AN: Hey guys I tried to get this updated within the month which obviously did not work out too well. Either way, here is the next chapter. So sorry that it's a downer. Also, it will be covering quite a bit of material rather quickly – these chapters break my heart and, to be frank, I wanted to get through them as rapidly as possible.
Also, I'm thinking of doing another flashback soon. Yay or nay? Should I just discontinue those? Or format them differently?
Finally, THANK YOU … a million times over. And as usual, please review!
Hermione didn't stop crying that night. It surprised her. Normally she would have gone into shock first – crying later. But the tears just kept coming. Sometimes she wept softly, silent tears streaming down her face. Sometimes it was with great, heaving sobs that wracked her from head to toe. Sometimes, it was a mere whimper – but they never stopped.
Are you staying or what?
Cowardice was not in her nature. Fleeing was not in her nature. Of course she was staying.
I get it. You choose him.
No, no, no, no, Merlin, never in a thousand years would Hermione choose anyone over Ron. Just her integrity.
Integrity or Ron? How dare he put her in that position?
She cried because he had. He had dared her to pick her honor or him – she cried because that was not something the Ron she knew would have done.
She cried because some of what he said had rung true and the guilt was eating her up inside. She cried because their situation was hopeless. Their chances of success were next to nothing.
Part of the time she cried because Moody was dead, Hogwarts was Hell, her parents didn't know she existed and she had never learned to cook. She cried because life was grey – cold and grey.
Those things only flitted through her brain for brief instances. She cried because each of those reasons had been there before, but they'd been bearable because he was there.
Mostly, she cried because he was gone.
By the time the light filtered through the fabric of the tent again, she felt like a cracker – brittle and dry, salty from tears. Numb, numb, numb.
She didn't speak at all that morning. She was afraid to make any sound for fear of drowning out his returning footsteps.
He's not coming back.
He might.
Crunch…
She looked up anxiously. Nothing.
He's not coming back.
The rain would flood them out soon, but she knew there must be more to finish before they could leave. But they had to leave. And once they did, she knew that his choice would be final. To leave them – to leave her.
They disapparated.
There was a crack, a tug in her gut and a painful thudding in her chest.
It's over. He's gone. He's gone.
He can't come back.
He won't come back.
Ron is gone.
She thought she was dried out, but the moment her feet hit the ground, she could feel the knot in her throat. Striding over to a nearby boulder, she crumpled onto it, burying her head in her arms and letting the tears come again. Harry could take care of the enchantments.
She was hollow – drowned in a heavy feeling that spelled the end. She had only ever felt anywhere close to that twice before – once in third year when they had stopped speaking to her on the grounds of turning in the firebolt and Ron's accusations against Crookshanks and then in sixth year, when Ron had given her the cold shoulder and then started dating Lavender.
Even then, though, the ache had not compared. Both of those times she had known that he'd come back. Besides, she had had the comfort of knowing that he was still only a staircase away. But mostly, she just knew that he'd come back. He was her best friend.
This time, she knew that he never would.
She wondered where he had gone. Harry mentioned in passing one day that he had not reappeared on the Maurader's Map. Would he have gone home? She didn't think so. She hated that she couldn't stop thinking about it. She wished she didn't care.
Time fled. Weeks – gone, surrendered to a total immersion in memories of Ron. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, she threw herself back into studying the "Tales of Beedle, the Bard." She put everything she had into making meals and the monotony of such a dreary nothingness.
She was determined not to fall apart, even if, in reality, she knew she already had.
There was no feeling she hated more than uselessness. Unfortunately, these empty tasks were just that. She was dying for a purpose and, one day as she poured over the children's book for the tenth time that day, she thought she might have found one. The symbol was oddly familiar, yet not one that she recognized from any Runes class or text book. She thought it could have been on Mr. Lovegood's necklace at the wedding …
The mystery thrilled her. It was a conflict – a challenge. Suddenly she was back in Hogwarts, mixing potions to exactness, perfecting a complicated spell – her element.
"Harry, could you help me with something?"
She showed him the mark and, when he finally recognized it and explained what Victor had claimed it was she felt a tinge of guilt at her lack of concern over the fact that it was a potentially evil symbol. It was a puzzle. She was seized by the insatiable need to solve it.
"Hermione?"
"Hmm?"
"I've been thinking … I … I want to go to Godric's Hollow."
She glanced up at him. She had had the similar thought quite often in the recent past, wondering if Dumbledore had perhaps left the sword of Gryffindor in Godric's Hollow. Bathilda Bagshot, she recalled, lived there. The old scholar might at least know something that would lead them closer to it. As she explained this to Harry, though, she could tell that he had other motives. To be honest, she didn't mind. All she cared about was that they had a purpose. And a destination. She was ready to get out of the tent.
Preparing for the event was enough for Hermione. The idea of actually going was exciting, but it also scared her. For now, she was content meticulously readying for every possible conflict. The jaunts out to practice apparating for hours at a time, the piles of notes littering the table again, the spread of supplies they had – it all was distracting enough that she could forget the hollow ache in her chest that should never be there. She could forget that this was the Christmas season and that it was supposed to be wonderful.
When they arrived at Godric's Hollow weeks later, her heart did not stop twisting even after the unpleasant feeling of apparation had faded. She was terrified, insisting on the invisibility cloak, trying to wipe away their footsteps. When Harry asked that they walk uncovered, she grudgingly agreed, seeing how much he needed it.
They walked the charming, lit up street in silence. There was a small church with soft music drifting from inside. She wondered why, then stopped in her tracks.
"Harry. I think it's Christmas Eve."
"Is it?"
"I'm sure it is."
She glanced over at the chapel again, thinking of the Christmas carols that she hadn't gotten to sing this year. Her eyebrows scrunched as she looked a little closer, noticing shadowy shapes in rows shrouded in the darkness behind the little building.
"They'll be in there, won't they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it."
His expression grew taut. Reaching for his hand, she gently tugged him along, leading the way to where they knew his parents' grave would be. When she caught sight of the statue and pointed out to him, she could feel herself getting emotional. There was a family – blissfully unaware of their impending, premature deaths. Here it was, Christmas Eve, and her family was a continent away, blissfully unaware of their only daughter. There was no Ron. No Hogwarts. She was struck by the overwhelming sense of tragedy.
Hermione had never been more grateful than in that moment for the boy standing next to her. He had always been there – more so than any other person, even Ron. Even if she never cared for him the same way, she loved him deeply and felt, for a small moment, the weight of what he had on his shoulders.
"C'mon."
She followed Harry wordlessly back to the cemetery. The singing was enough to make the tears overflow. In that church, she heard the spark of human hope. People doing what people should.
Her musings were interrupted by the creaking of the kissing gate. Startled, she was reminded again that they should probably not be there and the dangers associated with their presence. They traversed the snow covered tombstones quietly after that.
When they discovered the graves of Dumbledore's mother and sister, Hermione could tell how torn Harry was. She pursued the next ones with renewed determination to find his family.
After thinking she had found them then realizing that it was a different name altogether, she made to move on. Before she could, she noticed something familiar.
"Harry. Come back here a moment."
There it was – there was the funny symbol on a grave right in front of her face. She brushed the snow away, showing Harry the mark. He seemed terse and uninterested, but she was focused on the name. "Ignotus Peverall."
Even after Harry walked away, she studied the dates, committing them to memory. Finally, she moved on, searching again for the real reason they had come.
"Harry, they're here … right here."
She gazed down at the beautiful marble headstone feeling once more the unwelcome lump in her throat and the appreciation for young lives lost. Calculating the dates in her head, 1960-1981, she cringed to think that they had only lived 21 years. She would be their age in just over three years.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
Harry was beside her now, reading. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death? Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"
The panic was laced throughout his voice. It broke Hermione's heart to think how little he truly knew of his parents and how many of those that should have been like parental figures had let him down in his life.
"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, harry. It means … you know … living beyond death. Living after death." She didn't much care for the quote either, but Harry didn't need to believe that anyone who might have had something to do with their memories would have inscribed some piece of Voldemort mentality onto their headstone.
She looked over at him and bit her lip as she watched his tears overflow. Looking away, she took his hand instead. They sat there for a long time, silent tears streaking down their faces. Pretty soon, Harry began to inhale deeply, and she knew that he was trying to regain control. She thought about leaving nothing there and how, had it been her parents, she would not have been able to do it. There had to be some way to mark that he had come here – to show in some way that he had found them.
Without thinking twice, Hermione moved her wand through the brisk air, conjuring up a wreath of white roses. It made her a bit nervous, not knowing if he would agree with her sentiment, but he caught it, knelt down, and laid it reverently below their names. He brushed the engravings with his fingertips one last time and stood back up, swiping at his eyes.
She was not at all surprised when he slid an arm around her shoulders. She held onto his waist, and together they made their way back towards the church.
They crunched their way back to the kissing gate, the whole while Hermione trying to resist the overwhelming nerves in her gut. Every noise was a death eater. Every twig was Voldemort, coming personally to finish them off.
When a bush in the corner of her eye shook, she glanced rapidly over, exhaling in relief as it fell still again. They kept moving. She heard another rustle, and glanced over. Was she mistaken, or was that a flash of a hand?
She shook her head and stepped again, ignoring the strange, burning feeling in her side that she associated with someone staring at her. The bush shook once more.
"Harry, stop."
"What's wrong?"
"There's someone there. Someone watching us."
Hermione's stomach was in knots. Bathilda's garden was overgrown and her house smelled, to be polite about it. She could see through invisibility cloaks, apparently knew exactly who they were and still had not spoken a word to them. Her face was eerie – almost transparent – and her eyes were alight with some cunning malice that was simultaneously too old and too young for the shriveled woman.
"Harry, I'm not sure about this," Hermione murmured the moment the witch had disappeared into her sitting room.
"Look at the size of her; I think we could overpower her if we had to. Listen, I should have told you, I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her gaga."
Something struck Hermione like a dissonant note. The strange gleam in her eye was some level of crazy; there was no doubting it. However, it was not the vague gaze of the aged. This woman reeked of evil.
A sudden, croaking hiss came from the other room. The voice made Hermione jump. How sick was this woman to have made a noise like that? Harry's reassurance did nothing to calm her down.
As they looked around the next room, she could see that Harry was curious, looking eagerly around for clues. Hermione was also looking around, but differently than Harry had been. She noticed the layers of dust and mildew on seemingly every surface of the home. She noticed the smell that worsened as they crossed the threshold into this room – that of rotting meat. Something was dead here. Were it not for Bathilda walking around before them, Hermione would have guessed that it was a human by the untended state of the home.
Harry asked the woman about the man in a picture – Gregorovitch, frustrated and still anxious for information about whatever name it was that he had had some bizarre dream or vision about. But Hermione was barely listening. She had begun to shake, an icy chill creeping into her chest.
When Bathilda refused to tell them why they had come, Hermione had to clench her fists to keep from outright convulsing. Her lip was bleeding from the pressure in which she was biting down on it.
The woman made a jerky gesture with her head, glancing stiffly behind her.
"You want us to leave?"
She did it again, pointing at Harry, herself and the ceiling.
He voiced the thoughts that Hermione was afraid were right.
"Oh right. Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her."
Every possible warning flag had gone off in Hermione's head.
"All right," she agreed through her chattering teeth. "Let's go."
Bathilda shook her head, and Hermione's heart sank. She didn't need Harry to explain what the woman wanted when she repeated the gesture, pointing at only herself and Harry.
"Why?"
"Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only to me?"
"Do you really think she knows who you are?"
She willed him to pick up on her feelings, to insist that they get out as soon as they could. But he was the leader. And for some reason, she felt a strong sense that she should not make any moves openly contesting the batty Bathilda Bagshot.
"Yes. I think she does."
"Well, okay, then, but be quick, Harry."
The last thing Hermione heard for a long moment was their footsteps creaking up the stairs. She hugged herself, holding herself together, trying in vain to contain her quaking. The more she looked around, the more she got the odd feeling that this house was that of someone dead.
Silence stretched into an endless series of time. Hermione waited, unable to make herself move or make any noise. A sudden flash of color caught her eye. She recognized the glossy book cover immediately. Knowing Harry would want it, she forced herself to walk two steps to the side table in the corner and snatch up the copy of "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore." There was a note attached.
Dear Batty, Thanks for your -
CRASH
Hermione's heart stopped, hearing the giant clatter of what sounded like a heavy object smashing into wood.
"Harry?"
Shoving the book into her bag, she heard another smash. Already on her way to the stairs, she pulled her wand out, heart thudding erratically. Running, she finally made it to the top of the stairs and had barely a moment to register the sickening mass of flesh and floral print on the floor, and, in the corner, a reptilian pile – Harry's legs sticking out from beneath it when, quick as lightning, the creature had changed direction, lunging for her.
As she dived out of the way, she fired a curse, ducking as it ricocheted off the walls and shattered the window. The night air filled the room, but Hermione had barely a thought to spare the cold as the snake expanded to twice the size she thought possible, raising itself taller and wider than she was, a thick mass of quivering coils and fangs.
It lunged again, but Hermione's DA prepared head was ready, and she shot back another curse, aiming right into its open mouth. There was a bang, and the snake rose ungracefully into the air, hissing, spitting, curling around itself.
"He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!"
The snake smashed into whatever solid items were left in the room, heavy and clanging. Hermione felt the need to vomit, frozen to the spot, processing what Harry had screamed her way. A split second before she had a chance to leap across the bed for him, Harry had lunged, yanking her violently by the waist, catching her ankle on the metal sides. She heard a shriek that was apart from herself as he jumped, taking her with him. It was all in slow motion, watching the snake strike again, feeling like a rag doll as Harry jerked her towards the window.
"Confringo!" she cried, and the force of it was everywhere, rebounding from the ceiling to the floorboards and back again. There was shattering glass and Harry was shouting in pain – or she was – and then they were apparating and all she could feel was the arm constricted around her waist.