it any easier for anyone.
But someone like Professor Dumbledore couldn't possibly be mistaken about something as important as this. And someone like Professor Snape wouldn't let whatever animosity it is that is crackling between him and Harry get in between what needs to be done. Because this is war, and it is bigger than detention or resentment or hate.
There is a shifting in the night sky above and the Entrance Hall is plunged into preternatural blue-black as a cloud cloaks the moon. The torches seem to flare brighter, the shadows blacker.
She really must finish with her shift. She swallows cold air and quickens her footsteps.
There is a quiet rustling in the direction of the staircase to the dungeons. Trivial at first, then a blackening silhouette growing in the bluish darkness. She freezes.
What to do? What to do?
Her eyes flit across the expanse of the Entrance Hall, scanning possible hiding places. Then she remembers that she is a prefect, and she has every right to be here. She opens her mouth to admonish the late-night prowler, but her voice is just as soon tangled in a knot in the pit of her throat. She is grateful that she is standing in a corner out of the way and brimming with shadow, because... there.
There.
Standing right there. Standing tall and not at all diminished by the towering ceiling. Looking like he owns the place, like a pillar that the entire castle was built to accommodate.
And really, it's bordering on the ridiculous. Because she was just thinking about Occlumency, and him, and because this spectral atmosphere is just too fitting. And now there he is with the filtered moonlight from the mullioned windows waxing ghastly and grey on his face.
And then he is looking right in her direction, his eyes squinting and malevolent. It is a little strange that he didn't notice her first. She remembers how perceptive those eyes can be. She averts her own. Which is absurd, and foolish, because why on Earth would he want to perform Legilimency on her?
He staggers forward.
There is something... off. Something oddly... languorous in his movement, something torpid and supple where there should be clipped tension. And this makes her take one step back.
"Fuck." She hears him whisper when the hem of his robes gets stuck under his boot. She's never seen him trip before. The sight is strangely discomfiting, like when you are climbing a staircase and you miscount the number of steps, and you lift your knee a little too high thinking that there is one more to go, but there isn't. Like she has walked into something she is forbidden to see. He looks up again in one swift movement, throwing his arm out for balance, and she knows that he sees her.
"Come now, Miss Granger. Do you time your patrols just so we could... bump into each other?"
She stops breathing for three seconds, as if to prove that, no, she really isn't here, there really isn't anyone standing in this corner like some contemptible simpleton. And honestly, this is ridiculous. So she steels herself and (What are you doing, Hermione? What are you doing?) moves out of the shadows.
"Good evening, Professor."
He dips his head slightly in acknowledgement. She can't get around the fact that something is wrong, because he doesn't acknowledge her. He doesn't ever acknowledge her, not unless it is for something she has done wrong.
"Let me guess. You were patrolling, and you thought you saw something. Which, of course, explains perfectly why you are hiding in the corner like a conscience-stricken toddler waiting for her punishment." He laughs humorlessly. The sound is crooked and hoarse and makes her cringe.
"I-I wasn't—" She clears her throat. "I wasn't hiding, sir. I was just finishing my patrol. I'll be off to bed now."
He gives her that look. The one that could be interpreted as either curious, or resentful. The one that lasts but one flitting second.
There is something strange in the air around them, something she cannot identify. There is a nasty thrill in her gut that she quashes into silence. She turns to walk away, to leave him to whatever it is he does in the corridors in the middle of the night.
"You know what your problem is, Granger?"
His tone is positively genial, for him. She knows from experience that this is not right, and the bells are ringing in her head because this is how he baits Harry, and sometimes Ron, but not her. She won't stop. She will pretend she hadn't heard him, and she will not, absolutely not, give him what he wants. So she walks away.
One step: She thinks she just might get away.
Two steps.
Three.
Four: She is feeling a little proud of herself.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
"You're so very brave,aren't you, walking away like you are."
Eight, nine.
"Acting like the better person when you know your mean, ugly Potions Professor is about to belittle you."
Ten, eleven.
"How very... mature."
Twelve: She refuses to listen.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen: She has made it farther than she thought she would.
She can feel his eyes on the back of her head. There is definitely something wrong, and she isn't sure if she cares to find out what it is.
"Are you alright, sir?" she asks, her back still turned to him. "It's been a long day for all of us. Harry's just told us about Occlum—"
"To hell with Harry fucking Potter!" he thunders, his voice sounding much closer than she remembers.
She turns. There he is, a mere three steps away. She hadn't gotten very far, after all. And all she can feel in that moment is her suddenly ragged breath gasping into her lungs and a profound awareness of her stupid scarf, and her dressing gown with the hole in the shoulder, and the boots that she doesn't own. He is clad in the usual black. Black so very black like a sacrament from chin to instep.
Her nostrils twitch, and suddenly she can smell what's wrong. It is a smell that she sometimes encounters in the Gryffindor common room the morning after a particularly rowdy celebration. It is a smell that was stuck in her nostrils for hours after Ron made her try Firewhisky for the first time. It is sour, and cheap, and it is saturates the air around him, invading her senses with every move he makes. She may have been frightened before, but suddenly she isn't. Not anymore.
"Are you alright, sir?" she repeats herself, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Perhaps it's time for you to retire for the night."
"Ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger, for being an impertinent bitch," he sneers hatefully.
She can practically feel her blood pressure rising, climbing up her arteries, throbbing in her ear. She cannot believe she was justifying his cruelty just moments ago. She can feel her top lip drawing up in a snarl, her joints locking rigid and straight. He smiles at her. It is hostile, a baring of teeth that makes her hackles rise.
"That's all there is with you, isn't it? It's always Potter this, Potter bloody fucking that—tell me, Miss Granger, do you think he regards you with the same... adulation that you do him? Do you think you're special to him, that he doesn't just pretend to listen to your nattering because he feels sorry for the poor little Mudblood that nobody lik—"
"Shut up! Shut up!" Her voice is too loud, louder even than his, but she doesn't care, because she is sick of this. "I don't care what you say, because you're wrong!"
He draws himself up, and she should really stuff her words back into her mouth and apologize, but the torrent is unstoppable.
"You think you can make me feel small, that you can make me cry and feel like nothing, but I matter! What we're doing matters! And I. Am. Not. Weak." She punctuates each word with a vicious jab from her finger. She doesn't let it touch him. She may be furious, but she doesn't have a death wish.
"Thirty points from Gryffindor," he sneers. His teeth are even yellower in the scant light, and there is a trail of something faintly red and crusted at the corner of his mouth, and this disgusts her. She stands a little straighter and balls her fists at her sides. Because her teeth are better than his, and because she knows that now, at this very moment, she is not what he thinks she is.
"Fifty points, for all I care! Do it! Do it!"
For a moment, she thinks he is going to grab her. His fingers twitch in her direction, and she instinctively recoils. She feels a savage pleasure at the brief look of abashment on his features, but it is gone almost as soon as she notices it. When he speaks, his voice is calm. Duplicitously so.
"What are you trying to prove, you daft girl? That you belong? That you, with your blood, are better than those born into this world? You think you can act like their leader and teach them how to fight the Death Eaters? When you're surrounded, when you're alone and lying in the dirt, which spell are you going to use? Because the time will come when you will have to do the unforgivable."
"We can handle ourselves just fi—"
"Tell me, Granger, which of your friends do you think will learn to maim the fastest, which of them will be good at it?" He has a good ten inches on her, and he uses it to its full advantage. He leans closer. His breath in her face almost makes her retch. "Which of them will like it?"
It's perverse, the way he knows exactly what to say, exactly how to say it.
"Please. You don't intimidate me," she whispers. And it is a lie. It is a lie.
"You know what your problem is?" he spits again. His eyes are red-rimmed and hideous in a way that she remembers all too clearly. She wonders if he was drunk, then, on that night months ago. She wonders if she didn't linger in the shadow, and if the moon wasn't obscured, would he be standing in front of her right now? There are conversations that can only be had in certain types of darkness.
"Your problem is that you think you're far too good for the rest of us. You just love to show off, don't you? And not just in class, no... you like it, you bloody well revel in their appreciative nods and their sycophantic smiles, you feed on all that shit like a fucking drug addict. And doesn't it bother you, doesn't it just twist your starched fucking knickers that I can see through your shiny facade? That they may not know, not even Harry bloody Potter knows. But Ido."
He steps even closer (too close, step back, too close) and the smell washes over her, the black engulfs her.
"You see, I know you, Granger. It isn't about good and evil with you, it isn't about saving the bloody world. It's about getting riled up into your ideological stupor, until you're frothing at the mouth and bleeding through your fucking eyes, and you convince everyone that you're doing something worthwhile so you can feel pleasantly self-righteous for the rest of the day."
She's heard these words before. Only... it was a different voice, a more insidious tone in her own head. She doesn't know any longer what they are fighting about, but the anger is bubbling too hot and she has to tell him. She has to prove to him...
"You're wrong," she seethes. "It isn't—it's more than-—you're wrong..."
"Then tell me, Miss Granger." He draws back. Suddenly, he is the Potions Professor again, standing in front of the class, lecturing them about some ingredient or other. Suddenly, he is graceful and strict and perfectly in control. The change is so quick that it dizzies her. "If this little... club of yours is really about standing up to age-old prejudice, then why so exclusive? Are there any members from the Slytherin House? Have you simply forgotten about them? Or are they too evil, too corrupt, too much of the wrong sort to be allowed to fight against the Dark Lord?"
How dare he accuse her of prejudice? The self-righteous voice in her mind screams. But somewhere in the back, in the crevices that she doesn't care to examine too much, another voice whispers low and shameful words.
"They are free to join, if they want to."
"Are they, now? You would deign to impart knowledge of potentially dangerous magic to people like Miss Parkinson, to Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle? You would help Mr. Malfoy, if he wanted to learn how to defend himself? And how would the rest of your group receive them, Miss Granger? These scions of Purebloods, these Death Eater children?"
She opens her mouth to answer, but he beats her to it.
"Of course not, because they're all heading down the same path, aren't they? They're all going to end up like their fathers, and their fathers' fathers before them, in the service of the dark. Because we are all bound, aren't we, we of the wicked calling?"
"I don't care about their families. They're all old enough to make their own decisions. They've had their chance, and they've made their choice," she sneers.
His eyes are glassy and unfocused, but they burn and penetrate like a shard of arctic stone. Then he gives her this look, like he is satisfied with her answer. Like he has been waiting for those very same words all along, and she almost expects him to award her five points. And with that one look, she doesn't feel so certain anymore. Like she is all wind and bluster, and he knew this, and now she knows it, too.
And maybe (possibly, possibly), she is exactly what he thinks she is.
She is exhausted.
Her nose is runny, her fingers are cold, and she wants nothing more than to crawl into her bed. It's funny, the way this always happens with him. The way it starts out explosive and she is so sure, sure, sure of the things in her head. And she is just so sick of this.
She remembers how he looked, that time in Grimmauld Place, with his head tilted up to her. How everything was falling apart around him, and how he looked so much like he belonged in a place that could be reduced to ashes in a single paltry breath.
Her eyeballs feel too warm in their sockets.
"Will that be all, sir?"
He straightens, and the look he gives her is all poison triumph.
"Like I've said, sir, I was just finishing my patrol. I've rather an early start tomorrow, and I'd best be getting off to bed. Good evening, Professor." Her voice sounds oddly detached.
He is no longer looking at her. His right hand is clenching and unclenching at his side, and he is glaring at something just beyond her shoulder. She realizes now that there is something in his eyes that shouldn't be there, something sinister and dissolute, something manic, something that tells her that this is war, little girl, and the great ones are dead.
She turns to leave him to whatever it is he does in the corridors in the middle of the night.
MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN
MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS "RALLYING POINT"
FOR OLD DEATH EATERS*
"There you are, Harry,"* said Ron, his voice breathy and incredulous. "That's why he was happy last night..."*
"I don't believe this."* Harry brings his palm down with a smack onto the table, making Neville flinch. "Fudge is blaming the breakout on Sirius?" *
Antonin Dolohov. Augustus Rookwood. Bellatrix Lestrange. Their names are familiar, and she knows that they have stricken fear into hearts far stouter than her own. But she is sixteen going-on-seventeen, and she does not know torture. She does not know death. She does not know the primal call of blood, and how it glistens even in the dark. For her, Azkaban is a dark place on a cold rock, somewhere with frenzied winds and indefatigable waves, somewhere far away, where evil is sent to rot. The fact that these names stand for Death Eaters who have escaped is terrifying, but it is just another problem. Just another obstacle that the Order will have to face.
She looks up to the staff table, already knowing what her eyes will not find. Perhaps there had been a celebration over on the other side of the line. A conviviality to commemorate the return of Voldemort's finest. Perhaps that explained his distasteful... behavior, and that awful smell, last night. She twists her lips.
She rips open the Daily Prophet to read the rest of the article. She drowns out the sounds of breakfast, making an irritated noise in her throat. Here they are, standing on the edge of a precipice, waiting for the push, while the rest of the Hogwarts population is busy with their toast and marmalade and blueberry muffins.
"Oh my—"* she breathes as her eyes catch on another headline.
How dreadful...
"What now?"* said Harry, peeking over her shoulder to scan the paper.
TRAGIC DEMISE OF MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER*
She doesn't even know him. She didn't even remember his name until today. She remembers a vacant stare, knobby fingers clutching at a white blanket, but not much else. They saw him in St. Mungo's, that day they ran into Neville and his grandmother. He had been permanently ill, but now he's dead. They look at each other for a moment. They could have been the last visitors to that ward, the last people, other than his Healer, to have seen him alive. They could have been the last people he's seen alive.
Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr. Bode's ward at the time of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement, "St. Mungo's deeply regrets the death of Mr. Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to this tragic accident."*
He received a cutting of Devil's Snare, disguised as something innocent, as a Christmas present. They were there when the Healer brought it in.
She wonders if his life flashed before his eyes, like they say it does before your death. He had been mentally incapacitated, so maybe he didn't even remember his life. Maybe the Healer, Miriam Strout, told him stories of her life as he lay there, unmoving. Maybe she ran out of stories, so she told him again and again until the same events and characters and places really sank in. Maybe he remembered scenes from those stories, until the line blurred between what was his and what was hers. So he died, with someone else's life flashing before his eyes. Maybe he was grateful.
The rhythmic clicking of her charmed knitting needles fills the room. Lavender gives her a pointed look.
"Sorry, I'm almost done," she smiles appeasingly. Please, it's only nine o'clock. She closes the hangings around her bed to muffle the sound anyway. She lies back on her pillow, watching the flash and dim, flash and dim of light on her needles as they churn out section after woolly section of a house-elf sock.
Broderick Bode was an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries. He may have been a husband to someone, a father to a few, perhaps a dear friend to those he left behind. He could have been someone's taciturn neighbor, the lonely old man with the unfaltering stare who went out on his porch at six o'clock every morning to water the hydrangeas. He could have been someone's nosy and overbearing superior, the cantankerous codger with the stultifying voice who insisted that his subordinates use one color of ink for all official paperwork. He could have been someone's running partner, the impossibly hale fifty-year-old with impossibly white teeth who liked to hike his athletic socks up to mid-calf and ate precisely two cups of bran cereal and a boiled egg for breakfast every morning. He would sit there in his kitchen, munching, watching the sunrise through the window, as he had for the past twenty years.
She remembers when she was around eight or nine, and she found out that her next-door neighbor had died of an aneurysm. It was old Mrs. Ruth G. She had had a multitude of children and grandchildren, most of them blonde, all of them tall, and holidays always meant cars spilling out of her driveway and into the Grangers'. When she passed, there had been a funeral somewhere in Dorset, where her family was from. And then there had been a period of two weeks when aggrieved family members kept coming and going into the house next door, selecting their own memories to take home with them.
Or maybe she remembered wrong. Eight is very young, and nine isn't much better. Maybe Mrs. G. had been a batty old lady who drowned in cooking sherry and had too many dead bolt locks on her front door. Maybe there had been no tall, blonde grandchildren, no funeral somewhere in Dorset.
She reaches up to untangle a snag in the thread. She hasn't quite perfected the charm yet, so she has to manually comb her fingers through the knots every fifteen minutes or so.
Broderick Bode is the second casualty. He is an empty bed in the long-term residents' ward of the Spell Damage floor at St. Mungo's. He is three paragraphs on page ten of the Daily Prophet. He is a put-together mental image of sickness shrouded in pale sheets and now he is dead. He is an afterthought.
Her parents had never made a fuss about Valentine's Day, so she doesn't understand why it's such a big deal for other people. The only appeal it holds for her are the dozens of plates of chocolate cupcakes with the pink coconut frosting piped into fat hearts on top. The house-elves make them every year, and she really shouldn't encourage their involuntary (from her perspective, at least) servitude, but she isn't exactly spoilt for sugary treats back home. So when she spies a bit of pink wrapping paper sticking out of Ron's bag, she isn't in the least suspicious. This changes, however, when his face turns beet red as he sees her looking and he shoves it deeper under his books, all the while desperately trying to draw Seamus into conversation. Later, after he has dumped an industrial-sized box of spiced toffee into her arms, her first thought is one of dismay, because her parents will forcibly strap her into the chair and take out the dental drill if they find out she has ingested about five stone worth of sugar. But then as she looks at Ron, with his ears red and the toe of his shoe scuffing the carpet, and she smiles at him and grasps his hand, she thinks that maybe a bit of a fuss wouldn't kill her.
Umbridge is stumping about the halls, pink bow a-tremble, stopping students and asking them sweetly to turn out their pockets and go through their bags. But the article she commissioned Rita Skeeter to write has spread uncontrollably throughout Hogwarts, if only for the fact that it features Harry Potter. Hermione smiles with a vengeful pleasure. It's too late now, she thinks. And if there's one thing Umbridge could have done to ensure that every single student will read the article, it is to ban The Quibbler, which she had done almost immediately after the appearance of the latest issue. Harry's silent episodes are decreasing in frequency. And Luna Lovegood, who always regarded Hermione with a touch of coolness, was often to be found sitting at the Gryffindor table next to her, imparting advice about how to control unruly hair with a mixture of a young niffler's saliva and black beans.
Otters can be rather cute, in a way that sort of sneaks up on you. It takes a while to realize this. Yes, they're quite lovable in their own special sort of way. One has to beware of their formidable teeth, however. But yes, barring the teeth, and the short, bristly fur, and the potentially deadly claws, otters are alright. She does not know how she feels about their tails, as they have too much of a rodent quality to them.
She sneaks a glance over at Cho Chang's swan. It is floating along the air gracefully, leaving a trail of silver wisps, its neck bobbing slightly with each movement. Cho is watching it dreamily, turning her head every few seconds to see if Harry is watching her. He is. She twists her lips. A swan is completely predictable. It's majestic and beautiful, but what does it do, really? Aside from meandering about in that lethargic pace that it has, honking every once in a while. See, now while otters may not be the sleekest, most visually pleasing of animals, they are relatively intelligent. At least, more intelligent than certain birds, she surmises. They certainly look dependable. And they can probably defend themselves quite well from predators.
Harry keeps reminding them that producing a Patronus while surrounded by your friends in a well-lighted room in Hogwarts is quite different from producing one in a situation of dire need.
"Oh, don't be such a killjoy. They're so pretty!"* Cho bubbles.
"They're not supposed to be pretty, they're supposed to protect you,"* Harry replies sternly. Too right. She can tell, however, that he is immensely pleased by anything that Cho Chang could have to say to him.
Despite the failure of most D.A. members to produce a corporeal Patronus, there is a palpable excitement in the air. This is the lesson that a great many of them have been looking forward to since the group's conception. Neville's face is shiny with effort, and Lavender has taken to stamping her foot every time her wand emits puffs of silver mist, but they keep trying anyway.
She senses it before she sees what is going on. It is the sudden hush that befalls a large group of people, the quiet atmosphere of nervous expectation whenever something strange appears in their midst. She looks fondly at her gamboling silver otter, before allowing it to evaporate in a whisper of silvery luster. Everyone is staring at Harry at this point.
"What's going on?" says Cho at her shoulder.
"I don't know, I expect—" She stops as she hears a familiar voice. A pinched, over-eager voice that can be most often heard eulogizing Harry Potter.
"Harry Potter, sir... Dobby has come to warn you..."*
Warn him of what? Of what?
And then her blood roars to her head, and her heart splinters, pieces of it beating in her wrists, her neck, her temple.
Because Dobby starts muttering about a 'she' finding out, a 'she' on her way to the Room of Requirement, and banging his head off Harry's knees. She knows who 'she' is, there is only one 'she' that can strike that sort of trepidation, and she watches as horror dawns on all the other faces as they realize who 'she' is too. There is a funny sort of inertia in the room, and she is sure that everything is unfolding in slow motion for everyone. Until -
"What are you waiting for?" Harry bellows. "RUN!"*
And suddenly the spell is broken. She shoots out her arm and grabs at the one nearest to her, possibly someone female judging by the slimness. She yanks it mercilessly, tightening her grip as the arm tries to twist away from the bite of her nails. Together they stumble toward the doorway where the D.A. members are pushing and shoving at each other to get out. She throws herself into the center of the knot of people, eyeing for gaps in between wriggling backs, crouching low and pushing her way through legs and knees. She looks around for Harry and calls for him, spotting him in the middle of the throng with Dobby in his arms. He says something to the stricken house-elf and Dobby runs off. She resumes pushing as soon as she is sure that Harry is behind her. She remembers spotting a flash of red earlier, and she knows that Ginny will be safe with Fred and George. Ron was standing right by the door when Dobby came, so he ought to be alright as well.
She reaches a point where the pressure is unbearable and they are all breathing the same air and she has to open her mouth to suck in—to breathe—oxygen! Oxygen!Her hair is plastered to the back of her neck. Someone's elbow slams against the side of her head. A hand is shoving at the space between her shoulder blades. And her heart is thudding wild and her stomach is churning angry and her eyes are swivelling left-right-left-right for escape—
The pushing eases and she is past the doorway. But still she cannot stop to breathe. She tugs at the unknown arm now slick with sweat and pounds down the hallway. She is certain with all her heart that a hand will clutch at her throat, her hair, her shirt and pull her down to the ground. She pumps her legs harder (harder, faster, harder) and a stitch is leaking acid into the flesh surrounding her ribs. Someone crashes to the floor behind her but she doesn't care because the tapestry is right there, right there!
She hurtles into the thick rug and hopes that she remembered the passageway correctly. The floor is briefly illuminated, then everything is velvet darkness as the tapestry flaps back into place over the hidden doorway. The close walls exude a chill that freezes the sweat on her skin. She skids to a halt and swivels her wand around, but then lowers it as she realizes that the chorus of labored breathing she hears is their own, multiplied and sent back to them by the stone walls. The arm once again tries to slip away.
"No, stop it! We have to get to the library!" she whispers harshly.
"Alright, alright, just... I can't—let me breathe for a second." So it isa girl. The voice isn't familiar, so it isn't someone from Gryffindor. She throws her arm out and her hand grazes a torso, doubled over and breathing hard. It is someone else, someone bulkier than the owner of the wrist in her hand. She sighs in relief. For one second, for one terrifying second of mingled guilt and panic, she had thought that it had been Harry who crashed into the floor behind her earlier. But he had apparently managed to follow her unspoken plan.
"Harry, is that you? We have to go."
"R-right," he pushes out. His voice is husky from the strain.
They round the passageway and descend the three flights of stairs. If she remembers correctly, this leads to the fourth floor. If they could just get to the library they could pretend that they've been there all along. She hopes that the other members didn't think they could make it if they ran all the way to their common rooms.
"There should be a doorknob somewhe—yes! Here, come on!" She twists the knob, wincing at the soft wumph of the catch being released. They emerge in an alcove beside the Prefects' bathroom.
"Do you think Umbridge checked the library already?" the girl asks. It is Cho Chang.
"No, Dobby said she was heading straight for the Room of—" She stops, turning her gaze back on Cho and the boy standing next to her.
"Michael Corner?" Her voice is shrill, her tone condemnatory.
"Yeah, sorry. You thought I was Potter—"
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Hey! I could hardly breathe up there, at the pace you were goi—"
"Shut up! Where's Harry? Where is he? Didn't you see him?" She yanks the door open, expecting Harry to be standing on the other side. But there is nothing.
"Er, I reckon it was him that fell... I heard someone cast a Tripping Jinx, and then I think Umbridge got him. She sounded very pleased with herself..." Cho said.
No, no, no, no, no... this can't be happening.
She pinches the bridge of her nose, willing her brain to come up with anything, anything, anything. She remembers the look in Harry's eyes as he walked amongst them, the pride, the enjoyment of having something to look forward to besides Occlumency with Professor Snape and Defense with Umbridge, besides a lifetime ban from Quidditch, besides the nightmares of a smiling Voldemort, besides being Harry Potter in a world that is ripping at the seams. She remembers the earnestness with which he tried to demonstrate the proper casting of the Patronus Charm. She remembers how he seemed to forget, finally, whatever it is that makes him close off and stare at the fireplace for hours. If they were caught now, if Umbridge dissolved the D.A. now...
She slumps her sweat-stained back against the wall and presses the heels of her hands into her temples.
The nights are getting balmy once again. The stars are ridiculously bright in the sky, and everything is still. This could have been just another night on the Astronomy Tower, if not for the O.W.L. examiners pacing behind them, glancing occasionally at their charts. She sets up her telescope, adjusting it on its stand. She presses her eye to the eyepiece and marks down the position of Venus on her chart.
She read somewhere, in one of her Dad's astronomy books, that everything in the universe is composed of exploded stars. Sometime in the early universe when the first giants were born out of disorder and chaos, there were only light elements in the universe. The heavier stuff, everything that matters for the sustainment of life, was produced much later, in the bowels of those burning titans. They burned briefly before it finally got too bright, and then they perished in violent rapture, scattering those molecules far and wide. So every atom in your body came from the death of a star, and the atoms in your right hand could have come from a star say, ten thousand light years away from the star that produced the atoms of your left. When she read that so many years ago, the poetry of it never really struck her. Here they are now, plotting little pinpoints of light on a piece of parchment, pinpoints of light that don't really have a discernible effect on their day-to-day lives. But those are their forefathers, really. Their progenitors. Somewhere in the universe, some time billions of years ago, a star died for her, and maybe the evidence can still be found twinkling in today's night sky.
She remembers saying something about a saving-people thing, and fury in Harry's face.
She remembers a hasty plan, something she never approves of normally, but she has to do it because she can sense that something is up. She remembers creeping underneath the Invisibility Cloak, not carefully enough because she was never good at this sort of thing, Harry very agitated beside her. Then Ginny's voice saying something about Garroting Gas, Harry yelling Number twelve, Grimmauld Place in Umbridge's fireplace.
"Sirius? Sirius, are you there?"*
And then Kreacher lying, lying—a hand yanking her hair and her neck bending all the way forever backward, the smell of stale sweat in unwashed robes, Millicent Bulstrode's unnaturally sharp teeth in an ill-intended smile, then her wand is wrested easily, pathetically from her grasp. Then despair and frustration as the Inquisitorial Squad bring them in one by one, everything over before anything's begun. Then Umbridge's slack face in Harry's, acquisitive and eager.
"Draco—fetch Professor Snape."*
Then relief, because. Because.
Counting down the seconds until—"You wanted to see me, Headmistress?"* Cool and collected. He looks around, uncaring, but she knows he is furious because they've been so, so, so stupid (I'm sorry, save us, I'm sorry). She knows he will do what needs to be done. She wills him to look at her, putting everything at stake in her eyeballs, willing her irises to tell him. He doesn't have Veritaserum, but it is a lie, and he is on their side. Triumph, because fuck you, Umbridge. He still isn't looking at her. Harry screaming about Padfoot, Padfoot in the place where it's hidden.* Finally, finally, a flash of black meeting her, and she could almost cry. Then the door closes behind him and a painful grinding in her lungs because everything is hopeless once again.
She remembers a threat of torture and rage in her bones and a desperation bigger than anything she has ever known shoving against her chest wall. She remembers trying to keep her eyes open to force the tears to form. Snivelling like an idiot. Lying through her teeth.
She remembers crashing into the Forbidden Forest, with Harry and Professor Umbridge in tow. Then the sound of hooves pounding the earth, the smell of a giant's blood on her robes.
She remembers flying over the lights of London with nothing visible to support her nothing but terror, terror, terror.
She remembers an atrium, gleaming and beautiful. A fountain of golden figures glistening looking like it is the most true most beautiful most precious thing in the world.
She remembers a large room. Black. Circular. Blue flames in blue darkness that reflected on identical doors. She remembers those doors rotating faster and faster.
She remembers a tank filled with nightmare-alien-creatures, squirming in pearly white liquid. She remembers detached horror—are those brains?Her voice sounding strange and small.
She remembers a cavernous space, an amphitheater? Stone steps. An archway, sinister and seductive. She remembers the fascinated terror with which Harry looked at it, the low light reflecting in his glasses. Let's go, let's go, okay? she had coaxed him. Nobody's talking, Harry,she had said, tugging on his arm, pulling him from the voices that seek to transfix and slay.
She remembers clocks. Sparking and glinting clocks, every kind of clock she could imagine.
She remembers dusty shelves. Rows and rows of them, covered in glass orbs. She remembers thinking, no one's here, we'll be fine, no one's here, scanning for row ninety-seven.
Then scanning in the darkness, squinting into shadow. Nothing. No one.
Then Harry, whispering to himself, he's right down at the end. I saw him. Sirius, Sirius. He might be... Or maybe...
She remembers an orb with Harry's name on it, and her snapping at him Don't touch it! Don't take it!Because it she felt the danger of it brown and disgusting slopping under her skin, and she was so sure that something was going to happen.
She remembers voices. Black shapes materializing out of thin air, eyes peeking through slits in hoods, wand tips promising doom. Then a woman with the feverish low scratching voice, with the lovely face ravaged by something eating at her insides. Mocking Harry, taunting Harry with the death of his parents, the death of his friends. She remembers adrenaline searing her veins. She remembers the faint amusement, because the voice in her head is nagging her, You thought you were brave, didn't you?Ron stiffening, Ginny whimpering. Harry buying time, stalling, every single one of them idiots with too much bravado.
Then screaming, threatening, her mind hardly working, her heart seizing in her throat. Then a cascade of glass, runningfleeinghavetogetaway, running fast, running blindly, casting over her shoulder. Masked faces getting closer. Her friends, her friends, pleasebeokaypleasebeokay, Harry's fist in her robes dragging her tripping and flailing, Neville run faster, run faster, something tearing at her ankle something dripping down her temple warm and wet and disgusting, and she smears at it with her palm and a funny thought, it looks just like mud in that darkness, in that blue ghost darkness—
What do we do, Harry? What do we do?
Hiding under a desk, hoping, praying to something, anything, oh God something trickling down her trousers—
Please—I don't want to die—only sixteen!—Idon'twanttodie—
Check under the desks one of them says in a deep voice, crawling out from under because she isn't a coward she isn't a bloody coward and then her heart stops and she almost throws herself onto her knees to beg and plead because a wand is in her face and a voice says Avada—
Harry toppling into the Death Eater, Neville clattering around somewhere behind her, and one more, two more minutes of life regained and it's worth it, runningfleeinghavetogetaway, time trapped in a bell jar, laughing because what the bloody hell is that Death Eater doing with a baby's head on his shoulders, hysterical, eyes leaking, head throbbing, legs melting, smashing into a bookcase and heavy things falling, hitting her in all her bony spots, catching her temple, her ribs, her hip and crying out, swallowing vomit, Harry petrifying one of the enemy, her saying well done, a silent slash, a purple flame, something cold and jagged twisting in her liver and slashing at her lungs, all her air rushing out, all the lights rushing out, and her thinking, you wanted a push? You wanted a push? THIS is the bloody push!—
Falling finally into the precipice, tripping over the edge and they aren't, they will never be old enough, or clever enough, or braveenough—
I'm sorry. Save us. I'm sorry.
A flash of black a deadly voice asking you think you can teach them?—
Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. And silence.
There is a pressure on her chest. She pushes feebly against it, her arms blocks of solid concrete at her sides.
"No... no... no..." someone is whining. And it isn't her, because that person's voice sounds like death.
Somewhere far away, somewhere millions of miles away a deep voice says, "Water, Pomfrey."
Bustling and fussing. A large, warm hand at the back of her neck easing her head up. A blaze in her lungs at the movement.
She is crying. She is weeping. Through eyes gummed shut and crusty.
"Drink this."
But the water is too cold, her throat too dry, the air too empty and she chokes and sputters, feeling it spill onto her naked chest.
Her naked chest. Her naked chest.
She panics, trying to pull the covers up, but there aren't any. The hand eases her head back down into the pillow. She lies there, sobbing and naked.
"Calm down, Granger." The voice is stern. She complies. "Madam Pomfrey has unclothed your torso to make it easier for me to heal you. You were hit with a dark spell. I need to know what it was."
A silent slash, a purple flame, pain, pain, pain, pain—
"Granger! Stop thrashing—"
A hand between her breasts, fingers at the base of her throat, pushing her into the bed. It is warm and strong and firm.
"I need to know the spell, or you will die."
"I don't—I don't know," she croaks. "Don't let me, don't let me. I'm only sixteen. Don't let me."
"I won't. But I need to know—
"I don't know! Please, he was silenced—Silencing Charm, I don't know!" She is desperate. Already she feels the magic wreaking havoc inside her, and it is blunt and putrid.
The hand leaves her chest. Footsteps walk away. This is the push into the precipice.
"No! Please, Professor, come back! Professor! Professor!"
One second.
Three.
Eight.
She is screaming incoherently, ripping the muscles of her throat. The pain, the pain. Blood coating her teeth. Her chest on fire.
"Bloody hell, be still, Granger!" And then, gently, "I'm here... I won't leave you."
A finger rubbing something into the slits of her closed eyelids.
"I need to see. This will help you open your eyes."
The light is dim, could be dawn, could be twilight. Madam Pomfrey is standing next to her bed with her hands clasped together under her chin, her eyes wet, her lower lip trembling. It is strange to see her like this. Hermione doesn't remember the Mediwitch showing any sign of weakness in the face of any of Harry's injuries.
"Oh, Hermione dear," she breathes.
"Look at me, Granger." Her breath comes in short gasps. His face has a grey tinge to it, and he looks more angry than she has ever seen him. The buttons at his throat are undone and she can just make out the jut of his collarbone.
"Professor Snape needs to know the spell they used on you, love. Please look at him."
"I thought... Oh..."
Her voice catches as she sees her chest.
There is no blood, no laceration. But her skin is a sickly cadaver yellow, her veins black, turgid, pulsating hypnotically. There is a large purple welt running diagonally across her torso, starting at her left shoulder, running across the nipple of her left breast, and ending at her right hip. And... she bites back a scream. Her skin is moving and shifting. It is subtle, but she can feel it. Like her organs are churning under her skin...
She heaves herself over the side of her bed and vomits. Madam Pomfrey's small, slightly damp hands pull her hair back. "Oh dear, oh dear," she says, over and over like a litany.
She drops back into her pillow.
I'm going to die.
God.
I'm going to die.
I need... God—
I'm going to die.
"Perhaps someday, but not tonight. I won't let you die tonight." She doesn't realize she's been saying it out loud.
A hand slips under her chin, fingers clasped against her jaw. He brings his face close to hers until she can feel his breath on her lips. "I need to know," he whispers. It sounds like an apology but it couldn't be because he has done nothing wrong. He puts his hand back on her chest, and then she forgets to breathe as everything is plunged in black.
Things flash before her eyes, things she regrets. It turns out Harry did have a saving-people thing. But it isn't his fault.
Antonin Dolohov's febrile glare and damning smile are before her again, the flash of purple, the pain. Then, he is gone from her head. Somehow she feels colder. She sees him doing something with his wand pointed at her chest, sees him chanting low and melodious through the tears in her eyes. The heavy warmth on her chest is still there, and it is an anchor, a lifeline.
She is watching them from somewhere else, watching herself go into a seizure on the bed, watching as the welt becomes a deep red, approaches a gut-clenching black, watching as her skin churns and finally as it splits, blood-splatter like in the films. Somewhere, someone is yelling, "You won't, you won't, not tonight!"
She watches as he doesn't flinch, her blood dripping from his face, the tip of his nose, his lip. Blood in a little pool in the hollow above his collarbone. It is reddish black against his ashen white and it is the color of shame. Madam Pomfrey is full-on sobbing now.
She watches as he continues to sing his incantation, as her skin slowly knits back together, as the wound closes in on itself and heals before her eyes into an ugly, raised scar. It is pink, and bumpy, passing from her left shoulder, twisting around her left nipple, ending at her right hip.
There is a stalling in the pulleys and weights within her heart and a sterile solace in the black of his eyes in the weight of his hand pressing into her and I'm sorry save us I'm sorry, I couldn't teach them but they told me that this, this, is what it means to be brave, and forgive me, forgive me for I know not what I do—
When does childhood end?
It ends here. And it ends now. And it ends forever.
*Taken directly from canon.