A/N: Oh, hello. If you reach the end of this chapter, please drop a line. Or at least a letter. (My favorite letter is "Z," FYI.)
Now on to the chapter. (Things happen! The verb of the story begins.)
Let's go.
The Roots of This Tree
-
Chapter Two
Her ears are ringing. This is her first bit of consciousness in what must be forever.
Hermione blinks, and all she sees is white, the light blinding. There is only so much her senses can take, so she closes her eyes for the moment as her hearing adjusts.
Her head slumps to the side, and woven strands of thick, almost-smooth wool brush against her cheek. Her hand twitches. She extends her fingers minutely, testing, flexing. Reaching out, eyes still firmly closed, she searches for her wand across the top of what must be a very fine rug.
"Who are you?"
The clanging in her eardrums is lessening, but that's also before the voice. The voice itself is distant, and though it feels like her head's underwater, she can hear the words well enough, can tell they're shouted.
"Ungh," she croaks. It's supposed to be a question.
Where am I?
What happened?
Did everyone make it out?
She isn't sure which one she's trying to say, but any would do.
She blinks in rapid-fire succession, her vision white-black-white-black-white, until the light and dark converge into a manageable mix. As they do, a face starts flashing into focus next to her on what she had correctly deduced was a rug. A persian rug. Hermione blinks again, the world coming together now, and finds herself staring into the glassy, unseeing eyes of a middle-aged man.
She screams.
"Be quiet!" the voice yells, cutting her off. She has enough awareness now to tell the voice is coming from behind her.
She jerks her head around, her breathing a heavy, hitched staccato. At the rapid turn, vertigo slams into her. Hits her hard. Makes her dizzy.
The physical dizziness, though, is no match for the swirling confusion she feels as she puts a face to the voice yelling at her. Because it's the man on the rug, only younger. And—not a corpse.
No, his eyes are definitely, distinctly alive. Wild, even.
She's breathing faster now. It's unsteady, uneven. Panic. This is panic.
"Who are you?" he asks again, louder, his pale skin flushed a mottled pink. "What are you doing here?"
Her eyes lock on his face, and she sees that pale, mottled skin, and a head of messy black hair, and a rage — a panic so dissimilar to her own, as her right arm swings across the rug in a quick, searching arc. Her hand hits the top of her thigh without coming across anything.
Her jeans are soaked and warm.
She's still bleeding.
"Hel - help," she calls.
The young man starts, looking over his shoulder, then back to her. He's holding a wand tightly in his left hand. Hermione sees the handle of another wand sticking out of his trouser pocket. It must be hers.
Instantly, her arms heave against the floor, and she attempts to sit up.
It's not a good idea.
When Hermione jerks awake again, she is in a bed. On top of a bed. Dense, scratchy wool irritates her arms, and it feels like there's a weight on her head. Her hands fly to her stomach, under her torn, blood-stained shirt, and find a rope of tender purple-pink scar tissue. She exhales.
"How are you feeling?"
The voice is deep, precise, and polite. Somehow, she manages to keep from reacting suddenly.
She sits up slowly instead, thudding heart heavy in her ears, limbs sluggish, and head foggy. Adrift. Her back presses into the wall behind her as her bottom half sinks further into the bed — though, it's really more like a cot; there's no headboard or footboard, and the mattress is so pitifully thin that it might actually be made of straw.
The room she's in, if one could call it that, is warm, cramped, and dark with a low, sloped ceiling. Cracks of yellow morning light pierce through a haphazardly shuttered window, providing partial illumination to the room, which appears to be the whole building — a shack.
It's filthy. Putrid, really. There are potion ingredients sprawled and rotting by a dusty, upended cauldron and empty fireplace, rabbit bones and rat carcasses littering the floor, and snakes — actual snakes — nailed to the door with thick iron spikes practically cleaving their necks. Some are so large they nearly touch the floor. She's not sure, because her vision is slightly blurred around the edges, but she thinks one is still moving.
She grimaces and looks away.
In the tiny, dirty space, it's impossible to miss the teenager keeping vigil at her bedside on a rickety wooden chair. For one, he's the antithesis to this place — clean and meticulously put together. For another, he is so close she can almost reach out and touch him. So close he can certainly reach out and touch her.
She can't avoid noticing him, not in a space so small. She scans his body, tries to place him, her eyes roaming the structured plains of his face, the carefully combed waves of dark, dark brown hair, the unblemished, unlined pale skin, the wide mouth, the full lips, quickly skipping over and around the details, piecing disparate parts together as best and fast as she can.
He is dreamlike, beautiful, and utterly unfamiliar.
He brought her here.
Hermione glances down, frowning, as a lurching clutch of fear snaps in her. She sees a wand in his lap, just beyond her grasp, resting perpendicular to his knees. It isn't hers, but it looks almost identical to Harry's. Slightly less worn, maybe, but it could be its twin.
"You've been asleep for awhile. Are you feeling alright?" the teenager asks. His voice is velvet and swathes her in concern.
"I'm not sure," Hermione answers cautiously, moving her eyes from his lap and scooting farther back against the wall. "Better, I think."
Her head hurts, and her mouth feels like it's full of cotton. She wonders if it's from the dehydration, blood loss, or something else entirely. She swallows. The little saliva that's in her mouth is thick, stringy.
"That's good. I was worried. I wasn't sure how you'd be feeling, to tell you the truth."
She doesn't look back at him, focusing instead on her dry, blood-stained shirt. He sounds genuine, though. Kind.
"Thank you for healing me," she says slowly. Her tongue darts over her lips, and her eyes flick to the door and back.
The connections — the connections aren't coming, and she knows this isn't right. She feels tired, yes, but it's beyond than that. She's numb and sluggish, and her thoughts tingle, like her brain is a limb that has fallen asleep, just a jumble of pins and needles.
"You did heal me, right?" she asks, unsure. Anxious. Stumbling.
She's tripping around in her head on feet too weak to stand.
"Yes," he says, and out of her periphery, she sees him nod and give her a close-lipped, appraising smile, inclining his head calmly, magnanimously. The gesture feels so ludicrously out of place.
"Thank you. Thank you for your help," she says, and it's genuine. Kind. The gratitude spills from her without any conscious thought at all, and it's like she's putting too much pressure on a nerve.
"Someone hit you with a very dark curse," he all but whispers, voice low and, again, very concerned. "You nearly died. Do you know what happened to you — how you got here?"
She feels skittish. Confused and unwell in a way that seems deeply wrong, even for her injury. But something about his words and his tone bother her, so she forces herself to look at him. Not around him. Not over his features. She looks at him, and their gazes clash, crack and puncture like an electric shock.
His eyes are brown-black, intense, and focused entirely on her. At once, Hermione sees in them a light — an absence — a silvery blue deepness and a black, craggy darkness. The veil flashes, someone screams — prolonged, undying, and then a man is lying murdered and empty next to her.
She recoils.
How could she forget?
Did he make her forget?
She closes her eyes, exhaling raggedly, collecting herself. She will not panic. Panic doesn't help anything.
This is simply a problem that needs solving, and when she solves it, when she puts the pieces together, she'll understand.
It's morning, and she's not at the Ministry, and she's not at Hogwarts, and she's not at Grimmauld Place. She nearly died — thanks to, at least in part, a curse from Dolohov. Then a man who looked like an older version of the young man sitting before her did die. Somewhere in between, a madly cackling Bellatrix Lestrange shot Sirius through the veil, and she felt a wrenching, blinding scream.
This is what she knows.
Is it?
Hermione opens her eyes, and he is still staring at her, trying, she thinks, to catch the path of her gaze again. He has a consuming, probing stare. The kind that takes and takes and doesn't miss much.
She looks away. The dark denim of her jeans is dirty, dry, and stiff. Gradually, she bends her knees, pulling her legs up further on the cot, into herself, like the coils of a spring.
"I—I don't know. Where is here?" she asks, her voice sounding even weaker than she feels. "Where am I?"
The teen tilts his head and fiddles with a large black and gold ring on his left index finger, watching her like she is a curious thing.
"Little Hangleton," he answers after a second, like he's mulling something over.
"Oh."
Her heart stutters. Plummets. Over one hundred fifty kilometers from the Ministry, and the only person she's ever known to have been here is Harry — and that hadn't exactly been by choice, either. Outwardly, she tries to give as little away as possible, to not let the unsteady build of anxiety show on her face. Fear, panic — they don't help anything.
The young man leans in slightly, his crisp white button-down wrinkling and the empty gaping pockets of his trousers expanding, but otherwise he makes no apparent move to ask her anything.
She fights back a frown as another piece clicks. "I'm sorry, what was your name? I'm not sure we've met."
"No," he says, "we haven't. I wish it was under better circumstances, but, well," he pauses, and it's charming; it means something. "I'm Tom."
She doesn't know what to do with charming, though; it's another thing that doesn't fit. She knows that, somehow.
Her brows knit, and she presses. "Tom...?"
"Just Tom," he answers, tone clipped. He looks rather cross all of a sudden, and it's a frightening, refractory expression.
"Tom," Hermione says, planting the soles of her shoes flat on the mattress, testing the name. It feels wrong. Everything about what's happening feels wrong. She comes to a decision.
"Tom," she repeats, firmer, "have you seen my wand? I seem to have misplaced it."
She watches him, and he watches her.
"I'm not sure what you—"
"Okay, then."
She lunges, diving sideways for the wand on his lap.
She lands roughly, slamming into him. Her right hand brushes gleaming, pristinely polished wood, and her magic flares spectacularly at the slight touch, clearing her head with a shout. Her fingers curl around the cylindrical tip of the wand, and it's perfect, and it's hers — and suddenly she's grasping air, then she's grasping nothing at all, arm still outstretched, her body partway falling off the cot. She tenses, her hand curled in a hard fist.
She swings it upward and catches him on the jaw.
He staggers in his seat, momentarily stunned. Hermione is halfway on top of him now and not wasting any time. She clambers for his wrist, pushing against the mattress behind her and practically crawling up his body, causing the small, straining wooden chair they're both on to rock back.
She doesn't pause to look at him — doesn't pause to think. She wraps her hand around the wand, her fingers overlocking and interlacing with Tom's long, thin ones; the ring on his finger burns hot, and her magic screams, floodwaters building and ready to burst. There's no way she's strong enough to wrench the wand from his firm grip, not now, so she squeezes her fingers tighter, pulls at her magic, and yells.
"Expelliarmus!"
