Chapter Three
What Did I do to Deserve This Pain?
It was late into the night, and Hermione couldn't sleep. But
it wasn't her memories that were haunting her, it was her guilt, and with Ginny
just across the hall, it really hit her hard how much she had missed.
*******Flashback*******
It was dark in Dumbledore's office; it had been like that since Voldemort's invasion, protection for the headmaster, for he was the key, if the Dark Lord got to him it would be over for the entire wizarding world and the muggle population wouldn't stand a chance. But that wasn't why Hermione had been called into him office, she knew all of this, it had to be worse, something personal, if it wasn't he would have announced it to everyone.
So here she sat, in the dark, waiting for something that could only be bad news. He hadn't come yet, he called her, yet he wasn't here. She let her mind drift as the minutes wore on, she needed to finish her plotting, and research. That's what she did, she was a military strategist for the undercover attack army, and was trying to find out how to destroy Voldemort once he was apprehended, she was on the verge of finding the key to his power. She hadn't seen her friends in months, everyone was busy, they all had different strengths so were put in different groups; Ron was the leader of the army that fought the dark side face on, he had his work cut out for him, but he was the best for the job, planning attacks was his forte, they always had been; Harry on the other hand was, as usual right in the middle of it all, trying to get inside information, befriending death eaters, or just threatening them, it baffled Hermione to no end trying to figure out what it was about Harry that made everyone think he's so powerful, when she looked at him all she saw was Harry, her friend, tall, lanky, and kind of clumsy; maybe there was something there that she couldn't see. Her new found ally; Draco Malfoy, had gone missing when the Great Hall was overrun, and hadn't been seen since; she didn't have long to get to know him, but she got a strong feeling of trust from him when he had hugged her. But then it could have all been a plot to get to Dumbledore; for Draco wasn't usually so open. She didn't like thinking about the whole thing, it gave her a headache.
Just as her mind was about to disobey her and dive deeper into her thoughts about Draco a door Hermione hadn't noticed earlier opened and in came not Dumbledore as she expected, but Snape. Sure, he wasn't all evil anymore, but that didn't give Hermione any reason to trust him, in fact if something happened she would most likely point the finger of blame at him.
He was obviously expecting her to be in here because he didn't seem the least bit startled when he saw her. But then, he seemed to know everything these days; he was always one step ahead of everyone. It was he who suggested a volume called 'Life and How to Keep it', an extremely large and dusty book of restoration and preservation of the spirit to Hermione; how he knew that she was looking into Voldemort's powers in the first place was also unknown to her. And Hermione was usually aware of everything.
He took a seat across from her and ran his long, thin fingers through his hair and sighed, this was something that didn't happen often, for Snape was near to never nervous or at unrest, but at the moment he seemed to be unable to word his thoughts correctly, "Miss Granger, I have some," he paused to think for a moment, "rather unfortunate news."
Hermione looked at him intensely trying to read the expression on his sallow face, but she had no luck, his eyes were as they always were, black, emotionless. So she nodded for him to continue.
"Your parents, when was the last time you heard from them?" What an odd question to ask while attempting to bear bad news, Hermione thought as she eyed the potions master warily.
"Months ago, why?" she had been unable to speak too many of her close friends and relatives; she hadn't had the time, nor the resources.
"They were vacationing in
"That's it? You don't care at all do you?" She snapped at him, jumping to her feet, "They were muggles so you don't care!"
"Miss Granger, this isn't going to get you anywhere, I can assure you. I was not the one who committed the crime; you know who was; so I suggest you go look for him."
All Hermione could do now was shake her head furiously at her old Professor, "Why? What did they do? They did deserve to get involved in my problems, he should have fought me instead I could have defended myself, they couldn't."
Snape waited until she had calmed down slightly then took
her by the shoulders and sat her down. Then for the first time he looked at her
as an equal, not a student, and said, "If you want to get to the bottom of
this, and I suspect that you do; then I propose that you go to the scene of the
crime, your aunt's house in
So she went, she gave her notice to Dumbledore, packed a bag
of muggle clothes, and grabbed the first flight to
***
In
When she arrived at the large two story house, it look virtually untouched, the grass might have been a little longer than expected, but the building and yard were intact, there was no sign of the most evil person on earth being here and committing a horrible crime. So Hermione walked as calmly as she could to the front door. She knew that hoping this was all a bad dream was useless, but she couldn't help it. The door was unlocked, this was a bad sign. Inside, the front room had a strange feeling to it, an empty feeling, so she did not dwell long in it. Going up the stairs to the second floor, the emptiness grew stronger, and was mixed with something that Hermione couldn't name, fear maybe. Through the first door that she came upon was a neatly decorated bathroom, but it was unoccupied so she continued. The next door resisted when Hermione tried to open it, something was blocking its path, she pushed harder and the object moved and the door swung neatly open. Looking around the room, she had to try her hardest not to faint; piled by the door was the bodies of her aunt, uncle and their three year old son, all dead. To the unknowing eye they might have passed as life size dolls, but Hermione knew that they had been victims of Avada Kadavra, and let out a sob of sorrow. Closing the door behind her, Hermione moved on determined to find her parents; but when she did, she wished she hadn't.
In the last room at the end of the hall, were her parents, they looked sleeping. They were in bed, covers around them, they looked peaceful, but the image was ruined by the large skull with a snake wrapped around it burnt onto the quilt that covered them. This was too much for her, Hermione's knees gave out and she slid to the floor and wept; for how long she was unsure, but when she finally got the strength to stand again it was dark and she needed to find a hotel. She refused to stay in the place where these tragedies happened.
Later that evening when Hermione had had a chance to think about her situation rationally, she came to the obvious conclusion that Voldemort must be destroyed; the hard part was figuring out how. Being so powerful and well protected made it hard for anyone to get near him. She sat on the double bed in the small hotel room thinking of ways to make the Dark Lord crumble at her feet, each more painful and impossible than the last. She had been in her trance for almost an hour when a loud, urgent pounding brought her back to life, someone was at the door.
She rose and walked slowly to the door, the pounding was getting louder and more urgent by the second, Hermione's temper couldn't handle this; so when she swung the door open violently, without even bothering to check who her caller was she yelled, "STOP THE BLOODY POUNDING ALREADY!!! I'm not deaf you know."
The slow drawling voice who answered was a familiar one, "I know that, you're too obnoxiously loud to be deaf, and I wasn't pounding, I was knocking."
Before Hermione's mind registered that the person standing at the door was no longer and enemy she slapped him across the face. When she looked up and realized what she had done she let out a cry and pulled the tall man inside, "Draco you idiot!"
Draco held his cheek, wincing slightly, Hermione's nails had dug into his skin and he was bleeding, "I'm an idiot? You're the one who slapped me!"
Hermione didn't answer; she was too busy healing his wound, her face contorted with concentration as blue sparks shot out of her wand, then when she was finished she replied, "Why are you here?"
Draco looked at her intently, and then responded, "You've changed."
What sort of answer was that? She wanted to know what
had happened to him and why he was pounding down her hotel door in the middle
of the night, "So? That's not important, I want to know where you have been,
what you've been doing, why you're in
"You want to know what I've been up to. Really?" He asked her slowly making sure that she was serious, "It's not pretty." Hermione gave him the go ahead and he began his story.
He had been sent to
Hermione's eyes went wide as he said this and she backed away from him, he laughed at her fear, "I'm not actually going to kill you, but I do have a plan, if you are willing to hear me out," he said calmly, laying his wand onto the bed as a sign of peace; when she took it, he continued, "I can leave the dark mark here so that the next person that goes looking for you will think you're dead, I have a spell that will take any traces of magic from your body, to make you undetectable, you would just be another muggle to everyone; even Dumbledore. But I suppose it's better than being dead. But if you don't want to live as a muggle your other option is for me to kill you, which I will do; or else the Dark Lord will kill both of us."
When she now thought about it, her decision seemed to be made so quickly, but in reality it took her more than half an hour to give her answer to Draco, "Yes; it is better than death, and then I can study the arts with out having to watch my back all the time,-"
"No, like I said, no traces of magic, if you brought any item with you that were made only for wizard's and witches, someone would find out, they are made by magic therefore hold magic in them," Draco said as he interrupted her.
"Oh, totally muggle, nothing at all." She said mostly to herself.
"Do you have anywhere to go after I perform the spell? Somewhere safe?" The concern in his voice startled Hermione; even while describing his plan he had remained emotionless.
She shook her head; she had left all her things in Hogwarts, where she lived, so she had no money, barely any clothes, and no place to go.
Draco again took charge, "Alright," he drew something from an inside pocket of his cloak, "Here, have this it should get you on your feet and settled," he handed her a large amount of American bills, "More than $10,000, I always carry cash on me."
He had prepared for this, she could tell; even someone like Draco wouldn't carry that much money around on them, and he had to of changed it from Galleons because Hermione was almost positive he didn't have a muggle bank account, "Thanks, I'll pay you back, I promise I will." He just nodded.
When she had changed, and gathered her things, she stood by his side and watched as he flicked his wand and muttered an incantation under his breath. Almost immediately the dark green mark appeared on her sheets, just as it had with her parents; a smell of burnt plastic settled throughout the room.
Then he turned to her, "Give me your wand," she did, then he took his and hers in his left hand, swishing them both above her head for a minute with his eyes closed; when he stopped and his eyes opened, she noticed that they had turned almost purple, Then he took one wand in each hand and placed each hand on one of her shoulders then he said clearly, "ignarus, irritum, absens, desum."
A warm feeling washed over her, and when it had left it had taken with it all that she felt for the magical world. She still knew it was there and where to find it, she still knew who her friends were, and who the bad guy was, but now it just didn't seem as important, she didn't feel the urgency that she once felt when thinking about her friends, or about her cause. Hermione looked up at Draco, his eyes were a greyish-purple, and he looked close to collapsing. So she took his hand and led him out of the room, down the hall and out of the hotel; when they were outside they stopped, and he leaned against the wall while she hailed a cab.
In the taxi, he slept, and she got her first good look at him. The months away had changed him, his face wasn't as pale, his appearance had softened, he looked like he had accepted life the way it was, both muggle and wizard. His hair was longer, and darker; it now fell messily to his shoulders instead of being slicked back neatly, a light blonde colour instead of silver; and his movements were more relaxed. He looked so peaceful.
An hour later they arrived at their destination, another hotel on the opposite side of the city, and she woke him. After getting a room, she took Draco's hand and guided him to the elevator then to the room. It was bigger than her previous one, because she had ordered two beds, assuming that Draco would be far to tired to apparate; she was correct. So she changed again, while he just slept in his clothes, cloak and all, and she went to sleep.
***End of Flashback***
This was her story, it had worked for five years, and she had lived almost peacefully as a muggle, not thinking of magic, unless she let her mind drift. But now that she was faced with reality, everything seemed more important to her, her senses were becoming alive again. When she had used her wand on Ginny, before she found out who it was, that was when she had come out of her coma, she had ended the spell, and she was a witch again.