A/N: Chap 3 review responses are in my forums like normal. Thanks for reading.
Chapter Four: Lost
When Hermione Granger was a newly turned seventeen-year-old, she lost herself.
That's not to say she lost her mind, or her soul (although some would argue the latter). No, she lost all control over her own life when Harry returned yet again from what should have been, and for anyone else would have been, death itself.
The most intense memory of her life was the day she abandoned Hogwarts, her friends and her family and walked into the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade in response to Harry's cryptic written message. "I am not Harry," he told her in a whisper that made every hair on her body stand on end, and her insides burn into mush. "But much of who and what I am came from him. When I look at you, I see what Harry saw; I see a young woman of stunning beauty and intelligence. I want what he wanted. But I am not Harry, Hermione Granger. I have the rage and power of a Sith Lord within me, and I will stand up for myself, and I will take what I can."
He took her, and she gave herself to him, lost completely in the overpowered whirlwind which was the newly reborn and remade Harry Potter. She did so because in that one moment of time she could not imagine any type of life without him in it.
Sometimes, in the very few hours of the night when he slept with Luna draped over him, she would sit up and look down at the two of them and wonder if that moment in Hogsmeade was the greatest mistake she'd ever made. Luna seemed always to be the quiet one; the gentle one. Yet Hermione could never forget that it was Luna who killed Nymphadora Tonks to defend Harry after his fight with Bellatrix. It was Luna who helped Harry gather the hundred Muggles for him to perform the Sed of Ramses, even if it was an Imperiused Pansy Parkinson who actually did the dirty work.
"Harry will need this power, Hermione," the supposedly 'moral' center of their triangle explained. "I've seen it."
It was Luna who convinced her to go forward with the creation of the Philosopher's Stones, despite the terrible secret behind its magic. Hermione could not help but smile at the irony of Voldemort's attempts to find the stone during their First Year at Hogwarts, given the stone could only work for its creators. There was a reason no one else had ever made the stone. What Nicholas and Paranelle Flamel surrendered was their progeny, for only by harvesting all of Paranelle's eggs and Nicholas Flamel's testes when they were still young were they able to make the stones.
"It is a balance, you see," Luna explained even as she began working on the spell that would harvest their eggs. "Reproduction is an evolutionary tactic for living things that will one day die. With these stones, we will live forever if we choose, and so there is no need for us to reproduce. The price of immortality is our progeny."
"But Harry…"
"Harry has a different path to immortality," Luna said with that infuriating calm with which she greeted all things. "The elixir will maintain our hormones and our bodies; we will simply not have menses any longer. Surely that's not a bad thing, is it? The cramps are ever such a bother."
Only, it was a bad thing. Though Hermione had never dwelled on the idea of children, in the back of her mind there was always the assumption they would be there. As an only child, she was certain she would have more than one—possibly as many as three or four. But now…
They made the stones. The harvesting spell hurt like nothing she could ever have imagined, but she went through with it because the idea of withering into old age while Harry and Luna remained young and strong was too much for her to bear. But Luna's next suggestion astonished even Hermione—that they imbed the 20 karat stones that their efforts created into the muscle wall of their very hearts. By this time, Harry had returned from South America flush with the same terrible power that allowed Voldemort to tear down the old Ministry of Magic with his bare hands.
"Brilliant," was his only response to the suggestion. Luna did not hesitate to volunteer, and Hermione watched as Harry cast a silent Transitorus Dermitatus without a wand, since his magic was so powerful now no wand, not even the Elder Wand, could channel it. With that magic done, his hands phased easily through Luna's chest with the stone in his fingers, and in their bedroom he magically bound the philosopher's stone into Luna's very heart.
Luna's chest arched in pain when he removed his hand, thus phasing the stone back into the same space as Luna's body. Her face flushed a terrible red color and then she went very still. Hermione remembered thinking of the pensieve memory she had watched of a newly sired vampire being created.
Only, when Luna sat up with brightly flushed cheeks, she bore no fangs, nor did she thirst for blood. "Hermione, it's incredible," she whispered. "I've never felt more alive! You have to do it!"
Hermione was nineteen at the time—Harry and Luna were both eighteen, though Luna had just had her birthday. And yet Hermione felt like a child being led into trouble by older siblings. With the two of them staring expectantly at her, she hesitantly agreed. She never felt Harry's hands pass into her body with her own stone, but she felt it the moment he left the stone in her heart. The pain was sudden and shocking; she had a sudden, gripping shortness of breath and a sharp, spike-like burning that ran up the length of her left arm.
Just moments after the worst rush of the pain, she felt a flush of heat and energy, as if her body were being charged like a battery as the first drops of the elixir left the stone and entered her bloodstream at the source. She sat up with Luna and Harry beaming at her, and in the heat of the magic forgot her concerns and fears as she joined them in a passionate night of lovemaking.
The next morning, though, when she woke fully refreshed after only four hours of sleep, she wondered if she were human at all. She wondered, truthfully, if any of them still were.
~~ Stars Alone~~
~~ Stars Alone~~
When Hermione tumbled from the gate, it was impossible to point to any one thing that sent her crying to her knees. Rather, it was a cumulative effect of everything all at once—the color of the sky, the smell in the air, the temperature around her, and the very feel of the world they stepped onto—and the loss of everything she had ever known.
She cursed her own mind, which grasped onto the true, overwhelming enormity of what just happened far faster than her vulnerable emotions were ready to handle. Suddenly, abruptly, Hermione stood on another world entirely, while the world that birthed her and made her who and what she was fell forever behind her. The sudden transition overwhelmed her Force senses and her emotions in a perfect storm of grief and disorientation that left her weeping helplessly in the dirt by the gate.
Moments later she felt small, trembling arms wrap around her from behind. She felt Luna's face against her spine as the smaller woman's tears soaked into her blood-splattered blouse. Moments later, Hermione heard a thud and looked up to see Harry a few feet away, flat on his back, convulsing with froth at his mouth.
"Oh Merlin!" she cried, terrified. She scrambled out of Luna's grip toward their husband. Luna was half a step behind.
"Hold him down," Hermione ordered as she flicked her wand out of her invisible wrist holster. Luna knelt down with a knee on either side of his head and pressed down on his shoulders while Hermione straddled his thighs and cast her diagnostic charms.
His skin felt cool and clammy to the touch and had a gray pall to it that made her stomach clench with fear. She'd only seen Harry look this way once—after she tried to save him from his Sith conditioning and instead triggered a catastrophic death of personality between the old Harry Potter and the Dark Lord of the Sith who assumed control of his psyche.
"His heartbeat's irregular," she whispered. "Merlin, Luna, I think the pain stopped his heart. I can't…I can't…elixir! Luna, draw some elixir from your chest!"
Luna did not hesitate at all as she pulled her dress open enough to touch her wand to the creamy expanse of her chest just above her breasts. She winced as she drew her wand away from the skin, pulling with it a growing bubble of purple fluid.
"That should be enough," Hermione whispered. "Give it to him."
Luna guided the bubble with her wand until it touched his lips. Instinctively, the magic of the elixir caused his mouth to open and he swallowed it despite the shock of his body. Color rushed across the skin of his face as his convulsions came to a stop.
But he did not wake up.
"Did the elixir work?" Luna asked. She wiped tears with the back of her wrists.
"It healed his body," Hermione said. "And I can sense his magical core has already restored itself, but something is wrong. I can't…I never studied anything like this, Luna. I don't know why he won't wake up."
Hermione didn't even realize she was yelling the last until Luna reached out and took her trembling wand hand. "He's strong," Luna said softly through her own tears. "He's the strongest person we've ever met. If anyone can survive something like that ward, it's Harry. We just need to give him more time."
Hermione took a deep breath, and then with Luna's touch guiding her she slipped into a light, meditative Force trance. It was as effective as any cheering charm Luna could have used to calm her nerves. With a glance at Harry to see if he'd woken and finding he had not, she stood to survey their new environment.
She saw low-hanging clouds over distant mountains, all covered by a seemingly endless temperate forest. For the first time she felt a definite, moist chill in the air that seemed to soak through her thin, blood-splattered blouse. It looked more like Canada than an alien planet. Only, Canada paved its roads. The open area before the gate was not paved, and in fact looked muddy. There were a few primitive-looking huts with unfinished support beams and thatched roofs, but the huts were open-sided with a bar-like shelf filled with foods on display.
Across the wide muddy path she saw a completely anachronistic structure—a building that looked very much like a modern apartment building, only one built a thousand years ago and somehow meticulously maintained.
Nowhere, though, could she spot any people. If she stretched her senses, she could feel them, but she could not see anyone. "Hello?" she asked.
After a few minutes of waiting a single figure in a worn blue dress made of a locally produced fabric stepped out from a copse of trees and cautiously approached. Her hair was wrapped up in a white turban, giving her a frail look. As she grew closer, Hermione guessed the woman was in her forties.
"I don't suppose you speak English, do you?" Hermione said.
"Aangalash?" the woman said.
"No, I suppose not," Hermione whispered. "Luna, you're the linguist."
Luna stood from and stepped around Harry until she stopped before the woman, smiling up at her. The woman smiled hesitantly back, unnerved by Luna's white-blonde hair and silver-blue gaze. Still, she did not flinch when Luna reached up and gently placed a hand against the woman's forehead.
Letting her hand drop, Luna closed her eyes in concentration. In the Force, Hermione could feel her sister in marriage processing the language she was able to obtain with an ease and skill not even Harry could duplicate. Harry could have gathered the language from the woman, but it would have left her as a broken lump on the floor.
The woman continued to watch with a confused expression as Luna turned to Hermione. Though they did not need physical contact it did help, and so Hermione leaned forward and down until her forehead met Luna's. She felt Luna's unique, powerful psyche fill her own mind, pouring the language into her like water into a cup.
The language was Goa'uld, the lingua franca of the known galaxy, according to what they were told before arriving at the Stargate. Now Hermione and Luna both spoke it.
"Can you understand me now?" Hermione asked. The language felt stilted and overly formal on her tongue.
The woman brightened. "I can. Was that…a greeting you did?"
"We are sister wives, bound in marriage to this man," Luna said, having gleaned far more from the woman than Hermione. The language sounded stilted and very formal. "He has been hurt and we need a place to tend him. Do you know of a place we could go for shelter?"
The woman looked from Hermione, to Luna, and finally to the still form of Harry. "You share one man? Is that normal for your people?"
"Not entirely," Hermione admitted with a wry smile. "But it was necessary at the time, and we have grown very close over the years. Can you help us? We are alone, and we're not even sure what world we're on."
"This world is called by the Goa'uld Cartago. I am the Matrona of the Byrsa."
Luna bowed. "Matrona, I am Luna, and this is my sister wife Hermione, and our husband Harry. It is an honor to know you."
The older woman turned and said, "Dar, Fela, come!"
A younger couple rushed from the trees lining the village and with their help, Luna and Hermione carried Harry toward the anachronistic building. Within they came to a large room that looked rather like a courtroom of some kind, but that is not where they stopped. Carrying Harry without magic, they trudged up several flights of stairs until they arrived at a long hall with open doors near the top floor. Within each door was a fair-sized room with a simple cot and what looked an old, rusty sink and toilet, neither of which worked.
"The legends say our ancestors lived here when Lord Apophis first brought them to this world," the Matrona said as they placed Harry on the cot. "It is not much, but it is a safe place for your husband to stay until he is well."
"Thank you," Hermione said sincerely as she sat on the cot next to him. She glanced briefly at Luna before she said, "Matrona, we…we don't have anything of value to trade, but we have nowhere else to go. Is there something we could do in return for food and shelter? We don't want to be a burden, we just…"
"We have nowhere else to go," Luna finished.
"What happened to you?" the older woman asked.
"We were betrayed by those whom we thought loved us," Luna said simply. "They have barred us from our home and tried to kill us."
The matron took Luna's hand and stared at it. "It does not seem you have ever worked before. Your callouses are strange, but not the callouses of someone who works."
"We are accustomed to work," Hermione said. "Our old world had different jobs. But we could learn, and we're not afraid of difficult work."
"And your husband?"
Hermione started to answer, but Luna beat her to it. "Our husband was a warrior, Matrona. He was very skilled, but is now as you see."
The woman shared a worried glance to the younger couple. "Warriors attract unwanted attention."
"He is not going to fight anyone right now," Hermione pointed out. "If you allow us to stay, we will abide by your rules and laws and try to contribute. All we ask is patience from you while we learn your ways."
The Matrona looked at the three of them closely, one face after another, until finally she said, "I will have to discuss this with the elders. Until then, we will bring food. Rest, and you shall know our answer soon."
"Thank you," Hermione said. Luna echoed the sentiment.
The three Byrsa left Hermione and Luna alone with an unconscious Harry. "It feels so odd having to beg for food and shelter," Hermione whispered. "We were trillionaires on Earth, greeted by kings and presidents as peers."
"And now we're penniless refugees," Luna finished the thought. She pulled her knees up to her chin, and in that moment she looked very young. "I hope they don't hurt Lawrence Bartleby, or the rest of our people."
"Lawrence will be a target," Hermione agreed. "He'll have activated the failsafe protocols the moment our transponders left Earth. Imagine the surprise of all our employees when they receive million-pound severance checks."
"Or the anguish of our clients when all of our technology self-destructs," Luna said absently. She reached up and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I should have known, Hermione. I saw the gate in my dreams—I knew it was a trap. I should have seen it before Harry walked through."
Hermione scooted over, and with surprisingly little effort lifted Luna onto her lap. "I'm not sure it would have mattered in the end, Luna. They knew. Somehow, they knew everything we'd done, good and bad."
"We were going to save the world."
"We were going to conquer it," Hermione said bluntly. "We would have conquered it with economics, but all three of us knew that at some point or another the world leadership would figure out what was happening and take action against us. We just always assumed we would have more time to prepare ourselves. Remember your visions, when you first joined us?"
"There was still blood, but not as much." Luna remembered aloud.
"We weren't ready for a world-war," Hermione continued. "Especially not a world where wizards and Muggles worked hand-in-hand against us. We always planned on having a unified magical world behind us. Without that, we could never have won."
"Harry could have," Luna whispered into Hermione's chest.
"But at what cost? He would have destroyed the world to rule over its ashes. That's exactly what we didn't want."
"I know." Luna sniffed her nose again. "I just want… we're never going to see them again, Hermione. Not Ginny, or Ronald and Martha, or their babies. My Daddy…"
Hermione said nothing, but secretly thought the same thing about her own parents. Instead, she rocked Luna in her lap like she would a child and wept her own tears, while Harry lay motionless in bed.
Unfortunately, there was only so much grieving one could do. Eventually the need to move overtook the need to grieve, spurred by Hermione more so. Luna could mope and grieve for days on end; Hermione's limit was twenty minutes.
"This room as a mess," Hermione announced over Luna's head.
"I don't feel like cleaning."
"It'll be good to get up and move."
"I don't care."
Hermione ran a hand down Luna's shoulders until she reached her ribs, and started tickling. Luna slid off Hermione's lap, her face warping between a stifled laugh and outrage. "Stop it."
"Let's clean," Hermione said.
"I don't want to."
Hermione cast a tickling charm which Luna batted away. "You didn't!"
"Oh, I did!"
What followed as a duel of the ages, comprised of cheering and tickling charms, with an occasional tarantella or legs-locker jinx thrown in for good measure. The air filled with bright, bubbly magic as Hermione tried to cheer Luna up, and Luna tried her best to prevent it. Of course, both knew the duel itself was enough, but to admit it would eliminate the need for the duel itself, and so it continued for almost half an hour until the Matrona walked into the room and received a full-powered cheering charm to the face and a tarantella jinx to her legs. The end result was raucous laughter accompanied by frenzied, uncontrollable dancing.
Hermione cast a silent finite and the Matrona collapsed to the floor, her be-spelled laughter turning into cries of horror. "Witches!" she cried. "You are witches! We've let evil into our midst! I must tell the others, I must…"
She slumped to the floor unconscious when Hermione's light stunner struck. She and Luna shared a long, wide-eyed look before Hermione ran out into the hall to see if she was alone. Unfortunately, the young couple from before was in the hall. They took a look at Hermione before turning to run toward the stairs.
A pop of apparition later and Hermione cut them both off with two more quick stunners. She levitated the two back into their room where she saw Luna kneeling down with her hand on the Matrona's forehead, eyes closed.
"What can you sense?"
Luna looked up and, with wide eyes, said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
"They believe that?"
"Yes, but not because they are Christian," Luna said. She settled back on her haunches with a defeated look on her face. "Hermione, it is their oldest law, and was set by the Supreme System Lord Ra himself. These people hate the Goa'uld, but they don't dare violate Ra's oldest law."
Hermione looked back at Harry, then at the three Byrsa. "We're going to have to obliviate them."
"The thought occurred to me," Luna said waspishly. It was an indication of how upset Luna was that she used sarcasm. She did not as a rule like sarcasm, nor the purveyors of sarcastic wit.
Oddly enough, while Luna was far better at legillimency than any of them, she was pants at oblivations, so Hermione obliviated all three of the natives. Before waking them, though, she said, "While we're here, we won't be able to use magic at all."
"At least not until Harry wakes," Luna agreed.
Hermione levitated the two back into the hallway and woke them both with finite charms before apparating back to their room. They woke the Matrona next and helped her to her feet.
"What happened?" she asked, confused.
"It was my fault," Hermione said, speaking quickly as if afraid. "We were trying to cheer ourselves up and wrestling and we bumped into you. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, child," the Matrona said, blinking as she struggled to recall the event. "I must be getting old. So, we have spoken and agreed that you and your husband may stay here. We will provide food and clothing for you while you stay, if you are willing to assist us with our daily work."
"Thank you!" Hermione said. She smiled, but inside relief warred with guilt. "We'll be sure to work very hard!"
"Then you will be welcome here," the Matrona said.