Chapter Twenty Five- Year V- Flux Incontinence
Perhaps it had only lasted a moment, perhaps an eternity.
Hermione regained conscious thought where she'd left it- at the bottom of the lake. It took a moment to realize that the pain was gone, that she had a body- that she was running out of oxygen. The Inferi didn't stir at her presence, and Hermione kicked off from the bottom, watching them all the while.
She breached the surface and took great gasps of musty air. It had been so long since she'd breathed, and it tasted unnatural on her tongue.
There was no sign of the Inferi awakening, and so Hermione swam to shore. More than anything she just wanted to get out of this godsbedamned cave. The Locket wasn't placed yet anyway.
Hermione dragged herself onto the cold stone and lay there for a moment, just feeling solid earth beneath her. When the cold seeped past her sodden clothes and into her bones Hermione decided to move. Not trusting her feet and wanting to feel the ground besides, Hermione crawled on all fours to the wall which some distant memory told her would open at the touch of her blood.
That was fine. Hermione tore into the inside of her cheek with her teeth and spat the blood out onto the wall. The blood seeped into the stone and became, inexplicably, a doorway.
The sea below danced with the gales that tore through the crags of rock. Hermione could taste brine on her lips, felt the frozen moisture in her lungs. She dove.
Although her skin shocked with the cold, it didn't even approach the gelid waters within the cave. At least this chill was natural, normal.
Move, before you get hypothermia. Hermione took a breath and went beneath the surface. It was calmer- not by much, but calmer. A simple breaststroke carried her to the beach.
She walked for a while, squishing sand under her bare feet. The passage of time was something that she would have to relearn, and so she had no idea how long she walked before reaching a road.
The road wasn't even paved, showing how minor it was. Even so, someone was bound to come along eventually. The sun shone despite the chilly wind, and Hermione lied down by the side of the road.
Hermione. It was a name that echoed around her skull in a familiar way, and Hermione chose to believe that it was her own. Besides that, she had no idea who she was. Having her memories scrambled hadn't ridden her of her natural tendency to think things through, and so while she waited she pondered the question of her identity.
The sun was leaning toward the horizon by the time Hermione had collected the basic facts. She was Hermione, a Mudblood whose friends had all died. Those memories were vivid, more real than any others. She could remember having love more powerful than anything she could have known, and watching each of them shatter in the light of a familiar green curse.
First she remembered Harry- his stupid messy hair, his laugh, his swollen face when confronted by Evil Men, (his eyes blank, staring at the sky, his scar so inflamed it looked like an open wound). She remembered how desperately she loved him. How many years of her childhood she'd gifted him.
After that, the memories flooded her. Fred and George, Albus and Aberforth, Bellatrix, Dolohov, Lily, Keane, Echo, and Sirius.
Once the people presented their cases and filed back into place, Hermione remembered her mission. It was the reason she hadn't died in the lake in the cave. It was why she was doomed to repeat the year.
It was cold. No one would be coming down the road anytime soon. Hermione reached into her pocket and found a knife. She traced her finger over the hilt, thoughtful.
She stood and began to move, following the road to... somewhere. Probably a town, but that didn't matter because it wouldn't be London. The sun gradually lost its battle with gravity as it did every day, and the wind picked up.
A town. Hermione went faster.
Her feet hurt. She couldn't tell whether she was bleeding onto the road, but she would bet that she was. They pulsed with the cold, feeling bloated and heavy. The sooner she got somewhere warm, the better.
At she came to a parking lot on the edge of town. If she looked past it, she could see buildings, getting more dense further down the street.
The sun was nearly down.
A man came out of one of the buildings and, swinging his keys, strolled towards his car. She stared at him. She hadn't seen another person in so long. She couldn't remember the last time, actually. Although she'd put the corners of the puzzle in their places, the rest of her memory was inaccessible to her. All she knew what she'd been alone for some time. Alone, lonely, guilty, afraid.
"Oi, girl, you okay? Looking a little peaky, there." The man had spotted her. He stopped swinging his keys. He stepped forward, toward Hermione.
She had two options: fight or flight. She wouldn't run. She couldn't run.
Hermione found the outline of the knife in her pocket.
Closer... closer...
"Why aren't you saying anything? Do you need to go to the hospital?"
He wasn't about to take her to the hospital. Did he think she was an idiot, to fall for such a transparent lie?
The man came up close, reaching a hand out to take her arm. Hermione grabbed that arm and yanked him down, bringing the hand with the knife up to his neck. Her elbow dug into his chest, diagonal to his collarbone. "Drive me to London," she growled.
"Jesus Christ, fine, you mad bint!" he yelped. He tried to tug his arm out of her grasp, but Hermione's hand was a vice. She pushed him, forcing him to walk backwards, and considered briefly that, when she let him go, he might make a run for it. She wouldn't want to, but she would chase him down.
Perhaps he saw that promise on her face, because he got in the driver's seat, docile-like. Hermione got in the passenger side. She kept the knife in her hand, but really, as long as she ended up in London she didn't need to kill him or anything. The threat was enough. And if he made a wrong move? Well. He didn't need both of his bits, did he?
He started the car, and they were off.
*|II8II|*
"Here," Hermione said.
Silent, pale, and shaking, the man stopped driving. Hermione slipped out and waited for him to speed away before heading towards the Leaky Cauldron. He wouldn't have been able to see it, anyway, so her caution was unnecessary, but risks were expensive and Hermione was, frankly, tired of paying for them.
Her skin itched, but Hermione ignored that and slunk across the room to the Floo. A bag of Floo powder hung on a hook beside the fireplace. She grabbed a handful, feeling the dust soft against her palm and fingers, and tossed it into the fire. She was sure that it had found its way beneath her fingernails. The flame roared the same green as Harry's eyes, and Hermione stepped into it. "Hog's Head," she said, quietly but clearly.
She kept her eyes closed and her chin and elbows tucked in. After a short travel, she stumbled out onto the rug. She was in a private room, by the looks of it; around the corner she spied a bed.
If anything could be said about Hermione at that moment, it would be that she was exhausted. The adrenaline was losing out to the apparent security of her situation, for all that she knew it wasn't the case. Hermione was losing energy by the second. To lay down on that bed would be heaven, she was quite sure.
Yet, Hermione refused to be so defenseless. A Snow White, not she! She moved to the door and opened it, knife in hand. A sense of deja vu came over her, but she ignored it. There would be a lot of that in her future, and it wouldn't do at all to give it attention every time.
Stepping carefully, close to the wall and using the outsides of her feet (doubly useful, in that she could avoid reopening her wounds), Hermione made her way down the hall and down the stairs. She knew that she would find Aberforth here. She knew Aberforth had helped her before, and chances were good he would help her again. Everything else was up in the air.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, her ears were assaulted by noise. The room wasn't packed full by any means, but it sure was loud. Hermione had no idea what time it was, only that the moon had been up for some time. Was it past midnight? Who knew.
Aberforth would be the owner, and he would be at the bar. She could remember that, even if she couldn't remember his face. So, she did what anyone would do in such a situation: she strode through the barroom until she reached the bar, careful to avoid touching anyone. She needn't have worried; eyes followed her as we went, and when she came close they leaned away.
"What do you want?" rumbled an old man with deep frown lines whom she assumed was named Aberforth.
"Help," said Hermione. "And a water."
Aberforth glowered at her through bushy eyebrows, scanning her from head to toe. Hermione resisted the urge to look down. She knew what he saw.
"Where'd your shoes leave you?" he asked.
Hermione shrugged, a jerky little motion. "A lake. I think."
"What were you doing in a lake?"
"I can't remember."
"Did you hit your head?" He set a glass of water in front of her.
"I don't think so," she said, gasping. The water was gone.
Aberforth heaved a great sigh. "I don't suppose you know where your parents are."
"I know I don't have any," she said, which was, to the best of her knowledge, the truth.
"Who's been taking care of you?"
"I don't know. No one, I think."
"There's no doubt you're a magical child. You've been scaring everyone with that flux issue of yours."
"Flux issue?" Hermione asked, slowly. The words felt familiar in her mouth.
Aberforth picked up a filthy rag and began polishing a glass, smearing dirt around inside it. The gesture made something twinge in Hermione's head, and she winced. "I suppose you wouldn't know. Your flux, aura, whatever you want to call it, is pushing magical energy out around you. Your magic isn't exactly friendly, either. Even Muggles would be able to feel it, I reckon. Do you think you can rein it in?"
Could she? "How?"
"Pull it into yourself. Focus on your magic, and harden your skin to it."
Hermione focused, doing her best to block out the noise of the pub. She could feel her shields, first and foremost. The walls were woven so very, very tightly, absolutely impenetrable. It was as if she had a coat of flexible lead all about her. Inside, though? Where was her magic? Where was she supposed to find it?
"In your middle," Aberforth said. She'd asked out loud, apparently.
She closed her eyes, prodded at her abdomen with her consciousness. It took a moment, but yes, there it was! Her magical store was there, but it felt... foreign.
Hermione looked up at Aberforth, perplexed. He huffed. "Nothing can be easy, can it? Look, girl, if you've nowhere to be you can take a room upstairs. You might be wanting to see a Healer."
A Healer. Could one help her? Could she be helped? She didn't know much, but she knew that she wouldn't be easily fixed. Was it worth a try, though? What if she was made worse?
Well. She didn't know if that was necessarily possible.
"Okay," she said, and that was that.
*|II8II|*
Aberforth set up a meeting with one Healer Jezebel Wiblin within a week. Hermione got the distinct feeling that he'd called in a favor to do so, which was both flattering and unnerving. She'd been so sure that he would help her, but now that he was she wondered at his motive. He, after all, knew nothing about her and owed her even less.
Wiblin was a sharp-eyed woman of middling years and soft features. Hermione had insisted on examining her credentials, to the amusement of her inexplicable helpers. As she studied the rolls of parchment Wiblin had immediately surrendered, the words seemed to blaze on the page. No wonder they'd been entertained; Hermione remembered that even here in the past, Wiblin was a renowned expert in her field. Her name should have spoken for itself. Besides, now that her memory had been jogged, Hermione knew more about Wiblin's career and capabilities than even the woman herself. Satisfied, Hermione handed the parchments back.
"Have you any questions before we begin?" Wiblin asked, having already explained the coming procedure and the expected results.
"No," said Hermione, thinking that (while of course she couldn't say for sure) she'd never refused that invitation before.
While Wiblin shooed Aberforth out of the room, Hermione took deep breaths. Her memory had been returning to her over the course of that week, slowly. She was as yet unsure how she'd lost her memory, and many of the details of her personal history and those of the people around her were also beyond her reach, but the products of her research flooded her. It had been jarring at first, even painful, but her mind was becoming used to it. That wasn't the bit that scared her. Hermione had gathered enough about her actual memories that she wasn't quite sure she wanted them back. Would it be easier, after all, to be a blank slate than it would to deal with the pain she was certain dwelled within her?
Hermione sat cross-legged on a magically cushioned section of the floor, and Wiblin began tracing runes in chalk in a circle around her. Each rune flared as it was completed, and Hermione could feel the magic seep out, connecting with its fellows and itching to be activated.
It wasn't too late to back out, a voice within Hermione reminded her. Tempting, tempting. Hermione, however little she knew about herself, knew one thing: she was no coward. This was important. She was important.
With that thought, Wiblin activated the circle, and Hermione felt relief for the first time since she'd dragged herself from the lake. The noise, the light, the vibrations, all faded out. It was quiet. Gradually, Hermione became aware of her own body. The press of the soft stone floor against her legs and the sides of her feet, the pull of her shoulders and spine, the perpetual anxious vacuum in her stomach, the constant mid-grade headache (stronger now, she noticed), the weight of her hair on her scalp and neck— all made themselves known to her. Those weren't what she was here for, though. She allowed her focus to turn inward.
"Hermione," Wiblin frowned, "You aren't letting me in." She sounded confused, and maybe even a little wary.
Now that Hermione thought of it, Wiblin was right. The shields she'd noticed when she'd gone searching for her magical core were just as imposing as they'd been then. The problem was obvious: how was a mind healer supposed to heal her mind when they couldn't reach it?
"What do I do?" Hermione whispered.
"The circle was supposed to lower those for you. I don't know why it didn't work, but since it didn't you'll need to lower them manually." Here Wiblin paused, then went on, "Find them with your consciousness. That's it, yes. Now visualize them lowering. There are no spaces I can see, so visualize them contracting, getting tighter together but allowing some space for me to get in."
Hermione scowled, concentrating. She couldn't find any spaces, either, no place to begin applying pressure. "I'll have to force it," she realized aloud.
"Then do so," said Wiblin grimly, wand in hand.
She closed her eyes. With a thought, Hermione turned her consciousness into a wedge. She was loathe to compromise the integrity of her greatest defense, but it had to be done. Her shields, after all, weren't the only things she could see inside her head. The library of her thoughts and memories, once so grand, so breathtaking, was covered in the same otherworldly spiderweb which made up her outer defenses. Entire shelves were inaccessible even to her. She was pleased to note that those barriers, while strong, weren't of quite the quality of her most immediate dilemma. With some guidance, they could be breached.
The wedge struck out at the wall, barely passing the first layer. Hermione was undeterred; it would take some time, but she would prevail. After all, she was legendarily stubborn. She would decide what could and could not happen with her own magic, with her own mind. With a determination akin to rage, Hermione pushed forward again and again, until at last there was a space, however thin, which reached the outside world. There was a great heave, and then all at once the sliver became a window. The runes were helping, Hermione realized, which made her wonder whether she would have been able to do this without them. The thought was disconcerting.
It took some wiggling, but at last Wiblin joined her within her head. Her presence was gentle. Glancing, even. Still, Hermione was deeply uncomfortable. Not only had no one else ever been in her mind before, but Hermione had to exert a tremendous amount of effort in keeping that window open. If she let it close, she had a strong suspicion that Wiblin would be trapped inside with her.
"Is this how you see yourself?" Wiblin asked, her voice as unassuming as her magic. There was no judgment there, just a curiosity and, if Hermione thought about it, sympathy.
Hermione looked at herself and winced. Those strands of spider-silk coiled around eight sleek, bloody limbs, and originated from spinnerets. Even now, the strands kept coming, encasing her in a cocoon of her own making. "I suppose it is," she said. It made sense. She was, cliche or not, a black widow, with all the baggage which came with it.
Several moments passed before Wiblin said, "We would need more than just this session to help you. It may, in fact, take many."
That was fine. It was what she had expected, anyway, and Wiblin's willingness to help at all was gratifying. It was hard not to think of herself as a lost cause. Certainly, she must be a difficult case. For all that Hermione didn't know the specifics of her history, she knew that Wiblin had never seen anything like her before. She likely never would again.
"Please bring focus to those shelves," Wiblin said. She had no form within Hermione's library, and only her voice and her senses had managed to get through the barriers. Squashing the unease which came from baring such things to another person, Hermione obeyed.
Knowing that Wiblin would only see what Hermione herself allowed her to (and wasn't that a bother, considering the whole purpose of this exercise), Hermione carefully brushed against the webbing separating her from the books, but even that was too much.
"What did you feel?" Wiblin asked.
"A... a shock, I suppose," Hermione said. "For lack of a better word. My subconscious really doesn't want me to see these things."
"Yes, we expected that. Are you prepared to override that impulse?" The voice was carefully neutral, and Hermione couldn't see Wiblin's body language at all.
She turned aside several false starts, all of which were too angry or too honest. "Yes," she said instead. "What must I do?"
"There's very little to do but remove it manually. Normally, I could help you, but even with the help of the rune circle all I may do is guide you."
Hermione frowned. How very Muggle. Then again, she was quite used to doing things the hard way. What had she expected, really? This manifestation of her mind, then, was little more than a visual aid for herself and the Mind Healer. She was wasting too much effort in keeping the crack in her shields open, and already knew that she would need full focus if she were to get through what she suspected was at least partially self-inflicted amnesia. "I'm going to close the window now," she said tightly. She could feel her physical body beginning to tremble.
Wiblin didn't need her to say so twice. It was easier to get her out than it was to get her in, by just a bit. As soon as she was clear, Hermione allowed the gap to close. It did so instantaneously, leaving no crack behind.
She watched in silence as Wiblin deactivated the runes and cleared them from the floor. This time the quiet was not comforting. Once the light of the runes faded, Wiblin sat back on the floor. Hermione watched her.
"It pains me to say so," Wiblin began, then stopped, clearing her throat. "I believe you may have better results with a different Mind Healer."
"Oh," said Hermione. "I had thought— that is to say— oh." She'd thought that the curiosity of her situation would be a draw. A valuable chance to learn, which must be a powerful motivation for a Healer at the head of her field. If Hermione herself had been in the Healer's position, very little would have stopped her.
"Furthermore, I have some concerns. Would you like to hear them?"
Of course she would. Hermione nodded, expression as blank as she could make it. She'd allowed this person into her head, and now—!
"My most immediate concern is for the safety of your Healer, whoever that may be in future. Are you aware that had you lost your grip on your shields, I would have been trapped inside your mind with you?"
"I gathered, yes," Hermione said tightly.
"This isn't your fault, of course. It was my decision to press forward, and it was an ill-considered one. One I would not make again."
Hermione nodded. Her teeth were clenched, but as soon as she noticed she relaxed her jaw. What would her parents say?
What, indeed? That memory was new: her parents were dentists. Good to know.
"That being said, I wouldn't put it past someone else to make the same call, and be unable to get out safely. I can't say for certain that I would be able to do so if I were to try again."
"And your other concerns?"
Wiblin cracked a wry smile. "I would be the first to admit that my specialty lies in the flashy magic bits. That's not what you need. No one will be able to go into your head and fix things like normal. Only you will be able to do that. With that in mind, perhaps you would be better served by a Healer better versed in passive guidance."
Well, Hermione could barely begrudge Wiblin for coming to the same conclusion which she herself had.
They parted amicably, with a handshake. Hermione admitted to herself that she had, in fact, been hoping for some flashy magic. For once, just for once, she'd hoped that someone else could do the heavy lifting. What was the point of magic if it wouldn't make life easier?
At the very least, she wasn't directionless. Wiblin hadn't said that no one could help her. Perhaps she could look for a therapist, practiced in Muggle medicine?