You Know Me Like the Nightingale
Chapter One
See you over hill and dale
Riding on the wind I see
You know me, you know me like the nightingale
"Oh fair maiden, I see you standing there,"
Will you hold me for just a fair time
The tune is playing in the fair night
I see you in my dreams
Fair boy your eyes haunt me...
The sea was rough in the late night, crashing onto the shore, leaving frothy marks it had been there as it retreated back into itself. Cool winds caressed the young woman's face and caused her brown unruly curls to become even more so, blowing about her shoulders, which were nearly bare in the thin-strapped light-blue nightdress she wore. She was here to meet somebody - who she didn't know. She'd seen him before walking the shores at this time, his hair black as the night sky and his eyes like glittering emeralds, but he never revealed his identity to anybody, even the sea.
"Who are you?" she finally asked this night, as he slowly approached her. He didn't look surprised, as she thought he might, but instead smiled, the barest of effort going into the lifting of the corners of his lips.
"Your fate rests with me," he said, his voice not eerie and echoing like she thought it might be, but instead deep and smooth and comforting. She felt a great sense of familiarity, though she was certain she'd never seen his man before. He was incredibly handsome, she decided, his skin paled to ivory in the moonlight and those mysterious eyes of his framed by glasses. His garb was simple; black button-down shirt, black trousers, and black shoes, which contrasted with the pale of his skin but went perfectly with his dark hair. He was a paradox of a man, and she liked him.
"How does my fate rest with you? You're not God, are you?"
"Of course not," he laughed, and it filled her ears, comforting her. "I'm far from God - I am a man, just like you are a woman, and I'm falliable. That is how your fate rests with me, a falliable man. I will save you, in the future, how close that may be I do not know, but I will rescue you. And you will remember me, but not immediately after I see you tomorrow."
"But... how can I remember somebody I've never met?" He only shook his head, and began to fade before her eyes, like a cruel hologram sent to torture her, his features all becoming marred as the wind blew more strongly, until he disappeared altogether, leaving her alone with the crashing of the waves the only sound accompanying her shouts trying to call him back to her, growing more frantic as time passed.
The shores then receded back ten miles at least, and the sand disappeared before her feet. She found herself in the middle of what looked like a giant marble chessboard, without the chess pieces. Instead, there stood a massive hourglass to her right, the ocean ahead, and a castle to her left.
"This is where your fate will be decided," said the man from behind her, and she whirled around to face him.
"Please, tell me your name!"
"That I cannot do. Will you choose time over your past?"
"What are you talking about? Past goes with time!"
"Will you fight, or die trying?"
"Stop talking like that! Tell me your name!"
"Goodbye, Hermione." He faded again, and a giant fissure appeared in the chessboard, and she fell down it, down into the black hole of uncertainty and confusion, never to return.
Hermione Granger shot up in her four-poster, sweat drenching her pillow and the nightdress she wore, which was white and cottony, unlike the one in the dream. Her hair was falling out of the bun she'd secured it in before going to bed, and she took out the elastic as she got up and stood in front of the mirror. Her skin was the shade that the mysterious man's had been, and dark purple circles showed beneath her eyes of honey. She hastily put her hair back up and made her way out onto the balcony, her eyes looking up at the stars.
Hermione had never been one for the study of Astronomy, sharing Walt Whitman's opinion expressed in his poem "The Learn'd Astronomer" which was why study formulas and the such when you can just go outside and appreciate the stars? The sounds of the sea reached Hermione's ears and she looked down to it, as if expecting to see the handsome man without a name strolling the shore in all black. She'd been having the same dream of herself watching him for six weeks now, but tonight had been the first time she'd actually spoken to him. She sensed he was somebody from the past she couldn't remember, which was another mystery waiting to be unraveled.
It had been the night of September the twentieth, 1999, when Hermione woke in a street in a village called Hogsmeade just outside the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, bleeding and without a memory. She'd been taken to St. Mungo's after being discovered by a bearded man named Rubeus Hagrid, someone who said she should remember who he was but didn't tell her, as he'd promptly burst into tears, mumbling something about two boys Hermione was sure she'd never met. The Healers at St. Mungo's concluded she'd had her memory wiped by a Death Eater and left to die during the Siege of Hogsmeade. Very slowly Hermione began to regain her memory back in chunks, and remembered specific events up to September 19, 1990, the year she got her acceptance letter to Hogwarts.
Then, her memory was blocked off for nine years and one day, up to the day she woke in that street. She'd somehow retained information she'd learned at Hogwarts such as spells and historical facts, but hadn't any idea who her friends or teachers were at Hogwarts - something that baffled said Healers at St. Mungo's and other institutions around the Wizarding world. Last Hermione had heard, Rubeus had gone insane, retreating into a shell of himself, not speaking to anybody. She'd wanted to visit him, but a red-haired girl named Ginny Weasley, who'd looked after Hermione for five years until she got back on her feet and was accepted at the Aurorship school for the Ministry, told Hermione she couldn't, that it would be too dangerous. Ginny wouldn't ever tell Hermione of her life at Hogwarts, always bursting into uncontrollable sobs when Hermione asked. Hermione knew of Voldemort and his Death Eaters - how could she not, being an Auror? - but had never encountered one yet during her Aurorship, as she'd just been named one after three years of vigorous training and testing. There was talk of somebody named Harry Potter, but she wasn't sure how he tied in with Voldemort and the Death Eaters, as that had been the historical facts she couldn't remember, oddly. All evidence of her life before Hogwarts had been destroyed, as her parents' house had been burned and her parents killed when she was seventeen, or so she was told by Ginny. All save for the house she resided at now on an island off the coast of southern England, solitary and private.
As the twenty-seven-year-old witch looked out at the sea, she felt loneliness familiar to her creep into her heart, hot tears stinging her eyes. She didn't blink them back as she had many times before, but let them roll down her cheeks, staining her nightdress and wetting her skin as the cool wind caressed her face as it had in the dream.
"Who are you?" she whispered to the air. "Who are you, black-dressed stranger?"
Turning back to go into her bedroom once again, she decided she needed another trip to Diagon Alley's bookshop, Flourish and Blotts, to look up a book that might have some information on the place in her dreams or the mysterious stranger.
Harry Potter groaned in frustration.
"Blast it all to hell and back," he cursed under his breath as he turned away from the Hogsmeade shop. 'THE GOLDEN GALLEON IS CLOSED SUNDAYS. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE' read the sign on the front door. "I'll have to go to Diagon Alley now."
"You hate Diagon Alley," stated Remus Lupin when Harry stormed back inside the Hogsmeade cottage he and his parents' friend shared with Harry's friend Ron Weasley, choosing Hogsmeade as a location for their house so Remus could have easy access to Wolfsbane Potion, made oh-so-generously by Professor Severus Snape of Hogwarts every month.
"No shit," Harry blatantly stated. "All those damn people... I was hoping to avoid this by going to the Golden Galleon."
"You shouldn't be so pessimistic about everything, Harry."
"Oh, stuff it. I've only lost nearly everybody I love thanks to this bloody stupid war. Hermione's memory's been wiped and I can't visit her on Ginny's orders - for eight years, mind you - and Ginny herself just gets hysterical every time one of us mentions Hogwarts, and Ron's going off and getting married to Luna, which I don't know how is tied to the war, but blast it."
"Well, you still have me," Remus said, sounded rather dejected.
"I'm sorry," said Harry, instantly feeling bad about his outburst. "It's just... I'm sick of everything."
"Don't worry about it, I know what you meant. If you don't hurry up, Flourish and Blotts is going to close before you can go, and I don't prefer to hear you complaining to the neighbours because I've kicked you out." Remus's eyes were twinkling and Harry found himself laughing, something he hadn't been able to do in a while.
"Right, good idea." Without another word, Harry grabbed his wand and Disapparated from the house, ending up in front of Flourish and Blotts itself. "Perfect." Walking inside, he breathed deeply in the scent of old books and sank into the warm atmosphere the bookshop offered, wondering why he'd regretted having to come here so.
"Dreams of Prophecy? Pssh, sure, like that'll have valuable explanations," he heard a strangely familiar voice of a woman, his ears really tuning in on the word 'prophecy'. Whirling around, he felt his jaw drop and a flood of emotions hit him like fifty Bludgers to the stomach, and feared he would be sick for a minute with disbelief. Hermione Granger was standing not ten feet away, flipping through a book. Her hair was pulled back on the left side but a few defiant tendrils stayed out of the silver clip and fell over her eyes Harry knew to be a very pretty, very warm light-brown, and she wore a sapphire-blue cloak over a dark blue sweater and black pants. She'd only grown more beautiful from the last time he'd seen her - before she'd been taken by the Death Eaters into Hogsmeade - at one of their monthly meetings in the Three Broomsticks.
Harry felt myriad of emotions at that moment - anger at Ginny, anger at Voldemort and whatever Death Eater wiped her mind; hurt in that he knew she wouldn't recognize him if she caught sight of him; fear that she would try to attack him if he approached, and finally that one thing he'd felt for her at the end of their sixth year, stretching on until even now - love.
Swallowing hard, Harry let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, feeling very dizzy all of a sudden. He leaned against a bookshelf, staring down at the ground, but Hermione's face swam before his eyes. Her scream ripped through the bookstore, attracting everybody's stare and Harry's most of all - but what surprised him more than the customers and bookstore owner was that she was staring straight back at him, her eyes wide and hands covering her mouth.
"The dream was right!" he was able to make out as she spoke from behind her fingers.
"Miss? Is everything okay?" the bookstore owner, Martin, tentatively spoke, stepping forward and laying a hand gently on her shoulder. She pointed a trembling finger at Harry.
"He's the man from my dream." Harry swallowed a second time, feeling as though he owed an explanation.
"She had a Memory Charm placed on her many years ago," he said quietly, the customers all still staring, Martin's gaze focusing on Harry now. "I - I'm Harry Potter, she's Hermione Granger." Gasps broke out from the customers at the mention of his name. Hermione narrowed her eyes, lowering her finger, her other hand still against her lips.
"You're associated with Voldemort, aren't you? Somehow... no one will tell me, and... I can't remember." She shook her head, setting her curls dancing, and suddenly swayed, Harry's arms shooting out to catch her before she fell. She had fainted.
A/N: The song at the beginning is © Tori Amos in her "Song for Eric." The chessboard setting, with the giant hourglass and ocean, that's from Finger Eleven's video "One Thing" because I'm uncreative like that. The "Will you fight or die trying?" is a modification of a quote on a Legend of Zelda wallpaper I saw once that was "Wilst thou fight, or die trying?" So that doesn't belong to me either. Please review. Even if you didn't like it, tell me why, but nicely please.