Last of the Edhel, Chapter 3
by CinnamonGrrl for TechnoelfieAs the days passed, Hermione was but dimly aware of waking up in her own bed when she'd last remembered sleeping at Harry's, but it didn't really bother her any. Each morning, Hermione would lever herself from the bed and wander out into the lounge, pushing a sheaf of hair off her face and peering blearily around the flat. In her absence, Lavender had reverted to the slovenliness that had made her the bane of all their roommates back at Hogwarts, and every available surface was covered with detritus or an ever-thickening layer of dust. The demilune table by the front door held a sizable stack of unopened mail and a tangle of keys carelessly thrown onto its formerly polished surface; the squashy armchair was heaped with clean but unfolded laundry, and the settee boasted no fewer than three mountains of newspapers and magazines, none of which had been opened even once.
A strange, almost languorous apathy filled her when she attempted to reason why she kept waking up at home with mouth dry and head vile, as if she'd drunk far too much firewhiskey the previous night: a pressing, insistent indifference that turned her interest to other, less wearying things, and so she found herself cleaning her flat from top to bottom. Even the thought of Ron and his cure evoked a mere vague wish she could do something about it, before dashing back to Harry's.
The only thing that seemed clear to her, clear like crystal, like tears, were the too-brief moments she'd spent in the company of the angel. Or perhaps he was a god. Certainly, at least, an Adonis…. whichever. The classification didn't seem to matter in this muzzy world of half-fantasy, half-memory. It simply wasn't possible that something so beautiful, so ephemeral, could exist. Hermione's mind recalled things about him as if they'd been part of a fever dream: just a flash of gold as his hair caught the moonlight, or the barest glimpse of agile limbs as he sprang to the forest floor beside her: his body placed between hers and imminent danger, keeping her safe. He rarely spoke to her that she could recall, and then just words of warning, but the emotions that rolled off him were like waves on the ocean: consternation, certainly, and increasing confusion. Frustration. And, the last day or two, a growing interest. That makes two of us, she thought wryly.
Each new night seemed to find Hermione with another inspiration for how to prepare for it— might be cold in the deep forest, she considered, and bundled up accordingly. The Lumos spell is simply no substitute for a good old-fashioned Muggle torch… and what if I meet with some creature that was unresponsive to my defensive spells? With that thought in mind, she unearthed one of Harry's smaller weapons from the chest at the foot of his bed and stuffed that into the pack she'd realized she'd likely need on her jaunt to the Forbidden Forest.
It was only later in the week that she began to remember snippets of actually being in the woods. She supposed she should be worried, but as soon as she began to follow that train of thought, the lassitude filled her once more. If she just lay back and let the memories come instead of trying to force them, strange and wondrous images would flit before her mind's eye: trees, immense and stately, a solid canopy over her head. A wolf, at first deadly and menacing, then increasingly… bored? The recollections began to vanish like dew in the sun as soon as she turned her attention to them, and impatience rose in her chest like a coiled snake.
"Oh, who cares," Hermione snapped at herself. Little point in mooning over nonsense when there was work to be done. Completing her nightly packing venture, she let out a slow breath before Disapparating.
The now-familiar shadows swept down over her as soon as she appeared in the Forbidden Forest. A low mist was swirling around her ankles this almost-moonless, windless night, and a frisson of fear rippled down her spine at the sensation of being alone in a vast, dangerous place. Cursing herself for ten kinds of a fool, she busied herself in unpacking her bag, contemplating all the while simply returning to Harry's flat and finding some other way to help Ron. Plunking down between two tree roots, she leant back against the trunk and tried not to appear too hideously eager and obvious about waiting for the glorious creature who'd been haunting her dreams.
No sooner had the horrible possibility that he was a mere figment of her imagination crossed her mind than he appeared as suddenly as if he'd Apparated. Tall and lean, with the bow and knife strapped to his back a clear reminder that he was a hunter, his lips were twisted into a delicious smirk.
"I see you attend me, milady," he said.
As if she were a fish on hook, as if pulled by a string, Hermione came to her feet, unable to disguise the elation she felt at feasting her gaze on him once more. "Oh," she gasped, her voice a mere breath of sound in the still, hushed forest that surrounded them. "I knew you were real, I knew it."
Thranduil peered through the woods and, for the first time in many years, felt… something different. What could it be? It was not anger, nor was it sadness. He was not amused, nor was he pleased. It was a most puzzling emotion: he was agitated, as if he'd been halted in the middle of some important act and impatiently awaited returning to it. Stalking silently between the trees that filled the space between him and his quarry, he realized what it was.
Exasperation. Six days this woman had been coming to the Forbidden Forest, his forest, and six days he'd found her, subdued her, returned her to her own world. The spell he'd placed on her, increasingly strong each night, should have killed whatever interest she have had in his mysterious home. The potency of last night's rendering her unconscious should have made her wonder what her own name was, let alone why she might desire to explore the woods bordering Hogwarts. Thranduil had been quite sure he'd never see her again. He was, he noted unhappily, also quite wrong, for there she stood again like all the other times. Poised in a half-crouch, prepared for an attack that didn't come, she couldn't know that the wolf who'd approached her each of the prior evenings had tired of such fruitless pursuit and now barely raised his head from his paws when her scent, nervous and uneasy, wafted to him on the cool might air.
Why was she resistant to his spellwork? Never before had any been able to throw it off, but this one… she was made of sterner stuff than the usual, it would appear. Each night she seemed to recall something else—the second time she'd appeared in the forest, she'd been wearing warmer clothing; the third time, when the wolf menaced her, she brandished some sort of light source that was not dependant on magic, startling the beast enough to keep it from attacking until Thranduil could appear and hasten it on its way. The fourth time, instead of her wand, she had waved around a respectably sized dagger, and Thranduil was impressed by her intent if not her technique. Brave, this one. Amazingly stupid, but brave… and persistent.
The fifth night, she'd borne over her shoulder a bag, which by its lumps and angles proclaimed that it held books—large, heavy ones at that, and Thranduil marveled that her small frame was capable of hoisting their obvious weight without undue injury. And the sixth night, last night, she'd also come clutching a pack of what appeared to be rations. Could it be she planned on camping here, in the Forbidden Forest? This was unacceptable, he thought sternly, and did not give her even a second to begin speaking that time before making her sleep and taking her back to the woods' edge. "This must end," he told the half-giant, who accepted the unconscious burden into his burly arms as gently as he had all five previous evenings.
"Easier said than done, with 'Ermione," Hagrid grumbled, gazing down with shrewd black eyes at the girl, his expression hovering between affection and concern. "When she's got an idea, there's no turnin' her from it."
The elf's gaze now narrowed as he stared at her face. So common, so unassuming. There was no indication in her unremarkable visage of any extraordinary intelligence or will. She should have been as easily distracted from her interest in the Forest as myriad others had been over the millennia. Thinking back on this, a day later, another emotion reared its unwelcome head: curiosity. It had ever been one of his shortcomings, alas. What could be so important to this girl, that she would return over and over? What could drive her to overcome the most powerful magic he could muster?
She had stepped into a small clearing, and a weak shaft of moonlight just managed to pierce the tree cover above to illuminate her figure as she began to unpack her overloaded bag with what Thranduil was beginning to see were characteristically brisk movements. Her now-useless wand, several ancient-looking books, a pot of ink and well-used quill were all placed along a gnarled tree-root, and then she sat down at the base of one majestic tree, looking around expectantly.
He could delay no longer, not when it was so patently obvious she was waiting for him. Thranduil resolutely ignored the warning whispers of foreboding that slithered through his mind and stepped into the clearing. "I see you attend me, milady," he commented, a touch of dryness to his tone.
She leapt to her feet immediately, looking rapturously pleased to see him. "Oh," she breathed. "I knew you were real, I knew it."
Thranduil frowned. He did not know how she was able to recall anything of her interactions with him, few and brief though they had been, but it could not be permitted to continue. He reached toward her, as he had done the previous six nights, to instill upon her one last time the enchantment of forgetting. This time, when he returned her to the half-giant, he would stress his concerns and make it clear that his patience was nearing its end.
"No!" she cried, surprising him in his moment of introspection, and sprang away like a startled deer. Quicker than that, however, he was after her, and with a hand on her arm, whipped her around to face him. "Please," she entreated, eyes huge in her pale face, "please, don't make me forget again."
"Why should I not?" he asked almost against his will—it did not matter why she was here, only that she could not be allowed to continue to come.
"I am searching for the Source," she blurted, trying to say as much as possible before he rendered her senseless once more. She did not notice how he stiffened at her words. "I need it."
Face carefully blank, he put her away from him and scrutinized her. She did not have the fëa of a dishonest woman, and her eyes were clear, holding none of the hunger for power he'd seen poison countless others before her. "Why?" he asked simply.
Hermione's breath shuddered in her lungs, as if protesting being drawn inside and struggling to get out. "My friend," she whispered. "He was… damaged… in a battle several years ago. It's my fault he was hurt—I was trying to deflect the Killing Curse from hitting him, and it didn't work properly." She bit her lip as regret took a leisurely cruise through her once more. "I think I've a way to heal him, but I don't have enough power. No one does." She stared into the distance, in the direction of where the Source was hidden, and Thranduil felt unease skitter its way across the back of his neck at her unwitting accuracy. "Only the Source is able to help him, now," she finished sadly.
He stared at her, stared hard and deep until she felt her soul had been flayed open. "I am sorry," he told her at last, "that I cannot help you. I do not know how you are aware of the Source, or its location, but—"
Hermione felt panic fill her as he spoke. Finally, she was getting some answers, some sort of confirmation of her long-held suspicions, and she was being refused! "No," she interrupted, too distraught to catch his expression of astonishment at being cut off for the first time in ten thousand years. "There is no 'but'. Ron needs the Source, and I'm going to use it to help him." She tilted her chin up in a shockingly stubborn move. "I won't let anyone stop me."
His features were impassive; it could have been a marble statue before her for all the movement or mobility he showed. "I regret that I cannot help you," he said softly. "But the Source is more important than the life of one Man." An expression of grief flitted across his face then, so quickly Hermione thought she might have imagined it. "More important than the life of one Elf."
"Is that what you are?" Hermione demanded, pouncing on the fragile hint. "An Elf? What's your name? I'm Hermione, Hermione Granger."
He sighed. Really, if the situation weren't so dire, he might find himself smiling at her. She was so young, still so eager and questing and idealistic. Idly, he wondered what that was like. "There is no point in telling you my name," he answered at last. "You shall not remember me long enough to use it."
She tilted her head to the side, and her mouth curved in that way particular to females when they know something a male does not. "That's not possible," she said at last, eyes gleaming. "You're the reason I keep remembering the little that I do, after all."
"I?" he asked, eyebrow quirked. "Why is that?"
Hermione Granger tilted her chin up again, this time coquettish instead of tenacious, and then said something that shocked him, shocked him to his core with its strangeness, its incongruity to their situation, and its sheer brazenness. "Why, because I've fallen in love with you, of course."
fëa = spirit, soul