RESimon and shestoolazytologin - I adore you both. Thank you for everything you've put into this fic.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sunlight filtered in through the open tent flaps as a cool breeze drifted through the tent. Ron shivered as the breeze picked up for a moment and brushed over his exposed skin.
"Would you like me to close it again?" Hermione asked, her hand pausing where she was rubbing salve into the wound on his abdomen.
"No," he said. "It feels good."
Hermione looked up at where Draco had paused his analysis of Ron's vitals above them. Draco gave her a short shrug and resumed, his eyes moving rapidly over the pulsing lines and numbers suspended in the air before him. Harry stood at the end of Ron's cot, frowning slightly.
"I really am fine, mate," Ron said, his voice lilting as if he were trying to inflect it with a joking ease that instead fell flat. "Are you?"
At that, Harry and Draco exchanged a stormy look. Harry worried a hand through his messy hair, sighing. "Last night, I — well…" He reached out a hand, looking deeper into the tent. "Accio sword!" A gleaming sword encrusted with jewels flew into his grip half a moment later.
Hermione's eyes widened. "The Sword of Gryffindor? Is that what it showed you last night?" She paused for a moment as she took in the sword's beauty, yearning to reach out and touch its glittering hilt. She furrowed her brow as she remembered the tension between Harry and Draco as they'd returned to the tent the night before not long after Ron had fallen asleep, tension simmering between them. "Then why were you wet —"
Harry scowled while Draco cut his eyes at him. "I'd rather not discuss it," Harry answered stiffly.
Draco scoffed as his fingers started to jab at the vitals spells before him.
"Griphook assured me that it was in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault. Clearly it was not, or else it wouldn't have been at the bottom of a bloody lake —" Harry cut off, his lips thinning into a white slash. "Anyway, I think the vault is where the next horcrux might be hidden. If we are right, then —"
"It's gone," Hermione and Draco said in quick unison.
Harry blinked at them. "We can't very well know if it's gone unless we check the vault ourselves, as difficult as that may be. We just need to figure out a way to get in around whatever Griphook has been scheming —"
Hermione cleared her throat. "It's gone because the vault is gone."
Ron's eyebrows shot up. "How could an entire vault just disappear, exactly? It's bloody Gringotts, there's no way—"
"Because we destroyed it. And everything in it. If there was a Horcrux left in there now — I can promise you that it has been thoroughly destroyed." Draco looked over at Hermione, and she forced herself to paste on an impassive look even as her fingers started to tremble over where she continued to rub salve into Ron's wound.
She felt the burn of Harry's gaze on her. "Hermione," he said softly, "is that why…At the Manor—"
"Yes," Draco snapped. "So the topic is closed. Where else do you think that one would be hidden?"
Draco's words were unnecessary, and the four of them exchanged long looks as Harry's next words hung in the air between them, unspoken for a drawn-out moment before he said it quietly: "Hogwarts."
X
Hermione crossed and uncrossed her legs, shifting awkwardly on the hard sofa. She could've easily reached for her wand and cast a cushioning charm on herself, but the simple movements she'd already made and only served to make her even more hyper-aware of all the eyes in the room that were on her. On her, and on Draco who sat beside her, stoic and unmoving since the moment they had set foot into the sitting room.
The safe house they were in wasn't unlike the others she had seen, save for the enlarged room they sat in now. Just as it were, there had already been a dozen other occupants when they'd entered, and a few more had filtered in in the minutes since they arrived. They had timed their arrival seemingly perfectly to be but a minute before the meeting was due to start, but she now felt foolish. Punctuality, after all, was likely the last on their list of priorities during a war.
It was as the thought crossed her mind that Kingsley stepped into the room exactly four minutes after they were due to begin, his approach signaled by the telltale scrape of Moody's wooden leg across the hardwood floors as he followed behind him.
Kingsley spared only a short glance over the room's occupants before he began. "We received word that Rhodes and Davids didn't make it," he said.
He paused slightly, and Hermione darted her eyes around the room, gauging the reactions of its occupants. There was barely a ripple. She wondered how many times similar announcements had been made in this fashion, how quickly it had taken them to become desensitized to it all. Her eyes stopped as they landed on Parvati. She hadn't expected the woman to be looking back at her and found herself frozen, feeling trapped in the woman's gaze. They'd been roommates for six years, but they had never been close. Still, as Hermione looked into the woman's eyes, seeing the emptiness reflected there, it felt even more foreign than the already distant relationship they'd had.
She had used to think that she understood what a blank stare was, but now, looking into Parvati's eyes, seeing nothingness — perhaps this barest hint of recognition, layered under heavy layers of emptiness, she realized that she had known nothing of it at all. She'd once seen something similar in her own gaze, she supposed, but now that she looked at Parvati — color drained from her skin, its golden undertones faded to a sallow grey – she realized that she had yet to see much of this side of the costs of war. They hadn't been shielded from horrors while sequestered in their cabin, but it was only now that she realized how much they had been shielded from — seeing the hollowed despair they'd felt reflected in the eyes of those around them.
It was only Kingsley's voice that got her to turn away despite the way she still felt Parvati's eyes burning into her. "We don't know how much fight there is left to be fought, but we can only hope that we are nearing the end of this," Kingsley said soberly. "Nevertheless, we need everyone to be as alert as possible. We have no room for mistakes, nor do we have room for any more losses."
Kingsley turned to Harry then, and she watched the way Harry's throat dipped and devastation flashed through his eyes as he scanned the room before looking back at Kingsley.
"Harry believes that the final battle lies at Hogwarts," Kingsley continued. "I doubt this comes as a surprise to any of us. We all knew all of this would be leading here, to this."
Hermione jerked as she felt a sensation on her lower back. She froze in the same second as she realized that it was a finger, slowly tracing circles along her lower back. Draco. She sank back into the sofa, leaving him room to continue his ministrations while she continued to listen to Kingsley listing off strategies before them.
She had expected it to be longer, she supposed. It was barely an hour before everyone was filing out of the room, faces of classmates she'd once been at least acquainted with looking almost unfamiliar with the grief that lined their faces. Her eyes landed on Hannah and Neville stood across the room, talking in hushed voices while others filed out around them. Hannah straightened suddenly, head snapping to where Hermione realized that she'd been staring from. Hermione moved to stand, her movements awkward as she looked between Hannah and Neville. Neville gave her a soft smile while Hannah's eyes darted between her and where Draco still sat on the sofa, silent.
The room was quieting as others exited, and she hovered before the sofa, unsure if she could approach them or not. Unsure of what she could even say if she did. The decision was made for her moment later when Hannah ducked out of the room, turning away from her without a word. Neville managed to shoot her a final sad smile before he followed after Hannah.
When she turned again it was to see Draco standing beside her, tensing. Hermione caught one of her fists in her hand. "It's all right, I —" she froze as she caught movement in the doorway beyond them as a figure stepped into the room.
Seamus Finnegan stood several feet away, watching them quietly.
"Seamus," Hermione said softly, his name as painful to utter as the memories of blackened veins and crimson blood that resurfaced themselves.
"Hermione," he acknowledged with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Malfoy," he said, nodding at Draco.
Draco grunted back, and there was a brief suspended silence as the three of them stood there, staring at each other.
"I would ask how you're doing," Seamus said, running an awkward hand through his hair, "but…"
The silence felt all the more palpable the longer they stared at one another the emptiness of the room, almost stifling now whereas she'd thought only minutes prior that the full room had had the same effect. Now she wished for nothing but someone to come in and shatter what was suspended between them — her awful guilt at what she'd been unable to prevent.
"Can we talk?" he asked. His fingers twitched as he continued to worry them through his hair. "If you don't mind, I mean —"
"I don't," she answered quickly, trying to quell the tremble from her voice.
Draco caught her by the hand. "I'll stay, if you need it," he said just softly enough for her to hear.
"I'll be alright," she said, squeezing his hand.
It was only a moment later before she and Seamus were left alone once more. "It's spring now," Seamus said, nodding toward the large window across from them where the snow was half-melted outside. "If you don't mind a walk?"
Hermione nodded solemnly. "A walk sounds nice."
She followed him silently as they stepped outside, starting a slow, circular track around the safe house. This safe house was larger than the others, made up of whitewashed wood and large windows. The paint was cracked and peeling with age, and some of the quickly done patching was evident in the way certain shingles were slightly off-center, or where the paint was fresher in some places than the others. All done out of magical necessity, thrown together by an unpracticed wand with the aim of utility, not beauty. Her heart ached as she recalled the beauty of the cabin that had been supposed to be hers, burned by her own hand. She wondered if there would be an end to this, if any potential end could lead to another era where meticulous attention to beauty was valued once more.
"I'm sorry," she said, breaking the silence. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save them."
She couldn't look at him, not fully, but she still caught the white of air out of the corner of her eye as he exhaled. "What makes you think that you didn't?" His voice was an octave deeper, punctuated by grief.
Hermione raised a hand to her temple as she recalled the pain of the days following their deaths and what she'd done, the nightmares she'd had of skeletal bodies and blackened veins. "I…" She trailed off, at a loss for words.
"Did they suffer?" he asked, his voice quieter than before.
Hermione let out a shuddering breath as the words twisted in her mind, melding with the memories that she'd been trying to banish for months. There was a lie, somewhere ready near the end of her tongue— "Yes," she breathed instead, her voice breaking over the word.
Seamus was silent for a long moment, the only sound the soft squelch of their boots in the muddy earth as they walked. The air was fresh and clear, yet it felt thick as it all but suffocated her, the cool air suddenly frigid and biting. Her hand fluttered to her chest as she tried to breathe, wondering why she'd answered at all, reminding herself that what this was beyond what they could've predicted, beyond what they could've ever imagined.
Seamus grabbed her arm. "It isn't anyone's fault," he said. There was an odd tone to his voice as he said the words, each one seeming to linger on his tongue and in the air long after he'd spoken them. "That's what everyone says, right?" he finished, several beats after he'd begun.
"Yes," she said again, unsure if she was able to utter anything else even if he asked.
She listened to him suck in a slow breath before he spoke again. "I don't know if I can describe it." She watched as his hand twitched as he hovered above his chest, pressing a fist over his heart. "It's like — there was something whole there, once. Now it's just pain. Something shattering and exploding, twisting and breaking and melting over and over again every day." He stopped walking then, his breaths coming out in harder puffs of air.
She forced herself to look at him fully, even as she felt herself starting to collapse inward once more. The expression on his face was so raw, so foreign, that it only served to break her more. "I'm sorry," she choked.
Seamus searched her eyes for a moment, tears gleaming in his own as a loan one streaked down his cheek. "It's not the pain I fear anymore. It's time. I just don't know when it will stop — if it ever will." He reached out her hand in his. "I am mad at so many things. So many people —"
"I'm so sorry," she said, still struggling to stifle her sob, "so sorry —"
"— But not you. I want you to understand that even though I'm hurting, it's not you. You tried. You didn't torture them, and with what we know about that curse now, we know that we never would've been able to save them, either. I'm grateful to you — and Malfoy — for saving them from whatever would've come next, because what they'd already done to them is already beyond my nightmares."
Hermione pulled him into a hug, letting his tears wet her shoulder as she held him as tightly to her as she could.
This fic will update on Tuesday evenings until it is complete.