Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Broken after the war, Harry left. Now, two years later, he's finally found the strength to return, only to discover that old sins have long shadows…
A/N: Judging by the onslaught of reviews, people really liked the last chapter—and many of you are really upset about what happened to Hermione! Trust me when I say that I know where this story is going and I've put quite a bit of thought into it… :-)
Anyway, enjoy this one. It's not very long, but it's sort of the other half of the previous chapter, and I've tried to get it out as quickly as possible.
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Old Sins
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Chapter Twelve: Ghost of You
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Ever get the feeling that you'll never—
All alone and I remember now
At the top of my lungs in my arms,
She dies,
She dies…
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At the end of the world, or the last thing I see
You are never coming home, never coming home,
Could I? Should I?
And all the things that you never ever told me
And all the smiles that are ever going to haunt me,
Never coming home, never coming home,
Could I? Should I?
For all the wounds that are ever going to scar me,
For all the ghosts that are never going to catch me…
…
"Remus," Tonks gasped in relief, when she opened the front door of Number Twelve to him. "Oh, Remus, thank heavens you're here!" Her valiantly pale, tightly held together expression shattered and she burst into tears, throwing herself into his arms and sobbing desperately. "I can't believe it… Hermione… It could have been anyone, why'd it have to be her? I never thought I'd ever have to say good—goodbye to her… and oh, Remus, you should have seen the look on Harry's face when they brought her back here…"
Lupin held her tightly, drawing in shaky breaths as he tried to keep his own tears from coming. He had been in the Forbidden Forest, with his last substitution class for the day, when Hagrid had come thundering in. Lupin had only seen Hagrid that distraught once before: when Dumbledore had been killed.
In broken, disjointed sentences, Hagrid had sobbed out something about Narcissa Malfoy, and Harry and Hermione. Lupin hadn't understood a word of it—it had taken all his powers to calm Hagrid down—and it had finally taken the fiercely controlled, slightly quivering voice and explanation of Professor McGonagall before the truth had really hit him.
Hermione was dead.
It took a few minutes before Tonks calmed down completely, and then she wiped her face on his shirt—he didn't even notice—and looked up at him with an expression that told him he could make everything all right. But he couldn't, he thought desperately. How could he fix this? How could anyone put right this unspeakably terrible, terrible thing?
"She was my favorite, you know," he said distantly. "Not even Harry, who was James's son… she was so much like what I used to be, she…"
"What do we do?" Tonks whispered. "Harry's face, Remus, if you'd seen it—"
He didn't need her to describe it. He knew exactly what it might have looked like, because he knew exactly how Harry had felt about the young woman who now lay stone-cold and empty somewhere in this house.
"Who else is here?" croaked Lupin now, discarding his coat and following his young wife into the silent, bleak house.
Tonks gestured into the living room. "Almost everyone," she said in a low voice, as they hesitated out in the corridor. "Professor McGonagall and Hagrid were here, but they left a little while ago. Molly left sobbing as well—I don't think she could face it just yet—and Arthur and Bill went with Kingsley to see what they could do about tracking Narcissa down. I—I feel so sick, Remus, just knowing I'm related to her!" Her eyes filled with tears again.
Even in his youth, there was one thing Remus Lupin had always been known for: his ability to keep a clear, calm head. His ability to think when everyone else had lost their heads, his ability to think instead of allowing his feelings to overpower him. It was his greatest form of self-defense and he used it now, so he wouldn't have to feel…
It occurred to him that not even when he and Sirius had lived in this house alone, and Sirius had been at his most miserable, had the house seemed so bleak, so hostile, so dark and empty of hope and joy.
He scanned the living-room silently. Ginny and Neville were sitting together in a large armchair. Neville had his face buried in his hands and Ginny was very still, her face pale and so shocked that Lupin assumed she couldn't quite register or accept that one of her best friends was… dead. He knew how that felt, he thought bitterly, didn't he?
There were a couple of other ex-Hogwarts students; Parvati Patil and Dean Thomas and a couple of others he knew by face but not by name. Then there were the twins, Fred and George, their faces so blank and wiped clean off any humor that Lupin almost didn't recognize them. Mad-Eye Moody, pacing the edge of the room, his stump of a leg making a soft thudding sound every time he moved. He alone looked expressionless, grim.
And Luna, curled up in the corner of a sofa closest to where Tonks and Lupin stood. She'd been crying a great deal, that was obvious, and her eyes were not vacant or dreamy as they usually were. No sweeter alternate reality for Luna this time.
"Do her parents know?" asked Lupin quietly.
Tonks sniffed. "No—no one wants to tell them, Remus. How can we? They'll have to know, of course, but we can't tell them just yet… everyone's so afraid they'll try to take her away. They can, you know, she's not married and so they're the ones who would have authority over it. Magical deaths don't need preservation, so we can keep her here for some time… but if they take her away…" her voice broke.
Lupin understood. Even if Hermione was already gone, having her parents take what was left of her away, before her wizarding family could do what they could for her, would be a terrible blow to them all. It would make the loss complete.
Nonetheless, he felt they ought to know. They were her parents.
"Where's Ron?" Lupin suddenly realized that the boy was nowhere in sight.
It was Luna who answered, looking up from the floor. "He's shut himself up in our room," she said very softly, her voice a whisper on the air. "He won't talk to anyone, not even to me. He might talk to Harry, but Harry won't speak to anybody either… I don't think they'll get through this."
Lupin winced at Luna's blunt statement of the truth, but couldn't disagree with her. What would Harry and Ron be, without Hermione?
Harry…
His heart wrenching, Lupin said gently, "Luna, where is Harry?"
"I don't know," she replied, standing up. "He was with her until about five minutes ago. I went up to check. But he wasn't there anymore. He might be in his room, but I don't know." She moved towards the stairs. "I think I'm going to Hermione's room. I think I'll keep her company. You might stare," she added defiantly to Moody, who had in fact turned to stare at her upon hearing her words. "But Hermione can still feel us, even if she's dead."
Lupin waited quietly until Luna was gone, and then followed her up the stairs. He was going to find Harry.
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Harry wandered through the hallways, past the door to the attic and Buckbeak's old room, back and forth, back and forth. The tears had dried on his face, and he had been convinced he would never cry again. It was as if every feeling had been cut off, and killed, as surely as Hermione had been. He couldn't feel anything, and it was a conscious effort to keep breathing.
He hadn't wanted to come back home. Why should he, he'd argued? There was no home without her. There was nothing to come back to. She was never coming home, so why should he?
But he'd come back anyway, and yet… he wasn't home. Not really. He was somewhere else, wherever she was.
He felt… yes, he felt dead.
"I loved you," he muttered into the darkness of the hall, staring at an imagined shadow flickering over the wall. "I never told you, but I've been in love with you for years and I just never knew it…"
The shadow smiled, and laughed, and waved. The ghost he couldn't reach.
He sat down slowly on the floor, and slumped against the wall of the hallway, resting his head back against the cool stone of it. His eyes were red and raw and dry, and her face flickered across them, over and over, interspersed with her laughing shadow over the floor.
"Stay," he whispered, "Haunt me if you have to. Just—just don't leave me alone. I can't do this without you. Stay."
Distantly, he thought about the long years of his life, longer than most wizards who lived for hundreds of years. He thought about his mother Lily, his father James, and Sirius and Dumbledore and Cedric and all those other people who had died during the war, before and after, too, and all the other wounds that had scored themselves across his very being.
All those ghosts, he thought, who would never, ever catch up to him. He watched Hermione's face in his mind, saw it smile, and felt a sudden burst of pain.
"Daddy?"
Harry froze as realization struck him, hard. He turned his head and saw David walking slowly down the hallway. "Daddy," David whispered, sobs choking in his throat. "I went to Mum's room… I tried to wake her up, but she won't wake up… I don't know what to do."
It was the first time he'd ever called her 'Mum'. It was that valiant attempt to be grown-up that nearly undid Harry. He held out his arms and David curled into them, sobbing into Harry's shirt. And Harry realized that he could feel everything again, all the pain and loneliness and desperation… and love. And he cried, softly and silently, so his son wouldn't see the tears. Because fathers had to stay strong, didn't they, like his had done?
"I've got you," he mumbled brokenly. "I've still got you, David. And—and it may not be much, but you've still got me."
Lupin found them there a few minutes later, but he said nothing. He only nodded slightly at Harry, to show that he would be downstairs if Harry needed him. Harry nodded back, slowly, aware that if there was one thing Hermione would have wanted, it would have been for him to keep himself together and to take care of their son and keep their family together.
"Watch over them for me, Harry," her ghost whispered in his ear.
"I will," he whispered back.
When David had cried himself to sleep, Harry took him to his own room and tucked David up in his bed. He would have to sleep here now. Harry carefully smoothed his son's hair back from his forehead, and called Dobby softly. The house-elf appeared, weeping buckets all over the floor.
"Dobby, please keep an eye on him, would you?" said Harry quietly. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Of course, Harry Potter," sobbed Dobby.
Harry patted the house-elf gently on the ears, trying to offer some sort of comfort, and then left the room. He walked across the hall, and knocked quietly on the room door opposite his, his eyes moving slowly to Hermione's room. He could see Luna and Ginny sitting silently beside her bed, through the open door, and he was glad. He swallowed hard. He didn't want her to be alone.
"Ron," Harry called, when no one answered his knock. "Ron, open the door or I'm going to break my way in."
The door swung open and a very red-eyed, old-looking Ron looked angrily out at him. "Exactly who do you think you bloody are?" he muttered, allowing Harry to walk into the room. "Oh, I know I didn't love her the way you did, but she was one of my bloody best friends and I don't know what I'm going to do! Just leave me alone, Harry."
"No," said Harry quietly. "I won't. Because you're not alone. Don't shut Luna out, Ron, she wants to help you so badly. And don't shut me out. We're all we've got left now, you and I, we're all that's left of the family we had nine years ago."
Ron took a deep, shaky breath. "What do you want from me, Harry?"
"Just to tell you I intend to find Narcissa before the month is out," said Harry, and no one could have mistaken the rage quietly pulsing through his voice. "You've been more than a best friend to me, Ron, you've been a brother. So I'm asking you now, as a brother… will you help me find her?"
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Three days passed. Mr. and Mrs. Granger were told, and when they tried to come to take Hermione away, Harry and Ron were distraught. Lupin, though he sympathized with the Grangers' grief, unexpectedly stepped in.
"You haven't treated Hermione very well the past few years," he said. "You're still her parents and you have every right to see your daughter, but I must ask you for some time. There are many of us who still need to say goodbye. We were her family when you weren't. The wizarding world was the one she loved and belonged to. Let that world honor her."
When Harry wasn't with his inconsolable son, trying to bring some light back into David's life, he worked feverishly by day. He and Ron and countless others were desperately, furiously trying to hunt down the woman who had taken away someone they had all loved so much. But at night, when it went quiet, Harry would put David to sleep and would prowl the quiet old house as Sirius had used to. Ron would fall asleep, exhausted from the day. But Harry couldn't sleep.
He would go instead to her room, and sit beside her bed and talk to her, telling her about the day and all kinds of ordinary things, holding her still cold hand and trying to infuse some life back into it.
He stayed with her in those quiet, dark hours, when not even his son could take the darkness away. He fought off the darkness for her, because he believed she could still feel it, and she held the darkness away from him. When he was close to her, he could believe that at any moment, she would open her eyes and she would smile sleepily at him.
"I love you, Harry," the ghost told him, laughing in his ear.
He smiled. "I love you too."
Then he would cry, when no one could see him, and it was just the two of them.
But when three nights disappeared this way, Harry found that his body had other plans for him. He slipped into an uneasy, exhausted sleep late that night, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Many things flickered through his drowsy mind, faces and high cold laughter and warm smiles to chase the demons away. He saw the jet of light hit Hermione in the chest, but for some reason, he simply couldn't remember what color it was, and that suddenly seemed terribly important.
And then he saw Hermione again, lying still in her bed next door, and this time, he saw something he had noticed before but never fully registered.
There were faint, purplish bruises under her ears.
That meant something, the alert part of his brain told him restlessly. The Avada Kedavra wasn't supposed to leave a mark on the victim, but perhaps another killing curse did… yet even then, his mind argued, he knew something, in the corner of his mind, to defy that explanation. Those bruises meant something important…
If only he could remember…
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At the end of the world, or the last thing I see
You are never coming home, never coming home,
Could I? Should I?
And all the things that you never ever told me
And all the smiles that are ever going to haunt me,
Never coming home, never coming home,
Could I? Should I?
For all the wounds that are ever going to scar me,
For all the ghosts that are never going to catch me…
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I cry for you…
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TBC.
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